Running to the (New, Improved) Bathroom

Back on Memorial Day weekend, which was how long ago?  Almost three weeks? Really?  Sorry.  Anyway, way back then Cherie and Annabel went to Vermont to watch Cherie’s sister Angela run the Vermont City Marathon.  It’s become a bit of tradition to do so, as she runs it every year.  It’s great fun to go cheer her on because she cuts an inspirational and striking figure on the course.

See?  Here she is, ready to start:

Well, she’s in there somewhere.  She did great and finished in just over 4 hours, despite inclement weather and generally not feeling her best.  But that’s not really the point of this post.

Michael didn’t go along this year because he had quite a bit of work lined up for the weekend.  For other people.  Other people who were going to pay him in real money.  We decided that would be a priority over a trip to Vermont.  Since he would be on his own for four days, he thought it would be a good time to redo some of the drywall in the bathroom.

See, the bathroom was the very first room that we drywalled.  And mudded.  And taped.  And sanded.  And mudded.  And sanded.  And mudded.  And sanded.  And let’s not ever do drywall again, okay?

If you take any piece of advice from this houseblog, take this: do not make your first attempt at mudding and taping drywall in the dampest, steamiest room in the house.  In the almost three years since the bathroom was done, the steam took quite a toll on our amateurish attempt at drywall mudding.

Here’s what it looked like in the shower:

And outside the shower:

We had peeling tape, bubbling drywall, and cracks galore.  Not a pretty sight.

So while Cherie and Annabel were gone, Michael took time out from his consumption of greasy Chinese food and bad action movies to retape and mud the seams.  It was quite a sacrifice, since it meant he couldn’t shower until it was done.  (That went with the whole theme of the weekend, really.)

Here’s the shower now:

And outside the shower:

We can all agree that the finished product is a great improvement, yes?  We still need to repaint, but we are not quite as in love with this color as we were at the beginning, so we are taking some time to look at some other options.

Cherie is pleased to tell you that Michael was so lonely without his family that even after finishing the work in the upstairs bathroom he kept working away his sorrows by tiling the downstairs half-bath before sobbing himself to sleep in his empty, quiet house:

But the sobbing had nothing to do with this pinwheel tile, which looks fabulous.

Needless to say, Cherie is planning her next trip away as quickly as possible.