Operation Bathroom Redo: Complete

We are slowly making this house look more like us. After we moved in last summer, we noticed that a lot more would need to be updated to our tastes than we originally realized. We have already painted both boys' bedrooms, the office and the kitchen and had the patio around the pool redone. So we are getting there, but it takes time (and money).


For my next project I decided to redo Spencer's bathroom. This is what we started with:

I had already started to remove the wallpaper when I remembered to take some before shots. 

I personally think wallpaper is evil. Especially removing wallpaper. I also don't like brass. I am more of a silver/brushed nickel kind of girl. And I don't like oak. Thankfully, Chris and I agree on these design elements and have the same taste for decor. 

I also wanted to get rid of this tile in the shower/bathtub area, but that is outside of my DIY knowledge. And I didn't want to pay for it right now either. And it is mostly covered by the shower curtain anyways. Someday I might be able to have that redone too. 

We went from that hideous seashell wallpapered, brass, oak, yucky bathroom (remember these are just our opinions and since this is our house, those are the only opinions that count. lol!) 

To This:

We removed that wallpaper and painted the bathroom khaki, the same color as Spencer's bedroom. (The bathroom is in the bedroom.) We bought a new light fixture and mirror and refinished the vanity.


Here is a close-up of the new light fixture. I think it was the most expensive item in this redo. It was $60 from Lowe's.

I also redid the vanity and medicine cabinet in a new darker expresso color. I got this kit at Home Depot from Rustoleum called Cabinet Transformations. It was so easy! 


The kit cost $80 and comes with everything you need. I don't think I used even 1/4 of it for this bathroom. So I have more than enough to do my next bathroom. I bet I will still have some leftover from that bathroom too. 

We also put some hardware on the cabinets. None of the cabinets in this house have hardware.


And I'm sorry the pictures aren't better. It was really hard to take good ones in a small bathroom with limited natural light.

A new towel hook. The towel bar was over the toilet before and it grosses me out to have towels hanging over the toilet. I just don't like it; especially when it is boys trying to hang that towel up over the toilet. 

The towel hook, toilet paper holder, and new circle mirror are all from Ikea. 

We are so happy with how it turned out. And Spencer loves it. He said he hated looking at that seashell wallpaper every day. Spencer's room also serves as a guest room whenever we have company because it has its' own bathroom. So our guests will now have a nice, new, fresh bathroom when they come visit! 


Next up is Connor's/the hallway bathroom.

Oh yeah, more ugly wallpaper to remove! Woo Hoo! (Can you tell how excited I am?)

I'm going to take a couple of weeks off from bathroom renovating and then get ready to tackle this ugly room. 


Thanks for visiting me! 

The Weather Outside: Not So Delightful

Wow, it has been a long time since I blogged. The last time I was so impressed with the fantastic weather we were having the week before Christmas. And for the most part, the weather here has been pretty good. Until this week. 


It all started about 4 am Tuesday morning and hasn't really stopped since. The first round was sleet that was so loud it woke me up at 4am. That lasted a few hours and then changed over to some snow for just a little while. The precipitation was all over at about 10-11am that morning. It really didn't look too bad out there; that was until we realized they don't really clear roads here. We have to wait until it warms up for this stuff to melt. And it still hasn't warmed up yet. 


Our neighborhood has just been covered in ice since then. These next two pics are from that first day. The neighborhood kids were going down their ice coated driveways in laundry baskets. So the boys got all bundled up (thankfully we saved our winter gear from St. Louis) and grabbed a laundry basket. 

Sledding: Texas style. 

So it was all fun and games that first day of the storm. Chris' work closed and everybody was home and happy for a day off. 


Then Wednesday was still so cold, so nothing melted and school was canceled. 


Then Thursday was still so cold, so nothing melted and school was canceled. 


Then Friday, it snowed some more! So nothing melted and school was canceled. Again. 


This was not what I was hoping a Texas winter would be like. This is seriously disappointing. 


Seriously. Disappointing. 


On a different subject, I have been redoing Spencer's bathroom and I am just about done with it. I should have pictures next week to share. I really like how it is turning out! 


Thanks again for visiting me!  

The Weather Has Been So Delightful!

Seriously Delightful! The last few days the temperature has been in the high 70's and low 80's. It is hard to believe that it is the week before Christmas and we are walking around in short sleeves and no coats. 

