Bathroom Remodel - Day 18

Today, we got the detailed floor tile work done as well as the grout for the floor plus some of the wall grout. Tomorrow should mark finished grout and I think maybe the countertops were supposed to show up (or maybe Thurs?). I gave a shot at laying out the pattern for the splash sheild glass partition for the shower but after sending a picture of it to Felicia, it got rejected, so we'll go 'round on it some more before we can get it done.

Bathroom Remodel - Day 17

Pretty good progress today... looks like all the tile is pretty much done (can't walk in there to see) in the main bath, the closets, and in the throne room. We picked out grout color today, so that will probably go on tomorrow, and the countertops are supposed to happen (I think) on Wednesday. I think we're over the top and maybe picking up speed on finishing this party!!!

The lights we picked out came today. We ordered them online... amazing. The supposedly "oil rubbed bronze" looks like "nearly black". That ain't working for us... they'll have to go back. Dammit. Two steps forward, one step back.





Obviously all of this needs a SERIOUS cleaning.

Paint samples...

Can't believe I gotta move the baby girl pictures down to put up paint samples, but that's the way it bounces. Felicia spent quite a while today talking paint samples with the paint dOOd at the paint place, so these were the three options they came up with...what do you think??






Just putting this in becuase I missed seeing it until today. Nice inset for the soap and shampoo!















This is the dark green in the day light...















This is the dark green in the night light...














This is the light green in the day light...













This is the light green in the night light...













This is the blue grey in the day light...
(this one has pretty much been chucked)













This is the blue grey in the night light...
(this one has pretty much been chucked)











This is the two green colors next to the medicine cabinet and the small piece of marble that the countertops will be made from.

Introducing GINNY! (Day 2)

Introducing... drum roll please... GINNY. It was a long and ardous process by which we came up with that name, but there it is!! Of course she has no idea and still answers as much to "hey you!" as to "Ginny!", but we'll get there. We had a relatively decent night last night... just a couple whining sessions where she woke up in her crate and wasn't super happy to be there. She pretty much fell right back to sleep after a little bit of a sideshow (and one trip outside to pee). She's pretty mellow for a puppy...maybe the record heat we're having here, or maybe that's just how she rolls. Nice for us (at least in the mean time).

She's a little sweetie pie.





I'm going to chew this thing!!













How come he won't play with me?















Ho mahn... I can sleep in ANY position!












Peace reigns!!!














Nothing better than mommy stretching while I get to chew on her pony tail! Talk about yer downward dog!!!









So there was this one spot on the patio that holds on to a bit of water in the morning... and THAT's where I plunked myself down.












My favorite spot in the back yard. The grass tastes really good here when they don't yell at me for eating it.














Riley got into the act this afternoon.
He's barking at her for taking HIS toy.














More exchange of ideas...












Pete and Jen came over this afternoon to see the puppy. You'd have thought Riley didn't have a friend left in the whole world except Pete.











A little "paws" for comparison.
She's got Riley beat already (her paws are bigger than his). Hope she doesn't grow too well into them...

NOW WE"VE GONE AND DONE IT!

We went and dyed Riley grey!!! Yeah... not quite. Do not adjust your TV set!!!

For a long time, Felicia has wanted to get Riley another dog as a companion. She finally wore me down, so we started looking around at dogs we could rescue. I knew about the Arizona Weimaraner Rescue group from before we got Riley, so I looked to see what they had going on. They had a couple of 2 year old females that looked like they'd be good, so I sent in an application. As it turns out those two females had already gone, but they had two female puppies... so there you have it. The lady came over this afternoon and that, as they say, is that. She's 18 weeks old and she was bigger than we thought she'd be (yeah... we know they get kind of big - that's why we wanted a female, because they don't get as big). Who knows how big she'll get (she has quite the story behind her) but her paws are as big as Riley's.

I'm not sure Riley is really amused by this whole deal at this point.
Anyways...that's it, we're a two-dog town now.
We didn't have enough of a mess going on around here with the remodel, so we had to shake things up a bit.



















































He does not look amused!!!

























Check out the size of those paws!!!

