Upstairs Bathroom Re-do

Last fall, I hatched a brilliant plan - we could give our upstairs bathroom a quick make-over during Christmas vacation!

(Ha. Ha, ha, ha.)

Initially, this space wasn't anywhere near the top of our priority list because, unlike almost every other room in the house, it functioned. Hideous, yes, but functional. But because we convinced ourselves that making this room a whole lot better would just involve a series of small upgrades that we could do ourselves, it moved rapidly up the list. Plus, it made me kind of depressed to imagine giving the baby baths in that putrid yellow tub. The pictures above are from when we first moved in (that's not my curtain - they kindly included it in the sale...).

The first order of business was the tile. Now, if we were planning to stay in this house for many years to come, or if our tile was in great shape (but was just an unfortunate color), we would have either saved up to totally re-do the tile, or had it professional re-glazed. But we decided a quick and easy fix was more than fine for our purposes, especially since the tile has some cracks - I think it was a somewhat poorly done DIY when it was initially put in.

I heard about tile paint in This Old House, and thought it might be worth a shot, even though it seemed almost too good to be true. Painting over ugly tiles for a bright white finish?! But as you can see below, it's pretty darn good! I buffed and cleaned the tiles one night and filled in all the cracks with caulk, and then Peter painted the finish on the tub tiles and around the floorboard tiles (I actually left the house in honor of our unborn baby's brain cells - this stuff was incredibly toxic smelling). Then - and this is the tricky part about using this product - we left the house for a week (it was Christmas to New Years) because the tile can't get wet for a few days.

After this, the series of updates runs together in my mind, but we painted the walls a really pretty pale blue, replaced the horrible track doors on the linen closet that were never on their tracks (this task nearly broke Peter because the frame was so far from being square it was crazy!), replaced the light over the vanity, took down the huge, glued on mirrors and replaced the one over the sink with a Home Goods find, and installed a new towel bar and toilet paper holder.

We lived with it with these updates for quite some time while we shopped for, ordered, and waited on a new granite vanity top and sink to come in. Earlier this month, we finally picked it up! Right before that, I painted the awful faux marble laminate vanity base with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. I was very skeptical about this product, but it was amazing. It's strange stuff - very thick and matte - but the coverage was incredible. I did have to give it four very thin coats to effectively wipe out the marbling, but it was worth it.

The small narrow shelves to the left of the vanity had shudders that were falling off (this house is FULL of shuddered doors!). I took the measurements to Home Depot and they cut me new pieces of wood, and I bought some basic trim pieces to finish them off. I added the same new hinges and knobs to these that I used on the vanity.

The final-ish task was taking off the old vanity top and sink and replacing it. My parents were in town last weekend, so Peter took off the top and disconnected the water in the hopes of finishing the job when they were around so they could help lift it onto the vanity. The pipes were so old that they weren't standard sizes, and our new sink didn't line up exactly with these old pipes. Nightmare! After hours, Peter basically gave up called our plumber on Monday morning. The plumber assured him he was super close to finishing and gave excellent instructions, and he was able to finish the job.

I can't believe how much I've written about this bathroom update, and I know most of it wasn't exactly riveting. But I am incredibly proud of this project. My mom calls it the "painted everything" bathroom, which is fairly accurate, but it's also a place where we - and particularly Peter - did some things that we both would have happily left to professionals just a few months ago. With the electrical work, carpentry, and plumbing tasks, I feel like we made huge strides in our confidence to dive in and figure things out in this crazy old house.

And now, of course, I'm not at all depressed about giving the baby a bath in this pretty little room :)

Loving Lately

I recently devoured this sweet little book in one day (it's a middle grade reader, so don't be too alarmed by my speed reading!). I now want to not only rescue a stray a dog, but also acquire a spunky old librarian friend, and host a candy and pickles party (let's not blame pregnancy for that one - those two foods sound good to me always).

