Just a little project, or two, or three.....

Brian got a couple of photography classes for Christmas, one of them right after the first of the year. So as Brian heads off to the night time class, Staci puts the kids in the tub, has dinner cooking, and has to run downstairs to the pantry to grab something. As I open the door to the downstairs workshop/pantry area I see water running down the built in shelves. Not a major flow but more than a little water. It happens to be right under the tub. Oh CRAP! So, I call Dad over to help me investigate,and Mom to watch the Dinner and kids. We discover that the kids had the water up over the emergency drain in the bathtub and the emergency drain is what had the leak. But, in order to fix the problem we were gonna have to tear down the built in shelves and the ceiling.

This is a picture of what it looked like after we pulled it all apart. Luckily, we could still use the tub as long as we didn't fill it up too much. And luckily it was just the workshop and not a finished room with carpet and paint!

After looking at the issues and what we would have to do we decided to do a MAJOR fix! Which turned into MAJOR projects! One thing lead to another and it just kept going, and going, and going.

Project ONE:  Since we ripped out shelves to get into the ceiling we had to figure out how to reorganize our storage and unfortunately the extra bedroom which is the storage room was jammed packed full of stuff.  Stuff we didn't use, and didn't need.  Stuff we could sell.  Just STUFF!  So Staci started to purge.  And purge.  And purge.  I wish I would have taken pictures of the 'before' view.  I had saved about 10 Rubbermaid bins of baby girl clothes.  I came to the realization that those baby girl clothes are 8 years old and not in style, and I may not ever get the chance to have a baby girl again.   But if I do I will want new clothes anyway so why store them anymore.  There were old things and unorganized things.  Scrapbook paper, holiday stuff, old school stuff, just STUFF!  So we took about 5 trips to the DI.  Once that was moved out we had room to start to reorganize.  And now...I am organized.

There are bins for each holiday or season.  There are bins full of pictures, yearbooks, and family history.  There are bins for keepsakes, one for each of us.   (in case you can't tell, I even labeled the bins with my vinyl cutter!)

There are bins for my scrapbook paper and craft stuff (including Kennedy's craft stuff).

We used the old Rubbermaid bins that used to have clothes in them to reorganize our Christmas decorations. We had another little "closet" area that was full of crap that we sold and I made it a coat closet with bins for our hats, scarves, and gloves.

We cleaned up the shelves that had the games and books, we cleaned up the play area, we cleaned out the downstairs completely. We cleaned up the workshop area and rearranged the shelving.

Some things are still out of place while we fix the plumbing but you get the idea...

  We cleaned out the camping stuff and stored what we could in the trailer, not on our shelves.  We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned.  Project One - Done.

Project TWO and THREE:  We had talked about buying new tile for our master shower but it was one of those projects you talked about and never did.  We had talked about buying new tile for the kids bathroom and adding a shower to the bathtub.  The only thing the kids had was the tub and not the shower so they always used our bathroom for the shower.  Again, something we talked about but never did.  So since we were riping into the plumbing that went to both bathrooms we decided to take on project TWO and THREE at the same time.  First, we ripped out the tile in our master shower clear down to the studs.  Then we could re-route the plumbing to add a shower in the tub of the other bathroom.

This is the old green tile

This is down to the drywall

Down to the studs

So all we did in the kids bathroom was to add the shower head on the other side of this wall.  No new tile yet.  But it was easy and it gave us another shower to use while we remodeled the master.  Very nice solution for now.

Here's the new drywall and the red sealer paint. 


Here's the new floor...cool isn't it!

Here's the new walls and border.

Full View.  We love it!

We were going to repaint and put in new counter tops and light fixtures but we ran out of time and money...at least for this project.   There are other projects already lined up for the spring.   The rest of the bathroom will have to wait!