At first we thought the floor was linoleum. I thought maybe the previous owners went a cheap route and just bought those giant stick down floor tiles…totally a budget move.
ahem. I was wrong.
This is bonafide tile. excuse the mutant toes.
So here’s how we removed it all. First…removal of the quarter round. I recommend trying to save it when you can…ours was coming apart at the seams so there wasn’t a whole lot of salvaging…but it’s cheap to replace so if you do damage yours, it’s spilled milk my friends.
Then we started hammering at the vent. You can do this also in a regular corner of a tile. Basically the deal was ‘let’s break it up and see how hard it will be to remove’. Oh and yes, it’s a good idea to stuff a towel down in your vent so random bits of tile don’t fall down there.
We tried to clean up as we went.
After Jer got some of the tile started, he just pushed the hammer under the edge of the surrounding tiles and popped them up. They came up really easily.
Ignore the fact that he didn’t have safety goggles on. We couldn’t find them. He is now blind in both eyes.
oknotreally…but the point is, he should be. you know what I mean.
Our tile came up in big chunks…which means that the adhesive didn’t stick really well to the bottom of the tiles. That could have been a product error or an installation error. I’d put my money on installation in this house.
Jer kept on prying each one until it when from this…
to this:
Under the tile we were left with the cement board. Jeremy suggested we try to salvage the board and just scrape the adhesive off. In theory that’s a great idea…but in reality, I told him no. It would be a huge time suck and I didn’t want him to waste hours and hours just to make a finished product that may not be perfect for future tile. It’s worth the money sometimes just to replace it.
Jer set the circular saw blade depth just long enough to cut through the board and not the subfloor and equipped it with a concrete blade. Then it was dust city…
I crossed my fingers that the board was just nailed down…screws would have been a royal pain in the bum. not to be confused with pain in the royal bum 
Success.
Jer decided to just break the corners and leave the edges under the baseboards…for me.
One night when Jeremy was laid up in bed with the stomach bug, I was able to spend a solid two hours just pulling up the nails, prying out the old tile/cement board/nails under the baseboards and doing general clean up.
Oh and for those of you wondering…clean up would mean sweeping up the mess with a good ole fashioned broom and dustpan first…and second…and then using a little shop vac…then mopping it all up. It’s SUPER dusty so try to get as much up as humanly possible. or as extra-terrestrial as possible if you are good
Okay…so that’s that. Tile a bye bye….next up…prep and priming.
This post is not literally about our dirty sheets and socks and underwear.
If only you were that lucky
This is about airing our other dirty laundry…namely the room that we absolutely hate but use every single day…the laundry room. We’ve decided to work on it…well…that and Weston’s room…and the folks are coming to paint the house in two weeks…and Jer’s folks are bringing our dining room table down soon…so just be warned: there is gonna be a lot of switching back and forth. That’s real life for us…we don’t work on one room only till it’s done. I think that’s pretty normal, right?! This isn’t a makeover show…this is how we normally work and I’m glad you can follow along…but if you have a hard time with the switching, I don’t mean to make your head spin…just want to this blog to be a more real reflection of who we are and what we do.
Speaking of blogging….it was getting to be tedious and weird for me because I felt pressure to make sure every post had a ton of perfectly edited pinterest-ready photos…no bueno. Just to be frank, I have a life beyond this blog just like all of you …so for the next month, I issued myself a personal challenge. My posts will have 15 or less photos and most of them probably won’t be edited…at all. If you don’t like it, well, feel free send a letter to the head of the complaint department. His email address is [email protected]. He’s not great at getting back to people and he sleeps on the job…so my apologies.
Now back to the post…our laundry room…
I had cleaned it and wanted to show ya how it looked before the chaos began…aka the boys took off their clothes.
The thing that drove us all the most crazy was the floor. I don’t wanna knock anyone’s taste but holy moly that is some ugly tile.
Let me remind you that the trim is warm tan colored…the pics look on on the cooler side…inaccurate…and they are chipping.
Our workhorse sink…it is like the spa of the interstate…everyone is welcome and dirty things happen inside.
Above the sink is this weird cabinet. My mom said that she would understand if it was a microwave cabinet or had a microwave or vent hood attached to it…but you have to be either insane or a complete genius to have a microwave in here.
The plan is to use all the cabinets…but they will be getting painted. Again…the pics show cooler than the actual ORANGE that they are.
Oh and did I mention that there are quite a few plugs and outlets? Yup. I think there might need to be a creative solution to hide all those because dang.
It’s actually a super narrow room for having front loaders…but that’s fine. I was thinking of making the wall across from the washer and dryer just one gigantic peg board. That way things can be hung willy-nilly.
And we need a countertop. badly. I lose so much stuff behind the machines. I think if we planned accordingly we probably could fit more sorting space and smarter drying solutions.
And that far wall needs a little drama.
It’s a nice little room. I wish there was a way to make the washer and dryer be in my closet too…anyone do that before? I’d be willing to fork over 75% of my closet to fit another washer and dryer upstairs…yes I am that lazy…and yes my boys are literally THAT dirty.
Hello there cheap and plastic hardware At least this room had some…the kitchen was jealous.
But first things first…the floor. This is our main goal this week…to get it all out and to clean it up and to come up with plan.
