P90X Results Blog Part 2

I just wanted to take a break from the bathroom remodel and throw in a quick update on my workouts.  Before we started on the bathroom, I finished my second round of P90X. That was actually the reason why we started when we did. There is not enough time in the day to do a 60-90 minute workout and get much else done. So I’ll be resting my workout muscles and flexing my remodeling muscles for the next few weeks.

This 3 month period I lost another 10lbs, bringing my total weight loss to 25lbs since I started in the fall.  I feel like I have gotten myself back to a good weight, now it’ll be about maintaining that and building more muscle when I start up again. I’m still doing the pictures, and it’s totally worth it. I get to look at the comparison and see the transformation. I’m thinking one or two more sets of 90 days and I can send in the pictures to Tony Horton to show on his infomercial.

Bird Art

Another brief hiatus from the bathroom blogging to talk about some fun art that we made for my mom for Mother’s Day.

I got this idea from HGTV, but I actually didn’t see how they made it, just the end product. It was a whimsical little bird silhouette on a bright yellow canvas. They put the picture in a really modern room and it just looked so cool and funky. And since my mom loves birds, I knew it would be the perfect gift for her.

So we completely improvised on how to make these things – I bought canvas at Michael’s as well as some white acrylic paint. I decided that the little canary could use a buddy, so we bought 2 of everything. Then we went over to Home Depot to get spray paint. I thought about painting it with a brush by hand, but I really wanted a more even coverage without brush strokes showing. I settled on a canary yellow (how appropriate) and paired it with a complementary shade of pink. Once we had all of the materials, we went home and got started.

1) I covered the canvases both with the white acrylic paint to develop a good base and take away from the beige tint of the canvas.

2) I put on some cleaning gloves and held the birds in place while Matt proceeded to spray them from a distance of about 12-18 inches. I had to move my fingers around to make sure we got the full outline of the birds.

3) Peel off the paper birds and let it dry. That’s all folks! Easy, peasy gift that turned out so cute!

I did have to go back and fix that little owl’s eye since he was being less than cooperative in the painting process. We gave them to my mom on Sunday and she loved them. Now she just has to find a place in the house to show them off :)

Final Demo Day(s)

We hit a few little snags as we headed into what was going to be our final demo day. To start with, we wanted to have fun on the weekend instead of working. So on Friday night, we went out to Dave & Buster’s with some of my co-workers for games and food. Saturday morning, Matt woke up at the crack of dawn to go wakeboarding with Doug, and I went to a fun volunteer event for HopeKids. That night, we pushed off work a little longer and decided to go to Grimaldi’s for some pizza – followed by watching “Tangled” at home. It was a nice, relaxing night. But then on Sunday we had to hop to it to make up for lost time.

Matt spent a good portion of the day soldering together the new pipes for the shower so we could finally stop that pesky leak. As he assembled the fixture in the bathroom, he was not feeling too great about one of his weld joints, and told me that he was nervous it was not going to hold. But he finished up and I went out and flipped the water supply back on. As he suspected, water shot all over the place and we had to turn it off again to assess the leak points. Matt was able to do some fancy cutting and re-soldering around the affected area, and got it to a point where it was water-tight. Unfortunately, when we turned the water on again, there were a few more joints with small leaks as well. Turns out the valve we bought for the shower was sub-par. So despite his heroic effort, Matt was not able to save “Frankenpipe,” as we affectionately called him.

Soldering Materials...

Soldering In Action...

Jordan Supervising the Project



Installing the Finished Product:

The next day, I was calling around for plumbers and got a reference from my good friend Kristina for an independent guy she knew from church. After work that day, he came over and had no trouble replacing the bad parts and getting everything back in to working order. And he did it so fast and so well that Matt even hired him on to replace the sink valves while he was there. Rhett is totally our “guy” now for any future plumbing endeavors. Matt can do plumbing just fine (he did our entire Master Bath on his own with no issues), but for the low cost and the amount of time it took Rhett versus us, it’s well worth it!

