Irene, You Ignorant Slut!

Alexa, very inappropriate, do not tell Mom and Dad where you heard/read that!! (and for the rest of you out there who think that's vulgar, it's from an old SNL skit, cool down)

Ok, now that my conscience is cleared, I laughed quite loudly and realized that it really is the only appropriate funny title for this post. Otherwise, it's going to borderline depressing, and I was that along with a complete and utter stress ball for most of the weekend, so funny it shall stay.  I imagine there isn't anyone out there who doesn't check the news....but checks this blog.... and so I'm making a wild assumption that all are familiar with Irene.....and at this point probably COMPLETELY OVER hearing about her havoc.
Well, my entire family lives in Delaware, so I was a wreck.

Originally for the weekend, we were supposed to fly to New Jersey for a wedding of friends we made from Terry's Texas jobsite.  Our flight back on Sunday was cancelled, and with not knowing how long we'd be delayed after the hurricane went through, we sadly and unhappily cancelled the trip.  We felt awful, but after we started seeing pictures like this on the news here, we knew we'd ultimately made the right decision.

IT WAS NOT FUN, and I was a mess, sitting here in the middle of the country watching it all unfold crawling up the coast.  Thankfully, everyone I called back home always answered and said they were doing fine and giving me storm updates. Afterwards thankfully, my entire family was fine.  The only real damage was the loss of a tree in my brothers front yard, and boy did it fall the right way!!  So lucky!

My mom ridiculously decided to stay down at her beach house in Lewes through the storm.  Meanwhile, a tornado went through about a mile from her and destroyed 17 homes in it's path.  I'm just so happy that it wasn't hers, but feel so awful for all the people who have flood and tree damage.  

This is the view of the home down in Cape Henlopen near the beach in Delaware that's currently being built for the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition television show.  There was no reported structural damage, but quite a lot of flooding.

Thanks to everyone who was calling to check up with me about my family back East.  It made such a difference knowing they were in your thoughts.

Front Entranceway Update

Last time I mentioned our front entranceway was back in April with my big ol' mess I made.  As a refresher, there was parque; there was ripping it all up; there were hidden broken tiles; and there was frustration.

Luckily for us (but not our house guests), we come in through our garage everyday, so it hasn't bothered us one bit....well unless we have house guests and then I hide my head in shame.  Oh well. 

4 months later and we decided to get around to it, seeing as we rented the tile saw and all for the master bath. 
I took a lot of "through-the-process" pictures, mainly because the whole process took only about an hour and a half.  With all these major projects we've had spread out over days and weeks, this was a little project from heaven!

And We're Off!!  Terry did all the measuring and I did all the tile-cutting.  We originally were going to finish the wood leading into the entranceway hallway off the front room, but we've since decided we are going to keep the carpet in the hallways, so it was going to be too busy entering to travertine...then wood....then carpet in a 15 ft entrance.  So instead, we will have the travertine butt up to the carpet.

While I'd love it that you're eyes would pay attention to the floor, for me (who knows...maybe it's just me) all that I focus on in the next pic is the piano.  Well, for 1: it's 500 pounds, so we decided against shimmying it out of the way for better photo ops.  2: we have never been able to find a perfect fit for it in this house, so pretty much the entrance has been its sad little home.  3: It's gonna make me teary even mentioning it, but we sold it this past weekend, and it's new owner is coming to get it this coming Sunday.  That's all for another post though. 

Anyways, back to the tile. It's starting to come along now.  It went quite fast once we got into a rhythm.  Blegh, that previous floor remnant is G-R-O-S-S!

Almost there...

ahhhh, that's MUCH better!

We still need to grout (Grout and I are not friends anymore.  The puppy-dog phase is over, and he's a completely exhausting piece of work that I am not longer fond of.  Anyone want to come be introduced and take him of my hands?!?!?), put up floor boards, get a new air receiver, and a threshold for under the front door.......Oh and a new front door.  More on that quite a while from now, because that project hasn't even begun. 

What do you think?

