Grannie Frannie Runs: Master Plan....baby steps

Steve and Fran's Farmhouse - as my children have named it on Facebook is small. It is approximately 1400 square feet. But in this house we have lived for nearly 22 years and raised 3 children. For nearly the entire time that we lived in the house, I have been talking about remodeling. It has fondly been called Fran's Master Plan.

Steve and Fran's Farmhouse - desperately in need of being bigger

Every time Steve would want to fix something or upgrade something, I would say, "But very soon we are going to be remodeling. Do we want to spend the money then just tear it down?" Well, I said that for nearly 20 years. Steve would give me one of his looks that said "we aren't ever going to remodel, but I will humor you for a while."

Last year though, I made a break through. I finally hired a designer who had drawn up remodeling plans. I showed Steve some of the first drafts. He gave me his input and revisions were made. I found the last draft in my e-mail in-box 2 days after Steve was killed.

Now the dilemma - a house that was way too small for Steve and me seems too big for me alone. So, I'm not making any major renovation decisions for at least a year. But that will be a blog farther down the road.

In the mean time....My friend Rachel, had a house built several years ago. She tiled the entire house by herself. She has listened to my remodeling stories for years and came up with an idea. She had lots of tile left over from her house - She either bought too much, or the tile wasn't the right type, or not the right color. She wasn't able to take any of the tile back. So she offered to come over and teach / help me tile the 2 bathrooms.

This wasn't a major project, but it was more than I have done in 20 years on the house. I would like to think that Steve was proud of me that I finally did something.

(Pardon the crazy blog. I probably need some technical help with cutting, pasting, and getting things in the right place. Trying to get better.)

We have 2 bathroom. Both are very small. Bathroom number one is in the Master Bedroom and the other is called the Kid's Bathroom

Master Bath Before renovation began.

Carpet has been in the house for over 22 years.

Kid's Bathroom. The carpet was reomoved

about 12 years ago. It had just a plain cement

floor (I actually painted it last summer when

Steve's sisters were coming to visit.

I had some prep work to do before we could begin the tile work. I had to take out the carpet from the Master Bathroom. When I pulled up the carpet, I discovered old linoleum that had to removed also.

The linoleum had a very strong PineSol smell to it

Scraping off Very old linoleum

So, I took off work on Monday - a dedicating Tile day. Rachel showed me how to do everything, then we both got to work. She was a bit faster than me, but I got better as better as we went along.