2 weeks off

We didn't mean to exactly, but we took a couple weeks off from remodeling/house stuff. One weekend was spent doing bachelor/bachelorette things and then next we were at David's parents house, a baby shower, and dinner at my dad's.

David and I rode our beach cruisers to Einstein's down the street to start our day with bagel sandwiches! We got back and got busy pulling weeds and cleaning off the back patio. Our palm tree has dropped a lot of little seeds so we've got palm tree leaves sprouting everywhere also- great! We installed our doorbells finally also. It only took a few minutes, but we just never got around to it! We now have one on the front door (again) that makes a 2-tone noise and one on the back door that makes a 1-tone noise. So exciting!

















We've started to realize all the little things we're missing now that we have a bigger place. We have a kitchen trash can- downstairs obviously- and one small bathroom trashcan in our master bathroom. We must go and get more trashcans! We also found a small leak yesterday afternoon- so annoying! Our disposal doesn't really sit right (we think) and looking under the kitchen sink there was a pool of water. I ran the disposal with David watching and the whole thing moves when it's turned on. Great! So, we'll be reading the manual to fix that. We didn't install it in the first place...maybe that was our bad! We did so well on all our plumbing items upstairs we figure we'll give it a go this time around.

So, things are coming along here at the birdhouse. Soon we'll have to throw an open house party so you can see things first hand! Here's our first table with chairs! The chairs aren't even the matching ones from Pottery Barn- we got them at Ikea!! How awesome is that?!

Getting ready for guests

David and I have been very busy lately trying to get things finished up. Gina and Max are getting married soon (October 10) and I am hosting the bridal party and bride at our birdhouse for a night before we go to the hotel for a spa weekend!

So much to do!

Last Wednesday David and I painted the guest bathroom with one coat of paint. Friday afternoon David painted a 2nd coat in the guest bathroom and two coats in the master bathroom. We were finally ready for Tom Fink (our cabinet friend) to come over on Saturday to install our bathroom vanities. He makes it look so easy!

The rest of the afternoon David and I worked on putting together the faucets for both bathroom sinks and getting the sink top in place. We worked on the guest bathroom first and then moved into the master bath. We used a liquid nails type of caulking to hold the sink onto the vanity.

The water and drain pipes for both upstairs bathrooms are directly behind one another in the wall. We connected the guest bathroom piping (p trap, j bend, water supply lines, etc), turned on the water valves to the sink, and tried it out. It worked! Then we went into the master bathroom and David realized all the water we just ran down the drain in the guest bathroom emptied out of the drain in the master since we hadn't connected anything in there! We didn't have too much of a mess though!

Finally both sinks were connected! Besides our mini drain disaster we had no leaks! How awesome is that?!

Next job to tackle was installing the toilet. David already had installed our downstairs toilet a while back so he worked on this upstairs one on his own again- very professional looking job I must say! :) I scrubbed the bathtub and walls with a combination of items. It's amazing how things look so much better when they're clean.

While David took a bit of a break I switched out the old beige light switches and outlets in the bathrooms and hallways with new white ones. Monday was Labor Day and before David went to play golf we took down the old 80's style lights in the bathrooms and put up some new ones we found (very inexpensive) at Home Depot. We also removed the old caulk from the border between the tub and wall in the shower to get ready for new caulk. Last thing to go up for the day was the shower curtain rod and new curtain. Looks like a "normal" bathroom now!

Tuesday after work David and I met up for more table searching. We had found a white round one we loved at Crate and Barrel, but decided against it after some of the reviews we read online. Instead we went to the other end of the color spectrum and bought a black round one from Pottery Barn. Turns out white just isn't in style right now! Compared with some of the other models this table wasn't too expensive! It came with a leaf and actually can hold up to 8 people with the leaf in! We put it together Tuesday night but couldn't use it yet. We have no chairs! That's our next big purchase!

So- before the girls come over on Friday we have to buy some chairs, hang up a light fixture above the table, recaulk the tub/shower, and hang up a towel rack. Oh- and put the bathroom door back on upstairs! Looks like we have some errands to run after work this week!