Bathroom Remodel (FINALLY!!!)

I have pictures!  I have stories!  It is finally done!!!  HOORAY!  Years after the walls fell out of the
shower, we finally have a bathroom that not only can we use - but we can be proud of it!

As a reminder - THIS is what happened to our bathroom, pictures and all.

After more years than I want to count, we finally got ourselves together enough to pay for the remodel!  HOORAY! 

We went to one of the local home improvement stores, and had them do the big jobs - tub and tub surround, vanity, toilet and flooring.)

Husband re-enameled the wall tile.

We replaced the baseboard heater.  (C'mon, these things were installed in 1970.  You can't convince me that they're any kind of efficient.  I've got 6 more to replace in this house.)

We replaced the light fixture over the sinks.

And painted the trim and the doors.  I really didn't want to be painting anything over new flooring!

Now, here we are.  A fully functional 2 bathroom house.  I still can't believe that all 5 of us were sharing the master bathroom for as long as we have been.   What a long time this repair has been in the making!  Below, you'll see the pictures of the bathroom.  It's quite the change, isn't it?  And the best part of all of this?  We were able to pay for this renovation out of pocket.  Yes, it's taken years, but we paid cash.  Husband was able to do much of the work himself.  As a result, we saved a LOT of money on the overall cost.

If you'll excuse me, I'm off to go take my first bath in almost 10 years!

Bathroom Tile

The tile formerly known as yellow.

Disclosure Notice: This post contains Affiliate Links.

While I really wanted to have the old yellow tile ripped off the walls of the bathroom, it cost more
than we had in our budget.  After doing a lot of research, we decided to try painting the bathroom tile - to re-enamel it - so that it still looked like ceramic tile.  White ceramic tile, but ceramic tile.  Our thought was that if it looked horrible, we were giving ourselves enough time to rip out the tile ourselves and replace the wall with bead board paneling or ceramic tile.

Thankfully, the experiment worked!

Here's how we did this:

1) We used this product:



2) Husband spent time following the directions to the letter.  He cleaned the tile with Comet, cleaned it again using Lime Away, and then lightly sanded the tile.  Keep in mind, we're talking a LOT of tile here.  This is the tile on the walls surrounding the entire bathroom.  The tile came a little over halfway up the walls.

3) After the first coat, the walls looked like this.  (And the house smelled HORRIBLE.)

4) Since we had the time, we waited a week before we painted on the second coat.  The walls looked like this when we finished:

5) We still have time to add another coat if we want.  We've got another week or so before the installation of the floor begins!  What do you think, should we go for a third coat?

Look at that snazzy new baseboard heater!!

So, even without the help of the Property Brothers, HGTV, or This Old House, this project is getting done!!!   I don't want to discourage anyone from HGTV from helping us out here.  Believe me, we've got MORE big projects that need to be done.  This is just the first of many.

NoSpenduary - Week Two

Things We Did to Save Money This Week-

I am working on cleaning through the freezers and pantry.  My goal is to eat through a good chunk of what's in there so that we can get rid of one of the two freezers.  After all, my in-laws left one of the freezers here when we bought the house.  It's over 40 years old.  You can't convince me that it's not eating more energy than it's worth! Sooooo.... this leads to item number one:

1) The big, old freezer has been filled with everything from the chest freezer.  The chest freezer is unplugged, and being defrosted.  Once all of the ice on the sides is melted off, I'll clean it completely out and shift everything back over to the chest freezer.

2) I turned the ceiling fan switches to "winter" mode.  They run backwards, pulling the warm air down from the ceiling and back down to the floor - where we need it!

3) I finally went grocery shopping this week.  I haven't been since before Christmas.  But, we had finally run through the last of the fresh produce in the house, so I made a quick stop at a couple of places to pick up a few things.  I went to two year round farm stands in addition to the grocery store.  At the first farm, I picked up a 50 pound bag of potatoes and a 20 pound bag of onions, and some lettuce.   I also got several bags of their "save these veggies".  These are bags of veggies that are not perfect, and could turn soon, but are awesome if they hit a soup pot in the next couple of days.  At the second farm, I picked up a box of produce and some eggs.   At the grocery store, I  picked up the staples I didn't already have on hand:  carrots, oatmeal, sugar, coconut milk, etc.

4) I made cakes for the kids' birthday celebrations - sorta.  Daughter had a lemon cake.  I'll share the recipe here later this week.  It took surprisingly few ingredients.  Even better, you couldn't tell that it was gluten and dairy free!  For middle child's birthday, I was working.  His sister made him a cookie cake.  She made a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, and then spread it out on a pizza stone, leaving about a half inch around the edge.  Her masterpiece was gluten and dairy full, so I did not get a taste of it.  However, since it disappeared within a day, I'm assuming that it was acceptable! 



