Frazzled Reflections

I was useless with the wall tile surrounding the tub and shower, so when we were finally ready for the floor tile, I told Jeff that I could handle it, although I really don't think he was going to let me get out of doing the tile. Honestly, I felt I had to redeem myself in the home improvement arena. Finally one night this summer my husband decided that, with the walls all painted, it was time to tear up the floor to the floorboards to see what we could find underneath. The 60 years of flooring layers were interesting, disgusting, and we were glad to throw the flooring in trash bags and into our trash bin. The next step was figuring out how to fix the floor around the once leaking toilet and then laying down the cement backer for the tile. This included making circle cuts for the toilet and cuts for around the bathtub. My husband told me to measure around the toilet. I did. My husband made a beautiful circle cut with his rotozip circle cutter. We took the board upstairs. Still didn...

Until you start renovating a bathroom, you don't give much thought to toilets, that is unless you run into problems with the one you have and decide that it need to be replaced. At least, I had never given it much thought. You use toilets from the time you're potty trained until you get old, but when you are suddenly charged with the responsibility of picking a toilet for your own home, it can be surprisingly overwhelming. As of this writing, there are 1129 toilets available on homedepot.com and 1034 on lowes.com. And the toilet "technology" (for lack of a better word) is impressive and therefore daunting.  One can spend anywhere from less than $100 to well over $3000 on their bathroom comode. There is so much to consider for a piece of equipment that welcomes the wastes our bodies spit out. The discussion over what toilet to select has been going on for a year. We've talked to people, we've read about different varieties, we've looked at the toilet aisl...

There is a lot of reflection I could do on the walls in our bathroom, but that takes digging deep into my memory because the walls were a nearly 12 month project. It appear that drywalling, mudding, and installation of tile on the walls and ceiling have been the most difficult projects to complete in our bathroom. Not that we didn't have ANY idea what we were doing. We remodeled our kitchen in Indy with help from both of our dads, so we understood the mechanics of drywalling and mudding, but lack of experience with tiling, and the less than square walls in our 60 year old bathroom got intimidating. And when our son arrived and the mudding was still not complete, there was very little chance for the project to get done. So tile sat in the garage and then the utility room waiting to be installed. Paint sat in a closet waiting to be put on the walls. And the project never got going. Yes, we were busy. Our children constantly remind us how difficult it is for the two of us to work toge...

We bought our first house within two years of marriage, believing that it would benefit us to start making house payments as opposed to paying rent where we were living in Northwest Indiana. In retrospect, it was probably not one of our smarter financial moves, just breaking even when we decided to move to Indianpolis two years later, but we did love that house. Just like the one we live in now, it was quirky, and there were several elements of the house that I enjoyed. The bathroom was not one of them. There were several small things I didn't like about the bathroom, but the biggest problem I had with it was the window in the shower. The house had only one bathroom, so there was nowhere else to take a shower, and the situation was only made worse by the fact that the window was on the front of the house, facing the street. I never spoke about it, but I hated it. I hated the fact that the wood trim continued to warp and peel every time I took a shower. I hated the curtain that prev...

Apparently in the 1950s, Mamie Eisenhower became the authority on home decorating, at least for women from conservative, Ike loving households. She turned the White House pink, and women across the country followed suit. So begins the story of our main bathroom. As I have stated, every square inch of our new home either needs to be touched, or has already been touched by us or one of our fathers. We have three full baths, so when we moved into the house, our goal was to get all three bathrooms as functional as possible, and then decide which bathroom we would tackle first. I am hopeless DIY addict, and after watching enough bathroom remodels I started to believe that it couldn't be that hard and that we could do it for few dollars. After working overtime to finish several painting projects (more on that in later posts) Jeff asked which bathroom we should start ripping out. Our Master bath was out because I have grand plans for that one. The family room bathroom, while it looks te...

I started blogging two years too late, but I guess it is better to start at some point than to never start at all. For years I've needed a writing outlet that would just let me write and write and write, yet I was so busy being "super teacher" that I never took the time for myself. Now I know that I need to do this for me, even if I'm only writing while I catch up on the latest DVR'd HBO show. So why is this two years too late? Because I really NEEDED to start writing this blog two years ago when we moved from Indianapolis to Fort Wayne. Two years ago I hit the lowest point of my adult life. I had a husband and daughter who loved me, I was healthy, and I was finally starting grad school. However, I didn't want to move. I was happy with my life in Indy, I loved my job, our friends, our church, and I didn't want to relocate and start over. Emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and financially, I had hit a serious low point and had a difficult time seeing any...

Christmas break my senior year of college I finally told my parents that my post-student teaching plans in the fall included a December wedding. One of my mother's many arguments against my getting married included "you're too young" to which my father responded "they are the same age we were." Jeff and I have been happily married for over ten years, but those words from my mother took on new meaning this weekend when we watched my husband's cousin and new bride, who are the same age we were when we got married, exchange their vows and join their lives together. I watched the happy couple and their wedding party and one thought kept running in my mind: "They are too young." While I've had other younger cousins, sisters and siblings-in-law, and former students post pictures of their weddings and (gulp!) babies, this hit harder than those events. And maybe it's because I have known Jeff's cousin since he was 8 or 9. He's t...