the bathroom: update iii

happy sunday all!  and for us, it has been quite an awesome weekend.  first up on friday night: drinks and dinner at our local pub up the block with layne where layne & philip had a hell of a time ganging up on me for being awful at math.  layne is a high school math teacher and philip is, well, philip.  just for fun, why don't you comment on this post if you know how to find the inverse of the following equation:

y = x + 1

exactly.  no one should be forced to look at letters in a math problem scribbled on a cocktail napkin while drinking a delicious mighty arrow.  and no i couldn't figure it out.  but a good time was had by all nonetheless, it had been ages since we had hung out with layne and the three of us have a pretty damn good time together.  i had to work saturday morning, but when i left for work it's worth noting that the bathroom still looked exactly like it did when i posted the last update.  new bathtub was still in the entry way.  but by the time i came home, the tub was actually upstairs.  philip was hard at work putting up the cement board we are using as the backing for the tile.  the old tile was connected to greenboard, but this stuff is supposed to be much better since it actually repels moisture rather than basically absorbing it and disintegrating.  so the cement backer is a huge improvement.  i decided i should do something productive as well and did a very thorough cleaning of the first floor (the 2nd floor is just a war zone at this point).  blasted belle & sebastian, scrubbed the kitchen, vacuumed until my vacuum actually overheated, swept, mopped, polished just about everything.  i even got out some springy decor: green linen tablecloth from crate & barrel, and some greens to put above the mirror on the mantel where our christmas wreath was.  i have this grate bowl for a centerpiece where i keep two white pillar candles and i filled the bottom with faux moss and leaves, making it look really woodsy.  i love it.  

my dining table centerpiece. understated.

new greenery above the mirror.

i'm really ready to do the downstairs.  that's our next project by the way; as soon as the bathtub and tile is done we will be painting the living room and dining room.  we put up three different paint samples before we left for LA president's day weekend but really didn't love any of the colors.  i added two more samples last weekend and now we can't decide between those two!  

it's between the one on the far right and the one above that!

anyway, i'm really ready to just take everything out of the living and dining room to paint, give it a good cleaning and re-do the rooms.  i'm ready to get some real decorations in there!  we still haven't hung photos or anything because we were waiting until we painted... and here we are, a year after we closed we will be painting.  but one project at a time :) 

all the while, philip was being much more productive, i must say.  i couldn't do much cleaning up stairs, because most of the floor looked like this:

yeah.  so all i really did was clean up our bedroom.  i finally took off our amazing flannel sheets we got as a housewarming present that have literally been on since november when we got them.  i'd wash them and put them right back on -- i think it's the only way we survived the winter upstairs before we got our electric blanket.  but all the while, philip was hard at work on the bathroom.  by the end of the night, we hardly had the energy for anything at all.  i ran out and got chipotle -- the thought of cooking made me cringe.  by we had earned a night off, after all.  we watched the first half hour of gladiator before deciding it was, in fact, bedtime.  9:30pm.  but here's a few shots of the finished (for the day) product:

in the middle - cement board half up.

mussolini, making sure everything was up to code.

reading the instructions while lounging in the lined bathtub.

not a bad start.  next weekend we will actually put the tile up!  i'm beyond thrilled with how it's going so far.  philip is just amazing.  we slept like babies, except for when my snoring woke philip up at 5am, who woke me up.  we got to fall back asleep listening to the sound of spring rain outside.  even out tulips are trying to come out already!  i can see their little green buds popping out of the desolate brown grass in a few places and i just can't wait for spring.  today we had a lovely brunch at our favorite spot with mom, vince, uncle rich & beth before taking a long walk around sloan's lake.  but it's time for me to try my hand at roasted peppers and homemade pizza -- we rented the new woody allen tonight!  enjoy the end of our weekend all, and i'll post again soon.

til next time! 

alaina