We’re done! Well, we’re at about 99%  but it’s fully functional and it’s SO nice to have the bathroom and bedroom back in order!

After we finished prepping the walls it was time to start on the floor. We had taken up all the old tile except for what was left around the toilet, so we uninstalled our first toilet, broke up the remaining tiles and prepped the floor. And yes we painted that little patch of wall that was behind the toilet

Bye bye toilet.  We didn’t have use of the bathroom, at all, for about 5 days.

We would both agree that it was much easier to uninstall the toilet then we anticipated.

There aren’t too many intermediate pictures of the the tiling process, but from start to finish it took about 4 hours to lay all the tile.   When I was younger, my brother and I tiled a portion of my parent’s family room, so I was honing in on those skills when laying this tile.  I laid all the tile while hubs cut some of the smaller pieces.   When If we ever tile again, I’d like to invest or rent a wet saw to cut the tile because this really was the hardest part.  My goal for laying the tile was to keep the grout lines straight which I think I did, however, there were a couple areas where there was some excess mortar I failed to keep out of the grout lines.  What I didn’t expect was to be as sore as I was from tiling.  I’ve NEVER been that sore in my life and so when day two rolled around and I had to grout it posed a little bit of a challenge.  We went with a charcoal grout color which conveniently became my nail polish for the week as well!

What do you think? Not bad, right?

Once we got the tile down, grout in and sealed it was FINALLY time to install the vanity.  Hubs would say that a shower curtain instigated the bathroom renovations, but I would have to say it was the vanity and sink that did.  We got the vanity flush with the wall, glass vessel sink and faucet installed but the drain wouldn’t line up to the sink.

So we took this picture to Home Depot and the very nice people there were able to help. Pat from the paint department, Lynn from flooring , HD Live Chat and several others from plumbing, various other areas in the store. I keep telling hubs we need to have them over for dinner or something to thank them for all their help!

And everything from here on out, hubs did solo because he’s amazing and knew how much I wanted to have our bathroom finished!

And we now have running water in the sink! Isn’t it pretty??

This faucet guided our other decisions about fixtures, because we REALLY like this bamboo look!

We also got a great deal on the vanity, sink and faucet when ordering online through the Live Chat feature of the site. We knew what we wanted but wanted to be sure it would all match up and fit together. So I used the Live Chat feature and spoke with someone from Home Depot who helped us get everything we needed, and gave us an extra 20% off as well! And it all arrived within a week.

As you could probably tell we changed the color scheme of the bathroom to a teal and brown and were able to find some accessories that went along with it. Having taken down a HUGE cabinet we reduced the amount of storage space or what I like to call places I can hide things in the bathroom. All in all everything fits and it just gave me a chance to purge things we didn’t need!

Smaller wall unit to keep our everyday items!

I love these clear glass container for the items we use daily (thanks Mom Riggle for the idea).

We also added a curved, hotel shower rod to give the illusion of more space in the shower.  This along with getting a smaller vanity has really given more space where we needed it in the bathroom.

Towel holder going along with the dusted silver look in bamboo.

We also change out the light switch and electrical outlet to black which meant changing the face plate, switch and wiring.

Light fixture.

And that is about it folks! We have to lay the threshold and want to paint the back of the bathroom door to match the baseboards. Oh yeah, baseboards! We didn’t get a close up of those, but put those in as well new – thanks to Chris and Sarah Lipp for letting us borrow the miter saw! We painted them in a chocolate brown to offset the caramel walls.

BEFORE:

This was our 30 year old bathroom.

AFTER:

We have a completely new, contemporary bathroom!

Breakfast: mini bagel with peanut butter, Dunkin Donuts coffee (from home) w/ creamer and one splenda

This was taken outside of transition at about 5:30 a.m.  We got up around 4a.m. left the house by 4:40 a.m. and were to the park a little after 5 a.m. We timed it perfectly.  We were able to park inside the park and really close to a REAL bathroom.  We arrived about 5 minutes before our friends Stacy and Terry.  I couldn’t believe how many people were already there, but as with most triathlons it’s a hurry up and wait once you’re set up in transition.

Me and Stacy after our transition area was set up.  She’s part of Team Marathon -who makes yummy energy and protein bars.  We were all set up and ready about 6 a.m. and our waves didn’t start until 7:30 (for Stacy) and 7:46 (for me) so we went back to the car and hung out for a little while. I used this time to take advantage of being parked close to the bathroom and replenished with a Marathon Energy bar.

We made out way back down to the transition area and checked our gear one more time. The officials were a little particular about how you set up your transition area and had a ruler out making sure you didn’t have one inch more of space that you were designated.    I decided that we would take a dip in the water. I heard over the speaker system it was a lovely 90 degrees.

This is what I think about warm lake water….

All set to go in my light blue swim cap and Aquasphere goggles!

Fast forward through the pre race meetings and lining all the waves at the start.  I was in the 4th or 5th wave and competed as an Athena, which if you remember are those over a certain weight limit.  I’m over to the far right side – it’s hard to see but I’m ready to go!

