Bigs and littles

There are some big and little things going on around here, so I thought I'd smash them up all into one conglomerate of a post.

BIG:

Redoing the bathroom floor!

in all its unfiltered iphone glory...Amy, can you spot the bunny? ;)

 I should have taken a better "before" photo, but I did not because...umm..our bathroom is usually disgusting, covered with dirty clothes and a whole lot of dust.

This project started literally months ago when our faucet started leaking in the bathroom. We have a wall-mounted sink in there, and it's old and gross so we thought, "well, might as well buy a whole new vanity, sink, faucet combo" rather than pay a plumber to fix it or spend the energy ourselves to fix it because it's just not worth it.

So we purchased a vanity with sink included at Home Depot when it was on mega-clearance, bought a faucet at Menards, and then...did nothing for a few months. All this time wasted was due to nothing but laziness on our part, and busyness too I suppose. After a few months of the vanity sitting in the garage, we started talking about it - what's the point of putting everything else nice in there and leaving the disgusting linoleum? If we redo everything else right now, we might as well do the floor or we'll never do it. (At least, that was my thought process, and David just had to go along with it.)

So we decided we'd redo the floor, and then spent months trying to find a tile we liked in our price range and a weekend where David's family could come help us tile the floor. Then we bought a new toilet because why not! (Also our toilet works pretty much perfectly except for 1 out of every 10 flushes it'll leave a small piece of toilet paper because the suction isn't quite high enough to get non-heavy things down the drain.)

Finally this weekend David did the demo part of the project, and we're going to tile next weekend after Thanksgiving! Exciting stuff, I know.

Step one above was pretty easy, aka the first layer of linoleum and subfloor. Then we found this:

A gloriously disgusting second layer of linoleum that was even worse than the previous layer! Very 70's, very gross. Along with it came some serious mold/nastiness nearer the toilet and bathtub (this corner above by the door was in the best shape).

Yuck.

David spent a LOT of time taking this layer off, because apparently the glue was pretty nasty. (I spent the time he was working in the bathroom finishing my saint peg dolls, but that's another post!)

After that layer was gone, lo and behold we found the original flooring!

Wood floors just like the rest of our house (at least first floor).

Again this corner by the door was in the best shape, having the least moisture exposure and the least traffic too. I didn't even take a picture of the rest of it because it was/is pretty rotten and not super fun to look at. I know in theory why they put wood floor in the bathroom in 1930, because it matches seamlessly with the rest of the house, but I also know now why they don't put wood floor in bathrooms anymore. Because it turns gross and gets water when wood floors aren't meant to do that.

Anywho! So that was the journey of discovery we went on this weekend in our house. David prepped all the cement board for next weekend and did some plywood-repairs to strengthen the subfloor so we should be set to just jump right in on Saturday! The tile we bought is here if you want a sneak peek before we install it next weekend.

LITTLE:

What I wore Sunday, first really cold morning edition!

The lighting was terrible in this photo so I had to up the brightness pretty bad and in the meantime washed out my shoes. Oops. But my outfit is as follows - dress from Francesca's two years ago while pregnant (and I fit into it again, super big victory for me!!), black tights probably accidentally stolen from Caitlin, faux-suade booties from Target two or three years ago. I also wore my $4 leopard-print Forever21 scarf because I'm a pattern mixer/risk taker and my old North Face brown fleece because it was c-o-l-d.

I'm probably going to repeat this outfit for Mass on Thanksgiving morning because it is very comfortable and it's supposed to be cold again.

Also PSA: if you hate wearing just tights and boots like I do, be daring and double up with a pair of socks over your tights! I don't know why it took me so many years of NOT doing this to finally figure it out. It doesn't work with some of my tighter pairs of boots, but when I can get away with it I always wear a pair of low-cut black socks on top of my tights in the winter. Tights by themselves are just not warm enough, especially when you're walking through snow or ice or near-freezing water!

BIG:

I'm trying to decide if it's worth the time, energy, and money to open that quilting Etsy store I talked about in my last post. (Btw, thank you to every single one of you who commented in support of my not-knowing-what-I'm-doing rant. I mean it. It warms a girl's heart to hear I'm not the only one floundering in adulthood!!)

I love quilting, and I have since I sewed my first one in high school. I've made t-shirt quilts, sweatshirt quilts, wedding gift quilts, baby quilts, and just-for-fun quilts, and I've loved the process every single time. It's a lot of energy expended but something more rewarding than anything else I do, and I've thought for a long time about doing it "professionally." Baby quilts especially are my jam because they're so adorable and so useful for kiddos who always need bundling and warmth. Plus they're sentimental and something that can be kept for a very long time!

I'd love love love to quilt for a living. But the costs, time and energy, and pressure just might be too much for me to add on to my load of responsibilities right now. I'm praying about it a lot and trying to do some research and just generally discerning it all right now, so keep me in your prayers.

Also, Kenzie's post today was a much-needed reminder that my first thought should be how He wants me to use my artistic abilities to create. Check it out.

~~~~~

Whew.
That was a doozy of a post, thanks for hanging in there! I probably won't be on here much the next few days (yay for Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays) but I hope you and yours have a wonderfully relaxing and food-filled Thanksgiving!
HG