Two Empty Bedrooms

With our roommate gone, we have decided to do a pretty big project in the house, maybe bigger than the kitchen work but to me seems smaller.

This is our old room, we had it for 4 years, since we moved into the house. This photo is taken standing in the door that goes into the room. We're adding another bathroom upstairs and this area, to the right of the blue line, will be the new bathroom. We've already removed the white (who puts white carpet in a farm house bedroom???) carpet and I've done some painting so the red wall is gone.

The door on the right, shown here removed, goes into the old bathroom that was a jack & Jill bath. That will now be the master bath and connected to the other bedroom still.

Plumbing shown here before pipes were added.

This is the single vanity we found, perfect for a farm house bathroom. 

That left side is a barn door slider.

We purchased the double sink for the master bath.

Here is a side view with the vanity in its approximate position. The toilet to its left & the shower on very left. 

The brown door is going to be removed & replaced with a sliding barn door like we have downstairs. 

I like this blue paint but might not use it now. We'll see.

She's Moving!

I'm holding my breath & crossing my fingers, she said she's moving next week. I'll do whatever I can to help her on her way. I mean, I'm not co-signing or paying for anything, but I'll help her move her shit to her new residence.
Monday & Tuesday are the big days. yippee.
She's got 2 places, one is $800 for a bedroom in a shared home, the woman has a day care & kids are there all day and into the evening.
Second place is with a married couple and is a bit cheaper. She hasn't been to see it yet & isn't sure of the location.
I told her the handyman will be here February 3rd & she's got to be out before then.

Room Mates

Our room mate, my niece, sucks. Actually, all roomies suck. But she's real sucky because she thinks its OK to not pay us rent. She's paid a whopping $1300 these last 10 months. She's living in our home, using a bedroom (2 when her son was here), our electricity, our internet, our heat, our kitchen & dishes. She comes into and out of our gate and takes up a parking spot in our yard.

Last summer while her son was here for 2.5 months & she was working, I babysat if I was home. Even if she was home, I was babysitting because she would be too lazy to care for him. She didn't do shit with him except took him to the zoo twice, one of those times for only 1 hour and she knew it would be closing soon.  Her idea of playing is to put him in his room & her in her other room & they play an online video game together. We live 6 miles from an excellent swimming lake but she never took him, not once. She didn't fill his pool for him & she didn't ride bikes with him even though we had given her a nice mtn bike & I bought him a kids bike.

I've been telling her repeatedly that she needs to move out & I've told her that we're going to need that room when we begin remodeling the bathroom & adding the new one. I was trying to get an idea if there could be damage to the wall that's inside her room when we demo the cabinet & she thinks I was spying on her. There's no reason to spy on her, I know she's not hiding anything.

At least she isn't a drunk, isn't on drugs and isn't having parties when we're not home.

Last month she got turned down for a rental house & I had given a great referral. Two days ago she told me she had given my name again for another house & today the gal called & I told her, "don't rent to her". A house is for someone who will pay their rent, in full, before the due date. She's got NO intention of doing that. A house is for people who have done their time in crappy apartments, saved up money and are ready to move up to the next level, whether it be a nicer apartment, a house or buying their first home.

She's at the bottom of renting & all she's fit to get into is Mariners Glen apartments but when I told her to go there she said she doesn't want to live somewhere horrible. OK then. I'll give that apartment a GLOWING referral for her but no place else.

But she's not staying here, either. Her boyfriend can shit or get off the pot or she can move to Florida to live with him & his sisters. But come February, she's better get her ass out of here. She said she's got $750 saved up towards a house so if she's not moved out I'll tell her to go stay at a hotel.

Its time to have the internet/wifi password changed and the power to her room cut off. I bought her a heated throw blanket & she still has the small heater on all the fucking time, on MY pocketbook.

We had snow this morning.

Good & Bad News

Good News First:

We had the handyman over the other day to give us info on putting in a new bathroom upstairs; 

he said he can totally do all we want, for $65 per hour. He said what we're asking for will take about three 8 hour days so... about $1720 after tax.

