Oh yeah, and this happened, too!

Yeah, it was a good vacation.

Has it really been almost 6 months since I’ve updated last? Wow.

Since I left you, school has eaten my life. Right now, I’m one final exam away from having finished my first semester of nursing school at my local community college, and let me tell you: THIS SEMESTER WAS HARD. Technically, it wasn’t even a full courseload (though only just barely part-time), but it entailed trekking half an hour away two nights a week for 4+ hours at a time, and then from October-December I also had to participate in nursing clinicals on Saturdays and Sundays, working in a nursing home from 6am-1pm each day. All of that on top of working 40 hours a week at my regular job. I think I may have joked over the summer that I’d be pretty busy with school, but to tell you the truth, I had no fucking idea what I was getting into.

So, when I wasn’t busting my ass working, studying, or going to class, whenever I had a moment of free time to myself, I was greedy with it. Who wants to take time to work on renovating a house when you barely have time to make sure the clothes you’re wearing are clean? So, I’ve been a little lax on the house/blog front. Oops.

No more, though! Well, at least after next Tuesday. And for the next three weeks, during my blessed winter break.

I can’t wait!

We here on Clark Street hope that you had the happiest of holidays this season! We’re gearing up to start taking baby steps towards some pretty big goals, although we made the tough decision to put off gutting and renovating the kitchen over the winter. There are simply bigger fish to fry, and the kitchen we have is perfectly usable until we’re able to complete those other tasks. In the meantime, we’re going to have a lot of fun re-imagining the space and coming up with our dream (vintage) kitchen, rather than coming up short and having to settle for good enough. Be sure to check back for renderings and floor plans!

Kevin has been busy working on the upstairs bathroom, with a lot of assistance from our friend Mark, who has his own handyman business in town. (If you need stuff done to your house and you live within 30 minutes of Iowa City, use him! He’s good!) On Monday night, the two of them got the new subflooring laid in the bathroom, and last night they were able to get all of the concreteboard for the floor cut to fit, spread some wet concrete on the subfloor, and screwed the concreteboard in place. This will allow us to lay tile and not have to worry about moisture seeping down to the subflooring and causing it to rot. Very important, indeed.

While they worked upstairs, I was downstairs painting the basement walls bright white, a welcome change from the ancient antique white that had been on the walls before, and through the mold fiasco had become stained black in places. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of this yet. Mark’s girlfriend Angela was a big help on Monday night, too, and we knocked out most of the basement walls that evening. It’ll take a few coats to cover everything up, but it’s already starting to look great. I’ll take pictures for comparison tonight.

The subflooring has been laid

Lots of screws mean no squeaking floors

Kevin's ready for a bath

Mortaring the floor

Screwing down the concreteboard

Ready to tile!

On the docket for tonight for the boys is to hang the concreteboard for the tub surround and hopefully start tiling that with the white subway tile. I’ll be busy putting another coat of paint on the walls in the basement and finishing up getting the kitchen cleaned up. I’d like to bring carloads of kitchen items over and get it completely moved this week, so that I can start making dinner at night while we work on the house. We’ve been eating out every night, and it’s getting to be ridiculously expensive, and homemade food will be a nice change.

I tried to find some pictures that might serve as inspiration for the bathroom tile, and these were a few that I came up with:

I think what we’ve got in mind is lots and lots of white tile with some black accents throughout. I really like that we’re choosing colors that will go with everything, because I’m a little on the fickle side, design-wise, and I want the ability to change things drastically without actually bringing in demolition.

Also, here’s a tub that looks exactly like the one that’s in there now, the one I want to save:

Just imagine it as white. Isn’t that fabulous? What is that style, art deco? I really need to convince Kevin to keep it, as it adds a wonderful design element to the room.

If everything goes as planned, Kevin should be closing on the house today. How exciting! The picture above is a pretty old one, and one that appears with the house’s listing on the city property assessor’s website. I feel kind of creepy taking pictures of it before we actually take possession of it, so until then, this will have to do.

Over the weekend, I got my first really great look at the innards of the house, and I was really relieved to find that it’s got great bones, and there’s tons of potential. Don’t get me wrong, even if there weren’t I would have painstakingly polished that turd. Seeing all of the things that can be done to it was very exciting, though. I look forward to cataloging all of the ideas that I’ve got for it here.

Yesterday, we let the landlord know that we’ll be out soon because of the house purchase. Kevin let him know that we’d be out by the first of the new year, which was a bit further away than I thought we’d been planning (I was hoping to move by the end of November so that we wouldn’t end up with a double housing payment, but I’m sure we can manage). Telling the landlord is just one more little way that this is becoming a real thing. It’s like, “Hey, there’s no going back now. We’ve given notice to the landlord!” Amazing. We also spent a good amount of time at Menards and Home Depot over the weekend, daydreaming and figuring things out. Kevin also went ahead and bought a heater for the garage so that he’ll be able to get things done out there over the winter (had to buy it now, before the closing, because the sale price was too good to pass up).