And yes, the work has already begun…this was taken a bit ago and we are still not done with it. That’s sad, huh? But like I said…life gets in the way sometimes and I am surely not complaining
p.s. Thanks to everyone who sent us get-well emails about Will’s stomach bug. It was getting passed around at church and I figured it was just a matter of time till we got it. His lasted the longest…three days…then I got it for 24 hours and then yesterday Jer, my mom and my dad were all laid up in bed with it. (not all in the same bed though! awkward!) Needless to say…glad that is over. And I hope that all you mama’s with sick kiddos are getting a little break!
Most of the time Mother’s day makes me weepy. I can’t explain ohwaityesican….it’s because the babies are getting older. From my perspective, it’s the bittersweet day dedicated to actually thinking about your children (yes, I think about them other days…when I have energy to think)…I dwell on their birth…their life…their future graduation from law school…their marriage to Suri Cruise after she converts from Hubbard to Jesus…my old age and my impending death.
kidding. sortof.
I do get weepy though. That part is true. It’s just that every single day as a mother of babies, you are waking up to crying, dealing with the highs and lows of day-to-day life, milking those moments of peace and trying to forget how many dirty clothes there really are, and through all that work and patience and exhaustion, there is pure and unadulterated joy. It’s living in front of you. creating more laundry. and making your eyes fill and flood over. It’s your children. And as much as people may say that mother’s day is about celebrating moms…it’s equally about celebrating what made a mom…it’s remembering the children…our living breathing joy!
This year I had double that. double the weeps. double the joy. double the highs.
That photo is a perfect representation of my mothers day. My sweet darling boyfriend made me breakfast in bed(room)…which Will ate and made me laugh when he told me in a tiger voice that I was ‘gorgeous’ and that he would share his food with me. His funny personality is so big sometimes I wonder how it fits in his little body. And of course, telling him “No…you are gorgeous!” is my favorite comeback. And he squeels with delight.
The day before (week before?) I had worked on a mother’s day event at our church. We go to a hipster church. That’s what I call it because there are men in skinny jeans on Sunday mornings and twinkle lights are hung everywhere. Jesus loves hipsters too I’m not cool enough for fedoras…so no offense hipsters.
And the event was great. It was just for women…it didn’t matter if you had a mom there or were a mom or just wanted to be a mom…it was celebrating the fine ladies in a community. I had helped out…which meant I did the photography, hosted three tables and helped cook the food, make corsages, and do setup and breakdown. I was sortof like assistant to the gal who was in charge. She’s now a new and fast friend…funny how working together will do that to ya. I told Jeremy that next time I need a stunt double because I was beat afterwards. It was a good beat. Like when you get a deep tissue massage and are sore from it but feel so much less tense. It took me all week to clean up the stuff I brought back home. And when I say a week…I mean, there might be still some dirty dishes from it still in my sink. (FUN PART: I recreated the tablesettings at home so I get to share them with you this week!)
The best part of Mothers day this year was two things. One…I got to be with my mom. She surprised me by being able to come to the brunch at church and between the crazy running-around moments, we got the chance to exchange face-to-face sentiments on how we feel through weepy eyes. Ten years ago or so we did a whole lot of much louder word exchange so for us to come full circle to be able to say the most flowery compliments ever is kind of a miracle. All you teenage girls reading this….your mama loves you more than you’ll ever know….and things eventually will get better…don’t lose hope. Enough said about that.
Two…we dedicated Weston.
The baby dedication kinda snuck up on us. I guess Jer and I were both thinking more about mothers day than baby dedication. But just being able to spend a few quiet moments with family and church friends praying for Weston and his future was really really special.
This is just a close up of that photo above. It was the best one we got. Jeremy is a chronic collar fixer. And that lady is the gal who is in charge of the childrens ministry at our church. Basically I am obsessed with her. She is so down-to-earth and honest and sweet.
That photo that they showed behind us was a recent one I snapped of Weston. He’s a bonafide sitter-upper. I love how squishy his body is…like one of those stress relievers…the ones that you have to squeeze repeatedly.
He’s trying to learn another new skill….the crawl. He pushes really really hard and is able to get his knees under him but then he pops them out straight.
Then he planks for a while…moves his feet back and forth but can’t seem to quite get brave enough to put the knees one in front of the other. This is his concentration look….which includes blowing bubbles…
(this is quickly becoming a baby Weston update, huh?!)
So in addition to his new skills, he is starting solids. Big (HUGE!) deal for me since I have loved breastfeeding this time around. There is no guarantee I will ever have another baby that does breastfeeding so easily and I get emotional thinking about the end of it…it was just really such a redemptive experience for me as a mom. I know we have more months to go before he stops nursing but it’s like the beginning of the end.
::dear Lord, someone get me a tissue::
I feel like just yesterday someone else was just learning to sit up and getting his first rice cereal….
Soon enough, it’ll be this little man playing in alleys and talking in tiger voices…
Oh sweet mother of tears, make it stop!
Let’s talk about something else.
How bout a quicky gift that is cheap and nice for moms out there. Hostas. In tiny baskets. With washi tape flags.
I scored these at a local growers outlet for cheap. The plants were $1 and the baskets were a quarter. Perfect price for giving to those special moms in your life (or aunts, neighbors, teachers, etc) that help mother us along.
Oh. And I forgot to tell you the most embarrassing thing. The church printed out the babies names in the sunday notes. It had their names and birth dates and parents. It was a nice little thing to put in Weston’s scrapbook. I brought it home and Jeremy casually mentioned that they got his birth date wrong. I was all like “WHAT?! no way. I told them the 17th. What did they put?” And then Jeremy was like “the 17th?! I thought he was born on the 18th!” and then I relentlessly made fun of him.
Long story short….I don’t know my own son’s birthday. the shame.
