Dave is the Man

Tearing down walls, poring over cracked walls for weeks until they're silky smooth, constructing arches in doorways, erecting closets out of thin air....not nearly as impressive as building our mantle.  I can't articulate why this remains the most impressive thing I've seen Dave do in our house so far, but it is.  And it only took him two pieces of dentil trim from the Depot.  Here is the original.

The original fireplace had that lovely brick border that needed to be covered up.  I also wanted those sconces torn out of the wall and I'm sure I'll regret that some day.  To be fair, the wires were covered in shredded twine so I'm not sure how long they would have worked before burning our house to the ground.

This was our first encounter with tile and it made my head spin.  I don't know if you know this, but grout comes in colors.  Picking out the tile was hard enough.  Can't they just make grout-colored grout?  These decisions tend to paralyze me enough to never finish a project.  We took the easy way out and got white tiles with slightly gold, antiqued edges and grout that the lady at the tile store recommended.  We figured we could always throw her under the bus if we didn't like it.  As all things in this house, tiling was a first for me.  Not as easy as it looks on TV.  Even with the mesh backing, they're far from perfectly flush.  We'd just finished the tile and were nearly enjoying our collaborative efforts until I stepped on the wet tile and smooshed them all around.  It's fine.  You can't see it from the pictures and that's all that counts, right?  You're not even looking at the tile because you're distracted by the enormous porcelain deer head.  I know it.

 

The deer head remains nameless, but I'm open to suggestions.  It's a conversation piece.  Not everyone enjoys it as much as we do, but most people are amused and kind about it.  We didn't buy it as a joke.  I repeat, we didn't buy it as a joke.  We totally love it.

 

King of Hearts

One of the first projects to be completed was our first floor bathroom.  In part because it was heinous, but mostly because it's so tiny that we could knock it out pretty quickly.  Not a weekend project.  As we've learned, nothing in an old house is as easy as it looks.  Here's a little taste of what the previous owners had left in their wake;

Please note the overwhelming use of red; in the floor tile, the tp holder, the towels, the light switch, and even the doorknob.  Then behold how they tied the aforementioned color into the border.

 

It's difficult to see in the picture, but these suits carry around to all four walls.  It's quite whimsical, which we're not opposed to.  It's just not our style. 

This bathroom butts up to the kitchen and Uncle Richard went through the wall to put in some updated electrical for us.  Once that was patched, we painted the walls gray, the doorknob black, hung some crown moulding (left over from the kitchen), installed the towel bar, hard wired a chandy and changed the faucet.

 

The after pictures don't really carry that "wow" factor that I'd like because the bathroom is so tiny I can't get a good shot of it.  I also think these pictures make a strong argument that our camera isn't as great as we once thought it was.  But, I think you get the basic idea.  I love the two pictures we have hanging in there.  The boston terrier print is from Mod-Dog.  I know dog paraphernalia isn't for everyone, but these are the least cheesy items I've seen yet.

Heck, they even have cat prints.

And the other is a Valentine's present that I got for Dave fully knowing that it was really for me.  I'll work on that for this year.  They don't have the one I got anymore, but here are some samples from the Keep Calm Gallery.

 

Even in my selfishness, the print I got him says Olive Ewe.  I love you.  Get it?  It's kind of from the heart, right? 

I digress.  So there you have the belated first floor bathroom before and after pics.