Master Bath Shower well on it's way

Our Master Bath is moving right along! And we are personally SO in love with the makeover.  I was going through a lot of pictures this weekend, realizing that I was awful at taking before pictures to compare to our afters, but I found these two that ended up working out really well.



Hilarious, right?!?!  And hilarious in many ways at that: That we saw THAT and actually still bought the place; that we used the bathroom in that condition for over a year and a half; that they had a fiberglass sliding shower door; nothing says comfort like a wooden toilet seat; and last but certainly not least, how hilarious is that paint color?!???

I showed you our floor upgrade a few weeks back, and just showed the new shower floor earlier last week, but now it's time for the Oooo's and Aaahhhh's.  The Slate Shower.

The start of the weekend, post floor grout, pre-tiling.  For the record, the walls are that crazy red for water-proofing.  It helps when you're putting it on so that you can easily see if there are any areas not covered.  Easy place for water damage....not that it needed to be said. :-)

We very much understood the saying of Rome not being built in a day, but this slate shower installation fooled us both with how many man-hours we would be putting in.  I'll say this much: Terry and I are now Pro-fessionals with a tile saw.....and thank goodness for buying a few extra boxes of slate.

Proof: (btw, I'm always so put together...can't you tell?? ha)

This was Terry's wall from hell. The little nook was Satan.

 

Terry can tile saw circular cuts now.  Man with many talents.

I love the colors in the slate, although I know at the point the red walls are still blinding.

And this is where we are right now!  We still need to add slate around the storage cut-out to the left of the shower, and we still need to grout....Oooyyyy grout.  My arms might be ready by next weekend. 

At this, my only request is just to scroll up to the top again and look at the before shots:  TOO HILARIOUS!!!

just because...

I think I say it enough, but just in case I don't, this sums it up:

Kitchen Backsplash Complete

The kitchen has been sitting 80% done for quite a few months now because there were a few pieces we still needed to cut in around the light switches and outlets along with around the windowsill. So finally (don't wanna give away the next post, but we had to cut more slate for a certain somebodys major bathroom upgrade) we had a reason to go rent the tile saw again and finished up with our kitchen backsplash!!!  This was my first grout experience, as I was in Bermuda with my Mom when Terry did the Guest Bath floor grouting.  Let me tell ya.....What A Workout!!!!

Pre-Grout with all the smaller cut pieces in place and set to the wall

Pre-Grout (its hard to see, but it was very noticeable that it was unfinished, you could see the webbing that the tiles was stuck to that you have the thin set grip into so it stays on the wall)

This was at the point that I still thought grouting was fun.

Me: "oooh, we get to fill the cracks with mud"

Terry: "yah, and then we have to scrub it all off"

Me: "scrub it off, oh I've so got that!"

What felt like round 362 of scrubbing off the grout:

Me: "ok, I'm done....it's done....it's beautiful"

Terry: "keep scrubbing"

What seemed like days, horribly sore arms, and lots of whining later, we finished!!

Finished Shot #2 (minus putting the face plates on)

Finished Shot #2 (minus putting the face plates on)

It's very understated which we both really like.  We debated between the light grout lines that blended in or a darker grout that emphasized and accentuated the tiles, but ultimately we want the backsplash to be the supporting role to the cabinets and the granite counter.  I think we pulled it off rather well! 
What do you think?

Remember that time when we didn't have an Appliance in our garage...

Terry and I figured out that since Texas, we have had a major kitchen appliance (at some points more than one!) living in our garage.  An email exchange went something like this:

Do you realize we have never not had an appliance in the garage?

-Black fridge (from Texas)
-Black fridge, white fridge (that was in the house when we bought it...moved out to garage when new stainless fridge came in) and new stove (we bought a package deal, but at the time weren't ready to install the new gas grill)
-White fridge and new stove
-New stove
-Old stove
-Old stove, New Microwave
-EMPTY GARAGE

Thank goodness for the beauty that is my very dear friend, Craigslist.  While many a person has had their horror stories to share, I'm knocking hard on my wooden desk right now because all of our transcations have been pleasant and drama-free.

