Our Guest Bath Update

Good morning friends. The forecast here in our corner of Washington State has predictions of heavy wet snow with the possibility of falling trees and branches breaking and downing power lines. Hopefully we will not lose power but if we do, I’ve created a few posts for this week and hopefully the predictions won’t be as dire as forecasted.

When we moved into our current home in September of 2018 we knew that we wanted to make changes in our guest bath. In 2019 we bought a slab of maple wood with a live edge to replace the countertop in this bathroom. That slab lived under the guest bed in what we call the Blue Room for about 3 years. Along the way in those 3 years we bought a new sink for the bathroom, too.

Demolition day…

After he stripped the bathroom, the walls, ceiling and cabinet were painted white.

The slab of wood was measured for cutting the hole for the sink and faucet.

Now it was time to treat the wood with TopOil.

The top oil complete it was time to install the backsplash.

Time for the plumbing. We tried some of our old wall pieces and really didn’t like the look so we contemplated changes that would function better. That wall piece on the side wall got moved to the master bedroom. It poked out to far over the new countertop and imposed on the counter space.

Time to set the sink and hook up more plumbing.

We tried a few pieces over the toilet area and finally settled on this piece with shelves and a rod for hand towels. We found this piece at Wal-Mart.

We are pleased with the update. Josh and Laura were our first overnight guests to enjoy the changes.

Dear does good work and has saved us thousands of dollars over the years by doing these projects himself.

I was going to list the projects that Dear was planning to complete in the next several months but as Providence would have it we had an emergency health event that has changed our plans. Dear suffered a Stroke on Saturday in our home while we were together enjoying our lunch. He and I recognized something was terribly wrong. 911 was called and we had a great response with the EMT’s and the Fire Chief of our area. Once evaluated at our local hospital, Dear was transported to Spokane to the ICU at Sacred Heart for further evaluation. Our son drove me to Spokane and booked a room for us across the street from the hospital. Dear is in expert care and it was determined he should have surgery sooner than later and he will have an Endarterectomy on Tuesday afternoon. We are grateful that things were caught early and the right treatment was given for the best overall outcomes. His brain and speech are in great shape. The lingering symptom is weakness in his left hand. Thanking God for watching over him. Thanking those of you in advance who will pray to our God for Dear’s surgery to go well and for his recovery to be free of complications.

We have had such an outpouring of care and prayers from loved ones, our kids have rallied, our church family in Colville, old friends in Edmonds, Monroe, Bothell, Lynnwood, Kenmore and Poulsbo. Family in New York, North Carolina, Texas, California, my ‘girls’ in British Columbia and Manitoba. We are so thankful to our God for the love and peace we have experienced because of those prayers.

Posts this week will be sporadic if at all.

Hope your new week is going well.

Finally the Bathroom Revealed!

To say that there was much agony over this latest renovation in our home is an understatement. We are happy to be done with the company we chose and happy to be finishing up some final touches ourselves. I won’t even mention the name of the company because I don’t want to give them any advertising. You will see a wonderful transformation without experiencing the pain of getting there. So enjoy the before and after…

Of course I realized that I didn’t take the best before photos, especially of the bathtub enclosure. Oh well, you will still see major transformations. The sink before was on the right of the cabinet. The window was a slider from side to side.

The tub enclosure before was one piece with a average depth on the tub. The new enclosure is Porcelain tile and goes to the ceiling and wraps around the deeper larger tub. The new tub is wider and longer and deeper.

Our new window is a more energy efficient one and opens up and down instead of side to side. It’ is also larger and allows more light into the room.

We decided since we are getting older to add two safety bars to help with getting up out of the bathtub or stepping out of the higher tub.

We chose, purchased and installed the Mirror, Sconces and wall art ourselves. Dear installed the new window and all the can lights and heater unit in the ceiling. He also did the painting.

When we were at Windsor Castle in England we bought one hand towel to use in our new bathroom as one of our souvenirs. Our new bathroom has a great Spa feeling to it worthy of this queen.

