Grouper's Gettin' Inspected Today

I dropped Grouper off this morning at the Vet for his annual check-up.  I realized I didn't have any more heartworm pills and needed to schedule his visit in order to re-fill his perscription.  He may be only 1 or 2 weeks past due... oops.  I asked the vet if this was bad and she said that you 'really shouldn't let more than 30 days pass'.  Double oops. 

But, anyways, going to the Vet is kinda different than what I am used to.  Grouper is on the Banfield Hospital 'Dog Plan' which means we pay a monthly fee which covers all the 'standard things he needs to get done each year'.  It doesn't cover his meds, but that is okay.  We love the Dog Plan because we don't have that 'Oh my, $400 to get some shots and make sure he is healthy' thing each year.  Plus, if he has an ear infection (he gets those often due to swimming) we have free visitations! But what is weird is that we don't get to be there with him and ask questions and everything.  The Vet does his thing at some point during the day after you drop him off.  I'm okay with it, except I am super Type A and like to make sure everything is okay and ask a ton of questions. 

(I don't have any new pics to post here... just the same ones from his 'page').

 Plus, I am terrified that when I pick him up the Vet is going to say something like 'well, overall he is okay but you really should be 1) cutting his nails more often 2) cleaning his ears more often 3) brushing his teeth more often 4) or something else'.  I would just feel horrible ... like I am a bad mom or something.  Especially so if this is said amongst other fur-baby moms.  This has never happened, except during his initial visit when we only had him for 5 days.  The Vet said 'he is severely dehydrated and is not worthy to be on the Puppy Plan yet'.  Ahh!  We high-tailed it to CVS and bought every boddly of Pedialite which he drank for a week.  He made it on the Puppy Plan.  Smiles :) 

So, in the meantime today, I will cross my fingers that I don't get a 'bad call' from the Vet saying something is wrong with him or pick him up with a 'bad letter home' like you got in Elementerary School.

Got Wood? ...

We added tons of wood products to the bathroom over the weekend.  It was totally a step in the right direction and it started to pull the bathroom together.  Which wood products you may ask - 1)  Trim trim and more trim & 2) Vanity and top!

1)  During one of our Home Depot visits last week we picked up some trim and held it up along the bead board to make sure we liked the profiles before purchasing the total amount needed.  We loved the 'chair rail'!  It added so much dimension.  There wasn't much of a selection for base, so we picked up one of the cheapest.  It didn't live up to the chair rail - the 4" base was dwarfed by our 'in charge' chair rail.  We needed something taller.

We returned to Home Depot (for probably the 10th time in a week) to purchase our trim on Saturday.  We came home with our chair rail, a 6" base, and some casing for around the door.  Sunday morning, after several mugs of coffee, Hubs got to work cutting and nailing each piece of trim.  Like the rest of the projects, all the cutting was done inside.  The shop vac helped, but there was definitely some saw dust to clean up.

Prepping for trim - adding 'nailers' between the bead board and wall to give us something to nail the chair rail to.  All due to our pesky first layer of tile

Cutting in the Hobby Room

First bit of trim - Love at first sight!

Other side

Detail work - where the chair rail meets the door casing.  We just added another layer of door casing to minimize and hide the thickness of the chair rail

Another Angle

 2)  Saturday purchases wouldn't be complete without ... a new vanity too!  During our trip to purchase our trim I fell in love with a On Sale $299 36" Vanity with lovely drawers, a shelf, and a mirror.  We were there to purchase a different one, but I loved this On Sale vanity.  We knew it would be tight so we headed home to double check the dimensions before purchasing it.  Unfortunately, it was too big.  Sad Face, Tear.  So, we headed back to Home Depot to look at the vanity we originally decided to purchase.  We still loved it with its strong features to compliment the trim.  So, in the cart it went!  We also came home with a Moen faucet and a new P-trap (plumbing).

We opened the box and a smile came to my face.  We moved it into the bathroom and I was giddy with joy.  It is awesome!

Hubs installing the faucet

Our amazing vanity!

Yay Vanity :)

It was late on Sunday by the time we got all this work done.  This is what Grouper was feeling ...

A Yawning Pup

Grouper relaxing.. We are working

Dominating the Tile Installation

This past weekend has been v-e-r-y productive at Casa de Wolf!  We totally checked a ton of things off on our bathroom reno 'to do' list!  (I also had a little more fun with my fabric!).

