Demo is complete!

Tom cuts through galvanized iron pipe in the area behind the toilet and vanity.

Hi all, apologies for not updating in so long. Sometimes our full time jobs and commutes and appointments and dogs just take up all of our time! I know I have some catching up to do here. Hopefully by the end of the week I won't be blog-dragging any more. :)

The big project, our guest bathroom, is our main focus these days but even so, we can only really work on it on weekends. So with one day last weekend and two days this weekend we have officially completed demo as this Sunday draws to a close. Tom spent two hours yesterday and about five hours today to cut through 50+ year-old galvanized pipe and drag it to the truck for the dump. That stuff was HEAVY!

Here's the wall behind the toilet/sink after Tom finished that fireworks display. Pipe is gone and ready to be re-plumbed!

Why did we remove the galvanized iron pipe? Well, basically because a plumbing contractor told us that was the right thing to do. See, our pipes were a conglomeration of galvanized iron and copper on the older parts of the house, and plastic on the newer additions. The plumber advised us to leave the copper alone but remove the iron pipes and replace them with plastic. Tom listened politely and then decided to do the work himself. He does that a lot--he picks the brain of the pro to see if we really need to pay for the work to be done of if it's something Tom can do himself.

Here's pipe cut and tied as Tom cuts that lower pipe from the bathroom below. I was really hoping that rope  held!

So anyway, it turns out galvanized iron pipe is REALLY difficult to remove and REALLY heavy. The plumber would have removed an entire wall but we were trying to avoid that. Here behind the bathtub area was this big heavy joint that gave us the most problems. Tom had cut it from the master bathroom below and we were trying to wiggle it free from the wall so we could remove it.

My job was to scream  if it looked like the big pipe was going to fall through the ceiling onto Tom's head as he cut it from below.

Here's what the hole looked like after Tom finally wrestled the big pipe out of there. That's our master bathroom down there!

 Here's the view from that bathroom below:

Oops! A bit more drywall repair than originally expected.

 This is where that iron pipe used to be. Its opening is covered by a margarine tub, and the wrestling is what banged into the drywall and cracked it.

Okay back upstairs for a few shots of the guest bathroom as it looks today. 

   Definitely a blank slate, right?

Those are my blurry feet looking down at the floor. I guess I forgot to mention that when Tom was wrestling with 80-pound iron pipes, he was balancing on these floor joists. That's the ceiling sheetrock below the joists so if he had stumbled or dropped the pipes that would have been a bad thing.

Next on our list: a visit to the plumbing supply store for new plastic pipe. We're looking forward to building up instead of tearing down!

Sharpen your wits for a mystery!

Got your detective hats on?
Behind the walls of our bathroom lurked a surprise.

When Tom knocked down the drywall behind the medicine cabinet, he was assaulted with deadly weapons. Several HUNDRED deadly weapons! And one very cute vintage box.

I had a theory forged from vague childhood memories, so I researched a bit and found out quite a few homeowners have posted similar pictures of their razor blade finds...and they confirmed my theory.
I thought I remembered medicine chests that looked like this when I was a kid:

source

Apparently in the past it was quite common for medicine chests to have a razor slot where men could deposit their used razor blades. Like this one I found here:

Source: Apartment Therapy

The medicine chest we removed didn't have such a slot, so I guess the original chest was replaced at some point.
Medicine chests weren't the only places with razor slots. I found some photos of razor slots in tiled walls of bathrooms. If you really wanted to be authentic, you can buy a new one here to install in your renovation. (I think we'll pass, thank you.)

source

And there are things called razor banks too! There's even a book about them.

source

Well, for all those kids out there who wondered where the razor blades went when Daddy dropped them down that slot in the wall: the answer can  now be revealed. They went between the walls, where they waited patiently for decades until the day when they could cascade down on future owners like us!
Mystery solved.

The Bathroom is Bare

We have the bathroom pared down the studs. Well, Tom did all the work so I'm kind of pushing it by saying "we." He worked for an hour or two each day after work this past week, and then on Sunday morning, he broke the cast iron bathtub into pieces with a sledgehammer and took 4 big heavy chunks to the dump.

 He broke the handle of the sledgehammer on the first chunk of tub:

We wheeled out four chunks of tub to the truck...

Tom and Sarge get ready to go to the dump. It's Sarge's favorite thing to do--riding shotgun in the truck. See how alert he is--you can tell by his body language he's thinking, "Truck? Me? Ride? Now?"

 That tub is HEAVY! Each big chunk probably weighed 100 pounds.

 The cast iron is about 1/4" thick, and the porcelain coating was about 1/16" thick. It broke into these jagged sharp edges that reminded me of dinosaur teeth.
(And I'm not sure why my pictures are so blue here. I'm going to google it. Could it be white balance??)

 The edges of the porcelain broke off in sharp shards like glass. Safety goggles are a must with this job.

It appears that this tub was the original 1954 tub. Certainly overdue for an update. :-)

 So with the tub gone, our bathroom is officially bare and ready for a whole new look.

