Labor Day indeed

We are working our butts off around here trying desperately to get our big house projects done before the end of the month.

No rest for us this holiday weekend!

Here is what our Labor Day weekend has looked like:

Let's take a peek in the upstairs bathroom!  Here is Todd mudding the seams of the drywall.  I have already sanded the mud on the seams and screwheads and here Todd was going over it a second time.  Now, it has to be sanded once more and it's ready for texture, prime and paint!    

Another look at our new walls.  This entire room we have gutted and rearranged - meaning Todd moved all the plumbing so it made sense and the electrical followed.  What's left for the bathroom before we can make that first celebratory flush?  The walls need textured, primed and painted.  The wainscoting needs painted (it's already primed) and installed.  The vanity, which Todd made himself, must be finished with putty, sanding, and varnish.  The clawfoot tub (see below) must be finished.  The tile must still be sealed and grouted.  And there is still a strip of tile in the doorway that needs set.  These jobs will make the room FUNCTIONAL.  There will still need to be some finishing touches.  (Don't mind that blue sample in the pic. The room will be painted blue, but that sample turned out horrible!  On to option no. 2.)

Here we are entering the master bedroom.  That wall in particular has had spray foam insulation AND batting put behind it.  Why both?  The spray foam was to help insulate, yes, but to also help stabilize the 90+ year old plaster wall on the other side that is in the living room.  The batting was to provide an additional sound barrier...

A view across the room toward the closet.  We got that mostly drywalled today also.  Only a few more boards and it will have complete walls!  Tomorrow evening I will mud all the screwheads.  That window there?  Before that wall where the window is was spray foamed for insulation (there was none, not a lick, in that room), Todd had to re-mortar brick in around the window to fix a shoddy job done who knows when.

So, what else needs done in here?  I have sanded all the seams (minus the ceiling, which Todd will do) and screw heads.  The seams and corners all need one more coat of mud and to be sanded one last time.  Obviously, texture, prime and paint.  We have to reinstall the heat.  We are going to put crown moulding in here and the baseboards need attached.  The closet needs finished.  But, we are not worrying about the moulding or baseboards before the end of the month...

This is looking back down the hall from the master.  The bathroom is the next room to the right and that room at the end will be the nursery.  I share more on the nursery another time...

Here is Todd cutting a chunk of drywall...

What else have we done this weekend?  

Well, we spray painted the frame we will be using for the bathroom mirror.  And we started removing the old paint from the clawfoot tub we are using for the bathroom.

Todd has a power washer that we started with...

A lot of the paint flew right off, but there are still some stubborn pieces that refuse to budge.  So, we'll have to find a way to scrape that off without damaging the enamel on the tub.

What's left here?  Finish scraping the paint.  Then we will turn the tub over, lightly sand the outside of the basin and prime and paint the tub gray.  We are going to remove the feet and either have them chromed or, most likely for the time being, we'll just remove the white paint leaving them the bare metal.  They will have to be sealed, however, so we have a can of clear coat we will use to protect them.  We already have the fixtures, so that just needs installed.

And now, after a long weekend of working on the house, we are watching a movie and trying not to pass out!  

Registry rationale

Putting together a baby registry is HARD WORK.

After talking to a few girlfriends who have recently had babies, I feel better that I am not alone in thinking this.  It's funny how smart gals with common sense can be overwhelmed by putting together something as seemingly simple as a baby registry.  

There are so many silly and unnecessary products out there and it's hard to cut through the noise to figure out what you really need and when.  

I have spent hours reading baby product books and researching, comparing features, and reading product reviews until I've narrowed down the items I think we'll like best.  I've kept by my side the sample registry list I found in a magazine and slowly - very slowly - I have either checked an item off as "registered for" or scratched it off as "not necessary."  

Some items have been saved after being written off as not worth it once I consulted with others who have kids.  Like the Boppy pillow, for example.  It seems like a gimmick to make you spend money on yet another baby "supply."  Why can't you just use a pillow if you need support?  One friend did just that, but she was outnumbered by four others who absolutely insisted that the Boppy was a lifesaver.  One girlfriend told me last week they have three, I believe - one for each floor of their house.  My youngest sister went so far as to just buy me one out of fear, I think, that I wouldn't register for it.  So, the initially silly Boppy was saved and arrived last night on our front porch.  

I find I have to really think through even little things like sleep sacks.  Little Kittel will be a winter baby, so she'll obviously need something on the warmer side.  Ok...a fleece sack it is.  In fact, two fleece sacks in case an accident in the middle of the night warrants a change.  But which size?  How long are babies, particularly newborns, in those sizes?  What if she's like another girlfriend's baby who, I just learned, runs hot.  On to the list went a cotton one, which then required another round of deciding on colors.   

And so it has gone for the last month.  Read, review, compare, list.  

I am happy to say the list is almost done!  Just a few more items to decide on and the registry will be good to go!  Now which stroller system should we use...?  

Questionable investment?

At 22 weeks pregnant most couples invest their money in baby things.  Dropping big bucks on nursery furniture and baby necessities is likely where a lot of their cash is going.