We had been waiting to sell the electric stove and microwave (that came with our house) as a pair, but since we bought a new gas stove with no matching microwave, we ended up waiting for a while for a good deal to spring up.  We waited.....and waited....and waited....and finally waited long enough and posted those two on Craigslist.  We were trying to work it so that we would have our new by the time we put them up for sale, but nothing screams Lindsey like "Always In A Rush". My magical Craigslist powers went into high gear, and  the pair had a new owner in 2 days from the time I posted!  We finally waited long enough for our great deal to come along so we opted for trusty Home Depot. 
Sidenote: Has anybody had a microwave and then gotten rid of it, even for a day or two?  I thought it was hilarious in the mid-time between the sell of the old one and the installation of the new one, how many times I reached for the Microwave to nuke something, or how many times I planned a meal and then said, oh but we can't reheat anything.  Funny how used to things we become at times.

So onto the new stuff.  Woohoo, we have a new microwave installed (not to mention that the sale of the old stove and microwave not only covered the brand new Microwave, but also left more over.....have I mentioned in this post yet that I love Craigslist).

Before

After

Now if you're paying close attention, you'll be able to see what's coming in the next post. :-)  But can we all just take a minute to get excited by the fact that not a single appliance lives in our garage anymore!!!  YIPPEE!!

Shower floors a little ROCKY!

There's no real way that I can post about one part of our bathroom project without giving another part away, so I'm just gonna start with our order of projects and keep your interest piqued for the rest that we completed from the glimpses you might catch from the pictures below. 

We pretty much decided we were doing a rock floor since the same time we decided we were starting our bathroom renovation.  It's different, it's very spa-like, and well, we both were just digging it (do you see that pun?  Like we "dug" the rocks??  Insert my laughing snort here.)

Luckily for us, Lowes sells the rock floor in pre-configured sq. ft. pieces.  Basically, the rocks are glued to a white mesh on the bottom so they stay in place, and they put notches around the sides so the rocks will slide into one another so it doesn't look like clearly segregated rocks when they are layed on the floor.

Placement in the shower floor was minimal effort.  There were a few rocks that were a bit wonky, but after some minor adjustments, we had it just how we wanted it.  Next step was the grout.  As you can basically have the grout any color you want, we opted to make it a bit darker so that it would hopefully be more cohesive with the slate walls we have already put up we will be putting up, but also contrast it enough to not make it feel like a big dark box of a shower.

During the grouting process. Following this step was an hour of scrubbing it off and making sure all the gaps were filled. 

Still needing some more scrub down, but getting a lot closer to the final look.

TEASER PHOTO: Our final product (well, we still have to put a top-coat sealer on, so it will end up looking a bit shinier).  It is so comfy on the feet, almost like a foot massage. 



Have I mentioned I can't wait for this to be complete....we're SO close!!  And it's beautiful!

It's House Update Week!

Ok yes, so I still didn't fully update all of the books that I have read, but only having 2 left to review is basically like being done.  Right??

Anyways, there are way too many things to catch up on here with the house that I just can't wait any longer!

Be on the look out!

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Book Description

Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the twists and turns of a landmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproariously funny black drag queen Miss Chablis; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city has become a modern classic.