Unfortunately it came to an end today. We are gray and the temps have dropped back down. It is only suppose to be in the 50's for the next week. Bah Humbug! I want that 80 degrees back!

Yesterday we took advantage of this awesome weather and drove over to Dallas. Neiman Marcus has an awesome Christmas window and it has these tubes the kids could climb through. I have always wanted to go to NYC to see all the Christmas windows but I haven't made it there yet. I thought I could at least see one that is relatively close to us.

The theme of the window was outer space. It had rocket ships and monkeys in astronaut suits, aliens, and these monitors that we couldn't quite figure out what they did.  

 The best part was these tubes the boys could climb through. They went in and out of the windows. 

 Here is where the tubes came out over the sidewalk. It was really neat! The boys had a great time and went through it twice. 

The boys sitting in front of one of the decorated windows. I only took my small camera with me (didn't want to lug the big one around downtown) so my pictures didn't turn out great. I didn't realize I got so much reflection of other buildings in most of my pictures. 

 After we got done at Neimans, we had lunch and then headed back to the car. I couldn't find any parking garages and ended up parking at a meter on the street. And that only gave us two hours to play. There was a small park right by our car so the boys played there for just a bit. 

I do like this picture of the boys playing with all of the big buildings surrounding them. Dallas is such a pretty city. I can't wait to go back and explore it some more. It really was the perfect day to be walking around outside. 

And I thought I would leave you with this last picture.

This is what you get when your kids ask you if they can use your camera to take some pictures of the Christmas windows. 


Thanks for visiting me! 

Getting that Perfect Christmas Card Family Picture

Last weekend, we decided that we needed to get ourselves together to take the always pleasant Christmas Card Family Photo. 


You know that annual picture where you lovingly request your children to put something on that resembles the Holiday season, then pose for a few hundred pictures. And for goodness sake, please look happy while we are doing it! Yes! We are a Happy Family! 


We wanted to take our big picture outside by the pool this year; but of course it was way too windy to do that on the day we finally get ourselves in gear to take the picture.  


So we move indoors to the living room by the Christmas Tree. I really wanted to use the lighted Palm Tree in the picture. 


Which was suppose to be by the pool. 


But it was too windy. 


Once again, procrastination ruins a good plan.

So we move the Palm Tree to the living room. 

Yeah. I know. It doesn't work. Darn. 

So the Palm Tree gets axed. In come the kids and the dog. 

Okay now let's make sure the remote clicker is working. 

Looks good. 

Look, I joined the picture now! That is the beauty of the remote. Very handy little device. 

Now if we could just get Maggie to look at the camera. 

Maggie, please look at the camera. Please.

Well, you know that old saying they have in Hollywood. Never work with dogs or

Children!

I think my motivation was gone by that last shot.

Thanks for visiting me. 

Pool Renovation-Completed!

Last week, we finally got the pool finished up. Yeah!  We originally were told this would be about a week to a week and a half project. It took a little over a month. It wasn't too bad, but I am happy that I won't have men just show up in my backyard every couple of days. 


These next two pictures are what it looked like right after the concrete was poured. These pictures really show the comparison of what we had and what we are adding. 

Sorry the pictures are kind of dark. I haven't quite mastered the proper balance between shade and sun in the same shot. 
As you can see, there just wasn't much space to put chairs around the pool before. 

And now the completed project........

We love how it turned out! We picked out the color of the overlay and I think it looks so good next to the house. 

And another angle looking towards the pool. 

And yet another shot, this one showing the new concrete we added up next to the house. This is also where we chopped that tree down. 

Now we can't wait until next summer so we can use it! We will have to do a little landscaping and replanting of grass next summer. I would love to get a palm tree or two to plant back there. Our neighbors have some around their pool and I love them. 


This was all finished up on Tuesday, and then we had to wait two days for the sealant to dry before we could put our furniture back on it. We thought everything was good and Friday I went out to admire the new patio and noticed the pool pump wasn't working correctly. Grrrr! 


So we put in a call to our warranty company and they are sending someone out tomorrow to look at it. Actually one of our neighbors came over to look at it yesterday. Chris and he worked on it for over two hours, and got it working again! Yeah! We think the problem was one of the filter baskets was cracked and allowed leaves to get into the pump causing it to clog. We are still having the warranty folks come tomorrow just to make sure that was it. It does seem to be working much better though. 