And here we go! The swim was 400 meters and by far the most difficult in the sense of getting around slower swimmers.  This race is designed for all women (which I like) and for newbies, so there were lots of people doing the backstroke, doing what I call the frog  stroke and lots of other crazy stuff, so it wasn’t until the last turn that I was finally able to get in to a stride.  Official race times weren’t posted at the time of writing this, but my Timex showed 8:50 minutes when I got out of the water. A little slower then expected but not too far off considering the elements.

T1  = 3:05 it was a little ways from the water into transition, but overall a decent time.  Got ready for the bike, and took a HammerGel for nutrition and on to the bike! (video of the bike on facebook)

I was a little nervous about the ride, since it tends to be my weakest sport.  However, something different about this race is that I’ve actually trained on the bike so it felt a little more comfortable.  Overall there weren’t too many hard hills, except for a nasty one as you turned onto Nance Rd.  Several ups/downs  but kept a consistent 16.2 mph for the course.  My goal was to have an 16mph average for the bike, so I was very happy with the way it turned out! I was coasting in at about 20mph when I saw Scott and Terry headed towards the run finish to catch Stacy.  She started about 15 minutes ahead of me so they were trying to be in two places at one time.

(insert) here is a picture of my friend Stacy who was battling a sore throat and stuffiness for the race but pounding the pavement for the run.

T2  = 1:53 grabbed my gatorade, and beans and headed out on the run.

The run (for me) can be a gamble as well, but I was feeling really good thus far.  It was actually surprising how good I actually felt.  Of course there was a hill to start out on and I ran up it and every other hill on the course! Several women were walking, but I just pushed through my heavy legs.  I was quite chatting on the run, commented on one woman’s tri shorts being cute, promoted Team in Training and kept seeing the same dog who I joked with his owner should have been in a relay with me. I ran all the way through until 1.5 miles, walked 1min and ran again until about 2.75 walked another minute and finished up the run at 34 minutes and change for the 5K course. (video of my finish on facebook)

I was VERY happy with my performance today and is a great spring board to my next sprint triathlon in two weeks.  Hoping to hit the training hard these next two weeks and perform just as well if not better.

All done and headed towards food!

He was slinging mud on the walls (three coats) to smooth out the layer upon layers of wallpaper.  Saturday we got up early and made our trip to Home Depot for the next wave of materials, which actually turned out to be the last wave (more later).

Our friend at the paint department helped up get the right stuff and we primed the walls (no picture – we forgot) and textured them.  And as a side note, don’t visit the paint department at Home Depot on a Saturday.  By the time we got home with all the supplies, prepped, primed and textured – that was all we had time for since the texture needed several hours to dry.

oooo, pretty texture (picture taken with a cell phone

Hubs and the pretty texture  It really was tough to get on the walls without getting all over the place, thankfully a little water would clean it up nicely.  It felt like we were playing with paper mache!

It’s hard to see the color but this wall IS actually painted.   After my triathlon this a.m. we tackled the bathroom and it really didn’t take any time at all.  I love the edger tool and hubs used the roller and it was done in no time.  Thankfully it didn’t need two coats and just some touch up were the texture was a little thick.  It sort of looks like the starting color, but it’s a nice tan color or warm caramel to be precise.

Hubs also hung out new light fixture. It’s a dusted bronze, bamboo fixture!

Next phase will be a douse and probably take most of next weekend. Depending on how much we get done we might not post pictures until the finished product – leaving you in suspense! It will include laying new tile (Thank you, Lynn from Home Depot to getting us all set up), installing the new vanity, sink, and faucet,  and we have baseboards left to do.  There are a few minor things we’ll do this week to get ready!

I’m SOOO ready to have our bathroom done! It’s going to look amazing!

I’ve struggled with finding a wax that I can use at home that does the job just as good as the salon but found something I just needed to promote.

Sally Hansen Extra Strength All-Over Body Wax Kit

This stuff works wonders and it was the first time I’ve been able to wax my eyebrows from home.  It cost $10.19 at Target but will be well worth it in the long run.

On a recent adventure to see what decor we could find to remodel our bathroom we went to Tuesday Morning.  And it never fails that wherever kitchen tools, gadgets are, I’ll find hubs.  We came across a panini maker, but the price tag was a little steep for my thriftiness.  However, last week I saw a tweet come in from dealsplus for a panini maker from Macy’s.  It was listed for $49.99 on sale for $19.99 plus free shipping.  There was no way I could pass this deal up.

The panini maker arrived earlier this week and we had some delicious, huge sandwiches for dinner, which left us all with leftovers for lunch (score).  We bought some fresh ciabatta bread from the grocery store and it was MORE then enough for a new dinner/meal!

Hi, I’m Evie! I’m super cute!

Evie looking for lizards on the deck.

I’m pretty sure she found one here and just waiting for the door to open.

This is one of her favorite past times – sleeeeeeping

She LOVES this bed!

And this couch, with her blanket – and having the remote close enough to change the channel!

