if bob vila was a bitchy redhead...

this blog would probably be a LOT weirder...but you might get a little less fashion, and a little more plaid shirts.

anyways...i like to call this story "why it pays to live near home depot...and tiling is dirty business"

you see this peach monstrosity?? this is our downstairs bathroom. or should i say WAS. we used it as a bathroom for about 2 months, from june to august 2008.

then we got  dog and decided he could live in there instead of in crate...and then began the demise of this heinous room. (the dog is now crated, as is his doggy brother....but the bathroom digs also meant he got litter trained, which is a whole other story).

so sometime last summer we decided to start demolishing this room. which then took a million trillion years because we live in an old house.

so the project is languishing, until 2 weeks ago...when the hubs randomly says to me "oh did i tell you my plan? we're going to have the bathroom functional by the start of football season."

SAY WHA LITTLE MAN?? two weeks?? two weeks to turn our better-suited-to-a-crack-den-on-svu bathroom into an oasis to potty?? ARE YOU OUT YO MIND BOY?!

apparently...he was not.

also, this cart full of tile was wicked heavy. AND THEY DON'T LET YOU RIDE ON THEM EITHER.

no way i weigh as much as this load of tile....i totally call shenanigans.

so no lie, 48 hours after he tells me about "the plan", we've got this crazy self levelling cement going on....it was way creepy. and was a plan B after regular cement wouldn't fix the floor...CUZ WE LIVE IN A JACKED UP OLD HOUSE.

but then the floor looked nice...and all was right with the world. the hubs put up cement board...but that's boring, so no pictures.

sooooo....do you wanna see how lovely it looks, about halfway finished?? will you scroll back up the peach monstrosity so it's fresh in your mind?

oh hello there greyish fake-but-looks-sorta-real stone tiles...all of your backsides have been buttered BY ME. (no fabio involved....but tiling is definitely dirty work).

that space at the top will be some pretty glass mosaic tiles, topped by the same grey tile cap thingies with the curved sides. i'm sure there's an actual word for them.

we spent all last sunday doing the floor, and then this sunday doing the floor edges, and the wall you see. last night, we did the rest of the wall.

thursday we'll be accent tiling, and friday we'll be grouting.

then we just have to install the vanity and the toilet and pick a medicine cabinet and light fixture and patch the drywall and paint and fix the trim and i'm going to stop thinking about everything that's left before i hyperventilate.

SO CLOSE to having a non-crappy bathroom in my house. no shower yet....but that's gonna be a whole other adventure.  and yes...i'll be blogging about that too. probably.

mostly so you can validate my hard work, because APPARENTLY the hubs thinks that all wives help out with nonsense like this.

anyone else tackled legit home improvements like this? war stories you wanna share?