We used to have a wider cabinet in this area of the bathroom but because we chose a longer and wider tub we ended up with this narrower cabinet. We are happy for the choice we made to go with the wider tub and to move the door into the bathroom over four inches.

We switched to a center sink which gives a good amount of space on either side of the sink. The counter top is a quartz composite with the under mount sink. All the fixtures are brushed nickel.

We like our flooring choice and our pulls and deep tub. I still haven’t had a chance to have a bubble bath in the tub yet but hopefully I’ll get around to that soon. The floor is not tile but a composite material that is warmer to bare feet.

We are very happy with the choices we made on the materials for our new bathroom. Now I need to find someone who might need all my old towels that are not the right colors for the new bathroom. I suppose I could cut them up and use them for cleaning rags.

I bought the mirror, the brushed nickel trash can, and the waffled shower curtain at HomeGoods. The sconces are from Lowe’s, the brushed nickel soap dispenser is from Target. The wire bird art is from Hobby Lobby and the Bird print is from Fred Meyer. The towels are from Costco.

The job began the Monday after we returned from England, July 21st and we just signed off with the company on September 24th. It was suppose to take 12 days. We did get them to reduce the final payment.

Now we are moving forward and enjoying the finished product that Dear has fixed up to our satisfaction. We’ve had busy days here at this old house and we are thankful for each new day afforded us. We are looking forward to more finished projects. Dear and I worked hard in our yard today mowing and weed-wacking and getting rid of the first round of fallen leaves. We look up at the huge maple tree in our neighbors yard still full of leaves and know our leaf raking days aren’t over in a long shot. What’s up in your corner of the world?

Gathering Moments ~ Hidden August

For my August Gathering Moments – a month in photos post I decided to share what didn’t make it on the blog already. Linking with Cheryl at Thinking About Home on Saturday.

Glimpses of the unfinished bathroom. We hope this project will be completed soon.

We purchased some new patio furniture that does not involve cushions. I also wanted some chairs that rock and roll. We are pleased with these pieces.

It’s been a nice relaxing time for Dear and I to watch more of Inspector Morse after visiting Oxford in July. We put the dvd’s on hold at the library and as they slowly become available we watch them. I’ve also been reading the Louise Penny Inspector Gamache series and just finished How the Light Gets In…so riveting. Now I’m splurging and ordering the new book that was just published this week because there are already too many holds on it at the library. In the meantime I checked out Surprised By Oxford from the library. It’s a Memoir written by Carolyn Weber. Here’s one of many praises for the book , “Carolyn Weber’s brilliantly written account of her conversion to Christianity at Oxford will inspire her fellow believers and provide intriguing food for thought for sceptics. It is honest, entertaining, and refreshingly free of superficial cant. I warmly commend it. Don N. Johnson, Senior Pastor, Montecito Covenant Church.

Katie and Andrew had fun dressing up to attend Katie’s 10 year high school reunion. They enjoyed their time in downtown Seattle last Friday.

I forgot to take a before before photo (yes, I did mean to say before twice) of this part of the house but then I found an obscure photo from the winter. Dear took the vertical siding off this part of the house and will be replacing it with the horizontal siding you see on the other side of the chimney. He’s out there working right now while I type away. This might be interesting to Vee’s John who is the master of siding.

We had to move a few of the rounds of wood from the part of our yard closest to the street when we realized someone was helping themselves to our wood. To make sure most of the wood didn’t go to a thief we invited the boy scouts to take what was left to split and use for a fund raiser. Look at that early sign of fall appearing on our dried out summer lawn. The last of the purple in the yard is still hanging on.

The new siding project will be taking most of our time this weekend. I am thinking of stealing Dear away from that project to go to a Food Truck event at World Concern here in the Seattle area for lunch on Sunday after church. Our Daughter In law works at World Concern.