Bathroom Remodel - Day 15 & 16

A little doublin'-up on the update this time... there's a good reason for that... we came home Friday afternoon and found that the floor tile had been laid square instead of diagonal. We'd talked to the head remodel guy about wanting it diagonal so I gave him a call right away. It had just been lost in the shuffle. Betcha tile guy wasn't too super-happy about having to lift that laid tile back up more than 24 hours after he put it down.



The square-laid tile Friday night...



















And the start of the diagonal tile on Saturday morning... pretty amazing he managed to get all the tile back up without breaking any of it and the thin-set off the slab.










Caling it quits on Saturday. He got a lot done.
It may seem sort of pedantic wether the tile got laid this way of the other way, but it looks much better this way. Trust me.

Bathroom Remodel - Day 14

Okay, now we're getting into interesting territory! This one will be fun to chuck out there and see what people think of it. Somewhere along our long and varied path to getting this remodel done, we had this idea of sort of sculpting the top edge of the tile around the shower/tub area into "mountains." Last night, I sketched a random mountain skyline and today, the idea came to life. I don't know how it will come across in the photos, but it looks really good to us in person. Tile guy really did a nice job following the line!!!We still need to figure out what color the walls are going to be, but I'm pretty sure they won't be white anymore.

Tomorrow, he's supposed to be doing some cleanup and maybe starting on the floor tile. We're on the verge of having to start getting serious about picking paint and worry about what existing hardware to replace.

So what do you think?



















































The tile around the bench area at the back of the tub came out really nice!












Inspector #25 on the job!

Bathroom Remodel - Day 13

Okay boys and girls... we're back on track! I called this morning to check and see where we were at on wating around for the new tile to get into town and found out that the dOOd had picked it up and was, at that very moment, starting the tiling!!! I got home after work and checked out the progress. Sweet!

After that, it was really just a matter of watching and waiting... waiting for Felicia to get home so I could find out if we'd made the mistake of the century.

Whew!! She loves it!! Could've gone either way...

Crappy Broken Spoke Ride!

I didn't come up with the title of the post... that was the title Pete put in for the ride when he uploaded his GPS info to the Garmin Connect website. It was an interesting morning. I was feeling a little pounded and tired from climbing yesterday, but we really wanted to get a good longer ride in this morning. Pete took me on a tour of the neighborhoods north of Camelback Mountain, most of which seemed to have uphill sections all over them. By the time we exited the neighborhoods, I was already feeling a little shelled. As we made our way over to Shea Rd. to head for Fountain Hills, I realized that at least a little of that mushy feeling in my legs was probably due to the fact that my front tire was on it's way to being airless. We stopped and did a quick tube swap (no LEVERS needed!! haven't launched the new wheels yet).

We pushed on west, taking some back streets to get over onto Shea, at which point it's just get on, avoid the traffic, and get up. The hill felt a little better than last week, but I got a nice tow from Pete up the thing into the stiff headwind coming over the pass. Where did all the wind come from? We were holding a good pace up the hill until near the top. We were on the last push for the summit when TWANG! Pete's back wheel blew a spoke!! The bummer of this is that today's high tech, low weight, low spoke wheels, like Pete's Aksium's, can't survive a broken spoke as well as the older school 32-spoke wheels I was running. On those, you just unscrew the spoke or wrap it around a nearby spoke, and keep riding. Pete's wheel was pretty jacked up immediately. We let the back brake out all the way (no dice), then just loosened up the cable clamp to let it out as far as it would go. WIth it opened all the way, the wobbler wheel just cleared it. Pete called Jen to let her know we were having technical difficulties, and we started limping back west. As it turns out, the wives were looking for somewhere to have breakfast after their back-to-back power hike workout of Squaw Peak and Shaw Butte, so we wobbled over and met them for breakfast, then just called it a day. Hoping Pete's wheel can be resurrected with a new spoke.

Edit: The bike shop basically told Pete the wheel was a dead soldier... he ended up buying a new wheel to replace this one. That's pretty scary, considering my Ksyerium wheels have the same general construction as the Aksiums... one spoke, you get to buy a new wheel? That sucks.

I think at this point, there's roughly no chance I'm going to try to run the Ksyrium's in the Tour de Scottsdale. All things being equal, I think I'll go with my ten year old, still absolutely true, bombprooof 32-spoke specials. The K's will have to earn some trust before I get out there too far on 'em.