Monday. I was up at four and decided to just get to work in the office by around four thirty. I got in a good hour alone before Paul got up around five thirty, pretty late for him. The drive and hanging out with us must have worn him out quite a bit.
I made a pot of coffee and Paul and I pretty much had that polished off by seven. So we made another and it was pretty well hit before Dominica got up at eight.
By a quarter after eight, demolition of the girls’ bathroom was well underway. The worst of the tile was down in minutes and while there is definitely water damage, it wasn’t anything we didn’t already know about, and the great news is that there is no mold behind the wall and we are now three days ahead of where we expected to be!
The bathroom demolition went on all morning. Dominica and Paul made a run for demolition supplies. And then around eleven went out to find a tile liquidator to see what they could find in terms of tiles for the new bathroom. They found a tile that was okay and really cheap. But they brought it home and I wasn’t thrilled. Not at all modern, nor our style. I think that we will be unhappy with it.
At three thirty, Dominica and Paul went to Home Depot to check out other tile options and to see about paint samples. Dominica found a new tile for the bathroom that we both thought looked really amazing. This time she through to bring her phone with her so that she could show me pictures of tile while she was looking.
So after today’s shopping, we have tile in hand that we love. And we have found a vanity and sink that we are really excited about. Not as cheap as we had been hoping, but decently cheap and it will allow us to have a bathroom that we really love. It’s one of the most important rooms in the house, the girls’ and the guest bathroom. It’s used heavy and seen constantly by guests. We want to make it something that we really like. And it is our first room, ever, that we are redoing in the house! This is the start of really making the house “ours”. Even though, of course, we’ve had it since before Luciana was born.
Luciana did some of her reading with me today. She’s reading a book called Stick and Stone.
Around five, Liesl came into my office and we did her programming class today. More working on Python via CodeAcademy. It has been quite a while since we last did her programming class and we need to get back into the groove. I set her up with the Asus Chromebook at the little table sitting next to my office table.
The girls looked at paint samples for their bedroom today, too. And they have landed on Tahitian Breeze as the colour that they are most interested in. We will likely be painting their bedroom next weekend, I think, while Paul is back in Missouri for a few days. That is going to brighten up that room so much. The dingy old dark brown in there makes it so dark and small. Not good for little kids who want to play, at all. And it makes it feel really old.
This evening, after work and after the bathroom construction had wound down, Paul and I went into Little Korea to go shoot pool and billiards for a few hours. This was my first time in Little Korea for real, since we have returned to Texas and boy has it grown up. Right around the corner from us and there are hundreds of awesome new businesses in there now. Restaurants, grocery stores, cafes, bakeries, medical, you name it. It’s a whole city, right there, very dense and full of interesting stuff. I could pretty easily walk there.
We had a good time, but we were tired. So by nine thirty we were on our way back to the house to go to bed. I started my day at four thirty this morning, so no wonder I am tired. Dominica was nearly ready for bed when we got back. And Luciana was thinking about going to bed, too. Liesl was set up in the living room playing Grim Legends 2: The Dark Swan which she had been playing all evening.
At the end of house reconstruction day one, we are really excited. We have a vision for what we want to do with the house, pretty much all of it, and it is not going to be nearly as expensive as we had been thinking that it was going to be all of this time. Still more expensive than we can afford, but that’s a different matter. With Paul here to help with the handy work, things are totally different.