toasty toes

Looking through my iphone photo album i found this picture.

i remember taking it because i thought, "what are the odds that we would both get house slippers/booties for christmas?!!?" Nolan got house slippers from his parents...and i got some handmade booties from cece (made by inhee's grandma).

perfect for our new place w/colder hardwood floors.
floors that are going to take 6-8 weeks to arrive!!!!!!
we shouldn't have waited so long to have our placed measured so we could put in an order, but we're new at this. have you ever gone to lowes and home depot and spotted the young couple wandering around looking completely lost and confused?
we're those people.

the loo part two: tile it up!

our shower is 2 days in the making. i'm super excited to see the outcome.

this is an iphone photo nolan took on day one of the shower install:

Day two: a work in progress
more iphone photos!
boxes & boxes of tile!


cutting the tile

just like i've seen on HGTV!

my built in shelving!
hmm...i wonder where i'm gonna hang my scrubbies and put my clarisonic? i probably should've thought about it before....

alabastrino travertine tile

i wonder why it's all red?


Nolan said it should be done soon. I can't wait till i get to see it in person. I hate being stuck at work.

what should i do: entryway closet

This is the odd shaped closet that is to your left right when you walk in.there were mirrored closet doors that were taken down so they could rip out the flooring.
we were hoping to put shoes in here...hopefully. it is such an odd shape.
We kind of like the doorless look. it feels more open and easier to reach in and grab stuff. when the door was in place, it was hard to reach into the closet....

my question:
put the door back?

leave it doorless?

other?

let us know!

leave a comment or i'll make a poll on the side again.

the loo part one: goodbye tub, hello shower

the loo, the thrown room, or as i like to call it, "the coffin." i swear the room is so small and once the door is closed it feels like a jail cell. and why is the toilet so close to the tub? couldn't it shove over a few inches to make things more proportional? no. thank you building codes. and why are the sinks outside and connected to the bedroom? is this an 80's thing?
why isn't it just one room? this unit has so much dead space everywhere it's ridiculous.

so what are our plans for this interesting bathroom?
A SHOWER!
neither of us take actual "baths" so there's no real need for a tub.

and after nolan's ACL surgery last year, i'd much prefer a walk-in shower over anything step-in.
(climbing into a tub w/only one functioning leg is no easy feat)

and i am a happy camper knowing we're getting rid of all that gross tile and nasty tub.
how could people take a bath in there?!? i'd feel dirtier stepping in there than i originally was.

i'm still amazed 3 females lived here before us. it's like they never touched a cleaning product.

all our fixtures...

trying to find a shower door...

demolition derby part tres

Demo is complete!

now the real stuff begins!

Here's a look at the place after demo...but before installations:

the living room

the kitchen

the bedroom



the bathroom

the shower/toilet area

What's next?
the shower!

i'm super excited about this one.

"um, so...there's a flood in your apartment..."

that is something you never want to hear coming from your building management office.
that is exactly what we heard from our building management office...on monday.

WHAT?!?!?!!?

talk about a panic attack.

thankfully, it wasn't "that bad" according to the building management--who say they've seen much, much worse. phew.

thankfully, there's only one unit below us...and we won't be known as the unit that flooded 10 other units--which just happened a few months ago. phew.

thankfully, the people working on our unit has insurance. phew!!!!

so what happened?
while doing demo on the kitchen, a cabinet fell and hit the water shut off valve.
it broke. water went EVERYWHERE!
it went in the living room and all the way into the bedroom....
thank god there was no flooring installed yet!

by the time we got there, all the water was sucked out of the unit, and everything was pretty much dry...

the scene of the crime

some wet spots in the living room...

nolan pointed to this mirror and says, "do you want to take a moment to be vain?"
he reads our blog! =)

the magical machine that sucked up all the water.

you like my cute tank?
it's jewel numkki.

demolition derby part deux

so there are moments of pure happiness that require the usual happy dance, like more demo!!!

goodbye nasty tub and toilet...

goodbye nasty stove that was never cleaned...

goodbye carpet in the room that will one day be my "girl cave"

hello mirror...where did you come from?

let's pause a moment to be vain...

i decided to open the cabinet on the balcony...

whoo hooo are you?!?!

you need to move out sir.

don't we look happy?

hahaha.

this is about oh...3 hours before shock and fear set in when we received our first quote from a contractor about our installation labor cost.

let me revert back to my (our) very first blog title:

WHAT HAVE WE GOTTEN OURSELVES INTO?!?!

i need to strap on a tool belt and channel my inner david bromstad because this is just getting ridiculous! we need to figure out a way to do some of this ourselves because...just because.

have you ever seen 10grand in your hand? people save a ton of $$ just by doing it themselves.

i think we can paint.

don't you?

btw, there may be another paint option in the mix...

stay tuned for that.

demolition derby part one

demo has begun!!!
*doing my happy dance*

wanna take a look-see?
(all photos courtesy of nolan's iphone)

goodbye icky gross carpet!




sayonara ugly, dirty sinks and cabinets!




ummm....goodbye second bathroom sink and mirrors?!?
WHA????
we weren't planning a demo on the spare bath...but to get to the valves we needed to replace, all that had to come out...my question now is, what's going back in??? dear future guests,
when you go poop/pee, you may need to wash your hands in the shower...
due to lack of sink.
:/
sorry about that,
sixthfloorapartmentownersthatdidn'tplanonrippingoutthesink


****
tomorrow is a mad dash of meeting w/contractors, ordering tile, and who knows what else.
we're kinda behind in the ordering of things department.

need to be two places at once?

there's an app for that.

One of our biggest hurdles with this renovation so far is trying to get to these stores (paint stores, lighting stores, plumbing stores) that all operate on a monday-friday 9-5pm deal. honestly how do the regular folks pick things if they can never get to the store because they're at work themselves?!? i'm stuck at work, but nolan usually has days off during the week to go to such places...we TRY to go to places together because we usually never agree on anything, it's hard to send one person to pick out something that the both of us will like.

but when we need things by a certain time for contractors, that means nolan will be going alone.
and sometimes that leaves me frightened.

but now, we have discovered our lifesaving app that makes the process easy as pie.
i can feel like i'm there as well...

it's called knocking live.
its pretty much like a web cam on your iphone, AND we just discovered that if you put your current call on speaker, you can talk in sync w/the live feed!!!

AMAZING!!!

thanks itunes.com for the pic.

and you know what makes it even more amazing?!?!
IT'S FREE!!!!!!

go download it!!!!