My Review
Without a doubt, when I think of this book, I smile and wish I could find more non-fiction/murder-mystery/hilarious drag-queen/voodoo priestess/Georgia-admiring book like it; I absolutely loved it.  I consistently had to keep reminding myself that the book was a true story; the main plot line was believable, but  the people whose lives the Author captured on paper had me shaking my head in disbelief that they were real-life.
My mom of all people recommended this book to me (I say "of all people" because Mom does not read; recently always saying that she has no idea where my book-loving gene came from).  I remember her having it at the house I grew up in in the bottom part of her nightstand (ridiculous sometimes the little silly things I remember), and she's told me for many many years I needed to read it, but I didn't actually give it a try until this year.  This may be the only book my Mom has read; don't hold me to that but her list is certainly not long.  Sidenote: When I was younger, we went on a roadtrip to the south and purposefully spent a day in Savannah, driving by the houses discussed in the book and seeing the statues and squares mentioned.  I don't remember it vividly, but I did remember a sense of feeling like we had gone back in time.  Everything was beautifully maintained, and there was a very slow, southern way about the people.
I can see where this type of book may not be well-suited for everyone. Having been to Savannah now a few times, its very easy to appreciate this book, where I could see someone who has never been may not be as drawn.  Take this tidbit of my advice: While the author has several lead characters, by far and without any doubt, his primary character is Savannah, Georgia itself.....and he makes you fall in love.  If you do decide to try the book out, if by the time you meet Lady Chablis you are not a fan, you may as well put that book down and move along.  Lady Chablis is hilarious, reminds me of a guy I went to college with, and has a fire-cracker attitude I would kill for. Another sidenote: In the movie, Lady Chablis is the real actress for her own character.  Just thought that was cool since that does not happen very often in movies.
Speaking of the movie: unfortunately a major disappointment.  Granted I am only 26, so maybe I do not have the appreciation that a more mature audience member may have for films from the 1990's (when explaining one day how bad the movie was to Allison, Terry got all uptight with, "what's wrong with the 90's?! Some of the best movies of ALL TIMES are from the 90's!!" .... I love that boy!).  Kevin Spacey was a good pick for the role he played, but it just didn't hold true to the feeling I got from the book.  Savannah was a supporting actress and it changed the entire vibe from the transition from book to film.
I just shipped the book off to Allison, but if anyone has interest to borrow it next, let me know and I can have her send it to you next.

Books Tab soon to be back

Beyond irritated this morning as I was updating my Books Tab with my most recent reviews, I saved it as a draft, and then POOF, it disappeared into the eternal internet abyss.  It reverted my page back to when I very first started my tab of books, over a year ago.  It will be updated over the next few weeks, meanwhile I will still be crossing my fingers it magically reappears irritated. 

The Glass Castle

Book Description

People are apt to generalize why people live the way they do, especially when it is below the acceptable level deemed civilized. Jeannette Walls, in an autobiographical account, draws a picture of the way she grew up with her siblings in constantly changing locations that ranged from living in cars to a shack considered low life and dilapidated, even in the hills of W. Virginia. The children had little to no food much of the time learning to fend for themselves. Their parents were hooked on adventure and put them on "the skedaddle" when they couldn't/wouldn't pay their bills, were wanted by the police or possibly child welfare. The parents possessed intelligent minds attempting to raise their children with values. Unfortunately, their views of the world may have started well but then became skewed. Mom would relinquish the well being of the children for the needs of the alcoholic father. Was the mother mentally ill? Would the children have been better off in the foster care system? Or is this a look as to why the court system attempts to keep families together? Even when it is hard to understand why!
Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them — despite their overwhelming self-absorption — resonates from cover to cover.


My Review
I found this clip online, and I think it does a far better job explaining the book and the truth behind it. 



I liked the book, but it was personally a hard book for me to read.  Not with the way it was written, but the subject being written about.  I did love her way of recounting her past, never in a sorrowful or a sympathy-driven explanation, but as very matter of fact and how she grew from it. If you are needing a change from a light-hearted or funny surface-level book, this is your next pick up. 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Book Description
  Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the colors yellow and brown. As a fifteen-year-old boy with Autism / Asperger's Syndrome, he lives with his father and was told that mother died two years ago. He discovers the dead body of Wellington, the neighbor's dog, speared by a garden fork. Mrs Shears, Wellington's owner, calls the police, and Christopher comes under suspicion.
  He decides to investigate the dog's death, despite his father's orders to stay out of other people's business. However, he is severely limited by his fears and difficulties when interpreting the world around him. Throughout his adventures, Christopher records his experiences in a book: a "murder mystery novel". During his investigation, Christopher meets people whom he has never before encountered, even though they live on the same street, including the elderly Mrs Alexander, who informs Christopher that his mother had an affair with Mr Shears and had been with him for a long time.
  This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years. Mark Haddon make this an excellent book for children and adults alike. It's as if you're seeing the world through Christopher's eyes.

