2011 In Review

2011 was an interesting year for us - full of plenty of ups, and plenty of downs - so let's review some of it, shall we?

I started this blog back in February with a list of New Year's resolutions goals. Some of those goals were accomplished, some weren't, but more on that later because I have some new and exciting 2012 goals!

In February, we also started work on our basement bathroom, which, if you remember correctly, we just finished in December. Nothing like the usual 11-month home project . . .

In March, I ran my first half marathon, which was also one of my goals for the year! This year, that same marathon series is going to be a Rock N' Roll Marathon, so of course I am running it again, but this time Chris and my brother will be joining me. Can't wait!! Although, I really need to get in training mode . .. .

In April, Chris and I tackled the jungle of our front yard, tearing out ivy and planting some grass in its place. We're still going to have more gardening work to do in the front this spring, but I am so thankful that we squashed that ivy. Those original photos of it still make me shudder!

In May, while we were finishing up school for the semester, I expanded my baking repertoire by making some Mint Julep cupcakes (they were ok) and we decided to compete with one another in our own version of a Book It challenge (and in case you are wondering, we are still in the process of reading the books . . .)!

June seemed to be the epitome of highs and lows for the year - we celebrated our babies 5th birthdays and our 2nd anniversary, but also received the devastating news that one of our good friends was killed in Afghanistan. It was a rough month, but it changed us and has given us a better perspective on life.

July was pretty uneventful, except that Chris took me to the Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part 2 midnight premiere, on a work night! (I have such a great hubby!)

August was a booming-blogging month for me with a total of 11 posts! I got a little crazy :) Anyway, I started on a few painting projects around the house, such as the chevron wall and the guest bathroom. I also started my Tourist Tuesdays and Washington Wednesday posts, since this blog is supposed to be about our Washington life and all. Lastly, we experienced the momentous Washington Quake, which was crazy crazy stuff! Oh, and we celebrated our 1-year anniversary in our home, with messy house photos!

September through December were marked by travel and home projects, which were nice distractions from school work. Between Chris and I, we traveled to St. Louis three times (here, here, and here), Kansas City, Florida, Milwaukee, and, last but definitely not least, MEXICO! We had fun putting up new art in the house, getting my chalkboard-paint on, and finally finishing a bathroom too. And, my beloved Cardinals won their 11th World Series!

On top of all of the things that I blogged about in 2011, Chris and I were also blessed with making new friends, even more travel opportunities, great adventures around DC, and more home headaches and accomplishments that I can count. 2011 has truly been a great year, despite the heartaches, but I am SO ready for 2012. Bring. it. on. :)

Operation Finish Bathrooms: Part 1

While all of you (or most of you I would guess), were gorging on turkey, watching or playing football, and Black Friday shopping, Chris and I were hard at work on 3 of our 3.5 bathrooms. The TLC that each of them needed was long overdue, so we decided a few weeks ago to dedicate our entire Thanksgiving break to finishing up our bathrooms, finally. (This decision trumped our initial idea to spend the entire Thanksgiving break camped out in front of the TV re-watching LOST. Oh, the woes of homeownership....)

We spent 4 days over Thanksgiving sanding, priming, painting, taping, painting, cleaning, etc. our basement, guest, and master bathroom. Fun, no? And, believe it or not, we still aren't completely finished. Although, we are much closer than we were a month ago!

So it's time for Part 1 of Operation Finish Bathrooms: The Once-Cruise-Ship-Sized-Dreaded Basement Bathroom!

The most troublesome bathroom from the moment we moved in was the one in our basement. It was ti-tine-ey. Seriously, cruise-ship bathroom size, if not smaller. Too small to even take an okay picture of it. And, we realized shortly after we moved in that water was leaking in near the bathroom right onto our carpeted basement floor. Want mold? No, thank you. As I wrote about way back when, we spent last fall and winter making the bathroom bigger, thanks to some door maneuvering. Since then, Chris has been painstakingly patching up the leaks, re-bricking parts of walls, waterproofing, tiling, plumbing, electrical work, drywalling, mudding, painting, trimming, etc., all when he's not laboring away on statistics homework. Fun, no? Here are some pictures of all that fun . . .

Here's the bathroom last spring, after we moved the wall making it bigger, but before we found the water leak. (The gap in the tile floor is where the old wall was before we made it bigger.)

Then we realized that water was leaking in from under our outdoor steps and through the bathroom, so those pretty walls had to get torn down to find the leak.

Yup, this is rotting wood that was behind the bathroom drywall. Gotta love water damage over years and years and years.

And, here's more rot. Oh, and see that hole that's under our outdoor steps? Yup, that's where the water was getting in. Notice the rotted wood in the bottom of the whole. Gross.

Chris cleaned up the hole and sealed it from future water trickling in. Much nicer looking.

Since we moved the wall out, we also had to fix the light switch and put up the new dry-wall. Pretty much the entire bathroom got new drywall. Some walls got new drywall twice. Lucky us.

Here's the extensive list of what we Chris accomplished in the basement bathroom:

•  Re-framed the new bathroom entrance and door after we moved the wall out.
• Discovered the water-leak culprit: a strange empty space under our outside stairs.
• Cleaned out the space under the stairs, waterproofed it and bricked it up.
• Created a door to access the space = new storage!
• Put in a new vanity and sink (we used the one from our master bath, more on that in another bathroom segment!).
• Re-drywalled the entire bathroom, including the ceiling. Mudded it, then painted it.
• Put in a new light switch for the bathroom.
• Re-framed the bathroom window.
• Re-tiled parts of the bathroom and the area outside of the bathroom.
• Added trim everyway.
• Cleaned the bathroom, which was covered in dust. Bleh.
• Put on a new toilet seat cover. Fancy, I know.
• Re-hung the old fixtures, and added some new ones (towel racks).

And, voila! Here is our new and greatly improved basement bathroom!

Notice the door next to the toilet. That's the hole we found under the stairs that is now extra storage!

Check out our nice recycled vanity from our master bath. The mirror might be off-center, but it's a basement bath, who cares!

Our lazy-selves are relishing in the fact that we can now actually use the bathroom in the basement while we are down there watching TV and working out, instead of running upstairs! Yippee!!

So, that's it. Our basement bath is DONE. Done, done done!

Part 2 of Operation Finish Bathrooms will be coming soon . . . (as soon as we hang up shelves and clean!) So, stay tuned!

What a mess. (aka, our basement remodel)

When we moved into our new home 6 months ago we knew that our first project would be tackling our basement. Don't get me wrong, our basement was finished, complete with a granite-countertopped kitchenette, BUT, we had a MAJOR problem... We couldn't get anything into the basement! (and there was a leak somewhere, which we figured out ...) We had big dreams of a basement "frigerator" for Chris' stock of beers and a huge comfy sectional for movie and game watching, but unfortunately we couldn't even get our futon frame down there without taking it completely apart. So, we decided that first weekend that fixing the basement was #1 on our priority list - how else were we going to get our sweet sectional and fridge down there?

Long story, short, we decided that our only option was to re-design the back half of our basement. The photos below are our "before" shots. Note the window, the tiny hallway to the left of the window (that led to the bathroom and backdoor), and the backdoor itself which, in combination to the tiny hallway and its relation the back stairs, made it impossible to get furniture down to the basement. Ergh.

"Before" Inside

"Before" Outside

Confused by all of this? Yup, so were we. And a lot of contractors. Needless to say, we needed help re-designing this mess of a basement doorway. We found an awesome contractor that made the window into a door, and the silly door into a wall. Ta-da! Now doesn't our new door look more "normal"!? (And, thanks to the new door, we got our dreamy sectional into the basement!)

"After" outside!!

From there, handy Chris, who had been dying for a home project, decided to make that tiny hallway part of the bathroom. I mean really, we didn't need a hallway that led to a cruise ship-sized bathroom, did we? So, Chris tore down the hallway wall that separated it from the bathroom and moved the bathroom door. You can't believe how much bigger that bathroom looks and feels! As you can see from the photo below, even our kitties are in awe of the changes! And, if you look close enough to the floor of the current bathroom, you can even see the mark on the floor where the hallway wall was a few weeks ago! Believe it or not, our basement bathroom is now the largest bathroom in our house. Which we I think is a good thing!

"After" bathroom

Now, instead of a window and a tiny hallway along the back wall of our basement, you see a wall of doors (and my treadmill). And don't worry, after the bathroom is tidied-up, we're going to paint the brick so you don't have to look at the awful 1920s green glue residue.

"After"

(here's the "before" shot again!)

"Before"

And, if you noticed in the "after" photo above, while Chris was busy working on tearing down the hallway wall and re-framing the bathroom door we also took time to paint our basement. We wanted to go for the movie theater-look, so we decided to go dark, navy blue dark . . . We love it! When we turn the lights off to watch a movie everything is dark except the screen. It's the cheapest (or most expensive) movie theater experience we could have asked for!

Ohhh!!! Ahhh!!!

The end.

So for all of you that made it to the end of this VERY long blog post, you are welcome to come visit us in our new home and enjoy our almost-finished basement as much as we do!