Not us!

We bought ourselves an airless paint sprayer!

It's all in the name of baby though.  You see, we still don't have a master bedroom...an upstairs main bathroom...or a nursery that's even on the road to being ready for Little Kittel.  And almost every one of these projects requires a LOT of painting.  Todd putting together the new (amazing) tool.  Yes, that concrete jungle is our backyard.  One day, there will be many posts on it as we rip it out and start over with awesome landscaping.  Anyway...painting...

Lulu just has to check everything out.  Kind of looks like she's about to do karaoke, doesn't it?

Never mind, she probably thought it was the hose, which she loves to drink from...

Here comes Rigby!  A duet...

Back to the important stuff...This new sprayer is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!  Over the weekend I primed and painted 1/4 round for the dining room by hand.  It took awhile.  Todd had an old sprayer, nothing like this one, that we tried using to paint the wainscoting for the bathroom, but it went caput (hence the new sprayer).  With all the clogging of the nozzle, the small amount of paint it held, etc., we covered the backs of about four boards in an hour.

The NEW sprayer??  We covered one side of six boards almost all at once in under a minute!  Talk about production improvement!  We blew through all the boards of wainscoting!  They are now sitting patiently waiting for their quick coats of paint and then...voila!...on the wall they go!

If the new sprayer means we have a completed upstairs by the time we a) have a baby shower here, and b) actually have a baby, then I think this was an excellent investment indeed!

Big, life-changing news

If you didn't already know, or you missed the "public" announcement on facebook...

We're expecting!

And we're expecting a baby girl!  Todd and I found out last Tuesday at our first ultrasound that the little bun in the oven is indeed a girl; and from the ultrasound photos below you'll see there is very little question.

Being pregnant hasn't been too much of a secret, especially since at 22 weeks you can tell just by looking at me (or if you follow me on pinterest you've probably noticed a lot of baby-centric pins).  But I hesitated making any big announcements until after we were assured everything was A-ok from the ultrasound and previous blood tests.

We actually found out there was a Little Kittel on the way right after Easter.  At that point I was about eight weeks and had no idea until I started calculating time tables while making Easter dinner.  I told Todd my thoughts and decided to take a test the next morning.

I read the directions a few times, then did as instructed.  When I came back to check, there it was, a faint + staring back at me.

Though we had decided to start rolling the dice I don't think I was truly prepared for the reality looking me in the face.  I was excited, happy, scared, and rather in disbelief.  Being my first baby, I had absolutely no idea what to expect, so, I immediately ran to the local bookstore to pick up that famous book that answers that question.

And so we've boarded the baby train!

Check out our Little Kittel on the way...

If you look carefully at the top right photo you'll see the word "girl" typed between her legs.  The doctor described that photo as, "it's like the baby is sitting on a glass table and you are underneath looking up," to which I replied, "She better not be behaving like that!"  The doctor then came up with another analogy about sitting on a Xerox machine.  It didn't exactly right the image in our heads...  :)

A few more snapshots of her...

And my favorite...the very clear profile of our baby...

It's crazy to think that's INSIDE me...that I'm PREGNANT...and I'm going to be a MAMA!  A lot of times it still doesn't seem real.  But then I look at this photo and think of how this is just the beginning.

Water closet wonderfulness - Part 2

The floor in our upstairs bathroom is almost tiled!

Todd and his friend Ken have been working hard on it for the last couple of days.

Take a look...

Here the guys are starting to lay things out to get an idea of how it was going to go down.  That orange mesh is the heated pad that was supposed to go under the tile so we can have warm floors when we want them. The "supposed to" part of that mesh will be explained a few pics down...

Row one of the tile going in.  They had to level it starting with this row.  It's an important row to have even otherwise all other rows would be slanted...!

Starting row two...

About 1/3 of the way at this point.  Ok, the heated part.  The guys ran into a problem with the heating wires because they aren't going under every part of the floor.  Just down the center.  There's no sense in heating tiles under the tub, for example, but heating up to the tub is a good idea.

Apparently, it requires at least 1/4 inch of Thinset to put the wires in.  There has to be a layer to stick them to the floor, then the thickness of the wire is on top, then a layer of Thinset goes over them so the tiles can lay on top.  The problem was, they had to use only about 1/8 inch of Thinset to lay the tiles.  Any more and it would squeeze through the tile lines.  This is a problem because grout has to go in those tile lines and if they're clogged with Thinset you would have to clean EVERY ONE of those lines out first!  Could you imagine??

So, their solution was to cut the heating wires from the orange mesh, draw where the wires would go on the floor, then use Todd's saw (a special electric saw that I can't remember the name of) to carve out those lines in the cement board on the floor.  The wires would then set slightly down in those lines and they would seal them down with a little Thinset.

Success!

You can see the lines for the wires at the bottom of the photo...

Except for what looks like about three sheets of tile, the floor is DONE!  Todd said they had to stop for the time being because of something to do with the threshold at the door.  He was walking out of the house, so I didn't get a good explanation yet...