So that put us back on track with the remodel, and Matt spent the next hours scraping up the rest of the laminate flooring and cleaning up the drywall around the shower.

And that’s it. The demo is done! He’s already started making some good strides on piecing things back together – more to come (with pictures) later.

Steak Time

This week is Spring Restaurant Week for Phoenix, which means awesome restaurants have great deals on dinners! Matt and I have never participated in Restaurant Week before, but it seemed like a good deal: Pay $30 or $40 (depending on the restaurant) and choose from a prix fix menu that often includes an appetizer, main course and a dessert. You can even see what the prix fix menu is for each place online – helping you to make sure you’ll get options you like. We scoured the list and finally decided to try out a place called Donovan’s Steak & Chop House in Phoenix. Matt’s friend Doug had recommended the place to us a few times, but we never seemed to have an occasion to go and drop that much money on steak.

Oh, boy, am I glad we finally did!!

We got there, and the atmosphere was definitely a little fancier than we are used to. The servers all wore tuxes and everyone seemed to be a master sommelier. The interior screamed “money,” but not the kind of money like rap stars have with all the bling and whatnot This was more (as Ron Burgundy would put it) “rich mahogany and leather- bound books.” But they didn’t overdo it – it was actually quite nice to be in there.

The evening started off with some delicious bread – the perfect mix of crunchy outsides and warm, soft insides. Good bread is a must before you eat a good meal – we were off to a good start. Neither of us were drinking because it was a Monday night and we aren’t (always) alcoholics, but it did look like they had a great wine selection to choose from. We both decided to stick with the prix fix menu, but get different things so we could have more variety. The menu:

Pamela:
- Chopped House Salad
- Two – 4oz Prime Filet Mignon Medallions topped with melted bleu cheese and port demi glace. Side of Gruyere Au Gratin Potatoes and fresh vegetables
- Cheesecake with Strawberry Sauce

Matt:
- Lobster bisque soup
- 6oz Prime Filet Mignon medallion and 2 Bacon Wrapped Scallops. Side of Skillet Fried Potatoes and fresh vegetables
- Chocolate Mousse

I’m not kidding you when I say this steak melted in my mouth. I had to close my eyes like I’m on some chocolate commercial so I could savor the flavor for as long as possible. It was just cooked so perfectly and the bleu cheese was so savory and the potatoes were smothered in cheesy goodness. It was what I imagine steak heaven to be like. Matt’s was wonderful as well – he polished off his plate with the same zeal as I did. And the desserts were amazing as well – especially the cheesecake. By the time we were done, we knew that we were going to slip into food comas within the next 30 minutes, so we rushed home. I woke up this morning still full.

I think we just found our new “special occasion” spot.

Demo - Day 3

Another good day in Demo World. We started off by ripping out the remaining shower tiles. You know that little inset where you put soap and shampoo and stuff? Turns out those suckers pull right on out – we were expecting more of a fight.

Next step for the day was to pull out all of the green board since we are planning on replacing it with cement board. Despite the few holes we accidentally poked into the wall, the green board was not in nearly as bad of shape as our master bath. So Matt actually had to work for it! He scored around the edges with a knife so we wouldn’t accidentally pull up wall that we intended to keep. Then, (sort of) carefully, he hammered in large holes that he could fit his hand into. Once he could get a good grip, he would just tear out chunks of wall. Like Tarzan. I ran back and forth between the bathroom and the alley trash, throwing out the garbage as we went, to occupy myself.

Once the wall was stripped out, we were pleased to see that the insulation was still in good shape and didn’t need to be replaced. Same story for the wood frame – hooray!! So already this bathroom is going a lot better than the last one.