My Review
In my geeky, science, math-loving way, I thoroughly loved this book's story as well as the way it was written.  I would suggest this book to anyone who wants a very personal portrait of the life of an autistic boy processing detective work to solve a crime, that ends up with a very unexpecting twist.

I do not have Autism nor have, to my knowledge, ever known anyone Autistic.  I do however work with many Doctors at the hospital, at times I do truly believe my boss is included in this category on the very mild end, who have Aspergers.  I'm always mesmerized trying to decipher how their minds work in that they are so brilliant, true geniuses, yet they have difficulty looking me in the eyes, or even keeping a coherent conversation going.  They memorize books in full, and can perform surgeries (literally) with their eyes closed, but they don't comprehend chewing with their mouths closed or that it is inappropriate to tell someone that they are obese in public.  Where many, understandably, feel sympathy or empathy for the plight of those with these syndromes, I sit fascinated by it, and I think that is what drew me to this book even more.  There are certainly times where I feel awful for Christopher, but for so much of this book, I admired his strength in keeping after his detective work and never giving up, even when it is far more difficult for him than it is for most of society.  I also very much admired Christophers father in this book.  It must be a very challenging and at times daunting task to raise a child with emotional impairments, but clearly as you read through the pages, it is shining so brightly how much his father loves him, regardless of it all. 

I really enjoyed the pace of the book as well as the path the reader got to follow with Christophers thought-process and action. The only part that at times wore on me was how many tangents Christopher took in his explanations.  It was less grinding however when I realized that there are many people in our society that go through this mental process on a daily basis.  I enjoyed the book very much.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Book Description:
This story was set in Berlin, 1942. When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance. But, Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than what meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.

My Review
I admittedly do not have an overwhelming retained knowledge of World War II and everything that happened leading up to the fall of Hitler.  History and I have never been friends.  That being said, and it being acknowledged this this book is a work of fiction, it was very enlightening, very moving, and left my heart aching in thinking of the reality that the book is addressing. 

Right from the start, it was a very easy book to jump into.  It seems to always be a struggle of mine in getting through the first 50 pages of back story until the plot thickens, but that was in no way the case here.  From page one, you're off with Bruno on his experience. 
I consistently found myself annoyed with Bruno and then backing up to it with feeling so bad for him.  He was plopped into a life of luxury...maybe not of luxury by todays standards, but for their time, they were in the elite class.  Yet, he always seemed miserable.  Whether it be that his Dad paid him no attention yet Bruno idolized the ground he walked on, the life he had to leave in Berlin, his older sister (that I actually found quite entertaining even through all her bullying and brattiness), or his secret friendship with his friend Shmuel on the other side of the fence, he never seemed to find any happiness from his world. 

The book read very quickly , as most of the dialogue and concepts were from the perspective of a 9-year old boy (I think I finished it in 4 days and that was at a slow pace).  With his naivety and temperament, I envisioned him so much younger however than 9. Regardless of how sheltered a life he may have had, it's hard to believe he would not be asking more questions or with all of his enjoyment of exploring....finding more answers for himself. 

What broke my heart throughout the book, was how much Bruno and Shmuel were so alike, so innocent, and yet they were so very sadly different.

There were little mentions in the book that I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't know what was being referred to (The Fury: Hitler; Bruno called the new place he lived "Out-With", which he was meaning Auschwitz where the Nazi Concentration Camps was).  Regardless of my ignorance, it did make me curious for numbers. And what I didn't know before, but what I'll always remember now is this: At least 960,000 Jews were killed in Auschwitz. Other victims included approximately 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma (Gypsies), and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war; and 10,000-15,000 members of other nationalities.  Over a million people.  While the book was made of fiction, it made me go out and find out some astonishing facts.

Maybe that's one of the points of fiction; spark and interest in the reader and see how long the flame burns.

There is a movie out, but I have not yet seen it.  I need to find some time in this crazy life right now to pause and absorb.  I look forward to watching it.  

Book Reviews.... For Real

Just me out there that thinks it's funny that I didn't post a single review all week last week??  Yah...totally not funny (laughing quite hysterically).  Legitimately though, I didn't even attempt to procrastinate this time.  My week was just simply crazy; lets just say standing over a 4-hour open heart surgery was part of my Thursday.  Typical, right?!

