Master bathroom...check!

We are done with the master bathroom! Well, we better be since the renters are moving in….today! We ran into pretty much every plumbing issue you could have, but whatever. It’s fixed now. Out of sight, out of mind! One of Frank’s friends posted a very fitting Facebook status that made us both laugh…”Pregnancy is to women is as remodeling is to men. Something within draws you to do it. It starts out fun and quick, but gets progressively more uncomfortable over the next 9 months. In the end the reward is so incredible that God lets you forget the pain so you can do it again.” Ha!

I haven’t forgotten the pain yet. I need a break! Frank is, of course, already looking for another house to renovate. We drove through a few neighborhoods just for the heck of yet yesterday. I already told him if we do buy another house it better be turn-key ready with maybe just a little cosmetic work. I’m not up for another year and a half of dust quite yet!

Anyway- here are a few photos of the completed master bathroom! The renters didn’t even see photos of the old bathroom, or the new one…so they should be pleasantly surprised (hopefully!) when they get here today. At some point when I get our chaotic life in order, maybe I’ll get a few minutes to go through old photos and post a lot of before and afters of the whole house.

We had the old tub resurfaced and installed a new faucet.



The linen cabinet and robe hooks are in the location of the old shower




New shower- and it works!...we had some issues along the way...




New vanity, lights, and fixtures



Moving Out

Welp - our house is officially empty! Except for some random cleaning supplies and tools.

We've had a busy couple of days. Packing and moving isn't my favorite thing to do, but luckily we got an early start on it and spread it out over about 2 weeks, so it didn't really seem too bad. The master bathroom is basically done except for the cosmetic finishing touches which we will be working on in the next 2 weeks. We also found a company to install a fence around a portion of the backyard to close in the pool for the future families with kiddos moving in. The stress level is starting to go down now that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and everything is falling into place. It's kind of like the week before your wedding. A few weeks before the wedding, stress levels are at a 10...but the week of your wedding, it somehow melts away and you figure, if it's going to go wrong, it will, but things will still work out just fine & you could care less!

One of the hickups we ran into was the granite top for our master bathroom vanity. I ordered it online and we were keeping it ouside under our carport for a day or to before we could move it inside. It started raining hard one night, good ol' Alabama downpour. Frank and I tried to get the top moved inside so it wouldn't get wet...well, it cracked down the middle the second we lifted it out of the box! Grr! $500 mistake! I didn't think there was any chance the company would take it back since I already signed for the delivery saying it wasn't broken, but they were actually very nice and told me they would either have us send it back for credit, or let us scrap it and credit us! I can tell you most companies (especially online companies) wouldn't be that understanding! If you ever remodel a bathroom, FaucetDirect.com is highly recommended for bathroom fixtures! We bought our vanity, sinks, and linen cabinet from them and have been very happy with the customer service. I ended up calling all over town to find someone who could have a granite top built to the specs of the old one and have it ready within a week and finally found someone. I actually like our new granite top better, it's better quality, prettier...and cheaper! So it ended up working out in the long run.

Packing everything into our 10x15 storage was like playing a life size game of tetris, but we made it work! On Sunday we were packing the last of our things and Frank asks me if I knew where his guitar lesson CD's and books were...uhhhh....oops, they are packed into one of the boxes. I meticulously labeled each and every box with the contents, and even numbered them all (on all sides of the box) and wrote all the contents into a notebook just in case. Learning from experience...but of course I don't have the notebook with me at the storage facility. So anyway- Frank decides that he's going to find the box with his guitar lessons. I knew the box was somewhere on the back left hand side of the storage which was now packed to the brim. It was soo funny watching him monkey his way back there and digging through all those boxes, I felt so bad for him, but he really wanted his guitar lesson book! He literally had to dig a hole through all our junk and look at each and every box. He got down to the last box at the very bottom, in the far corner of the storage unit and there it was! Haha! Poor guy, it was seriously in the last box it could have been in, in the worst spot ever, but he got his lessons! And to make matters worse, when we were pulling out of the storage facility after packing the last of our things he asks me if I have his phone...nope. He left it in the back of the storage unit! Ha! I ended up crawling back there to find it (under a pillow, on vibrate nonetheless. It was definitely a sight to see. Our storage has a 10 ft ceiling and I was basically army crawling through the one foot space we had open at the top over our matresses, chairs, entertainment center, etc. It was comical to say the least. At least we can laugh about it :)

We've been in the RV 3 nights now and it's actually pretty fun! No complaints yet, so far my only annoyance is having to drain out the shower water every couple of showers, the tank seems to fill up fast. Or maybe I just take long showers? Other than that, it's been a good time :). I will post photos of the RV life soon!

It’s the final countdown!!

I can’t help singing that song in my head every time I’m working on something in the house. Things are definitely in full-swing at the Prokop household…and all I’ve got to say about that is hole-y-crap. This is worse than planning a wedding!

It’s almost over, though! And in 3 weeks we won’t be waking up to dust & chaos & boxes everywhere and upturned carpet tack boards that a contractor thoughtfully left on the inside of my closet door (true story, stepped on one this morning at 6am). Regardless of the stressfulness, we are having fun with the last few days at the casa and I have a feeling we will miss having our little project. I know we will miss the house. I’m sure we will find other projects soon enough. I am married to Frank Prokop… :)

 

I wanted to post updated photos of the master bath, but not much has changed in the past two weeks. We had a little hang-up with a tile issue and it set us back quite a bit.  We are hoping the tile will be finished this weekend so we can get in there and do the million little things that have to be done before the renters get here (paint, install vanities/toilet, lights, fixtures, baseboards, caulk, etc., etc.,). It’s just a lot of time consuming stuff, luckily we’ve done it all before several times before so we should be pretty efficient about it.

This past weekend we got a storage unit and started moving lots of boxes and odds & ends in. We also worked on the landscaping of our back yard and laid out about 50 bags of mulch along with some weed blocker fabric. It looks so much better that the weeded jungle we had going on behind the pool. I planted some hibiscus flowers back there a few weeks ago and they just started blooming again yesterday, that makes me happy! This upcoming Saturday we have movers taking our furniture to storage. Having the house empty should make it easier to finish up the little things here and there (and keep us from sitting on the couch and watching hockey playoffs & eating chocolate ice cream, which has been happening more than I'd like to admit..ha).

Anyway- we are surviving, hopefully we get everything finished before the 20^th! That’s our deadline. After that we are soooooooo looking forward to sitting on our butts and doing nothing, absolutely nothing :). I think we are going to Panama City Beach for Memorial Day weekend…it will be much needed!

Here are a few photos from the last few days:

Current state of the carport



Trash from bathroom remodel




Doesn't look like much, but it took hours to weed, chainsaw, cover with weed fabric and mulch this area!



The trash guys are going to love us this morning...there are about 4 more black bags of trash not visiable, it basically takes up our whole curb! Ha! This all came from the area we mulched.



Our new vanity- it's here, just waiting to be installed!