Would You Tues: It's Back!

This Tuesday we welcome back our regular "Would You Tues?" feature, where we ask you probing, intellectual question (not really) and you answer it. 

This week, we're wondering: How have you made your current home as beautiful as it is? 

a) We had it built!

b) We bought a new home (built on spec)!

c) We bought an existing home and have primarily hired renovators since!

d) We bought an existing home and have primarily renovated it ourselves!

e) We bought an existing home and have learned to love it as it is!

f) We aren't homeowners yet, but someday we plan to (choose from above).

...and don't forget to tell us why you've chosen to go the direction you've taken!

Answer the question in the comments or on our Facebook page, we'd love to hear from you.

Most of you will know that we bought an existing home, and I'm not sure what the second half of the answer should be. We're fumbling our way through renovations, hiring out the tasks when we need to, learning some of it ourselves, and learning to love a lot of it as is until we can save up time and money to tackle them. 

So far we've ripped out our previous boiler system (ourselves), gutted our basement (ourselves), put in a new HVAC system and hot water tank (hired), new windows (hired), gutted our bathroom (ourselves), put in a new bathroom, learned to love the empty room at the end of the hall as is until warmer weather comes and we can deal with some of the insulation issues, redecorated our office and bedroom (ourselves with help), and a few other touches around our new to us house. Check out our Take the Tour page for before pictures, and we'll be adding progress photos one of these days when our house is clean (maybe when the bathroom is done?). 

It's all in the journey, and while it's taking us a lot longer than it would take someone handier, or someone who is more able to dedicate all of their time to the project, we're learning as we go and are sure our house will be beautiful when we're done with it in a few years. 

Today is about you though, tell us about your house adventures, whether they are buying a new house that is ready for paint and furniture, or have bought a huge project that is going to take years to complete. 

Resolution Progress

This poll wasn't well publicized as I've been running out of steam on poll ideas! However, we'll still use this opportunity to share how well we're doing on our resolutions (or not so well). 

Philip:

1. Get two rejection notices.

This deals with my desire to move my dreams of being a writer forward. While I didn't send anything off to a publisher, I did keep working hard on two fronts: directing our church's Valentine's Dinner Theatre that I wrote, and outlining the plot of the books I want to write. (Yes, books. I never like to make it easy on myself.)

2. Watch this year's Best Picture nominees before next year's ceremony.

Let's have a look at the scorecard:
Amour: No.
Argo: Not yet.
Beasts of the Southern Wild: Nuh-uh.
Django Unchained: More like Django Unwatched at this point.
Les Misérables: Cass saw it without me.
Life of Pi: Want to read the book first.
Lincoln: Not yet.
Silver Linings Playbook: No.
Zero Dark Thirty: Not this one either.
What's Your Number: Oh heck yeah!
Wait, that last one wasn't nominated? And it was released a couple years ago? And wasn't even close to getting nominated? Darn.
That said, I did watch Winter's Bone. And like I told Cass, the folks adapting Mockingjay for the screen better try to find something great in that mediocre source material or else perhaps the greatest actress in a long time will be wasted on that movei. (Cass: When editing it I could have changed this to *movie* but I chose to stick with the way more cool movei "mov-eye" is how I pronounce it.)

3. Get everything upstairs that's not related to the kitchen done.

The bathroom has remained stalled for these last couple weeks, but that's going to change this weekend (I hope). We've put in an order for some bathtub hardware and are intending to do some final demolition and reinsulation/vapour barrier work this weekend.

4. Rediscover my At-Work Mojo

A bit boring to talk about, but my energy and motivation levels have grown significantly. I'm responsible for a lot of the content marketing and social media for our company, and on both counts we've been making headway. And just recently I wrote some well-received ad copy for an interesting new campaign we'll be running this year.

5. Run a marathon.

On Saturday, I was outside shovelling snow for two hours. Twice last week I caught an earlier bus home that drops me off at a stop further afield, so I got a pair of brisk 15-minute walks in both of those days. And that catches you up on my exercise for the last week. Not exactly carving a chiseled six-pack, but I haven't lost hope yet.