Here is a very rough drawing of what its like now. I've never liked the Jack & Jill bathroom 

but its better than none & better than walking down the hall.

What we've been doing previously to having a room mate was our bed was in this room & our clothes were in the other room & we would go downstairs to shower & get dressed. We did that so the person sleeping wouldn't get woken up by the noise of the person getting ready for work.

The current bedroom measures 13.5 X 14.5 and the bathroom is 12.5 X 5, 

there are about 4 feet on either side of the window and the closets are 2 feet deep.

The future bedroom will measure 13.5 X 9.5 and the new bathroom will be 12.5 X 5, 

we'll need to install a smaller window and remove one closet.

We'll use the door & frame that goes from this room to the current bathroom & put it on the right, into the new opening made when we take out one closet. The remaining closet is still huge.

We're going to put in a new double vanity in the old bath & matching single in the new, both are getting rubber waterproof click in flooring & both get new toilets and fans.

See the green wall in the original bathroom? If its not a supporting wall, I'd like to remove it completely. All it does is hide the toilet from the sink area & it won't be needed. Removing it will make the bathroom bigger and provide a space for a dirty clothes hamper & scales.

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And Now The Bad News:

Our Septic Design guy told us we can't upgrade our gravity system & would HAVE to put in a completely new pump system at a cost of about $24,000.

That's OK, we didn't want to ruin the lawn and now we can concentrate on the bathrooms.

His name is Frank, a friend of a friend. He quoted us $1,400 for the design & permits, ALL the other companies I spoke with wanted $4,000-$6,000 for the same things. One of the companies was rude to me in an email so she's not getting my money. 

Well, neither is Frank, he's not charging us anything at all.

Promises Broken

I promised to write about England after France, then I didn't do it. I've been so busy, with work, holidays, shopping, more work. Seems every time I turn around I get called in for another shift.

We had a bid in early December for our winter season ( January 5th - March 15th) and I got a 36 hour selling shift. Sue & Lisa decided to go to Bainbridge and Joe made a bonehead mistake & faxed his bid upside down so I lucked out. Don't know how lucky I really am, since the first two days of each week will suck:
Sunday 8:05am-2:05pm
Monday 1:00pm-6:00pm
Tuesday & Wednesday OFF
Thursday midnight-9am
Friday midnight-9am
Saturday 8:25am-3:25pm
Beginning my work week with 2 graves sucks because I'll have to go to bed early on my days off in order to get up at 11:10pm but its guaranteed hours and winter schedule sucks for on-calls.

I HATE graveyards but getting a nice guaranteed paycheck every month for 3 months will be worth it.

We're planning on another home renovation which will include:
Septic Design upgrade from 2 bedroom to 4 bedrooms
Add another bathroom upstairs
Redo master bath upstairs, currently Jack & Jill bath.

This is into the bathroom from the other room, our current bedroom is on the other side of the far door. 

We will AT LEAST replace this dated cabinet, countertop & sinks with something pretty, maybe rustic. I'll be looking for a good used one and hope to find a good quartz countertop with 2 sinks. I'm sure I'll have to buy that new. We can add a nice back splash since we know how now.

I'd like a vanity like this, plain & simple

From our current room into the other bedroom, sinks on the right of this photo

We won't do anything to upgrade the tub/shower enclosure because its practically brand new. It needs a new fan as the old one is original to the house & has a red bulb meant to warm a person and the fan is LOUD. The sky light is awesome.

The floor is vinyl & we're going to get a plastic/rubber click in floating floor & just put it in right over the top of this. 

The new bathroom would be added beside this one, just reversed and instead of a tub we'll put in a standing shower. 

A new toilet is about $200 and I'd like to have a new one in each bathroom. 

I'd like a single pedestal sink in the new bathroom. We do have to figure out either a fan or small window & right now there will be enough room for a window beside the shower.

But I'll totally settle for a single vanity sink.

Our bedroom currently measures 14.5 x 13.5 feet, the new bathroom would take up 5.5 feet, leaving the bedroom 9.5 x 13.5, still plenty big enough for a kids bedroom. A doorway would be put in the wall where a closet is at, the closet would be removed. There is still another large closet in that room. The door that goes from the hallway to our room now would become the new bathroom door.

