our wedding vows should have said "in good times and bathroom renovations"

Well, we are currently in the midst of renovating our bathrooms. File this under, it would have been easier to move.

(Both bathrooms. There used to be a wall in between.)

 

I needed a little reassurance that this too shall pass and that I won't be showering at my mom and dad's house forever, so I dusted off the old blog to read through some posts about previous home renovation projects that we have survived. 

It seems like the general theme surrounding renovations is that they take much longer than originally expected, and are accompanied with a trip to Urgent Care for a tetanus shot, as evidenced by the two passages I wrote below about our kitchen reno.  

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Here I am again to talk about my kitchen.  I apologize in advance if you're as sorry about reading kitchen posts as I am writing them.  When we started the kitchen renovation it was Labor Day, and we said we'd probably be finished by Thanksgiving, but FOR SURE by Christmas.

Well those same fools are now well past Easter and just hoping things wrap up by Memorial Day.  

Matt and I were discussing the ideal vs the actual timeline the other day, and he said, "Well, there were just a few aspects that I didn't expect."

"Like what?" I asked.

"For starters, I didn't expect Christmas to come so quickly."

And this one...

Well, the kitchen is finished. After 8 months. 35 weekends. Hundreds of trips to Lowe's. And 1 trip to Urgent Care for a tetanus shot.

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We have two full bathrooms and one half bathroom in our house. We renovated the half bath during the Covid lockdown last year, but have totally ignored the other two bathrooms since we moved in six years ago because they've been holding strong since Eisenhower was president. They've seen 13 total presidential administrations and if it's not broke, don't fix it.  

Although some (namely Matt) would argue they were broke. For instance, the master shower door stopped closing two presidents ago and since then I just fashion a makeshift clamp with a wet washcloth to keep it mostly shut while I shower. 

Matt's been talking about renovating the bathrooms for a while now, but I was reluctant to give my stamp of approval because all I saw was dollar signs and a big headache. Turns out I was pretty spot on. But what sealed the deal for us to do them now was the fact that Oh Baby Darling #2 is coming in January, and we figured it was better to go through a major bathroom renovation project with one child still in diapers, as opposed to a potty-training/ed toddler and a new baby. 

All that to say, Matt promised me that one of the bathrooms would be fully operational at all times, and that he'd take a week of PTO and could easily knock out the hall bathroom in that time. 

I'm here to tell you that we are two weeks into this saga and I just repacked my shower bag to schlep to my parents' house for the 14th time. Reminds me of the old days of 2006 in Mifflin Hall when I'd squeak down the hall in my shower shoes with my caddy stocked with more Garnier Fructis products than you can imagine. But instead of getting dressed in my finest outfit from Forever 21 to go drink jungle juice from a questionable Rubbermaid container afterwards, I now come home in my stretchiest maternity pajamas for a wild evening of trying to heat up a dino nugget without setting off the smoke detector and convincing Joey to eat half a molecule of a vegetable.

Also, the promise of maintaining one fully operational bathroom went out the window sometime between 9:00 a.m. last Monday and noon, which is when I looked out the window to see the master bathroom toilet in the dumpster. 

I got home with Joey and he saw the old bathtub in the driveway. "HEY!" he yelled, "Daddy moved my tub!"

Last Friday evening, I'd just gotten out of the shower (have I mentioned yet I've been showering at my parents house?) and I had a text from Matt that said "drill through the finger," accompanied by a photo of said finger. I rushed downstairs and my mom said Joey could stay at their house while I went home to assess the injury. 

What I saw when I got home was a finger that, well, looked like a drill went into it. I said to Matt, "Well, obviously you need to go to Urgent Care." He didn't even try to fight it and say he'd be fine. He just said, "I guess I'll go get my wallet."

I drove us over there and waited in the car while he ran in, because did you read the part about me wearing my stretchiest maternity pajama pants? It ended up taking TWO HOURS and he got a tetanus shot, a prescription for an antibiotic, and a bandage. 

As we drove home he said "It seems like every time I attempt a major project, I get an injury. Changing the brakes in my truck? Sliced my wrist (that particular injury required surgery).  Kitchen? Nail gun to the leg. Bathroom? Drill to the finger."

He's had more tetanus shots than anyone I know. 

Our neighbor stopped over this morning while Matt was starting day four of tile that he originally thought would take one day. Our neighbor said, "So what's exactly been the slow part? All of it?"

That would be a yes.

And don't get me wrong, Matt is working so hard. He did all the demo by himself and the trash weighed 4220 pounds, and I can't even take credit for one ounce of it. Although I will think twice the next time I complain about taking the trash from the kitchen to the outside trashcan because SMALL POTATOES. And he's been working from 7:30 in the morning until 6:00 at night, barely stopping for lunch. But it's just really easy to watch a few episodes of This Old House and say "Oh I'll be able to knock the tile out in one day, two days tops" and not as easy when you're actually doing it.   

I'm trying not to think about the fact that the master bathroom is still completely gutted, the house is filthy and dusty from construction, Christmas is in less than two months, and I'm eight months pregnant and this is what the nursery looks like. 

Instead I'm trying to focus on the fact that these are the last two rooms in our house that had yet to be remodeled since we moved in. So, assuming we survive this, we have no more major projects ahead of us. 

Today Matt finished tiling the shower, and grouted most of it. I was so excited that I went to the store and bought a shower curtain rod and a shower curtain, and was just about to unearth my shampoo when I googled how long it takes grout to cure. 

At this rate, we might be on to our next president before this is finished.