I've never been a one-piece bath suit person (I have a long torso, and I always feel like they look a bit strange?) but this summer will fall just after I have the baby, so it might be time to take the plunge! This one from Garnet Hill is pretty and seems flattering. But how do you guys buy bathing suits online?! You have to reject so many before finding one that fits right - it's seems really hard! Related, I also need a cute cover up :)

When we were in California, we played Cards Against Humanity one night. We were all laughing so, so hard and kept putting off making dinner until later and later into the night (even though Sarah, Joel, and Peter had to explain the meaning of some of the cards to me and my parents - ha!). Super fun, but not for the easily offended.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Tomorrow we are taking a day long child birth class at the hospital (eeks!) and on Sunday I'm so thrilled that my mom is coming over to help with big some house projects. Cheers to a false sense of preparedness and projects!

Surviving a Kitchen Re-model without Living on Take-Out

We are two and a half weeks into our renovations, which means we've also survived for two and half weeks without a real kitchen! This was one of the most nerve-wracking aspects of the remodel for me, so I thought I'd share a few tips.

The first is that if you can do your remodel during the warmer months of the year, it will make your life a bit easier so that you can grill or throw together quick no-cook meals. I'm hoping that over the next few weeks, we'll be able to grill a bit, too (the giant snow flakes currently swirling around outside might suggest otherwise, but I'm going to maintain my delusions).

Our cooking set-up relies heavily on our slow cooker and microwave - two gadgets I didn't use at all before this. I know many people use their slow cookers all the time, but I have trouble working out the timing of it. Why are so many recipes 4-6 hours long? If I had a fancy slower cooker with a timer, this wouldn't be an issue, but alas, I stole this one from my mom and I think it's probably 20 years old. To work around this, I've been focusing on recipes that require 8-10 hours, or just 2 hours, so that I can either start in the morning before I leave for work or throw it together immediately when I get home around 5:00 p.m.

These are a few of my favorites so far:

• Slow-cooked brisket and onions (8-10 hours on low)
• Easy chicken marbella (2 hours on high)
• Creamy chicken and mint curry (8 hours on low)
• Bourbon maple slow cooker baked beans (I added cut up kielbasa to this, too - 8-10 hours on low)

I've had a few failures, too, including this slow cooker mac and cheese (totally gluey). To round out these meals, I bought frozen pre-cooked rice, brown rice, and quinoa at Trader Joes, as well as some of their frozen risotto, gnocchi, and Indian meals for nights when a 2 hour slow cooked dinner isn't going to cut it. These actually remind me of the early days dating Peter, when we made these kinds of things all the time (and thought they were delicious! ha). 

The worst thing about the remodel is the lack of a sink. Our accessible bathroom is upstairs, so we do all our dishes there (and obviously have to go there to wash hands, fill up a water glass, etc.). Every night, we fill a giant water pitcher and bring that downstairs, which helps with a bit with the back and forth, and I've started using some disposable plates and bowls, though I feel kind of guilty about it. To minimize dishes, I've stopped making salads and simply through extra vegetables (fresh or frozen) into the grain when it's microwaving or near the end of a slow-cooked dish, like peas, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, kale, or arugula (which I treat like spinach). 

I think that's everything I've learned so far, which looks long, but is admittedly not that revolutionary! If I'm missing something genius that made your kitchen renovation more bearable, please let me know! I've still got at least 3-4 more weeks of this...

Which Way to the Bulb Show

Last weekend we went to the annual Smith College Spring Bulb Show. We used to go most years when I was growing up, but I don't think I've been for at least 10 years! It was such a great way to spend a warm, late winter afternoon. 

The first room is stuffed to the brim with flowering trees, tulips, and daffodils, and the smell is intoxicating. 

Doesn't this all feel so happy and bright?

This is the last weekend of the show, if you're in the area and are looking for a cold weather antidote!

Down to the Studs

Our house is looking really crazy these days. We're 2 1/2 weeks into the renovation, and it's basically on schedule so far (I am furiously knocking on wood now that I've typed that!). 

The kitchen and dining room had the carpeting and flooring removed, and were taken down the studs so that the ceilings could reveal what was causing our upstairs to sag. It turns out that there wasn't a load bearing wall for that entire half of the house, which was, of course, causing the drop. Three big beams were added to the ceiling, and now the floor on the second level is flatter and the house is a lot more secure. It was a sad discovery, though. We were kind of hoping that the cause was just old age and there wouldn't be anything we could do about it :)

The electrician has come to set up all the new outlets and lights in the kitchen, a gas line was added for a new stove (I am so excited to go back to gas! Cooking with electric is kind of terrible), the stack pipe, which used to be in the middle of our kitchen counter (!), was moved further back into the wall, and the wall between the dining room and kitchen was opened up. So much progress! By early next week, we should have the new plaster up on the walls and ceiling.

