Sand or Snow

Busy scooping and dumping, we have to have all the toys out.



Sand toys make great snow toys too!



Irons in the Fire

Whoa!  We've got too many irons in the fire.  We're keeping very busy with:

Family - raising Noah, being married, etc.
Jobs - we both are experiencing unusually busy periods at work right now
Home Improvement - I'm trying to keep you all updated on the bathroom project as it crawls along
Business Dealings - more on that later
Moving? - Buying, Selling, Cleaning, Showing, Negotiating, Financing, Marketing - more on that later too
Bike Team - there are a few meetings and promotionals that we are involved in during the off season

I can hardly keep up with it all!

Business Dealings and Moving-
We were working hard a few weeks ago to get a particular pizza deal to happen.  We got word that it was not going to happen and we closed that deal, cancelled the contract.  While we were "under contract" with that business, another one popped up that was interesting to Brian, but we were unavailable to pursue it.  Shortly before the pizza contract went south, we discovered that we were simultaneously drooling over a house on an acreage very close to the bike trails and a good ride to work.  We decided to go see it when we heard the pizza deal wasn't going to happen.  Fell in love.  It's not a perfect house (because we haven't "made it our own" yet), but the land and location are fantastic.  We heard that they had an offer, but it wasn't reviewed or negotiated yet, it was simply on the table.  Yikes!  We don't like to make decisions fast, but this couldn't be helped.  We would both mourn the "SE Farm" if we let that one get away.  So, we spent 4 days fighting to get the sellers to make a contract with us.  We are, of course, in the middle of a major bathroom remodel, on top of this all.  We have a contract now and it looks like we'll be singing "Welcome to the Farm" in mid-April.  On Sunday we did a "home inspection", made it a family affair, so it was fun and we had helpful feedback from a few other perspectives.  We need to make sure that we don't buy another money pit.  We still need to summarize our findings and decide if the known fixes are worth the expense and challenge of starting over and the price we settled on paying.  On Monday, we heard 2 business related things... The pizza deal could be revived if we want it to be (Corporate changed their minds and decided to approve us even though we won't quit our jobs??!).  The other business of interest to Brian is still available and worth a real consideration.  It would work nicely from the "Farm" and we could easily make the deal work into the finances associated with moving, as long as we sell our downtown house.  We're listing "by owner" until the bathroom is complete, so there is quite a bit of work to be done with that as well.  We made a flyer, have told everyone we know, have shown the house to a few buyers agents.  We are showing the house to a potential buyer on Friday.  It's just a single showing, but we want to be as prepared as if it was a full-fledge MLS open house.  It only takes one! 

We aren't sure what order to make these major decisions in.  We're just praying for clarity and that the puzzle works itself out.  We aren't even sure how we ended up in this tangled web.  Maybe we just need to pray for contentment, learn to say no, and not look for trouble (aka - houses or businesses), but that hasn't really been working too well for us for the past few years...

CXC better make room

Noah's getting the hang of this skiing thing!

Bathroom Progress

 All the shower is missing is the glass door!

We have accumulated all the little things that need to go in to finish the bathroom.  Brian has spent hours making the door to the room work and getting it trimmed out.  We'll paint soon, then call the electrician out to do the final electrical!  We're only about a week out on the glass shower door and cabinet at this point.  We still need to figure out the vanity top, we know what we want to get, we just aren't convinced that we can install it ourselves...  We won't actually place the order until we have a better idea of how it's going to get from the car to the bathroom! We estimate that it will weigh over 200 pounds - whew!

Bathroom design concept

When we were starting to figure out what we wanted our bathroom to look like, we had a bit of help from some friends.  Everybody who commented agreed that we MUST do white subway tiles in the shower.  Most of the images that we looked at had bathtubs and pedestal sinks.  We wanted to eliminate the bathtub due to the size constraint (to replace the tub, we would have to get one that was "mobile home" sized, doesn't that just scream luxury!).  This was the first image that got my attention.  Obviously, it has a bathtub and pedestal sink, but style-wise, it's definitely moving in the right direction. 

I like the flooring strips.  Black and white work well.  We could do something like this. 
I kept looking around on the web for inspiration pictures and finally stumbled upon this.

Love it!  It takes the black and white theme into a glass-door shower concept.  It feels like a pretty big space because of the glass door and color continuity in on the floor and walls.  By the time I uncovered this picture, Brian had already brought home the black spa rocks thinking they might make a nice shower floor.  Combine all these features and...

Here it is!  Never mind the fact that the white subway tiles look a little yellow in these pictures, they are gleaming white in real life!  I'm really pleased how the tile job turned out.  The vanity and shower door glass are both ordered.  We'll be ordering the vanity top this evening as well as buying a lot of the rest of the stuff that we need to finish up the job.  I'm starting to feel like we'll have a functioning bathroom by about the end of February...  Most of our special orders estimate the product to be delivered in 4 weeks, they better not be late on that estimate!!! 
Our latest debate, a small detail that we haven't yet decided is the metal color/type.  The vanity comes with satin nickel hardware, so we're leaning that direction.  We had discussed defaulting to chrome because it works with everything and we could re-use the towel bars from before, but that would require replacing the brand-new hardware that comes with the cabinet and we aren't sure if we will be able to find an additional matching towel bar for the other sink.  The vanity is white and the vanity top is "absolute black" granite.  We like oil-rubbed bronze, but think that it might disappear against the black surfaces, and it costs more.  What do you think?  What's the best metal for a really old space made new again?