My week, in pictures

This use to be my bathroom:

This is the bathroom as of last weekend:

Halfway through destroying the shower:

Part of what use to be our plumbing system:

In progress...

Another pile of old pipes:

(By the way, removing old plumbing is a filthy, horrible mess.)

This is a good example of why the plumbing needed to be replaced: A drainage pipe, originally 2 inches in diameter, reduced to about 1/2 an inch of capacity due to build-up and rust...

In the garage:

Some of the new pex pipe (= AMAZING)...

The plumber, hard at work...


And although the house has been ripped apart, I can now confidently enjoy this, straight from the tap:

Office to Nursery: A remodeling story in pictures

First, a tour around the room as it was when we first moved in. We originally used the nursery as our office. Then we turned the "front room" into our office, leaving the nursery available for its remodel...

Step 1 of the remodel was to replace the windows. This was actually pretty easy:

(From the outside, new window on the left, old window on the right:)

(Nate in the window!)

New windows:

We hired a contractor to do some of the work. He added insulation. We wanted rolls of insulation, not blown-in insulation, so he first cut out the old drywall:

(Nate helped:)

The insulation:

Our contractor, stuffing the insulation in the walls:

Then he patched the drywall:

And started mudding the drywall:

We then resumed control of the project. I used a texture gun to add texture to the walls, then primed them in prep for the new paint color:

Here's a shot of the new paint color. I started prepping the floors to be refinished:

A close-up of the floors, pre-refinish:

I sanded the floors using this awesome tool:

(Unfortunately the big sander doesn't get close to the edge, so I had to spend a few more hours on my knees with a small orbital sander to get the floors sanded all the way.)

Nate put the new coat of stain on the floor (too many chemicals in the fumes for me to safely do this work):

Stain finished, but not yet sealed:

Nate sealed the floor with polyurethane. It is also highly chemical, so again I couldn't help. I couldn't even be in the house. See how shiny they is? :o)

I gave my very talented mother some fabrics and some instructions. She made beautiful curtains for me. She asked if I wanted them lined and I said no... Then I put them up and changed my mind. So I added a lining and ironed in pleats:

And here's an around-the-room now that it is mostly finished and we've got the furniture in place. In the first picture below, the crib will go between the windows, next to the little chair:

And finally, here's video tour of the nursery in it's current state. About 40 seconds into the video I tried to show the space where the crib will go. Toward the end I show the blank wall behind the door; I'm going to put white bookshelves along the wall from floor to ceiling. (I'm very excited about the bookshelves!).

There are still quite a few things to do, but it will be a couple of months before I make enough changes to warrant additional pictures. Stay tuned!

Help name our kid

Want to help name our baby girl? Here's your chance to give your totally honest, totally anonymous feedback on some of our initial name suggestions:

www.surveymonkey.com/s/G7BNTV7

Obviously we want to pick a good name for our kid -- one that we like and one that she won't hate us for. But there are a lot of other things to consider. For instance, is it a name that some bully could easily make fun of? Is it a name that people will call weird? Is it too hard to pronounce? I really like unusual names. But since I also really like my kid, I don't want to stick her with something awful...... and that's where you and your opinion come in.

So please, take the survey.

"Pickles" understands N8's frustration

Hahaha! My mom sent me this cartoon today from the newspaper. This could seriously be me, Nate, and Jack. (Hint: If you click on the image you should be able to see a larger version.)

(Source of this image: http://olive.columbian.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VENMLzIwMTEvMDEvMjgjUGMwMjIwNw%3D%3D&Mode=Gif&Locale=english-skin-custom)

Jack sits anywhere...

This post makes it at least one too many "Jack and Nate" posts, but seriously, how cute is this?

Don't you love it?

I love it. I would love to have a wall of build-in bookshelves just like this in my house. I think we'll add it to the list :o)

Nate and Jack

I owe a longer post that this, but alas, all the posts I start only ever seem to get halfway done. So, for now, enjoy some pictures!

Cats curled up as they sleep? Always cute.

But here's the real "story" -- a continuation of a previous post: Jack really loves Nate. Jack will do anything and everything he can to be near Nate. Sometimes that means balancing precariously on the back of a chair:

He's constantly "asking" to be in Nate's lap. Sometimes Nate actually allows this:

And Jack's newest favorite thing is to steal Nate's chair as soon as Nate gets up.... but only when Nate is intending to return. Just a minute ago, for instance, Nate got up to go brush his teeth and get ready for bed. Jack did not steal Nate's chair. But earlier this evening Nate got up at one point to go wash his hands, and he came back 90 seconds later to find his chair stolen: