One of the projects on our list of things to do before Baby Davenport arrives is to remodel our one and only bathroom.  Do to a limited time frame and a long list of other smallish projects to complete; we’ve decided that the most important portion of this bathroom remodel is to re-tile the tub surround.

A few years back we replaced the toilet, and we think that even though our pitiful sink and vinyl flooring could use some up dating they were sufficient for the time being.  So, the tub surround it is!

Now if you have ever  been to the Davenport abode and made a tinkle you probably have noticed the “interesting” walls in our tub area.  The previous or possibly the original owners “updated” the bathroom and replaced the wall tile with fiberglass panels.  This is perfectly fine if you have say… a mobile home, where tiling a semi-permanent wall would be pointless, but in a fully planted in the ground home like ours, using real tile just makes sense.

This is what WAS on the walls….

At first glance it looks like real tile, but at closer inspection….not so much.

We constantly have insulation and other debris falling from beneath the panels.  Lately, we have been finding gnats in the tub that we believe to be coming from behind the paneling.  Talk about nasty.  This started occurring about two weeks ago.  I have to wash them down the drain every morning before I shower.

(if you look closely you can see tiny black dots in the bottom of the tub…those are the gnats)

Saturday morning Derek and his dad began ripping out some paneling, and this is what my front yard ended up looking like…

(don’t mind the random plate in the pic, Derek found it while pulling up some ivy in the front yard)

Behind the paneling the guys found drywall, uneven drywall, to be exact.  That got ripped out too.  And I’m so thankful for that, because when I hear things like, “this wall is definitely crooked” I would gladly sacrifice another day without use of my bathroom than have the job look horribly shotty.

So that uneven drywall ended up as a lawn ornament…yea!

Remember awhile back when I mentioned that we had animals living under our tub?  Well, we found evidence.  Check out these scratch marks.

I think the animals pulled down lots of the insulation while living under there.  The animals come back every year, so I think this happened over time….I think.

Just hearing the guys bang away at the walls in there and hearing the chunks of plaster crumble and crash into my pretty old tub made me cringe.  I kept repeating to myself…they know what they’re doing, they know what they’re doing.  I really hope I’m not lying to myself.

I had my trusty vacuum on hand sucking up the trails of debris the guys left in their wake.

And believe me there was a never ending trail.  So while the guys made a mess all day….I cleaned their mess all day.  Lucky me.

Since the guys were doing demo in the bathroom they hung up plastic to protect everything, but the toilet.  The toilet is a pregnant ladies best friend, ya know.

This is just an example of what I was dealing with…

This experience really makes me wish we had a second bathroom in the house.  Having to kick the guys out every time I needed to tinkle, just so I could use a dust and plaster covered bathroom, was not what I consider fun.  I hate icky bathrooms and having to tippy-toe around in that one about sent me into shock.

Derek was doing some raking in the backyard this weekend and unearthed a 1967 newspaper in our yard.  It has been a bit eaten (by animals I assume) and weathered, but you can still read many of the articles and ads in this musky, soggy, and just plain old paper.

Look! an ad for a cloth diaper laundering service.  Ya don’t see those anymore.

This article is about a “devilish” couple united in unholy wedlock.  I wonder what these two did to be deemed “devilish”?

I even found the comics or as they use to call them….The Funnies.

Although a bit soggy and dirty, I really enjoyed perusing through the old paper.  It gave me a glimpse of what Memphis was like before I was here.  Our house was built in the 60′s…I wonder if this paper was here before the house was?  Food for thought.

Mmmmm….fooood.  Well I’m off to go eat…..AGAIN.

Our bedroom has come along way since Derek purchased the house back in 2006.  When he bought this house the carpet in the master bedroom was hunter green and the walls were yellow, and there was lime green shag carpeting in the closets.  W O W!

We have a sneaking suspicion that this entire house was completely green at one point in it’s life; thanks to what seems to have been a 1970′s makeover.  We decided to pull up the green carpet that was so dark you could spill motor oil on the thing and never find the spot.

