Head over to the photography site to see my latest post: PJ's Senior Photos.  

Also, in case you missed it: Andy & Emily's Engagement Session

My time in Ohio has been very surreal.  What I had originally thought would be a quiet 3 weeks, seems to have ended up quite the opposite (I don't know why this continues to surprise me - what's the definition of insanity?  Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome...)

My time has been filled with seeing friends and family, on both happy and sad terms.  My Grandpa went in for surgery the Monday after I arrived and after a week of ups and downs, he called it quits.  His memorial is on Wednesday here in Ohio.

Overall its been a roller coaster of emotions.  I've enjoyed my time here and will miss those that I never seem to be able to spend enough time with, but I'm ready to move on and join Jason in Germany.  

One more week!

We gave the half bath at my mother-in-law's house a refresh over the holiday.  It was QUITE a task!  We kept running into issues at every turn.  We had problems with the plumbing, we uncovered a horrible ceiling patch job when we removed the popcorn off the ceiling, the paint we bought ended up requiring four coats instead of the intended two, the hardware to the sink and toilet were completely corroded, etc.  But its done, thankfully!

Here's some photos of the process and the finished product.  It was hard to photograph because it was so tiny!

Somewhat before the work started.  I didn't get in there with the camera quick enough before the wallpaper ripping started.  It came off really easily on the walls away from the light, but the stuff closer to the light was tough.  We think that maybe the heat from the light over time just set the glue.

The color selection begins.

All the wallpaper we have access to is off.  Now the sink and toilet need to be removed so we can access behind them.

The sink was not only caulked to the wall and floor, but was tipped back to the wall so it was caulked in a leaning position.  We kept running into really poor craftsmanship as we moved through the process.

I didn't get a photo of it, but next to the light fixture, the previous installers had cut in wiring from the light fixture to the light switch and instead of removing the wallpaper to patch the holes they made, they just applied netting and spackle OVER the wallpaper.  So all that needed to be fixed in this process.

The screws were so corroded on this old toilet that we had to drill into the screws to break them apart.

We scraped the popcorn ceiling off using vinegar and water.  It was a really messy job because the plaster gets glue-like as its being scraped off, but it came off fairly easily.  Unfortunately we discovered this hideous patch job in the process that had to be carefully sanded, patched, and plastered.

After removing the sink, we could finish removing the wall covering.  We also had better access to the plumbing fixtures, which were very corroded from age.  We replaced all that we could without making it a major plumbing job.

Nothing like painting at midnight :)  Apparently red is one of the hardest colors to get good coverage with.  Who knew?!  To make matters worse, we were painting directly on drywall, which I had never done before and it wasn't accepting the paint very well.  If you tried to do more than one pass with either the roller or the brush it would start to clump and pull itself off the wall.  It was horrible.  We ended up needing to do 4 coats of the base color red.

After finishing the 4 coats of base paint, we taped off vertical stripes with a laser level.  The base coat was an eggshell and the stripe is a high gloss paint.  The stripes are subtle and were really hard to photograph.  I think the effect turned out really nice though.  I had never done this before, so we were figuring things out as we went.

Finished!  This isn't the ta-da photo that I wanted (the room, again, was really hard to photograph).  To my defense though, this was taken at 6:15 in the morning.  We had worked through the night.  I had just installed that shelf seconds prior and we were 15 minutes late to leave for the airport!

We installed a new faucet, drain, shelf, glass shades for the light fixture, towel rack, toilet and sink plumbing hardware, a new toilet, a GFCI outlet, new white switch and outlet covers, and purchased new accessories (towels, soap dispenser, basket for TP, and scented oil).