What’s better than spending a Sunday afternoon enjoying delicious food from Seattle’s favorite food trucks? Knowing that you’re helping feed hungry families at the same time! Worldwide, hunger kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined, but with your help, World Concern makes a lasting impact in the lives of the poor in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Haiti.
On Sunday, August 31 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., 10 of Seattle’s top food trucks will rally to fight global hunger at World Concern’s 3rd annual Mobile Food Fight for Hunger in Shoreline.

The very best thing about August is how it has brought our families together. The State of Washington is now the home of all our children. We have received the beautiful photos of my brother’s family bringing their new son home from the Ukraine. Mandy and Andrew arrived in Dallas this afternoon to the waiting arms of my brother (papa as Andrew lovingly calls him) and Big sister Hope. Oh what a happy day!

Fresh News

Do you need a fresh new sandwich idea? Click over to the Mennonite Girls Can Cook Blog for this sandwich combination.

I still can’t show you our finished bathroom…because it’s not finished. OYE! In fact after they wrap up today and clean everything up they will still need to come back in a couple weeks to finish up because of some boo boos. Part of the flooring needs to be redone and of course it’s on back-order and 2 cabinet fronts need to be replaced. We have come to the conclusion that we are not good candidates for hiring out work. In the meantime, I have found some nice accessories to go in the updated bathroom like that brushed nickel soap dispenser above.

Other news from this old house…apples are falling off the tree.

And these beauties are brightening up the yard and deck.

What’s new at your place?

Laughing at Myself…

…and this random post.

I have this sweet little hanging sentiment in my ~~powder room~~ master bathroom that is the size of a powder room. I am all for laughing and laughing often. We are busy campers at this old house these days. Today I mowed the lawn and did some weed wacking and some weed pulling. I love the way the yard looks after it gets it’s weekly cut. So neat when the weeds are mowed down. I especially enjoyed all the rich greenery around the yard at this time of year. My lavender is blooming already and I’ll have to take a photo soon.

On Thursday we have our end of small group barbecue. Of course we are suppose to get some good rain on Thursday. The first real rain in many days. We’ll be eating inside instead of on the deck. After that event the rest of our main floor bathroom will be torn out. The tub and shower surround are gone already. I’ll post some updates soon…maybe.

On Thursday World Cup begins. I’ll be watching a lot of soccer. Since the opening game Brazil v. Croatia is on at 1:00 Pacific Time I’ll be able to watch and still get organized for our barbecue. On Saturday my niece and her new hubby arrive for 4 days and good thing my sister isn’t doing a bathroom renovation and has a room and bathroom all ready for them. My sister lives across the big road from us. Very close as the crow flies a little farther if you are walking the meandering roads. We’ll be busy showing my new nephew by marriage Seattle since he’s never visited here before. I could go on and on but I’m probably boring you already so I’ll just stop.

Do any of you use Cloud Feedly to organize your blog visits? I haven’t been able to log in to my feedly to see if anyone has posted something new. I checked on the internet and they have been attacked overnight. I hope they are back on line soon!

Here’s what I read online: Not only has Evernote been struck by a DoS attack overnight, but now RSS news aggregator Feedly reports that its cloud-based service is suffering from a distributed denial-of-service attack that could impact users’ ability to catch up with the latest updates from their favourite websites.

Very inconvenient when I’m in the midst of busyness already, Oye! If I haven’t visited you in the last few days blame this feedly attack!!

And So It Begins…

The fun has started on our main floor bathroom. Dear will be doing all the stripping of the old materials ahead of the bath renovators coming in later in July. We have to start ahead of time because we are weekend warriors. We have one more group event at our home that we will need the toilet for this Thursday so the major demo work won’t be until next weekend. Today that old window is coming out and hopefully by Sunday afternoon the new window will be in. The new window is being moved over to the next stud so we have room for a wider bathtub and surround. The window project will involve some outdoor siding work also.

For now the tub is being used for trash!

Once the project is over I will share the before and after photos!

I’ll manage to fit in some soccer watching today, too. World Cup is starting this Thursday and I’m getting excited. Do you watch soccer at your house? I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I happen to really enjoy the sport.

What are you up to this weekend?

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Tag Archives: Bathroom Renovation