Christmas Greetings 2012!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours! We wish you a joyous and healthy holiday season. 

With Love,
Chanelle, Tim, Turner, Monkey, and Sullivan

Picture Joy Christmas

Turn your favorite photos into Christmas cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Photographs taken by Angie Dowers, Expressions Photography.

Building the Ark

Okay, so now that we tore apart the bathroom, it's time to rebuild it. Unfortunately, this process takes a lot longer than tearing it apart! As I mentioned, my mom, Steve, and Rex came to the rescue.

I don't have any photos of the tub setting. Here's how it went: take out the old tub, check supports in the floor to make sure the joists are still in good shape (we were good there), place the new tub, level, and set it. Voila.

Rex installed new drywall for us. This new drywall is green because it's a moisture resistant sheet rock intended for use in bathrooms.

You basically clean up the rough edges of the existing drywall, score the sheet rock, snap it, and screw it into the studs.

Then you tape everything with mesh drywall tape.

You fill in the drywall tape and other small holes with putty (or rather, you kindly ask Steve to do it.). Once it dries you sand, sand, sand for a smooth finish.

See the silver behind Steve's head? We had to use metal patches (see below) for the big holes where the porcelain toothbrush and soap holders used to live. Same idea, they just have big metal pieces for stability for such a huge hole. It worked like a charm.

Remember the area where the medicine cabinet used to live? Rex covered that with a new piece of drywall too. He had to attach a new 2x4 adjacent to the stud to secure it.

The floors also got new sheet rock too since we planned to tile them.

 Hey, this kinda looks like a bathroom again!

It's a Dirty Job...

Demo. It's a dirty job. Tim did ALL of the demo himself! He was eager to get a start on this project since my mom, Steve, and Rex were headed down soon to help us install the new tub.

Here's my wonderful husband proudly demolishing our old bathroom!

Beneath the toilet, Tim unearthed two old layers of linoleum. Can you imagine this faux brick look with our aqua tiles? Wow.

Here's a shot of the linoleum we lived with for close to two years.

That's a Coke, not a beer. As Steve says, Don't Drink and Demo!

Tim turned off the water valve, but there's an old sour cream container to catch any drips. Look at the empty floor where the vanity and toilet used to be!

You can see in the back of this photo that Tim peeled off the first layer of tile. More on that to come in a minute... Tim had several holes to patch. These are two of the smaller holes from the shelf that once lived here. That's pretty easy.

Now these holes... that's another story. How on earth are we going to patch them? We had no idea that the porcelain soap and toothbrush holders would leave gaping holes in the wall. We thought they were attached to drywall not sunk IN drywall!

Former vanity. It was gross!

Whoa, what happened to the bathtub!? He peeled away the first tile around the perimeter of the bathtub. Then, he took a circular saw and cut a nice hole in the drywall and took the tile out in chunks. We didn't want to redrywall the whole bathroom, so taking away the first tile allowed us to preserve the good drywall and just install new over the tub surround.

Tim managed to demo the entire bathroom by himself except removal of the tub. It was too large and unwieldy to get himself. He also cleaned up the debris.

A few days later, my mom, Steve, and Rex came and helped remove the tub. We were left with this completely empty shell of a former bathroom! What did we get ourselves into? :)

Upstairs Bathroom: Before

 The moment you've all been waiting for... or maybe the moment I've been waiting for... or maybe I'm 6 months overdue in posting this project. Whatever the case may be... enjoy! Okay, so our upstairs bathroom was pretty funky. I don't think I realized how bad it was until we started tearing it apart.

Aqua tiles that look straight out of the 1950s + brown vanity = awesome.

Peeling linoleum? Even better.

Actually, the toilet looks pretty crisp and white in this photo. So that's not too bad, but we're replacing it anyway. Who wants a 30 year old toilet in a brand new bathroom?

You can barely see the corner of the vanity top. The previous owners had actually replaced this while they lived in the home. It wasn't in bad shape either, but we wanted a vanity with two sinks, so it too had to go.

