Voiceless But Busy

Well, this is a first for me--I have laryngitis. My voice is a hoarse whisper which goes away at will. Sunday I had a very hoarse voice. Yesterday I woke up and couldn't talk. Today is no different. Would it be wrong for me to say I am enjoying it? I am. There is something very peaceful about not being able to talk. There are so many extraneous things we say that don't really need to be said, and not having much of a voice, I'm not saying them. It's bliss. Equally nice is the fact that yesterday, when I was first voiceless and whispering on and off, my children mirrored me and whispered too. It was so quiet here. Today the effect is not the same; though I can't talk, they are. Plenty. Oh well. At least I can't yell. That really is nice.

Anyway, enough about me. I thought I'd share with you where I've been the past few days. You might recall, back when I started this blog, I told you that my husband and I bought this house and it needed a bit of fixing up. Mainly, a lot of it was stuck in the 70's, which is when it was built. Well, slowly and surely, since we bought it a couple of years ago, we've been working on it. The first year we did some things, last year we did some things, and this year, same.

Our first project for this year is the "holdout bath". There are 3 bathrooms in this house. Two on the second floor (one common, one master), and one on the first, for guests. The two on the second floor were updated somewhat. The floors were replaced, the tiles in the showers/bathtubs were redone. Last year we replaced the toilets (because 1970s toilets use a ludicrous amount of water) and the countertop in one, and painted them and fixed them up. They didn't need too much work. We ignored the "holdout bath" on the first floor--the one that hadn't been updated since the 70's. The bath is/was ugly. Dingy "white" walls. Hideous linoleum, dark walnut-stained trim, lovely yellow toilet and towel bar, huge, dark 1970's sink cabinet with faux marble counter and matching lovely yellow sink. It is/was really bad. But it requires the most work/money, so we just ignored it, because there was so much else to do.

But not this year. It's the first thing to work on now. So these past few days we've been gutting it, and then I was working on painting the trim and filling in the holes in the walls. Yesterday my husband did the plumbing. Today I think I may be able to do a final sanding and then paint the walls, which I am really looking forward to.

Just in case you enjoy home remodel like we do, or if you just enjoy before and after pictures of home remodels, I thought I would show you what the room looked like "before", or at least when the demolition had only just begun. Be prepared! This room is/was not pretty. :)



The infamous ugly linoleum floor. As bad as it is, it's actually covering a floor that was even uglier. Scary, right? That loveliness used to be in the kitchen too, but we got rid of it last year. Shudder!!




Lovely yellow towel bar and toilet paper holder. The toilet in the picture is the new one--we put it in place late last year when the bathroom started to be used (previously it really wasn't) and we were unhappy about the old one's water consumption. The toilet is coming back, so you'll see it again when the room's done.







Dingy white walls and lovely dark brown trim around the window. This room also has the honor of being the laundry room, so this has been a challenge, to say the least.






1970's "faux bois" cabinet. Immensely big and dark and way in the way.







Faux marble top and lovely yellow sink with fairly no frills faucet that no longer turns properly.






So that's what was. The light fixture had been removed already, or I would have taken a picture of it for you. My daughter called it the "scary light". It was basically a fixture that had one light that stuck out from the wall and had an outlet in it. I don't know why it was the "scary light". I always thought it would look perfectly at home in a campground bathroom somewhere.


All of this lovely stuff was taken out, and the room is in a shambles. And what's going back in? Well, that's the fun part, right? First, the toilet comes back and a pedestal sink is added in lieu of that cabinet. The "scary light" is being replaced with a two-light fixture in an oil-rubbed bronze finish (sorry--I looked for a pic, but can't find one). The faucet is oil-rubbed bronze. The towel rings and paper holder are same. Wide white dentil crown moulding is going up, wide white baseboard is going down. The trim around the window and door is white. The walls will be painted a soft grey. And the floor? Dark. Nice and dark. I won't tell you about that just yet, you'll have to wait and see. I'm very excited about it.


We are making progress. I will definitely show you the "after" photos, which I'm hoping will be next week. We have found that this bathroom is hard to live without, so we're trying not to live without it for too long, especially because it has the washer/dryer, and we have kids. :) So, stay tuned!! There will be more!


PS--As I am a dutiful scientist, I should also update you on the chocolate covered cherry experiment. I have been faithfully sampling one every so often (and sometimes too often), and I can tell you, that yes, they really do liquify nicely. For a while not much happened, but now they're really doing whatever they do, and they're doing it well. I think that by Valentine's Day they will be really nice, and if I had had the time to keep them longer, they'd be fabulous. So far so good! I'll let you know the final outcome!