Video Blog: Tour of Upper Level Addition (Or, Making You Feel Better About Your Cleaning Habits)

Untitled from Heather Zebra on Vimeo.

Video Blog: The Home Addition, Part One (Or, how I show you how messy my house is)

Lower Level Addition Feb 2011 from Heather Zebra on Vimeo.

Part Two to follow next week!

Closer

The bathroom took a HUGE leap toward the finish line this week. It already looks like a showroom bathroom to me. Paint on the walls and it will really look extra nice. 3000 times better than the baby blue fixtures we've lived with for about 13 years.

Unforeseen Issues Regarding Bathroom Remodel

Our bathroom was mostly hideous. But if you like baby blue, you'd probably have found it quaint. I did my best to improve the room with cute little touches-- photos of my babies in bathtubs and fancy knobs for the vanity. Slowly over the last year and half the bathroom has been transforming. The baby blue tub has been gone for about a year. The new tub/shower is in a new location, making our bathroom bigger than it was before. Where the old bathroom rested, we have custom cabinets.

Yesterday the first part of the process for laying tile in our bathroom was started. We will be unable to use our main bathroom for the 3 days that the whole process takes, but it will be worth it in the end. It will be wonderful when it's done.

However there were a few unforeseen issues regarding this (specifically floor) remodel. First, when you're used to putting in your contacts just before you hop in the shower it feels weird to insert contacts while standing in your kitchen. When you feel the need to use the restroom and you are accustomed to going upstairs it is against nature to head the other direction. If the man installing your tile hits the floor with the hammer repeatedly, the globe covering your light in the utility room may, in fact, fall and shatter unexpectedly. You will not know what fell and broke until you need to use the restroom. You may actually use the restroom while your toddler follows you and exit to find glass sprayed over the floor. You may have a tiny heart attack realizing your toddler could have severely cut her feet (and you could have too but really who cares about you at this point, right?) and then usher her upstairs away from the owies.

Prior to this drama you may have realized why you actually avoid using this small (literally) water closet in the past. Claustrophobia. Forced to use this bathroom, you leave the door open when you must use it. There presents the problem when the man installing the tile is in the house. Can't really leave the door open. Plus the toddler wants to be in there with you. It's COZY. I'm going out on a limb and suggesting you do your business extra quickly.

Remembering the glass, you call your husband because you can't find a broom or a dust pan. He says he broke the broom weeks ago and the dust pan is in the garage "somewhere." You note to self to buy new broom and dust pan.

You may start to remember the blue bathroom fondly, simply because it was functional.

Then you take a deep breath, pee in the claustrophobic small water closet and hope for the best by the end of the week.

Moving On and In and On

My husband covered over one window, smoothed the walls, primed, painted and hung a new light fixture in our old master bedroom. It is purple, so purple, and exactly what little girls love. The new light fixture is a chandelier. It is the kind of bedroom little girls dream of. My husband did that for our girls.

The bunk bed that used to be just M's, bought when she was 22 months old in anticipation of her new sibling's arrival and needing the crib for that sibling, was dismantled and resurrected in the new room. M slept in the top bunk for the first time last night. D will be transitioned to the lower bunk with bed rails installed (as they were for her sister when she transitioned) next weekend. I thought D was too young to move to the bunk, but then I realized that Miss M had transitioned at a younger age than D is now. My perspective is skewed. K Man stayed in the crib longer than M as well, but he transitioned to a toddler bed first, where he still sleeps. When I get the rest of the junk moved from M's old room and Craig gets her old room painted, etc for K Man, he will have a full sized twin bed for the first time.

Suddenly all three kids have grown in leaps and bounds.

Soon the crib will be taken down for the last time. We went to Minneapolis to find that crib. It had to be a new crib. It had to be lovely. I was big and pregnant for the first time and loving it. (Also scared of what my future would hold.) We found the most lovely crib and bought it without flinching about the $600 price. Ah to be so naive and have such "disposable" income. We were both working then. I wasn't making much but I enjoyed my job most of the time and I didn't have nearly the stress level as my previous job. (I'm certain the move to a job with less stress helped me to conceive. I'm not sure it would have happened had I remained at the stressful job.) I still love that crib, for what it stands for, for the babies it held, for its simple beauty by itself.

There are new dressers, not the repainted partially falling apart old dresser of my youth, but new ones...white and clean-looking and big. There are new shelves, stacked and attached to the wall...almost full already. There is a pretty purple and navy rug to take away the disappointment that the carpet will not be changed.

I moved the framed caricature drawings we've had done (with all three kids around their first birthday) of the girls into their new bedroom and set them on top of their dressers...M's on hers, D's on hers. It's funny, the artists who drew them used the same colors in the background of both portraits...blue and purple. Seems a little like fate with the color of the walls and the rug. My two beautiful girls in caricature so similar yet both so unique.

The K Man is going to feel like he sleeps in a mansion when he moves to M's old room.

K's old room is going to be a study/desk/book room. K's old room is the original nursery where we excitedly set up that beautiful crib for the first time. No, wait. Actually, we excitedly set up that crib in the living room then realized we couldn't fit it up the stairs and into the room so we had to take it apart and set it up again in the room. When I say "we" I mean Craig of course. Also? I'm pretty sure I laughed until tears ran from my eyes when I realized he'd have to dismantle the crib to get it in the room. I'm a supportive kind of wife, especially when I'm pregnant.