Then we brought in the most insane shop vacuum I’ve ever seen (borrowed from Matt’s step dad, Marko). He only buys top-of-the-line products for his own home remodels, and then Matt and I reap the benefits by borrowing them. Between that and my dad’s arsenal of tools, we rarely have to buy these kinds of things, cutting down on our remodel costs significantly. It pays to know tool junkies :) So we cleaned up the floor and vacuumed out the debris from the bathtub and called it a (relatively short) day.

I believe Demo Day 4 will be the last demo day for this project… then on to rebuilding…

Demo - Day 2

Day 2 went a lot smoother than Day 1. AND! I actually got to contribute this time. We started off with Matt removing the toilet. Man, was I glad to see that nasty thing gone. It was quite embarrassing to have to tell our guests to hold down the handle for at least 5 seconds after you go. And, if I’m being honest, my preference would be to buy a new toilet every time the old one needs cleaning. I hate cleaning bathrooms…

So the toilet came out without a hitch and into the dumpster it went. Next, we busted out the hammers and crowbars and started attacking the flooring. The tile came up pretty easily, and sections of the 2-layer linoleum pulled right up without a hassle too. There were some areas where the linoleum was “like $*#@ing concrete” to put it into Matt’s words. But we managed to get the floor pretty clear during that first hour.

We still had 30 minutes left before our stopping point for the day, so we decided to have some fun and pull some of the shower tiles off the wall. That is one of my favorite demo tasks – Matt and I work like a well-oiled machine and get it done very efficiently. He takes the crowbar and gives a few taps of the hammer to loosen the tiny tiles, and then I pull them off the rest of the way and throw them into a waiting trash bucket. Some of the tiles are not too attached to the wall, so they come flying off and make for a fun game called “Catch the Flying Tile Before it Hits Someone in the Shin.”

Matt Working Like a Stud... Me Working in my Stunna Shades

Bucket o' Tiles

Funny story: as we started on the shower tiles, Matt said “I guess I don’t have to be too careful since we are replacing all of this green board with cement board.” Not 5 seconds later, the green board gave way to his crowbar and popped a nice little hole into the wall. Who puts together a SHOWER with GREEN BOARD?!! Apparently people who mistake “water resistant” with “water proof.” Green Board is actually fine for moist areas like bathrooms, but it is terrible for actual wet places like, oh I don’t know… showers? So you end up having these weak, crumbly walls after a few years of exposure and that can quickly become a breeding ground for mold. So yeah, we made about a half a dozen holes into the stupid green board. Today, we plan on cutting it out
completely.

*Note: at first, I was going to be forgiving of the people who installed the green board because Google wasn't invented back then. And how the heck do you know how to do stuff without Google's help? But then I remembered that they were professional contractors. So no excuses, I stand by my original mockery of their choices.

Try to spot all of the green wall holes! This is why we covered the tub before starting...

So that was it for Day 2. We got the toilet out, flooring up, and as a bonus started on the shower tiles. Matt commented on how yoga has made this remodel a lot easier – bending over flooring with a crowbar and hammer is eerily similar to Mountain Pose. More to do tonight – more updates to come.

Demo - Day 1

I would love to say that our first day of demo went off without a hitch. Unfortunately, when you are dealing with an older house with all of its original parts, there are a lot of not-so-great surprises. BUT – our goal was to get the vanity out of there, and we succeeded, so I’m calling it a great day

We started off by packing up all of the toiletries, cleaners, shower curtains, etc. to get them out of the construction zone. I completely forgot that we keep all of our extra linens and towels in that bathroom, so we ended up with quite a few bags of stuff to store (once we find spots for them… for now they are on the floor in the office…). Since we are planning on keeping our current bath tub, Matt wanted to cover it in cardboard and paper to keep it from getting scratched or damaged.

That’s when he noticed The Leak.

