Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

A couple of exciting developments in the upstairs bathroom today (work day 13)...just not what we expected.

In the photo you see our new recessed mirrored medicine cabinet, and the new light fixture above it, in the...the...hey, where's the wall?!? I'm a little confused by the mounting of these items in a wall with no drywall. But I'm not a contractor. I'm not even a DIYer. So, who am I to doubt that this isn't the correct order in which to do the work. I keep telling myself to just take a deep breath and trust that the contractor and her crew know what they're doing.

Click the photo to view a few more on Flickr.

Update: Turns out Alvaro (the lead worker on our job) installed the medicine cabinet and light fixture just so we could see how they look. He'll take them down before the drywalling starts. See, my deep breath and trust strategy works!

Upstairs Bathroom Remodeling: Work Day 12

"Although still early in the process, we expect the pace of work to pick up and proceed rather quickly now."

That immortal line is taken from my previous blog post dated Monday, November 13. In the last week there's been very little visible progress, if only because much of the work being done was "behind the wall" stuff like replacing the water pipes all the way down to the basement and rewiring the bathroom so it's on its own two circuits in the breaker box.

Finally, late last week and today there's some 2x4 framing that's starting to give the bathroom some shape, but all of the walls are still bare studs. But the contractor tells me the work will be half way completed by the end of the day this Wednesday. Really? I'll be curious to see what qualifies as "half way." I'll post photos, of course. In the meantime, here's a gratuitously cute photo of Calvin and Abner.

We're not discouraged though. As a matter of fact, I'll be signing another contract with the contractor to redo our powder room and turn our basement into a livable TV room. That work will start as soon as the upstairs bathroom is finished. As much as we'd like to have our house all to ourselves again, we want all of the remodeling projects completed more.

The Whirlpool Tub!

Work day 7 and the new whirlpool tub is in position and the plumbing has begun. We finished up most of the shopping for the bathroom this past weekend, buying the tub, two different kinds of thin set and two different colors of unsanded grout (for two different types of tile), and a new floor register. We also scouted medicine cabinets, which we still need to buy. The only other items still on our shopping list are paint and switch plates.

Although still early in the process, we expect the pace of work to pick up and proceed rather quickly now. And despite the mess and stress the bathroom remodeling is causing, our contractor is meeting with us this Thursday evening to discuss two more job -- redoing the powder room on the first floor, and turning the front room of our basement into a TV room/home theater space.

Random Facts About My iTunes Library

(Or, is there such a thing as too much Kylie?)

The following facts and statistics were generated by a website called the iTunes Registry. You upload a file of your iTunes library and it analyzes it for you. So, presented here for my amusement and yours, are some random facts about my iTunes library...

• Most Played Track: "Shocked" by Kylie Minogue


• Most Played Album: Kylie Minogue's "Greatest Hits 87-97"


• Most Played Artist: Kylie Minogue


• Newest Track: "Smile" by Lily Allen (last week's free download from the iTunes Store)


• Least Recently Played: "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing" by Pet Shop Boys (does not include songs in my library that have never been played)


• Average number of Albums per Artist: 1.84


• Average number of Tracks per Artist: 9.46


• Average number of Tracks per Album: 5.15
  

iTunes Registry is pretty cool -- but not perfect. For example, it says I have 6,196 tracks in my library, when iTunes itself says there are 6,287 items. And iTunes Registry says the longest track in my library is one called "More More More." I do have a song in my library called "More, More, More" by Bananarama, but it's only about 3 minutes long. And I have a song in my library called "I'm A Man" by Macho that's over 17 minutes long, which really is the longest, but somehow iTunes Registry missed it.

Bugs are to be expected since iTunes Registry is still in beta form. But even with the bugs I like this site and will continue to upload my library data to it.

Upstairs Bathroom Remodeling: Work Days 2 & 3

The demolition was pretty much done by the end of the second work day, which was yesterday. I've uploaded a new "day 2" photo set to Flickr so you can see the carnage.

New construction hasn't even started and already we're making changes to the original plan. Here it is only the third work day and we've decided that, because we have enough capacity in our breaker box to support a second circuit in the bathroom, we should install a whirlpool tub! Scott is very happy. And that's all that counts, isn't it?

It's so tempting to blog on about what we've got planned for the bathroom...but you're just going to have to wait to see it as it happens. Stay tuned!

Our Upstairs Bathroom Remodeling Begins

We're finally getting around to remodeling our upstairs bathroom. Or, to be more correct, we're finally getting around to PAYING someone to remodel our upstairs bathroom. We signed a contract with our contractor over two months ago, and the work finally started last Friday morning. We're documenting the process, beginning with some "before" and "day 1" photos on Flickr. (Sorry, but I wasn't very creative with the captions.)

Happy Birthday, Mom!

C'mon, you didn't think I'd let your birthday go by without a blog post...did you? :-)

That's Mom and me dining outside during our trip to Poplar Tree Bay in August. I think it was taken at Foxy's in Fischer's Landing. Scott is the photographer.

Love you and happy birthday!

Steven