Cassondra:

1. God Related: Do a great job with Sunday School & Care Group, start a new daily devotional and get back to daily Bible reading.

The first two are a bit hard to measure, but we have started a great devotion book I'd recommend! It's the Experiencing God daily devotional, I believe we got it from our church at our bridal shower. I like it because it's very practical, it's a very small page to read which is nice before bed and actually gives us more time to discuss what we read instead of one of us slowly dozing off as we read it, very easy to relate to and read. 

2. Philip Related: 2 dates a month.

We mostly failed at this this month, as far as intentional dates (although we're hoping to have one Wednesday - we'll see). However, I'd say that we did have lots of good quality time and were close as a couple this month which was a great thing to see. Definitely recognizing lately how important it is to put time and effort into being a better spouse and having a strong and healthy marriage. 

3. Health Related: Get outside and exercise more.

This month I helped Philip shovel way more often than normal, so definitely got outside - but not every day. The exercising is going to come too, I did a couple of times this month even with our fish bowl window, and our blinds are coming in a couple of weeks which will mean no more excuses!

4. Blog Related: Write more posts ahead of time, learn Photoshop, line up some house tours and guest posts.

I did pretty good at this this month! I planned all the posts out at the beginning of the month, and it only started to fall apart a few posts ago. This post was written yesterday, and at the same time I wrote some posts for the end of the week and next week so that's not too shabby! Also the series for next month should help with this because it will give me a month to get ahead on writing house update posts. 

5. House Related: Get the main floor to a place we're content with.

We're still working away on our bathroom and extra bedroom this month, so we're getting there! Also the February organizing series will help to get my butt in gear with getting settled into some of the already occupied rooms.

6. Finance Related: Enter receipts regularly.

I did pretty good on this too! I have a few receipts from this weekend I haven't gotten to yet, but I did catch up on receipts and entered them pretty regularly this month. On our way to being even more in control of our finances!

This made me laugh out loud,
even though it might offend some I thought it was worth sharing.

How are you doing on your resolutions? Should we share more monthly updates on these? Also, not sure how we'll do on sharing our quarterly t0-do list at the end of February because of the series I've mentioned...might have to postpone that until the end of March - but don't worry, we'll still be working away at that list! Also make sure to enter this week's poll as we think ahead to Valentine's day!

The Slowest Demolition in History

As of right now our bathroom renovation is sort of at a standstill. I've mentioned before, Philip is really busy with drama and so the gutting of the bathroom has taken a back seat. We have, however, achieved some progress and so I'll catch you up.

I'm not sure that we've ever even shared a before picture of this room. So here's a close up at what we were getting ourselves into:

Photo from before we moved in, courtesy of the realtor.

The highlights of this room were the floor with its gold sparkles, and the ivory and chocolate swirl plastic tiles. That's all gone now, and so you can use this picture as a reference when we reveal what we've accomplished.
 
We started by having a plumber come and do some work because this bathroom actually had no water shut offs, and so since we knew it would be a long project, and because it's a good thing to have, a plumber came and set up shut offs for us. After that, we removed the toilet, sink, and bathtub. Then we ripped out walls.

What's left to do:

• Take down the ceiling: For some reason we just haven't done this yet. It gets so dusty when we start, and I don't like doing it really because it takes me way longer than it would take Philip just because I'm not really a power tool user and I'm not that strong. 
• Take down the exterior wall: This wall needs to be done at the same time that we re insulate so we don't get super energy inefficient. 
• Reconfigure Plumbing
• Install bathtub
• Electrical
• Drywall
• Paint - we talked about yellow before...I'm also contemplating black. I'm shocking these days, you never know what could happen.
• Flooring
• Reinstall everything

I have no idea how long this is going to take us, but we're just trying not to burn ourselves out with everything that's going on lately, so we're taking our time. Hopefully one day we can go to the bathroom upstairs again though. Anyone else at a standstill with a major project?