I don't think the carpet would have to be replaced, just cut down to size and the extra added to the new doorway. 

We would have to move into the other bedroom as we can't  use that room for the bathroom because of hallway doors & permanent walls. The door from our room into the jack & jill would be moved to the closet area so we wouldn't even have to purchase another door.

Its not going to be cheap, I'm figuring upwards of $10k. And while we're at it, we're going to get the septic tank upgraded to a 4 bedroom (currently 2 br) which could run an additional $10k if it all goes well. We can  only hope for that BUT doing these things will increase our homes value and make it a heck of a lot more sellable.

My Heart Is Full

We had a GREAT time in England & France

In Annecy they had a parade for us

This castle ruins was really cool

Scotland didn't let us down one bit

London

Someday we'll go again & next time we'll know more about what we will do in advance. This was such an awesome trip and we saw so many amazing things.

Next time we go we will have a lot more things planned out in advance. 

We'll do a lot more research (we did tons!!) into the things we want to see and places we want to go. 

In the past I've always had a plan, with a map & predetermined points of interest. This time it wasn't always like that. We knew our phones wouldn't work perfectly but hadn't planned on NO phones unless we were getting free wifi. I hadn't planned on so many people, since last time I was there it was shitty weather and this time it was FABULOUS most of the time.

Next time we'll have a hotel room in a central location & take day trips from there. Not another trip where we're driving most of each day to get to our next destination.

We stayed at a hostel in London, the White Ferry House, above a pub;

they had 9 males & females in our room, there were 8 rooms all together with only 2 bathrooms w/5 stalls in each. That's 10 toilet/shower/sink tiny rooms for 72 people to use. You couldn't get dressed in your room because there were people of the opposite sex in all the rooms and the bathrooms had an hour long waiting line and there were no toilets that weren't in the tiny shower rooms.

Next night was in France at an Airbnb in Montpellier.

It was hell getting into the room because of no phone service but nice people spent an hour helping us. The room was small & had a fold out double size futon. Check out @ 10am and no time to enjoy the cute little outside garden.

The 2nd night in France was another Airbnb studio with another fold out bed. Much cuter than the first place, this one was in Cannet, the old town just above Cannes. So beautiful, with tiny streets that everyone whipped through in their cars. parking was scarce, motorcycles & scooters everywhere.

This window looked out over the tiny alley, into & through the neighbors yard. It took us about 2 hours to find this place & another hour to park.

This is the stuff I wanted Lan to see & he loved it.

Tourettes-sur-loop village. 

This place was AMAZING. People still live there & work in the small buildings & run shops. 

 On Saturday we were in Annecy, where they had a freaking parade for us!!!!

The Return From the Alpine Pastures.

First there was delicious food, sausages & scalloped potatoes cooked in HUGE flying pans.

Then the parade.

We went to the Museum of the French Revolution

Back I n the olden times, Lans ancestors were 'ROYALTY' in France but were on the wrong side of the people & suring the revolution they had to leave France for America in the dark of night.

This chateau used to be a castle so while visiting it I made up stories of what Lans great-g-g-g-g grandparents would have been doing while there.

On Sunday we went to Chamonix, rode the gondola up to the top.

We spent 3 hours up there, 12,602 feet in elevation. Can't say enough about this place, LOVED IT.

Glass floors with nothing below you for 1,000 feet

When we were leaving the Alpenglow on the French Alps was oh, so gorgeous.

Then we headed back south Monday; this is the Carcassonne Castle.

We got there too late in the day to go inside but the church was still open & it was beautiful

We also enjoyed a vry nice dinner in one of the squares, I had blackened escargot in a tomato sauce. YUM.

Tuesday we were flying back to London but not till 2:30 so we had several hours in the morning to explore. Decided on a castle ruins 2+ hours northwest of the airport.

Stopped for a pee break along the way and found this gem. An old swimming hole with this OLD bridge over it. You can see where the old bridge was added to to make it fit present day cars.

Château de Peyrepertuse

next post will be all about the UK portion of our trip.