Next step: plumbing and electrical. Oh joy!

Thirty

source

Well hello very young versions of us!

That was us. January 23, 1982. Weren't we young! We had no idea what was in store for us but we couldn't wait to get started on life.

We've been lucky together. We've had good health, good jobs, great kids, and very little heartache. If I could go back in time and whisper in that young lady's ear, I'd say, "You're gonna be fine! Just look what's in store for you two!"

Us. Last year.

14 cars

including 1 station wagon, 2 mini-vans, 2 trucks, and a bunch of "safe" cars for the kids to drive

6 homes

2 apartments, 1 base housing, 3 with a mortgage

6 dogs

Eddie, Lucky, Charlie, Sparky, Sarge*, & Sasha*

*still with us. :)

5 career changes

me: business administration; stay-at-home mom; teacher

Tom: USMC Tank Commander; systems engineer 
3 states

We've lived in Virginia, Florida, and California

4 children

who were and continue to be blessings to us. They have grown up to be quite wonderful adult human beings.

Joe, Dianne, Christine, and Tommy

 We have no special plans; just dinner at home on a winter's night. I don't like a lot of hoopla but I do get a bit sentimental so if you've read this far, thanks for indulging me here today.

A craft space I'm still sulking about

Today is a cold, gray, icy day. The sky is almost white--you know how it looks when it's going to snow? That's how it looks but apparently it's just teasing us...no snow in the forecast this week.

Work progresses on the upstairs bathroom. It's down to studs and today Tom is going to try to demo and remove the cast iron tub, using mostly a sledge hammer. I'll post an update soon.

In smaller news, I got a new craft table. It's for my sewing and paper crafts. Here it is--it's that cupboard on the right with the bright light shining on it.

I got it from Walmart--online...not available in our little Podunk town Walmart but I could order it online & have it shipped to said Podunk Walmart. Walmart was selling it for $99 and the next cheapest place was Amazon for $169.

I actually ordered it in December, and it didn't arrive until January 17. So I didn't purchase it in January..in keeping with my $0 Budget January.

It's one of those Sauder pieces. You know the kind--mostly particle board, and you have to put it together yourself. In my case the assembly took me about 2 hours. You have to match every little screw to the picture on the instructions!

It has rolling casters on the bottom so I can move it into the room and have more space to spread out.

The tabletop extends to 6 feet long and is braced by the open cupboard--which has these handy little plastic compartments. I can take out the dividers to make bigger spaces--like for scissors or rulers or something. And the right cupboard has 3 adjustable shelves for bins or fabric.

I can sit here and see the TV while I work.

Oh good grief...see the baby oil bottle? Well, I didn't see it when I was taking the photos--honestly! I can't stand how I think I'm taking a nice little photo and then when I go to post it here, I find there's a bottle of baby oil right in the middle of it. (By the way I had used the baby oil to get the sticky residue off of some of the craft surfaces where there had been stickers. So it's not so totally random after all.)

I got this craft table because Tom & I had a bit of a marital dispute rational discussion about this AWESOME, made-to-order, craft space in the basement, which Tom insists on sprawling all his computer stuff all over. Look:

The previous owners left us the desk, which is a nice, big, smooth, flat surface that would be PERFECT for cutting out fabric and paper and painting and all sorts of stuff. I envisioned a space like this:

(Found on Pinterest; original source not known)

But no, Tom wants it for computers.

I wanted to paint the desk black. Or white. And get rid of the shelves that sit on top of it. Paint the little triangular wall space behind it a cool color...or maybe put some cute wallpaper back there. And then I was gonna put up these Ikea shelves on the back wall and make the space really pretty like in this picture.

(Apartment Therapy)

Isn't this just so nice? I could picture myself spending many productive hours in my little basement craft space.

But no, Tom wants it for computers. Tom: 1, me: 0. He'll never love and appreciate it like I would have.

So I got second-best. The factory-made craft desk on wheels, and I sulked while I put it together, and I had to squeeze it behind the sofa in the basement.

Anyway it's kinda cute and it was a good price. So I'm trying to sell it to myself as a silver lining to the ugly cloud of disappointment of not getting my perfect little triangular craft area.


Oh and see those vertical blinds? I used to ignore them and/or pretend I didn't see them. Like the baby oil bottle. But now that I will be spending hours sitting next to that window, those blinds are coming down and I'm putting up some curtains I found on clearance at Lowe's yesterday. They're supposed to be thermal and block 25% more cold air from coming in.

Source: Lowes

I'll show ya when I get them up. Which won't be for a few weeks, because I don't want to purchase them in January. :)

So anyway, my craft table is definitely not my first choice, but I'm making the best of a bad situation. Lemons from lemonade if you will. So to speak. As they say.

I've even begun my winter sewing project--Joey's T-shirt quilt. I've made a nice pile & I've started cutting.

I usually get my way. So it really pains me when I don't. But don't lose sleep over me...I'll survive this horrendous treatment and come through stronger on the other side.

Once I stop sulking.