Here are some things keeping Peter up at night:

• Installing a new engineered hardwood floor throughout the first floor with me, his soon-to-be 33 weeks pregnant wife 
• Installing the new sink, super heavy counter top, and faucet to the bathroom upstairs 
• Keeping my somewhat grandiose time frame of when everything could/should be done in check

I would be kept awake by these things, too, if only I wasn't so tired each night when my head hit the pillow. Last night I did have a dream about taking down paneling and peeling wallpaper, though, so the renovation is successfully haunting me in my sleep. 

The Mysteries

Peter was a fat baby. His neck morphed into his shoulders in the most delicious way, and he looks like he had trouble propping himself up with all that head weight. I was the skinniest - all limbs, no fat, and also quite orange, thanks to my obsession with pureed squash and carrots. We keep saying we're hoping for a nice average sized one, but there's also a selfish desire to see ourselves more fully in the baby. Not a combination, but a big pudgy baby, or one that's long and all stretched that either of us could point to and say, "Yes, I was just like that."

I get irrationally annoyed by other people's hiccups, but I feel just as bad when I have them myself. Now the baby gets them, and I'm certainly not annoyed, but I wonder if it's driving itself crazy in there with all those rhythmic jerks that go on for long stretches in the middle of the night. No water to sip, no giant breaths of air to gulp and hold inside until they pass.

Most nights before falling asleep, I have a giant hypnic jerk that shakes the bed. Most days, and sometimes multiple times a day, my whole belly moves in a quick spastic shudder. I wonder if the baby has inherited this trait and if I can see it - even now - in that magical space between wakefulness and dreams.

There are so many other mysteries, but they are too big to even wonder about. Will this person be a reader? Will they love the beach? Will they be quick to laugh, or tell great stories, or make us insane by only eating orange food? It's too much - too exciting, too terrifying - to realize that we'll soon start the long exploration hoping to uncover who this person is.

The dusty house will wait

I took these lovely photos last spring of the blooming tree outside our old apartment. Like everyone else, I'm so desperate for these sunny, springy skies to return. Hopefully it doesn't feel too cruel to share them while we're still suffering below freezing temps in the northeast. They are giving me hope as we turn the calendar over to March this weekend!

This weekend is packed to the brim with fun stuff, and I'm so excited. Tonight we're going to a play, tomorrow night a party, and then Sunday to dinner at a friend's! We'll also be doing some house stuff - painting the bathroom vanity upstairs, maybe experimenting with taking down some paneling off the bedroom walls (Peter doesn't know about that plan yet, though!), and shopping for new floors. Whew!

Our house is a disaster zone - the entire kitchen was gutted down to the studs this week, and the dust levels are insane (though our contractor is doing his very best to keep it all contained as much as possible!). Next week I'll try to share some pictures of the craziness! It will be good to get out and about.

I've been thinking a lot about how we should be spending these last few weeks before parenthood duties officially kick-off. We're doing so much work around the house (and spending so much money!) that it's tempting to just hunker down and focus all our attention there. But this week I've been emailing with a girlfriend who had the most darling baby a few months ago. She gives great advice (about literally everything), so I desperately asked her what I should be doing during this weird time period, thinking I might be failing to accomplish something important like pre-washing bottles and baby clothes (which I don't even own yet).

But no. She had much better - much saner - advice. Go out to dinner. Take care of yourself. Have adventures. That's been spinning around in my mind all week. So I booked a weekend away to our beloved Portland, ME, and I've also put together a short mental list of local stuff I'd love to do, like going back to the Gardner and trying this fun looking new spot.

That advice really works for almost all of us, no matter what our lives look like at the moment, right? The dusty house will wait, but we need to make space to enjoy the fleeting blooms on the trees.

Our Week in the San Diego Area

We had the best time on our trip to San Diego! I collected our whole week of activities into one big post. 