Dog fur, now that’s another story, because that’s about all you could see on the freakin’ thing.  We figured since the rest of the house had hardwood floors the master MUST have hardwood under the carpet…it just had to.  We decided right away we had to pull up the carpet to at least look.  I mean wouldn’t you?  Even finding old, worn hardwood would be better than the Oscar the Grouch green monstrosity someone thought was suitable carpet for not only a football stadium, but a bedroom.  To our delight there WAS hardwood underneath!  It was in need of a bit of love, but nowhere near the nasty of the astro turf that sat on top of it for years.  SERIOUSLY.

We begin on a mission of carpet pulling-uping.  We made it about two thirds of the way across the room and realize that the hardwood STOPped.  See during the 1970′s massacre re-model of this house the owners added an additional 8ft onto the kitchen and master bedroom, but figured astro turf would really class up the joint.  Cuz I mean that makes total sense.  Maybe they rented the room out to little league football teams on rainy days.

Sorry, back to my story…

We began saving money for new “non-green” carpet, and decided the less of the nasty carpet in that room the better.  So, we tore up any carpet that had hardwood beneath, and left the what did not.

A few months later our money was saved and the new carpet was ordered.

Oh here’s a funny story….so, the dogs, Cohen and Ellie, (at this time Amy & Ellie lived here) loved, loved, loved to eat all the acorns they found in the yard.  There were like a gazillion of these friggin’ acorns.  These two fools would eat acorns and then come in the house a barf all that nasty up.  Well, not 30 minutes after the carpet guys left, Ellie trots into the room and yacks in the corner….dark brown!!  Ahhhh!!!  Derek about lost it.

A few years have passed since that barf filled day, and the room is slowly transforming into a nice little retreat.  It could use a few window treatments, I had to persuade Derek to let put some up in the house.  Just like a man, he thinks curtains are pointless.  Since then he has seen the light.  We replaced the ever so lovely mini-blinds with 2 inch wooden blinds, painted the walls a lovely neutral tone (i’m already wanting to change the color), and added some art.

All the art in the room was either drawn/painted by Derek or is a photograph taken by Derek or me)  I think it adds a nice personal touch.  Oh, did I mention that we made those bedside lamps ourselves.  I bought the shade on e-bay for $60.00 (it’s a Le Klint knock off), and purchased steel pipe at the hardware store.  We love them.  They are pretty with an industrial flare.

I would eventually like to see that dang popcorn ceiling scrapped, and some crown molding put up, but that’s just will have to wait.  I just found out yesterday Derek has decided to started getting estimates on having the wood floors refinished.  Yippie!!!!  So sorry ceiling you are just gonna have to wait.  Jenny needs her some purdy wood floors.

Painting has ceased on the house, yet again.   After painting two windows yesterday we realized the color looked a bit yellow.  We brought a sample of the current house color to the store to make certain this didn’t happen!

It’s supposed to rain for the next 3-4 days here.  At this rate I’m thinking we will be finished painting this house in May 2010.  It’s like doing the bunny hop…take two hops forward, now take one giant leap back! I hate moving backwards! My hand can’t take much more of this cramping, and my skin can’t fit any more mosquito bites.  I’m gonna get West Nile before this thing is through.   SWAT….just killed another one.

Derek and I have finally begun painting the house.  We are starting with the back windows and trim.  Why?  I guess for practice, in case we screw up in the back we will know how NOT to screw up the front of the house.  You know…the part most people will see!  While we painted the dogs spent most of the day inside watching us like we were a movie from the bedroom windows.

~ look just past the blue roll of tape in this image…you can see Cohen watching~

I am so happy the majority of the house is brick, because Derek starts back to school in the next month and I don’t know how much more of this my body can handle.  I woke up this morning feeling as if I fell from a skyscraper onto a concrete pad.  The concrete won.  It did not get so much as a crack in it.  My body absorbed all of the shock, and by my body, I mean every joint in it.  OOOOOUUUUCH!

Yesterday we taped and primed the back windows and trim.  Today, we are doing the top coat on those windows and trim.  Pray for me.