And as hubs know that once I get an idea in my head it’s pretty consuming, so the week after we got home from visiting Mama Riggle I started researching what we should put in the bathroom to give it a face lift.  Our master bathroom is small, almost like 1-bedroom apartment small.  It’s funny because our hall bath is actually larger then the master, but regardless old, old, old.

This is a picture of the bathroom area we focused on today.  You can sort of see the new decor and where I took the cabinet off the wall several weeks ago.  Our goal Saturday was to get the vanity out and mirror off the wall to assess what we’d be dealing with after it was removed.

Close up of the vanity – it is in decent shape, but just very old looking and was taking up too much space for the tiny bathroom.   We wanted to create something a little more modern and also free up some floor space.

In my researching how to remove a mirror from the wall. I found a couple different tactics.  One was to use piano wire and cut it from the wall.  Second, was to cut the mirror out of the drywall.  And third was to duct tape it and just break the mirror.  We started with option one, cutting it from the wall with wire.   We tried with one type of wire, but that didn’t work, so we went up to Home Depot where they suggested using a 100lb fishing line, but we could only find up to 50 lbs, and ended up trying it.  It didn’t work and neither did the braided 340lb rope wire that we bought also.   Since we weren’t in the business for having to drywall we opted for option three, hit it with a sledge hammer.

We suited up Hubs pretty good, making sure nothing was exposed and he gave it one hit with the sledge hammer and it came down pretty easy.  It was unfortunate to not be able to save the mirror, but after seeing how it was glues to the wall we don’t think it was coming down anytime soon!

So the mirror is down and next is getting the vanity out – this was my favorite part, because I got to use the sledge hammer. There really should have been video of that, because it was sure a lot of fun!

And as you can see below both pieces are out and ready for phase II.  We found another layer of wall paper, which is the lovely brown floral pattern.  This was apparently underneath the other floral pattern I found behind the cabinet.  Thankfully the drywall behind the vanity was find but we’ll have to tile a little bit since the vanity was the original piece to the bathroom and tile came much later.

Tomorrow, phase II

Thank goodness it’s Friday! I thought this weekend would NEVER get here.   The beginning of the week started off slowly but once Wednesday got here the rest of the week flew by and thankfully I have a busy day tomorrow so it’ll make the day go by quickly!

It is the last full week before the kids go back to school and they’ll have a few days next week before starting back on Thursday.  I can honestly say I’m not looking forward to it. We usually have some adjustment issues with the start of the school year. New classes, back to a normal sleeping schedule, HOMEWORK, making lunches, whew – it wears me out just thinking about it.  But I’m optimistic about this year, as I am every year and really… we have about 5 weeks until the first break

In the world of training I’m just plain tired.  Last weekend’s brick just wore me plain out. I think I went from napping on the bed to couch to the bed a few times but glad to get the mileage in as it’s important for the upcoming sprint tri.  This Saturday is another brick and the heat index isn’t giving up this week, with pushing 97 on Saturday.

We had one NASTY storm on Tuesday that left me hiding in the bathroom.  This time of year it’s just so unpredictable what the weather will do – bring on FALL. Thankfully we didn’t have any damage but darn it if that storm just hovered over our house for a couple hours.

Ice cream. Lets just be real. I love ice cream. Drumsticks, Klondike bars, Strawberry this, Mint chocolate chip that. I love ice cream.  It’s the only thing getting me through these dog days of summer! Oh that and my iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts.

Hubs and I have a BIG undertaking this weekend when the REAL bathroom renovations start.  We’ll post pictures as we move forward, but we’ll be pulling out the 30 year old vanity and mirror off the wall, patching some dry wall, painting and installing new hardware. I’m ubber excited about what the finish product will look like! I’ve only been able to see it on the side of the box, lol! Wish us luck!

What are YOU excited about for this coming weekend? Any BIG plans? Tips on home improvement projects? What has been fantastic about THIS week?

My cousin and her sweet new baby boy!

Since that time my level of activity has shifted a bit with life changes, but some form of activity and fitness has always been a part of my daily life.  Partly  it was to avoid sitting in traffic in the morning, but in the last few years I met a friend at the gym and we’ve been TRI-ing together throughout the metro area and it’s been fun.

I’m not the only Riggle who’s been getting active lately, hubs has been too.  He’s been running with a buddy from work for the last 5 months and they are training for a 5k/10k next year.  It’s been fun to see him running and becoming a runner!  Both kids have been too.  Bran is getting ready for JROTC this fall, with a 1.5 mile in 13:30 minutes, so he’s been doing an  interval workout I created for him on the treadmill.  Alli has been running too.  With the heat index being at such a high level we’ve wanted them to stay inside on the treadmill with and fan – because it’s sure a hot one out there. When I checked weather.com tonight it say 96 degree with a “feel like” temp of 106! Definitely not something to run around in.

It’s been satisfying, for m,  to see everyone getting healthy and staying in shape since it is such a big part of my life!  Who knows, maybe we’ll all run a 5K together one day – I get all excited just even thinking about it!

What activities keep you healthy and active? And how have you been managing these hot temps!?