So here are my upcoming reviews:
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
The Glass Castle
The Boy with the Striped Pajamas
The Help
Room

I'll cross them off as I go.  Maybe making a list will help this process out :-)

Book Week : Beware!!

For those of you who check through the Book Tab, it's clear to see that the books I'm reading are updating, but my posting of my reviews of the books are not.  If there's one post I procrastinate writing, it's a book review post.  They take the longest = clearly I put them off. :-)

In advance, the rest of this week is going to be reviews. I need to catch up and stop putting it off, so the best way for me to mentally do that is to brain-dump all at one time.  There are a few I'm dying to tell people about (i.e. they need to go buy and read them immediately), as well as a few others that I'm happy I read but not a lot to rave over. 

My book girls out there....what are you reading right now??  Any I should buy immediately??  I'm reading The Help right now and CANNOT put it down!!!!

Guest Bedroom goes White

Looking back through the blog, I realized that while I did show reveals of the guest bathroom, I didn't do such a good job of showing updates of the guest bedroom (Read that as: I didn't do ANY updates on the guest bedroom).  Not that there were many.  All that we did was paint and hang new doors and paint the trim, and while I'm sure I could have made a riveting post on the annoyance of painting floor boards, I spared you the details.
Anyways, we recently did a bit more upkeep with the guest bedroom, enough to make a post about it at least. :-)
Going back to the start of the minimal guest room re-do, here were some of the only pics I could find during the painting process where you can see the color before to the color after.  (This was during the major guest bath renovation last year...hence no toilet)

 

And so this is how it has sat for the last year.  I suppose you're trying to Eye-Spy the problem right now.  Well here's two separate hints: #1. Dark colors are not part of our color scheme in this room. #2.Cream and White are by no means the same color.

Answer to #1: Something had to happen with the eyesore that was our Air Conditioner.  I was contemplating spray painting it, but then fate intervened and the unit died on us.  Well I guess fate was the wrong word because through-the-wall AC Units are not cheap!  We put off buying a new unit until guests were set to visit, and again, as fate would have it, we lucked out found a unit at a home appliance store that is going out of business near our house.  70% off is a beautiful thing!!!  A sweet, white (so it's already matches our color scheme), fits in the previously cut wall-hole, remote controlled AC unit of a thing!!
 

Answer to #2: Those doors needed to be painted!!  Cream is soothing and all, but it was getting to us with them being two different colors.  So off they popped, I painted them in 3 thin coats over a week and a half, and boy does it sure look better (to us anyway). 

All that's left it to drill the pulls into the door....and level them since I someone may have messed up the doors when I ripped took them down to paint them. 

Master Bath has a new floor

...And we are in luuuurrve!!

We started out the project with laying out all the tiles in the dining room.  We wanted to spread out the color scheme, as in not have too many dark/light slate tiles all in one area together.  These were from the boxes of slate that we bought close to a year ago at a bottom bargain buy at Lowes. (Lets just say this purchase put us at less than what it would have cost to put in a linoleum floor, and we bought enough slate for the guest bathroom floor, the master bath floor, and eventually the master bath shower walls.  Goodness I love a bargain!!)

We had to wipe them all down and then seal them so that they would be water-proof for the bathroom.  It's a little easier in this shot to see all the personality of the slate.

 Here was our clean slate (pun-intended) bathroom.  Don't be fearful that we opted for a red shower....it's sealant to prevent water damage....it will be covered in slate soon!

 Ready...Set....Go!!

  

The tiles were not lining up at an even 12x12 tile that they should have been at this point, but Terry being the wizard that he is, figured out a way to make it work.....by renting the tile saw again!

And the Tile-Finished Result!!  With table vanity view to boot!  It is still not fully installed but we wanted to put it in, envisioning our vessel sinks and mirrors and painted walls on top.

 We even got an air register that blends in to the floor, ha.

 We still need to grout the seams and put another coat of sealer on, but other than that, our floor is finished!!  It's starting to feel like a new bathroom!!