We are also getting a new front and back door tomorrow. Right after we moved in, we found the back door was rotting. So that needed to be replaced. We also decided the front door needed to go because it has two windows in it. Which you can see straight through to the back of the house from. Not great for private mornings when you want to hang out in your pajamas and not have everyone who comes to the door see you. 


So we can't wait to get our new doors tomorrow and then we are done with home improvements for awhile! Well we hope we are. As long as nothing else breaks down! Fingers crossed! 


Thanks again for visiting me! 

Pool Renovation-Phases 1 & 2

So the house we bought here in Texas has a pool. When we were looking for houses, Chris and the boys wanted a pool desperately. I believe Chris' exact words were, "I'm not living in 100 degree Texas in the summer without a pool." So every house we looked at had a pool. 

Some of the houses we looked at had really fancy pools, but the house wasn't right. And I kept saying we can't buy the house for the pool. So we decided to the buy the house that was the best for us, but the pool might need some work. 

This is our pool. 

The woman we bought the house from lined one side of the pool with very pretty flowers and plants. They looked prettier when we moved in. When I took these pictures, they were starting to die and Maggie had decided she liked to trample all over them and tear them out of the ground. 


Plus since they were pretty flowers, they attracted bees and bugs. Which isn't too much fun to have around when you are trying to relax in the pool. The boys wouldn't even go to that side of the pool because every time they did, a bee would buzz their head.  They would then come flying out of the pool. (I should clarify that by saying it is the boys who would come flying out of the pool; the bees were content to have their pretty flowers to fly around. )

We decided that our first major project would be to get the pool looking the way we want it to. And by doing it this fall, we got some discounts and it would be all ready to use next summer. 

We started calling companies to get bids on pulling out all of the plants on that side of the pool. We also decided to cut down that tree on the side of the house. It was dropping leaves in the pool all of the time, and it was really too close to the house as well. 

So we decided on a company and they started to get to work. Here is the pool with all of the plants taken down. Who knew there is a great brick retaining wall back there??? 

And another view without the plants and the tree cut down. 

When we removed the plants we decided to have concrete poured all around the pool. This will give us much more space for chairs and lounges. So this is phase two: they leveled the ground and put up forms for the concrete to be poured. We are adding concrete all the way up the retaining wall.

We also wanted to add some more concrete on the other side. 

Next up is the pouring of the concrete. And then the final phase is having an overlay put down to make everything the same color. 

I can't wait for this to be done! I never know when they are going to show up for work. I will be sitting here and all of the sudden I will have a bunch of men in my back yard working. Plus it is taking a lot longer to finish than we thought it would. But isn't that always the case with renovations!??

Thanks again for visiting me! 

Our Halloween Weekend

We kind of missed going to a pumpkin patch this year, mostly because we didn't know where to find one. I had seen an advertisement for a Pumpkin Village at the Dallas Arboretum, so we decided to check it out even though we would not be able to buy pumpkins there. Also Chris' parents and sister Karen were visiting us that weekend and we thought it would be something fun for us all to do.


This was the day before Halloween and we didn't realize it was trick or treat day there. It was crowded! We couldn't even park there. We had to park a couple a miles away and then take a shuttle over. 

It was really pretty here and we want to go back when it isn't so crowded. The picture below shows part of the pumpkin village. 

And this is a neat part with waterfalls. There were lots of people taking pictures here so I'm thinking it is a pretty popular area. 

On Sunday, we took everyone down to the stockyards in Fort Worth. We missed the cattle drive by about an hour.  I believe they have the drive twice a day every day, but I'm not 100% sure of that.  

Unfortunately the boys seemed to run into some trouble. 

We debated on where to bail them out, but since it was Halloween the judge decided to go easy on them and let them out on their own recognizance. ;-)

I'm so glad they got sprung from the jail, because they had some trick or treating to do! 

That is one scary (cute) Vampire. 

And we also had Scream. 

And Chris got attacked by a giant spider who wrapped him up in a web. And poor Maggie got turned into a bat. EEK!!!! (And before you ask, I do not dress up for Halloween. Not my thing, but I love looking at everyone else's costumes.)

And then after we took all the obligatory pictures, they were off to go candy collecting! We have quite the candy stash around here. 

I believe I have hit all of the major events since we have moved. I can't believe it is almost Turkey time! This year is going by fast. 

Thanks again for visiting me!