My guess is that this tub has been leaking for 3 years since we moved in and we just never noticed because we don’t use that shower. Who knows how many thousands of gallons of water I’ve unknowingly wasted… I feel so guilty. So Matt takes apart the tub faucet, hoping we can fix the leak easily. The darn thing was so badly calcified that we can’t repair it without buying new parts (which we plan on doing, just not before we tile, paint, etc.). Matt says that we need to find a way to plug up the faucet, and I have a stroke of genius and decide to pop open a bottle of wine. We used the cork to plug the pipe, but only seconds later, the water re-routed to the shower head and started dripping out there. Shit. I suggested that we just drink the wine and make this whole remodel thing a little more fun, but Matt said something about being “responsible” or “not killing ourselves” or something like that. We finally settled on hanging a bucket over the spout to catch the dripping water. A temporary solution, but it allowed us to move forward.

After the tub was covered, we decided to remove the vanity since that would give us a lot of room to maneuver around. More plumbing problems: the shut-off valves under the sink were so old that it took a wrench, all of Matt’s P90X strength, and about 10 minutes of fighting to turn the water off without breaking everything. The pipes were no better – so difficult to get off that Matt resorted to cutting them off instead of messing with them further.

*Side note: I am incredibly useless on days like these. For one, the bathroom is too small to have 2 people effectively working in there at once. Secondly, I suck at fixing stuff and solving home improvement problems (although I’m GREAT at solving people problems! Turns out… not so helpful here…). So I spend most of my time offering words of encouragement, bringing Matt treats so he won’t go nuts, keeping the dog out of the room. Nothing super helpful, but better than sitting on the couch while Matt works his butt off…

Next, it was time to remove the tile backsplash situated right above the vanity. We knew what we were getting into on this one – the same tile had been used in our Master Bath and the super adhesive glue on those things was in-sane-o! As we pried off the tiles, there were some drywall casualties, but nothing too severe. It just means more patching later – oh well. Once the tiles were finally off and the vanity was unscrewed from the wall, it popped out with no problem and we were able to guide it out of the bathroom. Instead of buying $50 worth of crummy sawhorses to do the tile cutting on, Matt decided to repurpose the vanity cabinet and save some money at the same time.

Whoops...

Before we called it a night, curiosity got the best of us and we decided to pry up one floor tile to see what marvelous surprise flooring lay underneath. Voila! Brown linoleum hidden under a layer of aqua linoleum! Beautiful… but she’s all coming up tonight…

Classy Tile & Linoleum!!

It’s Finally Time!!

After 3 years of living in this house, we are finally getting around to updating the Guest Bathroom. And I, for one, could not be giddier!! When we first moved into the house, we had a lot of more urgent projects that required our attention. Like fixing the mint green/pale pink/nasty yellow kitchen. Or updating our Master Bath, since that’s the one we use and therefore the most important. Literally every other room in our house has gotten a face lift or at least some heavy makeup. And now it’s finally Bathy’s turn.

We have the vanity (ordered off of eBay) waiting in the living room.
We have the tile picked out (Lowe’s always comes through for us on tile).
We know what color we are going to paint (and it won’t be brown!! I’m getting braver!)

Matt just finished his second round of P90X (and is looking mighty fine if I do say so myself!) and has decided to take a break for the duration of the remodel. With my help and the aid of some of our friends, we are hoping this project won’t take longer than 2 months. We’ll see… the Master Bath took us almost 7 months, but it was a CRAZY time for us. Right after that remodel started, Matt started traveling to CA for work for weeks at a time, we got engaged so I went into wedding planner mode, and life got generally hectic. Things are currently calm (knock on wood). Plus, now we have one bathroom under our belt, and that knowledge will help us to complete this guy faster.

Demo (my favorite!) begins tonight and I’ll post updates as I can. Send us some good remodel vibes!

My First Experience at Last Chance

My co-worker Jen convinced me to go on a little lunch excursion with her on Friday to Nordstrom’s Last Chance Store. For anyone who hasn’t heard of the store, it’s basically a dumping ground for designer shoes, bags, clothes and accessories that either didn’t sell at the regular Nordstrom or Nordstrom Rack, or that have some light (or in some cases, not so light) damage done to them.