Day one: We met up with my parents, my sister, and her boyfriend Joel at our rental car place at LAX (to pick up our awesome minivan!). I convinced everyone that we should stop at In-N-Out Burger before driving down to Escondido. We made it to our resort, and then grabbed dinner at this yummy Argentinian spot (though the manager did have an annoying habit of asking repeatedly if we'd like to pose for a picture on their Facebook page. Thanks for asking, but NO.)

Day two: The gentleman in our group were particularly excited about the plethora of craft beer s in this area of the country. We went to Stone Brewing for a drink in their amazing gardens while waiting for a table to have a late lunch. The gardens are deceptively small, but are so well laid-out that every table and seating area feels private and special. We made a quick stop at Stone Farm on our way home. They grow food for restaurants, including their own, and there are chickens and goats and such. They sell beer, and people just seem to hang out (we came across lots of spaces during our trip that seemed conducive to that!).

Day three: Using Eater for guidance, we went to Mariscos El Pescador for lunch. It's in the parking lot of a mostly abandoned strip mall, but they had the most delicious fish tacos - for $1.25 each! We spent the afternoon at the San Diego Zoo. I loved the set up there - each new animal habitat felt like a happy discover because it's so lush and green, and the paths just wind along.

These flamingos were among my favorites.

That night, we met up with some long-time family friends for a drink at the lovely Hotel del Coronado (which the Grand Floridian in Orlando is based off of!). There's a giant patio in the back that looks at the ocean, with couches and chairs set up around fire pits. It was heavenly. For dinner, we ate waaaaaay too many chips and queso at Miguelito's.

Day four: My parents, Peter, and I spent the morning golfing at the course on our resort. Super hilly, but views were great and the holes were short (my favorite!).

Our beer tour continued with a visit to Ballast Point, where I tried the most incredibly crisp, light wheat beer (don't worry, I only had a sip!). My mom, sister, and I spent the afternoon shopping while the guys went on to do another tasting at Green Flash. We made fantastic guacamole at home and grilled steaks that night for dinner. I miss those avocados!

Day five: We stopped at Campini's Deli to grab sandwiches and snacks to go, and then went to Hart Winery. They have picnic tables on a patio outside of their tasting room that looks onto the (currently dormant) vineyards. Little grey lizards crawled along while we ate a lazy lunch with a bottle of their wine.

We later visited Wiens and Marimar - both lovely spots that are much more of a production than Hart was. Bigger tasting rooms, lots more people, large outdoor spaces. All the vineyards are very easy to bop around to - they're all basically off of the same road in Temecula.

For the afternoon, we shopped around Old Town Temecula, with a fantastic stop at the Temecula Olive Oil Company for an oil and vinegar tasting. (I was jealous of everyone else's wine and beer tastings, so I really went for it with those oils :) For dinner that night, we drove out to Carlsbad for sushi at Blue Ocean. This was one of our favorite meals of the week. In addition to sushi, they serve robata, which is basically grilled meat on a skewer. Delish.

Day six: The end of the week was unusually warm (around 80 degrees), so we spent the entire day by the pool, grilling burgers and eating more guacamole made from those unbelievable avocados. I had brought this book along with me for the trip, and I found it be terrible! Could not get through it. I'm now thoroughly caught up on the March edition of every magazine on the shelf, though.

Day seven: We started the day with a crazy drive up to Mt. Soledad. The views of La Jolla were stunning, and the memorial was touching. To round out our fish taco eating, we went to El Pescador Fish Market for lunch - also amazing, and the setting is a bit of an upgrade from the strip mall parking lot.

We spent an amazing afternoon Cabrillo National Monument to see the tidal pools. There are easy walking paths and beautiful views everywhere you turn. We went up to the top to see the lighthouse afterwards, which was very cool - you really got a sense for how isolating it was to be a lighthouse keeper.

For dinner, we were back in La Jolla to go to Whisknladle. Oooh, this place was so good! Everything I tried - which included bone marrow, my main dish with pork, olives, and asparagus, and a chocolate peanut butter confection - was wonderful. Highly recommend if you're looking for a fun celebratory dinner in that area.