How did we get here? Just three days ago I was expecting my first child. Then I was expecting my second two days ago. Yesterday? My youngest. I'm pretty darn sure this is how it happened. Where did these big kids come from?

Is it okay to miss the babies, the toddlers, the little kids they once were? I love who these kids are becoming (mostly). They are people, smart, beautiful, interesting people. But I will always miss those babies too.

The Cabinet Reveal

The bathroom cabinets were installed yesterday. The custom bathroom cabinets. They turned out even better than I thought they would. They are floor to ceiling and 90 inches across the entire East wall of our bathroom. I LOVE them. We even got all of our junk put inside and moved the towels from the hall linen closet into the bathroom AND have space left.

I can hardly wait for the new tile floor, the new (non-baby blue) toilet the new vanity and the new mirror. It's going to look even more fantastic. No more 70s bathroom here.

The Big Day

This morning, this wall of our bathroom, which used to house our old (baby blue) bathtub, will have beautiful custom-made cabinetry in it's place.

Storage! Glorious storage.

The Addition-Construction Update

So it occurred to me that I never posted an update after the addition was put on the house. The structure was done back in May. We're still working on the inside. (And by we I mean Craig.) Here's the progression:

The siding is also completely done but apparently I haven't taken a finished photo of the outside yet! Whoops!

The inside has drywall up and is in the process of mudding the seams, corners, etc. Soon it will be painting and carpeting time! :)

In Which I Realize the Value of Full Disclosure (And Also Get a Little Sappy)

Last week, my son went on a field trip with his preschool. It was his first time riding on a bus and it was a coach bus (although I was informed it did NOT have a toilet on the bus like I assumed all coach buses did...thanks for that fake-coach bus).

The excitement for this outing had been building for weeks. If you have any experience with exuberant 4-year-olds you know how hard it is to contain that enthusiasm. I often do not reveal plans until the day before just for this reason. For those of you who do not have kids, or have younger kids, let me tell you you will be asked approximately every 5- to 10-minutes when the exciting trip is going to happen if you make the rookie mistake of telling your child about it in advance. I had no control in this case. His preschool teachers told the kids about the trip weeks ago so they could prepare, or as I like to call it, so they could drive the parents nuts. (I'm reminded of the gargantuan "robot" of garbage my son brought home earlier in the school year. Why do his teachers hate me?)

Finally the day arrived and it coincided with the day that the builder came out to the house to start putting together the walls of the addition. K was more frenetic than an ant on a smashed hill. He was torn between shadowing Rick, the builder, and wanting to go to Oxbow Park (on the bus!) with his class. Eventually the bus and the trip won out, mostly because I think K had already exhausted every question he could come up with about the building process within a half an hour. Kudos to Rick who seemed to take the incessant questions in good humor. He, himself is a dad to three, although his kids are older now. I told K to stay out of Rick's way but he informed me, rather emphatically, he WANTS me to follow him MOM! So I stand corrected there.

So we arrived at K's school and the bus was parked in the street awaiting its kid cargo. The kids posed for photos in front of the bus and all donned their foam visors they'd made specifically for the day. A few of the kids were reticent, but even they came around and boarded the bus with their friends.

The moment for K to board came and he sought me out. There were hugs and kisses and the always, always, always uttered "I love you Buddy" before he was gone, bounding up the stairs that seemed too big for his little legs to scale. The windows of the bus were tinted such that I couldn't make out which of the little faces looking out was my son's so I just began blindly waving to any form that seemed to be looking in my direction.

I was thankful for my sunglasses as some of the other parents began to joke about enjoying their free time. I knew I'd get some errands done while K was at school, but my eyes teared up as the bus pulled away. His first solo field trip. On a bus (even though it had no toilet-man the credibility just gets shot down all the time). Riding away from me. Away from me.

Away from me. Just as kids are supposed to do as they get older. We are preparing them to leave us. Who thought of this aspect of parenting anyway? I don't think I like it.

So I turned away from my friends, those other parents who seemed so cheerful, so happy to see their kids riding away. I'm thinking the first day of Kindergarten isn't any easier when it's your second child. It's not, is it?

But when I went to pick K up from school, the bus had just arrived back at the school and I had just missed seeing K disembark from the bus. The kids went into the building to go potty or whatever and I watched that bus pull away. Thank you for delivering my boy back safely.

So I waited in the car line for the teachers to bring the kids back out. I was excited to hear all about the cool animals K had seen at Oxbow Park (although technically Zollman Zoo) and was a bit taken aback when he emerged with a frown on his face.

What's the matter Buddy? I asked, wondering if he'd had a falling out with a friend or something.

That was no park, he told me. You all lied to me. All I saw was a bunch of animals. There wasn't a park. It was boring.

So apparently I sent a preschooler and got back a teenager. Sigh.

Watching the Beginning of Construction

Wordless Wednesday and Even more Wordless Wednesday

Our House Is a Very Very Very Fine House...But it is too Small

Here is our house in the back. It's a fine house, but it is too small. I neglected to take true before photos with the sidewalk and the plants and such, but this will do.

This is the side view of the house. There will be another 20 feet added on the back when this is done.

The addition will be 2 stories, from the yellow line in this photo over to the edge of the house. We plan on having a new master bedroom with an extension on our existing bathroom for the upper level. The bottom level will eventually be a toy room/play room...possibly part scrap room.

I'm fairly certain the whole process will make me want to gouge my eyes out, but when it's done it will be fabulous!!