The store was massive in size, and had a lot of shoppers for a Friday afternoon. And apparently it can get a tad crazy there when good deals are at stake. Not 2 minutes after walking in the door, Jen and I were browsing purses in a 35% off bin. It was crazy to see $2000 purses “marked down” to $500 in the mix. But as we were browsing, a security guard came up and asked us to stand back 5 feet and stay put while then placed some more purses into the bins. There were maybe another dozen ladies in the area who had to do the same, which I thought was weird. Jen walked around the perimeter as they were adding bags and they literally YELLED at her to back off! The lady who was putting purses in told her if she “tried that again” they would kick her out! Then the security guard (who was really not much bigger than me – I could have taken him :)) gave the word and people were allowed to continue shopping. It was really funny and awkward at the same time – nobody rushed in or started fighting over the new merchandise. I just don’t get it. Obviously they have had issues with fights in the past over a good bag, which is why these crazy regulations are in place. But in all seriousness, I would LOVE to see two upper-middle-class ladies duke it out for a $400 Valentino :)

The shoe selection was huge there, but I was really not very impressed with the deals overall. A lot of the shoes had obviously been worn heavily and then returned (who does that?!), but the prices still ranged from moderate to ridiculous. A lot of our conversations went like this:

Jen: “Ooooh! Those are nice shoes! (Insert brand name I’ve never heard of)!”
Me: “Yeah, but they’re still $100”
Jen: “But they used to be $500!”
Me: “You really can’t use that kind of logic on a girl who shops at Target.”

Don’t get me wrong, I like having nice things. I just don’t want to pay a ton of money for used items just because some famous designer stamped his name on them. I could get 100 PAIRS OF OLD NAVY FLIP FLOPS for that price!!

In the end, I did end up buying a nice pair of Cole Haan’s – patent black with just a slight platform and an open toe. Perfect for summer – and I’ve been looking for a replacement to my Aldo’s for some time now. So I was a happy camper :) Jen was very successful too, and walked away with 2 pairs of shoes and a cute bag. We had a fun time, but I think I can safely say that that will be my first and last trip to that store. For now I’ll stick with my Banana Republic clearance rack and avoiding cat fights!

So Comfy!! With Nike Air Technology - thanks Cole Haan!

BBQ Chicken Sandwiches

Originally, these were supposed to be BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches. But yesterday afternoon when I went out to the freezer to grab the pork (hehe… that sounds dirty…), I remembered that we ate the last of it a few weeks ago. Since I had already been to the store once that day, I decided to improvise and just make BBQ chicken sandwiches.

I have developed a little love affair with my crock pot, and I love the days where I work from home or get home early so I can make things in it. It’s just so easy and requires very little maintenance during the cooking process. And you can make some pretty “fancy” stuff in there. I know that you can start a meal in the morning and let it go all day on low, but: 1) I don’t have that much mental capacity in the morning to be prepping a meal and 2) I have horrific, unjustified panic attacks thinking about the house burning down while I’m at work and Jordan being trapped in the flames. No thanks. Anywho…

Here is what I threw in there:

- 3 chicken breasts (about 1 pound)
- ½ Bottle of Bill Johnson’s Original BBQ Sauce
- 1 Tbsp. Onion Powder
- 2 Tbsp. Brown Sugar

That’s it, then just set it on high to start cooking. About half way through, I cut the breasts in half to make sure they were cooking all the way through. 3 hours in, I shredded the chicken with two forks and lowered the heat setting. After hour 4, we piled some of the goodies onto a Kaiser roll and enjoyed! We served it with potato salad (homemade by Matt’s mom & oh so yummy) and some chips for color – ha!

If I were to do this recipe again (which I think I will), the only think I would change is maybe putting some beer into the mixture. Maybe only 1/3 cup or so, just enough to give a good flavor after it cooks out. The BBQ sauce and the brown sugar made it pretty sweet, so it would be nice to have a balance. Enjoy!

Glamour Shot up Close