To prepare for our productive weekend required many trips to Home Depot throughout last week.  We wanted to have every single floor tile installed and ready for grout come Saturday.  To accomplish this, we had to remove and reinstall the toilet once so we could cut the tile correct to fit around the toilet and cut half tiles and triangular tiles to fit up against the wall and around the tub.

Chipping out the tile around the toilet

This is what was ready for me come Saturday morning!

All ready for grout

Correct 'L' tile around toilet instead of a half tile

So, come Saturday morning I was dying to grout these beauties.  We had some left-over non-sanded grout from our glass tile installation in the kitchen but I wasn't really sure if the color would work.  I knew I wanted a non-sanded grout because I wanted that smooth looking finish to complement the shiny and smooth tiles.  But, I wasn't sure about the color which was 'antique white'.  So, I mixed up a little test batch and grouted in 2 tiles where the vanity would be.  I knew immediately that the color was just to ivory and that a whiter or grayer color would work best.  But, the super saver in me didn't want to waste this grout.  I texted Hubs a pic at work and he confirmed - to ivory.  So, to Home Depot I went.

I came back with the same non-sanded grout brand, just in 'snow white'.  I grabbed my trowel, float, sponge, and mixed about a pint of grout with water (for ease in workability and to minimize it drying out) and got to work!

And here is what it looks like!  I love that you really can't even tell there is grout!

The Bead Board has a Case of the Mondays

Our tile set over Sunday night which meant we were high-tailing it home on Monday as soon as possible after work to install our toilet.  Toilet's are kinda realllly necessary in a 1 bathroom place.  To install our toilet meant we had to install the bead board we wanted around the toilet.  Hubs left work early to pick up materials from Home Depot.  I got a call around 3 that he was home and ready to install so I zipped home. 

I came home to find 6 4'x4' pieces of bead board ready, some adhesive, and first board ready to be installed.  We both were like 'we should definitely be done by 6:00'.  Little did we know that our bead board would have a case of the Monday's. 

Hubs cut holes in the bead board to fit around the toilet and sink connections.  At that point, once we knew it would fit correctly, we opened up the adhesive and used a trowel to skim it on the wall.  It was super wet and something just didn't seem right.  Hubs said that the Home Depot guy definitely said to use this so it should work.  We followed the instructions, but we had our doubts whether it would work correctly (looking back Hubs think he grabbed the wrong container in haste).

We pressed the first board on the wall and.... Nothing, no adhesion at all.  The board literally seemed like it was repelling away from the wall.  What!?!?  We re-read the instructions and though 'maybe we should let the adhesive set up some'.  So we pulled the board off the wall and attempted to let it cure until it got tacky.

Moving along, we applied this adhesive to every wall and cut all the rest of our boards to the correct dimensions ... on our dining room table.

We even went on a run and played with Grouper.  4 hours later, still nothing.  At that point, our patience had worn thin.  Hubs was ready to put this bead board into its place and got some nails/screws.  We used nails and screws, but they did not prevail either - they wouldn't penetrate through that first layer of pesky tile.

And that was it!  Hubs high-tailed it back to Home Depot, probably like Cruella Devil.  I ordered some Thai and scraped off all that adhesive from the wall.  Upon his return he had 3 tubes of Liquid Nails, some concrete screws, and concrete nails.  We chowed down and then returned to the bead board at about 8:00.  Hubs squeezed the liquid nail all over the board, we pressed it onto the wall ... and dun dun dun ... it sticked!  It was like a miracle.  We raced through the next several boards, used a few screws to hold it in place.  Now it just needs some good looking trim and several coats of paint.

Then it was time to reinstall the toilet which was super easy.  We took a wax ring, set it over the 'hole', and plobbed the toilet on top.  We aligned the bolts, tightened, and our throne was ready.

Bathroom Lift Off

As you know, our 'just pricing' errand ended up with us purchasing 26 sf of 12x12 marble faced porcelain tiles and thin-set on Saturday night.  Home Depot had a sale and we just couldn't pass it by!  $1.99 for marble faced porcelain tiles which totaled about $25 for a box of 13.  Similar tiles we found while pacing the aisles were about $3.99 per tile.  Our super saver mode immediately set in.  Here's what we got.

