Outdoor Spaces – Page 13

Before we can officially move into the new house, I’ve required a working bath tub.

See, we pulled out the claw foot tub and we’ve replaced it with a five foot jetted tub and shower combo.

Which also required removing the small half wall and building a new floor to ceiling wall.

The plumbing runs through the new wall, and a Hardie Backer surround, tub to ceiling. Ben taped and filled the seams and we’re waiting for it to dry.

We also gained a little bit of space for the toilet. A claw foot tub plus a wide half wall in an eight foot square room is a tight fit. Now a five foot tub with a standard wall gives the cramped toilet space a few more valuable inches.

In other bathroom news, we picked up our shower tile and a remnant for our vanity counter today. Hopefully Ben can start (and finish) the shower surround tomorrow. But here’s the counter:

The counter is a 45 inch by 25 inch piece of white quartz. I love that it is light and will allow me to paint the vanity any color I want. Ben got it for 60 bucks, which is about $400 cheaper than the quote we got from the other granite supplier in town. Score!

Even better, this granite place has piles of damaged materials. Ben saw a few pieces of Carrera marble in the heap, so he asked about it. The company is trying to get rid of these and the employee said Ben could take anything he wanted, free.

Those babies are sitting in the garage, waiting for Ben to cut them down to fit our end tables. He sure knows the way to my heart.

In other new house news, I hung a few pictures. Mostly because I don’t want to look at the epileptic seizure inducing wall paper. And because I have about 10 boxes of art at my disposal.

We were able to sell the old bathroom vanity on Craigslist, and now we’re trying to pawn this enormous wooden pergola on someone. No clue of its original purpose, but it’s in our yard and we want it out of there.

We met another neighbor yesterday; Rocky, the rock chuck.

That’s the latest progress. Bring on the bath tub so we can move our beds over! Tell me, what kind of counters do you have in your bathroom? Have you scored any free things lately?

Weather here in Montana was b.e.a.utiful this weekend. On Saturday, we made had a bathroom shopping spree at Home Depot, spurred by a 10% off coupon and a great need for a tub.

That was Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon we went up to the new house. Ben wan’t in the mood to work on the bathroom, so he and Handy Sammy capitalized on the sunny day, working on cleaning up the yard. Year(s) of neglect made the landscaping a hot mess.

Cleaning up loads of weeds and several dead plants. And oodles of pine needles.

I know they hauled at least two pick up truck fulls of pine needles and such from the side yard, right here off the deck.

This little area was also a house plant graveyard. Anything that died got tossed out here, sometimes in the planters, sometimes not. A helpless duck planter (shown above) was an innocent victim of plant and planter tossing.

While we were over there, I asked Ben to cut down a scraggly tree and old stump.

He easily cut down the little Russian Olive tree. The stump was rotten, so a several strong kicks and it fell apart.

After that, we called it a day and headed to the other house for dinner and a shower. On Sunday, Ben started bathroom work while Handy Sammy got friendly with our weed whacker. He asked what he could do, so we asked him to cut down the weed covered hillside.

Now we can see the yard. And all the things we’ll have to do to get it looking nice.

We’re certainly no where near a nicely landscaped yard, but it’s one small step in the right direction. Also, we met several of our new neighbors this weekend. I think they were all very happy to see we’re cleaning it up, lessening the eye sore the previous owner left behind.