Homeownership project #4, Part 6: We have a new bathroom!

It is FINALLY DONE!  The bathroom turned out so nice.  We are really happy with it!  Gutting a bathroom is definitely not the most fun thing to live through - we constantly had people in and out of our house, there was always SOMETHING that didn't go as planned, our house was full of dust and had weird smells all the time, but I'm so much happier now that I'm not totally grossed out by our guest bathroom.  I hope all of our guests enjoy it!

For a reminder - here is what it used to look like:

Here is my inspiration photo:

And here is our final bathroom!!

I probably should have ironed the shower curtain - oops!  Overall, we're really happy with how it turned out!  We went over budget on a few things:

Tile - I picked out tile that was above the allocated amount, but then again he only gave me $1.25 per square foot.  When I went to the tile store, I hardly saw any tiles for under $2 that were worth anything.  I think my subway tile was $2.25 a square foot and the floor tile was around $6 a square foot.

Subfloor - something was going on with the subfloor, so they had to use some cement to even it out.

Demo - the contractor thought it was sheetrock behind the original walls because the bathroom had been remodeled in 1992.  Once they got in there they found out it was indeed CONCRETE behind the tile, not sheetrock.  He wanted to charge me $250 extra in demo, but I got him down to $200.

Walls - because it wasn't sheetrock but concrete, they had to add an additional layer of backer board to get the correct thickness - he charged me for materials on this.

We ended up JUST over our budget for this, which is what we were expecting.  Here are some more detailed pictures of the bathroom:

Love this piece - its a photograph we bought at the 
Main Street Arts Festival.  The photographer shoots in black
 and white film and then paints in the color.

Had to have my double towel rack!  It holds so many towels!  
Perfect for multiple guests.

Soap dispenser is from Target's Threshold line.  So cute!

Shower curtain rings are also Threshold.  
Shower curtain is from Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

We did all of the painting.  Now THAT was a job, since all of the trim was new, we had to caulk all of the edges.  The trim guy's work was subpar (I actually made him redo it all because I didn't like it the first time) so we had lots of cracks and nail holes to fill in.  Once we finished caulking, then we could paint all the trim.  At this point, the sink, new toilet, and light fixture were in, so that made painting a little challenging.  The trim color is a latex paint color-matched to Benjamin Moore's Chantilly Lace.  The wall color I decided on is Behr Premium Plus Ultra in Gentle Rain, eggshell finish.

Hope you guys like it! :)

Glamour Shots

Some friends have been asking to see more grown up photos of Stella - she's definitely turning into a dog and is losing the puppy look!  When we see her at home she looks so big to us because we compare her to Max, but when we take her out around town and see other dogs, she still looks tiny. :)  She's weighing in at around 28 lbs, and still has a good 4-5 months left of growing.  We love our fluffy puppy!!

Here are some pictures of her at 2 months old:

And here she is just shy of 5 months old:

She's so sweet and happy and cuddley all the time!  Sweet Stella!

One Year

This post is a little late, but happy anniversary to my husband!  I can't believe it has already been one year since we got married.  That went by SO FAST.  We've literally had so much going on the past year time has just flown.  Right after we got back from our honeymoon, we had every weekend booked for months it seemed like, not to mention starting the house buying process, getting the townhome ceiling and floor fixed, living in a hotel, holidays, moving, quitting my job at The Richards Group, getting Stella - it has been a busy year! Its been so much fun though - so glad that Tyler is the person I get to experience all this fun stuff with. :)

For our anniversary, we kept Saturday kind of low key - worked on some projects around the house, and then went to Bob's for our anniversary dinner.  You guys know I'm not really a red meat eater, but I'm telling you, that steak I got at Bob's was money.  The entire time we lived walking distance from the Bob's in Dallas and we never went - what were we thinking!?  It was so good.  We wanted to start off with the calamari, but then saw a waiter bring out a plate of onion rings and they were HUGE!  Biggest onion rings I've ever seen, so in true Tyler fashion, we got the calamari AND a plate of onion rings.  I wish I would have gotten a picture, they were super yummy.

On Sunday, our actual anniversary, we decided that we were going to go to Dallas for lunch and to do a little shopping and maybe go to the Perot museum.  Well, that morning, Stella went NUTSO and got super dirty running figure 8's in the backyard.  All of her white fur was brown, so we had to bathe her.  Well - our bathroom with the tub was still a disaster, so we had to bathe her outside with the hose, and it was cold so she was real pissed at us and it took way longer than anticipated.  But at least she was pretty afterwards. :) She was going crazy over the hose - Tyler and I were in tears over how hilarious it was.  When the water would shoot out she would try to eat it, but was super spastic about it.  It doesn't sound that funny when I say it now, but I promise you it was, and we'll get her to do it again and video it next time.

We finally got to Dallas around 1pm and went to The Porch, my favorite!  We got the spinach parm dip (of course) and had our fill of Starbursts.

After lunch we went across to Knox so I could stop at Z Gallerie and Crate and Barrel to check out some things I had been eyeing online, and while we were there Tyler mentioned something about the Fort Worth Zoo.  That immediately sounded like a great idea, so we drove back and made it to the zoo with a good 2 hours to explore.  It had gotten up into the 80s, so we went home so I could change, and that was a really good decision because it was quite warm when we got there!  The Fort Worth Zoo is pretty legit.  I wouldn't say its as good as the Audobon Zoo, but still pretty good.  Here are some pics from the zoo:

I mean, isn't this adorable?  They're holding each others' tails!

Spread your wings!

Overall, a pretty successful zoo trip.  When we got home, we decided to take a family picture (please note, Max couldn't be in this picture because 1. we were outside and 2. there's no way he would have sat still next to Stella long enough to take a photo.) Please ignore the fact that I look like I have zero makeup on in this picture - gross.

And then we had 1 year old cake for dessert.  It was still pretty good!

And the best part of our anniversary - Tyler surprised me with a surprise vacation!  We will be going to a mystery location over Memorial Day weekend - I won't find out where it is until we get to the airport! Super excited - we're due for some travel time! :)

Such a great weekend - looking forward to many, many more anniversaries to come!