We decided it is time to paint the house, and if this is to get done at all…we will need to complete the project in the next few weeks.  Derek starts back to school in August/September (I can’t honestly remember).  I’m sure not going to paint that dang house by myself; unless using a can of spray paint will suffice.  In that case, the brick, siding, and trim will all be a nice glossy black!  Over the past year we have repaired a few minor imperfections to the exterior of the house, but have only gotten around to priming these areas.

While prepping the house for a makeover, we inspected the exterior of the house for any wood that may need replacing before the BIG PAINT.  Lucky us, we found that one of the bay window’s exterior wood was not exactly wood, but interior paneling.  YEA!!!!  Obviously one of the previous owners repaired this window at some point, and thought that using an indoor material to repair the outside of the house would be a smart defense against rain, snow, mildew, mold, and other glorious nasties one would dream to have growing in their walls.  From a distance, being shielded by a curtain of shrubs, the window’s paneling looked fine, but within 5ft of the window you begin to see the moldy horror.

Upon Derek’s initial inspection the paneling was mushy, and appeared to have mildew/mold growing on it.  So, Derek purchased “real” wood, cut it to length, and preceded to remove the nasty old paneling.  After he removed the 1st of two layers of the paneling, knowing my phobia of slugs, Derek called me outside to show me the slug breeding farm lurking just below the 1st layer of paneling.  THANKS BABE…I OWE YOU ONE.

Those little nasties are just icky and slimy.  I swear we have some that are a solid 5 inches in length.  5 inches…that’s got to be some sort of a record, or a genetic mutation at very least. I told Derek not to dump those chemicals in the ditch next to our house.  I mean it was only time till we had slugs the size of stray cats, and stray cats the size of St. Bernards. SERIOUSLY.

Throughout the day Saturday the front yard looked more like a trailer park yard sale as opposed to a quaint mid-century neighborhood.

I guess Derek decided to use this bush as a seat.

By the end of a long, hot Saturday Derek had successfully replaced the paneling with proper symmetrical wood boards.  I helped him caulk, and prime the boards once he finished.  We made sure these board were watertight.  So much that the house would have to flood from the inside, and the water would have to build up so high that it seeped down through the window sill, flow down into the plaster walls, and wet the board from behind to even begin to water-log these babies.

Next step :: paint everything else.

Since our house dates back to pre-historic times, I thought it would be nice to spruce it up a bit.  Our house is really old, not quite pre-historic…but old.  See many of our friends that purchased their first home went with the trusty “new construction” homes or at least homes younger than 15 years.  Not us, we went with a house that was built in the 1940′s.  We were looking for something with some character something other than what a new construction home had to offer.  And we certainly got character!  There are definite benefits to a new construction home: minimal dust (compared to our pounds per day), a garage, a two car wide driveway, windows that are not painted shut, “new” wiring, and so much more. Don’t get me wrong we love our house, and although there are times when we think that having a “newer” house would be easier we wouldn’t trade this one in for anything else. We love our home.

I decided I wanted to “update” all the light switches in our home.  Like the wiring in our house, many of the original switches are still being used. Many of the switches have four sometimes five coats of paint; each layer trying to mask the one before, and in the groves where words use to be years of grime, dirt, and dust have accumulated to form what seems to be a shadow effect.  So instead of making Derek listen to my gripes and watch me constantly scrub down every switch in the house with 409 & a magic eraser once a week I decided to do something about it.  Plus in an older home with a 1970′s addition like ours some cohesiveness, even if just in the light switches, would be nice.  (P.S. – 1970′s additions do not hold true to the original styling of a 1940′s home)

living/front porch

kitchen/side porch

So, like my father and his father before him, I took to working with electricity.  You see both my grandfather and father are brilliant men; both men are electrical engineers.  My grandfather worked for NASA, and my father has worked in designing 9-1-1 emergency response systems for a well-known communications company.

end result

Having my sweet and patient husband show me how to re-wire a light switch, and supervise my doing of the second; I proceeded to follow in my father and grandfather’s footsteps, and work with electricity.  I must say…I am quite proud of myself. Making certain not to start a fire I double and triple checked every wire placement, and connection I made, and I still replaced every light switch in our house in just a few hours, and no fires yet.

How ’bout them apples!