toilet paper dispensers

so what do you think?

yes? no?

Blue floor no more

We've finally started on our last flooring project for the main part of the house. The horrid aqua marine blue linoleum is no longer. Chris has been working on it all week. He took out the blue toilet and we moved the vanity into the guest room. Removing the top colored layer of linoleum was not too bad. But it separated from the paper part that's glued onto the floor. We could've just left it put everything on top, but the paper showed some water stains so we wanted to make sure there wasn't any water damage on the wood underneath.

Luckily there isn't any water damage to the wood but since he easily chipped away the dark spots, we figure the rest shouldn't be that bad to remove. Its about a 1/4" thick layer of paper and adhesive that he partially removed so we can't really leave the rest as is with these divots all over the place. Unfortunately, the 90% of remaining floor would not come off. Chris tried the hammer and crow bar thing, that didn't work. We bought one of those huge scraper things in the tile department, that didn't work. He was almost willing to remove the plywood that's just under the adhesive layer. But that's a major job, I think. So I borrowed my dad's heat gun and its working so much better. Its slow, but its working. We've got 3' left to go. He should have it out by the end of the day, then we can start cutting backerboard and screwing it all in. We'll probably be grouting by the weekend.

The in-laws will be back some time next week. I'm sure we'll be done with the bathroom by then. It'll look so much better when we're done. Then we get to tackle the basement, garage, and driveway.

Bump in the night

Bad: As of Tuesday evening we've been hearing a weird thump coming from the house.
Worse: We have absolutely NO IDEA where it's coming from.
House: It only seems to happen when we're trying to sleep.

It's not coming from the basement. Can't hear it from outside,

Visitors

Chris' parents are visiting us for potentially a month. His mom, just for a week before her flight. His dad, well, at least 2 weeks now then he'll go home to take care of things there, then back up here before his mom's flight back. Not sure when he'll be back or for how long. Initially he was staying for a whole month, but he was convinced otherwise. *Phew* So he'll be helping us with the house while he's here.

So the few days before our LA trip, we were frantically trying to paint the bathroom so its ready before our visitors arrived. Well, we were able to finish, mostly....by 1am anyway. Since we didn't have time to take out the vanity and toilet in order to paint behind it and install the tile floor, we painted around it. So there's a nice outline of brown around the sky blue wall behind the sky blue toilet which sits on top of the aqua-marine blue linoleum floor. Beautiful imagery, huh... (I'm working on uploading our pix to flickr.com so hopefully I'll get that up this week. Patience young grasshopper.)

We had about 90 minutes ahead of the folks on the way back from LA. We used that time to put the mirror back up and fight the installation of the mini blinds. The design of the brackets for the blinds is so lame, I don't know how anyone can fit a screw driver so close to the frame without skinning their knuckles using a manual screw driver or chopping up the frame with the chuck of a drill. And the screws must be made of clay...the metal is so soft it gets eaten by the phillips bit. After my frustration overwhelmed me, Chris took over and got it installed. We moved our spare full mattress from the basement onto the futon. We figured it was more comfortable than the flat, dense futon mattress. And of course we cleaned as much as we could before they arrived. Its good enough, I guess.

They've been here 3 days now and our fridge is full of food, utensils are stored in different places or positions, dishes are clean and immediately stowed away in the cabinets, the shoes by the door are orderly, the stove and table are always clean, there's always something cooking, and Chris sleeps earlier cuz the TV is already occupied. Ahhh, the house is always tidy when we have guests.

Some things on his dad's to do list... install telephone line in the rooms (done), install water heater blanket, fix broken sprinkler head, install lighting in hall bathroom (I found a nicer 4 light fixture on the 75% off table at Lowes yesterday... $10!!!), wire cottage for power, install flood light for the deck, install wire shelving in laundry room... That's the smaller stuff. We'll eventually tear down the mud room to put the porch back, install some kind of ceiling in the basement, make a garage or something, redo the deck... Its never ending.

Rant (Disregard if I mentioned this already. I can't remember): Our master bathroom is nearly done, just need to paint and install the baseboards. The fixtures look fairly updated. It looks like the shower was recently tiled inside to match the floor outside. Issues... the shower floor doesn't slope to the drain completely. There's a puddle of water in the corner that takes about 10 minutes to go down... if it ever completely goes down. The water pressure in the shower sucks. I guess if you like those rain type shower heads, then its fine, but we like a little more pressure to wash off the soap when we take a shower. And the bathroom fan is inside the shower stall so it pulls up all the cold air so the only warm part is where the water hits you which doesn't cover all of you cuz the pressure sucks. We tried changing the shower head with no change in pressure. Chris is gonna try to find a valve or something in the basement to adjust the pressure. I hope he's successful. Oh yeah, and if you don't turn on the fan before the water, the steam condenses on the ceiling and starts dripping on you. Ack!!

I think that's enough for now. Pix up soon. Stay tuned.