So, Sunday morning after my successful attempt to cover our living room ottoman, a coffee run, and breakfast, we set right into prepping our bathroom for floor tile.  Which meant, our plan to have a fully functional bathroom was out the door... literally.  We decided to save some bucks by saving the toilet (those babies can run $150 at Home Depot!).  So, just to be sure, we You Tubed 'how to remove your toilet' and let some British guy walk us through the steps.  Luckily we had a shop-vac handy though because it required us sucking all the water out of the bowl and tank.  After Mr. Muscles pulled that baby off and set it aside, it was time to remove the vanity.  Our plans to save the vanity as well were short lived.  As Hubs started taking it off he realized it was super cheap-o and ready to fall apart.  So, it was tossed too.

And then we were ready.  Once again, to save some money, we bought the thin-set that requires us to add water and mix.  It really isn't that bad, it just means our bath tub sees its fair share of thin-set and grout mixing as well as tile cutting (i.e. the kitchen reno was done via bathtub too).  There is a hose outside, but it was turned off for the winter.... bummer.

After the thin-set was mixed it was time for me to put my tile laying skills to good use.  See, I did the entire kitchen, so I got some skill... at least I like to think so.  When laying floor tile you should always work your way out of the room.  We did this with our kitchen, but in the case of the bathroom, it just wouldn't work out.  See, we wanted full 12x12 tiles from the door to the tub and make all necessary tile cuts behind the toilet and vanity so they were hidden as much as possible.  That meant we had to work the completely wrong way - from the entrance to the diagonal corner.  At that moment it seemed like small beans - surely I could figure something out, maybe magically float across?

We laid out the first 2 rows to make sure the tiles would run in a straight line and so I had some guidance as I laid each tile down.  Then it was 1) slap down some thin-set 2) level thin-set 3) use notched trowel to trowel thin-set 4) lay tile 5) make sure tile grout lines are correct width and tiles are level with surrounding tiles 6) repeat.

As I worked myself into a corner, literally, it required a lot of sitting and bending.....

Getting my tile selected

Getting more thin-set

Applying thin-set

Grouper being a fantastic supervisor

Setting the Tile

Making sure it fits before sliding it into its final spot

Sliding it into its final spot

Thankfully we ran out of tiles which meant that small slither of tiles on the left hand side weren't installed and I had a way out by playing hop-scotch.  We let the thin-set dry over night and during the day on Monday before stepping on them.

Bathroom Shenanigans and a Renovation

Hubs and I had no intention to start our bathroom renovation in January.  Really, we didn't.  We talked about it at length and decided that February would be a good time for several reasons - like sticking with our budget, time required for the renovation, and the fact that February is typically really cold which means hibernation.  Well, once we get talking we get to thinking.  It first led to our exploratory work completed the weekend of Jan 7, which led to lots of googling, which led to ....

Well, lets just say we kicked off our bathroom renovation this past weekend.  It all started on this past cold and windy Saturday.  As I dove right into making envelope pillows, Hubs was getting increasingly antsy and bored.  It went like this:

Me:  Bernina isn't working!
Hubs:  Silly Wife, you have to put the foot down in order to sew (read all about that here)
Me:  Hahaha
Hubs:  Ok, now that that is fixed, what should I do?  (Hubs sifting through papers, flipping through the TV channels, and pacing)
Me:  You could take off that first layer of tiles in the bathroom.  That will still leave us with a fully functional bathroom.
Hubs:  Great idea!

1 Hour Later:
Hubs:  Wife, I am tearing out the ceiling too.
Me:  Whatever floats your boat babe.
Hubs:  Can you get me some safety goggles and a dust mask
Me:  Will a towel work as a dust mask?
Hubs:  Sure

Dust Mask... kind of

Tearing out the ceiling

5 Hours Later:
Hubs:  Wife, look at my awesome job!
Me:  Wow, it looks amazing!

Bathroom After Demo - with the pesky first layer of tile to remain.  

Grouper was always supervising the process

And just to remind you as to what the bathroom looked like before the demo:

Then...
Hubs & Me:  Lets go to Home Depot (just) to price some things up.

2 Hours Later, we came home with 26sf of Marble Floor Tile and Thin-Set.  And that is when the shenanigans started.