John & Hannah are HERE!

No one has earned their space in our house more than John & Hannah.

They've slaved for days (in the heat wave) removing the wallpaper from their room. Here is some during & after:

I can't believe the transformation this room has seen! The gray accent wall was the perfect choice; it's the best looking room in the house!

I am so sick of the bathroom

And Ben is even more sick of it than me. We're been working on this bathroom for the past month and it still looks like hell.

First, we removed the old medicine cabinet. This part was easy:

Then Ben spent a week shaving with no mirror:

After many attempts, the medicine cabinet is finally installed correctly.

With the bathroom sink & mirror installed, next we'll be working on:
- patching around the edges
- painting the bathroom a bright white
- hanging a second medicine cabinet above the toilet
- laying vinyl flooring
Our quality time in the bathroom has just begun. Here's to hoping to more luck (and lower temperatures) for our next projects!

Our New Bathroom Sink

Despite all of the blunders we made in How Not to Install a Bathroom Sink, we did finally install one:

Before

After

Carrying our 150 lb porcelain sink downstairs was not a challenge; it was a victory march.

We took shots. And then we turned the water back on.

Painting the Red Brick Fireplace: Before/After

We have been working on modernizing our red brick fireplace, and are finally finished!

Before

After

How Not to Install a Bathroom Sink

Based on our recent personal experience, I have created a list for anyone preparing to replace their bathroom sink. I'm still unsure of the proper way to do it, but I have a pretty good idea of what not to do:

1. Begin during a mid-summer heat wave with no AC.
2. Give up on figuring out how to shut off water to the bathroom; just shut it off to the whole house.
3. Assume that your sink has traditional size pipes (or that the size marked on your pipes is accurate).
4. Wait to begin until a Sunday night when all of the hardware stores are closed.
5. Be really busy at work so that you're working extra hours instead of fixing the bathroom sink (or more importantly, turning water back on to the house).
6. Don't buy bottled water; there is plenty of liquor in the cabinets to hold you over while you sweat to death.

Living the Dream

"It's nights like tonight that I wonder why we didn't buy a swanky apartment in DuPont," says Ben.

In the next breath, he reminds us both that we're living our dream. We give an exhausted cheers with our $7 wine from the liquor store on Georgia Avenue. Yes, we're living our dream.

Our Living Room Makes Me Feel Insane

We've been working every night for a solid week on scrubbing, patching and painting the living room. Somehow it seems like everything I need is in the middle of this mess:

And after today's 4 hour Home Depot excursion and sink installation fail (more to come on that later...) the living room has also become the new residence of our bathroom vanity. As you'd probably expect.

Sometimes I see before and after pictures and wonder if I will ever live in the after.