Bathroom Project

How many rainy days does it take to finish a bathroom makeover?  Ah, who's counting, it's done now.  We've been calling it the "bathroom project from hell".

Here's the "before" picture minus the towel bar that we'd already taken down.

Before--April 27

 

 

I have hated this bathroom since we built the house.  The cabinet is not what I ordered but when it arrived and was wrong we didn't want to take the time to get the right one so in it went.  It's a tiny bathroom and always felt too confined.  I have two mirrors from my grandma's house that I refinished and wanted to use them somewhere so I was always looking for a new "antiquey" vanity.  I found one a few years ago at Lowe's but didn't have the right vehicle to haul it home.  Then when I decided I was definitely going to buy it it was out of stock.  I kept looking and finally this spring they had another one similar to the first one I found so we bought it.

I needed to paint so I asked M if I should paint it some color other than white and got a resounding "yes!"  The vanity sat around for a month (or more) until I finally guilted M into taking out the old cabinet so I could start painting.  That's when the trouble started.  Our amateur plumbers (M, his dad and his brother) ran the water lines through the floor and not through the wall so had just cut holes in the floor of the cabinet for them.  That meant cutting the cabinet to get it out.  Not a big deal, but then we had to cut the new vanity to get it in.  That wasn't the biggest deal either until we realized it was just barely wide enough for the water lines to go in and actually had to take off one of the legs in the back to make it work.  (No one will notice)

The painting was the easy part--oh wait, there was a snag there, too.  I went to buy the paint (smoky orchid) and the paint mixer wasn't working properly and they were working on it at the time.  I was in a hurry because I had an appointment to get my hair cut so couldn't get the paint.  I did make it back before they closed, though, and they had it ready for me, thank goodness.  I only go to town once a week and didn't want to have to make a special trip in just for that.  Town people don't understand. It's a very small bathroom and it didn't take long to paint, and I really like the color.  Of course, I bought too much paint so I'm thinking of painting the master bath the same color.  I had to put a chunk of cove base in where the old cabinet had been and wanted to get it done so just ran to the station in Richland and got some Liquid Nails.  As I was putting it in the caulking gun I noticed the date on it was many years past.  It was crap, but I did as best I could with it.  That reminds me I need to tell them at the station to check their supply and throw it away if it's that old.

We started the business of putting in the new vanity on a Sunday afternoon.  Not a good idea. For a moment we had fears of having to shut off the water to the whole house until we could get to the hardware store on Monday.  Luckily, M figured out a solution and we got the vanity in, but then we needed to get adhesive for the top and sealer for the sink, and an adapter for the drain which I did the next time I got to town.

When I painted I didn't fill the holes from the towel bar and toilet paper holder thinking the brackets for the new ones would match up.  Haha, what was I thinking?  Of course, they didn't so I had to fill those holes and paint.

We had a wall cabinet that I wanted to stain darker to match the vanity better.  I tried to sand some of the finish off but that wasn't working too well.  I had some stripper so tried that and that didn't work well either so I was to the point of thinking I had just ruined it and should start shopping for something else.  It was just a cheap cabinet, and I've had it forever so it wouldn't have been a big deal, but I couldn't find exactly what I wanted to replace it with.  I eventually put some stain on it and decided it would be okay but needed new knobs which I actually found locally--big surprise!  The wall cabinet has always bothered me because it wasn't centered over the toilet so we finally remedied that when we put it back up by drilling new holes.  Still not perfect since we wanted it hung on studs, but much better.

I needed a new shower curtain and rod since the blue ones that were in there didn't match the new paint.  I found a cool shower curtain with a tree on it and thought that would be better than ordering five trying to match them to the paint so I went with a tree theme.  For the finishing touches I hung a watercolor that my grandma had done and a tree photo that I had taken.

It took a few weeks but one afternoon I finally pinned M down and we put up the towel bar, toilet paper holder and one mirror.  I thought we had hanging hardware for the second mirror, but we didn't so I had to wait on that until I went to town.  That hardware has been sitting here for another few weeks, but we had rain today and we finally got that up so M is officially done with the bathroom....unless I decide to get a new light fixture.  I'm sure he's very happy and probably having a beer in the Mint right now to celebrate.

After--June 17

 

Panoramic view



A Little Hormonal

We've been busy with various things lately, but the most important has been artificial inseminating our heifers.  We gave them shots last Saturday.  We always joke about whether we'll chase them in or lead them into the corral.  A small group of them was in the northeast corner of the pasture and R rounded them up.  I was at the barn and watched them come through the holding pen and into the corral before R and M had even gotten to the ones on the west side.  They patiently waited in the corral for the rest of the group to get there.  There are advantages to bucket feeding them all winter.  They worked really well through the chute and it took M, R and I only a couple of hours to give 85 head shots and apply heat detection patches.

I was a little bit worried that we'd have some ready to breed on Sunday afternoon.  We had an important event that evening--Sawyer's birthday party--which had been postponed until we finished seeding.  Nothing was ready on Sunday, thank goodness, so they hit it hard on Monday.  I was kind of disappointed that I had to work and missed most of it.  I did hurry home from work to help with the last group.  By the time we finished up with those and took them to pasture it was 8:30 so we had supper around 9:30.  Everyone was ready for bed immediately after!  We were up bright and early on Tuesday morning and finished up the last ones and moved them to pasture, finishing just before noon.

We had much better weather than last year when it was drizzling the whole time, and the heifers came into heat a lot better.  We're hoping that means we'll get a better catch.  We had lots of sun and not much wind and then a rain shower after we had finished.

It's quiet around the barn again now and will be even more quiet once we get the bulls to pasture, probably this weekend, 

We're turning to other projects now.  The solar panels for the pump in the pasture are back up and water is flowing.  We'll be moving the cows to that pasture soon.  We have lots of fencing to do--like always.  We've worked on the new hay yard and now are moving a fence out of a bog to slightly higher ground.  We put some brace posts in this afternoon and were heading to the area where we need to put in some more when M got the skid steer stuck in a coulee.  I knew I wasn't going to take the pickup across there but thought he'd get across.  We didn't have a chain to pull it out so called it a day.  M didn't have time to go get a chain and go back and pull it out before he had to leave for a meeting.  Pretty sure it'll still be there tomorrow and hopefully R can help him get it out instead of me.

We were in prime tick habitat and sure enough, I had one crawling on my neck when I got home.  I need to go shower and make sure there aren't any more.  They give me the heebie jeebies!