What would you call that? Seafoam green? Aqua? Not-quite-turquoise? It's hard to say.

This is my favorite. Wicker cabinet, oh yeah. Notice we had already updated the light fixture when my mom and Rex came down to help with several other light fixtures in the house.

Tiny shelf, but functional.

You recall my ideas for this bathroom here. Just wait and see how close we come...

Craft Crazy

In the weeks before Baby White arrived, I was in a frenzy to finish projects. You might call this nesting. Or, you could say this was my attempt to keep busy with small projects instead of staring at the calendar waiting for him to arrive. Either way.

I love organization. I saw this idea on Pinterest and then executed in my friend Kathy's home. Unlike me, Kathy actually executes most of the stuff she pins on pinterest. This is our weekly organizer for events, meals, etc. It helps keep us on track and makes sure that we have a plan for groceries and not wasting food. This is just a $10 frame from Wal Mart. I stamped the days of the week on scrapbook paper and plopped it in the frame. Easy!

My next project included these supplies. It also cost less than $10.

I had been wanting to do some kind of art for our downstairs bathroom. The walls needed some visual interest, but I didn't want to put pictures of people in there (creepy!).

I also had 3 canvases leftover from my last failed art project, so I thought I better use them or get rid of them.

Canvas + foam brush + acrylic paint = bathroom art. Simple enough.

I figure I can always change it if I get sick of looking at this.

Turner's Room

The green room has been the most used yet least used room in the house. Sounds odd? Read more. 

It first began as a guest bedroom when we moved into our house.

 Then we decided to paint it green and move the guest bedroom.

 This was supposed to be our project room, but it was more of a storage room.

Instead of being a place where we could sit and work on projects, it was overrun with projects!

We finished our bathroom renovation and purchased new carpet, so this room was a clean slate for Baby White.

We liked the natural wood finish on the furniture. Hopefully, he will be able to use this furniture for some time since the crib converts to a toddler bed then to a full size.

The rocker/recliner has been so nice for those middle of the night visits to the nursery. I cannot imagine having one of those wooden rocking chairs (no offense if you have one, ours just seems more comfortable!). The puff hanging from the ceiling is a collection of little tissue paper pom poms, made by my good friend Natalie for my baby shower. I put all of the pom poms together and added a ribbon so it could hang from the ceiling. Here we are with our boys:

Two Old Friends and Two New Friends

In addition to the main furniture items, we do have some sweet details. The left frame contains a poem my good friend Jamie wrote for Baby White. The right frame is a gift from Turner's grandparents to us. They gave it to us at the hospital and it has all of his birth stats! Such a personalized gift (and so quick too).

These two jungle themed items are a growth chart and animal print from family friend Irene and Tim's parents, respectively. They look so cute together even though they came from two different people! Our boy sure is growing fast.

This cute little frame is from our friends Chris and Abby Trout. We filled it with two baby photos of me and two of Tim. Right now, Turner shares a bit more of my likeness. What do you think?

Baby White

Hi, I'm back! Did you miss me? Things have been pretty busy at the White house. For starters, we had a baby. I didn't mention that I'm pregnant? Oops. Well, I am-- or I was. Tim and I found out we were expecting a new addition of the human variety (unlike our new addition, Sullivan). Our little guy was due August 9th, so we scurried to finish projects at our house before his arrival. Here's an early image of the little guy.

Welcome to the world, Baby White! Turner Robert White joined our family July 29, 2012. Little T is busy growing, eating, and playing, but he'll be involved in DIY projects before we know it.

Hello Boy Baby Announcements

Click here to browse Shutterfly birth announcement designs.

View the entire collection of cards.

We've been pretty busy with this little cutie the last 3 months. There has been very little time for DIY projects, but I do have some fun things to share. Most of our projects were pretty small, but we did throw in another bathroom renovation. I'll be back to share more!