Toilet Troubles

Do you know what these pictures mean? A bathroom remodel is in our future. We have always known that at some point (soon) we'll start replacing all the galvanized plumbing in the house. However, recently our toilet started leaking so I think we're moving that project to the front burner. All new plumbing and a new bathroom. The picture on the right shows how much the toilet will leak if we don't turn the nozzle off each time after we use the restroom. We're sure there is a MUCH easier and cheaper solution to this problem than a new bathroom, of course. However since we were planning on doing the plumbing very soon anyways this debacle just made it a priority. Which is fine with me. The leaky toilet will make holiday entertaining a bit more ... uh, interesting. Ah, the joys of older homes!

As you can probably see we have all original tile in our bathroom. This is why we have debated, literally for years, over the extent of a bathroom remodel. I am REALLY torn over taking out original details in old houses because it is what makes them special. However I do want to stay in this house forever and am willing to make it a more useful space. We have some plans for a slight expansion for a walk-in shower. And there are some places where the wall tile is cracked and chipped or has been replaced with cheap twelve-cent white plain big box store type of tile that does not match at all. So in a nutshell those are my justifications. I'm sure that some die-hard restorers will want to crucify me for this but I guess I'm willing to take that risk.

We just ordered tile samples (see pic below) from a place called Mission Tile West. We are looking through about fifteen colors from their Revival line. We'd like to look at some other

places before we commit but their colors are beautiful! We're thinking of the Bancroft line from Kohler for the toilet, pedestal sink and faucets for the sink and shower. We'll probably end up restoring an old claw foot bathtub. I'm really excited!!

Fence Progress and New Garage Siding

It's been awhile since the last post. You should all be used to this since I'm such a slacker blogger.

By late summer/early fall Chad was still working on finishing the fence. Before he could put the most eastern portion of the fence together he wanted to rip out the old siding on the bump-out of our brick garage and rebuild it. I think there are some pictures of him doing that here. On the left below is the other side of the garage bump-out (which hasn't been replaced yet but is a good comparison "before" picture since I forgot to take a "before" picture) and then the new siding is pictured on the right. Looks good, uh? The square is where our garage lights will placed. I'd place a link to what we bought but they have been in the damn boxes so long I can't even remember what we bought! All I know is we got them from here so they are bound to be fabulous. I probably posted about them at some point on this blog.

Here is a picture of the fence finished on the most eastern side of our lot:

The fence is ALMOST finished. We do still need a gate and the hardware for said gate. And we need to finish the tops of the boards so that they are not sticking up in random, fortress-like patterns. The garage siding is primed (bought it that way) but not painted and won't be until we get to painting the outside of our house trim next summer.