I really, really didn't want to come home from this trip. Being outside so much in the sunshine, eating so many delicious things, getting to spend so much time with my family - it was just a perfect mix. California, I can't wait to see you again someday.

The Chaos Before the Storm

Sooooooo. There are a few things that have happened in the house since moving in that I've been too embarrassed to tell you about. This is because they were my fault, and they made our already crazy house even more crazy. But now that we are on the cusp of the rest of our renovation (which will address these insane things!), I feel like I can come clean.

The top two are in our dining room, and they are things I did within a week of moving in last August. I innocently pulled a piece of wallpaper off the wall to see how stuck on it was, and was horrified to realize that the previous owners had put the wallpaper on over paneling. What the what? I told Peter we need to take down the paneling so we could paint the walls, which involved taking down the (very tacky, very plastic) crown molding and trim. However, underneath that sheet of paneling was a horror show of crumbling plaster that can't be salvaged. We've been living with that piece of paneling propped against the wall for almost seven months. Gah! But the entire room is going to get a coat of new plaster, along with the ceiling. And the carpet is getting ripped up, too.

On the hutch, I took off the horrible shudders and then sprayed it like crazy with paint stripper. Over and over and over, and it still looks all chippy and crazy. I know that I could be more patient and get it clean enough to re-stain, but I'm totally resigned to painting it at this point.

The last photo captures a taste of the worst thing I've done to the house. Before we moved in, I peeled back a piece of wallpaper in the kitchen to see how stuck on that one was, and that also revealed paneling underneath. One weekend in October, Peter was away for a bachelor party, and in what my Mom thinks was a fit of hormonal insanity, I pulled off all the paneling, which revealed no fewer than six (6!!!) different wall papers throughout the room. My brilliant solution to this horrendous obstacle was to buy the biggest tub of joint compound I could find and literally cover every single square inch of the kitchen before Peter came home. It is a disaster. (To Peter's tremendous credit, he has admirably pretended that this is not a completely awful thing.)

I am really writing a novel here! Easing toward the wrap-up, the kitchen is being remodeled, starting tomorrow (Monday!!!). We got back from a glorious week in San Diego last night around midnight, and have spent all day paper writing (for me, boo), and then moving all our stuff out of our kitchen and dining room. Lots of stuff on the porch, a new-to-us fridge from Craigslist in the entryway, and a make-shift kitchen set up in the living room. By the way, I have a fun California post coming up this week, too...

Anyways! I didn't snap a picture of this, but we're also having our stairs opened up a bit so that we won't hit our heads on the ceiling when walking on the fourth step multiple times a day.  I am 30 weeks pregnant today, and this all feels a little bit insane, but I really hope our instincts are right that we'll be very, very happy to have this all done pre-baby.

Just keep cooking, baby. Please don't even think about coming early!

Getting Ready

This semester, one of my classes is being taught by the editor of The Horn Book. Yesterday we got to visit their offices, which featured stuffed shelf after stuffed shelf of children's book - essentially, heaven. I love the magazine's most recent magazine cover from the lovely Jonathan Beam.

It's fitting on multiple levels right now. I could practically build a snowman this large with the amount of snow in my tiny yard. And we're getting ready to go back into building, renovating, and construction-mode in our house. The plan is for the latest (and maybe final?!?) round to be done by mid-April, leaving a couple of weeks to clear the dust ahead of my due date (which I share with Grace and Olivia, weirdly enough! Also, those are two names are on our long list of girl's names, ha.). If the baby comes early, though, hooooooly cow.

I'll be able to give more of an update about our plans later, once we review all the quotes and make our final-final decisions about what to do. Suffice to say, I'm having frantic thoughts at 4:00 a.m. about setting up our dressers in the bathroom upstairs and assessing how many slow-cooker recipes are actually in my repertoire (not nearly enough).

Plans for the weekend include watching the open ceremony tonight with take-out, lots of school work, and hosting friends for a dinner party on Sunday. I have zero ideas about what to make, which isn't like me, but I'm sure it will come together just fine. (Just kidding, as I was reading over this post, some inspiration struck: meatballs with braised onions and mashed potatoes, carrots and fennel, and the most perfect brownies would all be good.)

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, friends!