Dinner-

Teriyaki Chicken
So, this is a freezer meal that's been sitting in the big freezer downstairs for way too long.  I pulled this out, thawed it out and tossed it into the crock pot before I left for work.  We had A LOT of chicken left over.  (This really isn't one of my favorite recipes.  I think that this is why I've had a couple of the pre-made bags laying around the freezer for so long.)

Chicken Wild- Rice Casserole
I found this recipe HERE on The Kitchn's website.  This IS one of my favorite recipes!  It is traditionally a freezer meal, but we can never keep it in the freezer for long if we know it's there.  We really, really like this recipe!  I swapped in the leftover Teriyaki Chicken in place of the raw chicken the recipe calls for.  I also used one of the way too many boxes of Long Grain and Wild Rice that I have sitting in the kitchen cabinet!

Taco Night
 aka Taco Tuesday!  I made 2 huge messes of taco meat, one with real meat and one with fake meat.  I served it along with Corn, Refried Beans, and Spanish Rice.  We ate a lot of it, but not all of it. It was messy and wonderful!  I saved the leftovers to use another night.  (This was dinner on middle child's birthday!)

Taco Salad
Combined with lettuce and a bag of Fritos, all of the taco leftovers make one of the best salads known to our family.  Seriously, it's an easy meal, and picky eaters love it.  (Heck, even I eat it willingly, and I'm not known to love salads!)

Baked Acorn Squash stuffed with Quinoa
I had picked up two big bushels of winter squash for $30 back in the fall.  These hardy winter stalwarts last for a long time, but they do need to be eaten!  Tender acorn squash are sliced crosswise into rounds, and filled with a vegetable quinoa stuffing.  It's filling, healthy, and a great way to warm up the house on a cold winter's evening!  You can find the recipe here:  Baked Acorn Squash.
(I made this for daughter's birthday.  It's one of her favorites!)

Bean Soup
Made with a pound of dried beans.

Baked Beans
I took the leftover bean soup, poured it into a casserole pan, and then drizzled molasses over the top.  Baked at 350* for an hour, I thought it was pretty good!

NoSpenduary - Week One

The goal at the end of this three month period is to have a nice chunk of change saved up in order to renovate the hallway bathroom.  So, here's what I did to save money this week:

• Lowered the thermostats throughout the house to 65*.  We have baseboard heat throughout the house, so we lowered the thermostats as much as possible.   
•  I took lunch to work every day.  Usually, my lunch was leftovers from one of the other meals.
• Breakfast every day was oatmeal.  I picked up a Dairy Free version of Egg Nog just after Christmas.  I made overnight oats with my Dairy Free Egg Nog, Craisins, and Pecans.  Not too shabby for a quick overnight meal!
• I turned out lights throughout the house in the rooms we weren't using.
• Husband's birthday was this past week.  We made his favorite cake for him - German Chocolate - from scratch.  I also made a kick-ass stir fry for him.  We took him out to the movies for his celebration.  (I used a gift card to the movies that was given to us for Christmas for admission.)

Dinners This Week 

1. Bean Soup. With the leftover ham bone from Christmas, I made a huge pot of bean soup with the little white beans.  (Dried).  I had leftover roasted veggies from Christmas that I added to the pot.  (Carrots, leftover baked potatoes, onions, etc.)
2. Baked Beans. I took the leftover bean soup, poured it into a 9 x 13 inch casserole dish, poured a drizzle of molasses over top, and baked it at 350* for 30 minutes.   
3.  Sloppy Joe Potatoes.  When we went to my Mom's house to celebrate Christmas two weeks ago, I made Sloppy Joes for dinner.  I made two batches - one vegetarian and one with 2 pounds of ground turkey.  I froze the leftovers.  I pulled them out, and we had that served over baked potatoes for dinner.
4. Baked Chicken Fajitas.  Believe it or not, I found the recipe on Facebook, via a Tasty feed.  (Let's see if the link works! Chicken Fajitas) It was quick and easy!  We had leftovers, which I took for lunch both days. (For lunch, I wrapped the leftovers in corn tortillas.)
5. Salmon.  I found a bigly fillet of salmon on sale this week.  We cooked it up for dinner one night.  I served it with a huge salad and the leftover sweet potato and pomegranate salad, and baked cabbage steaks.  I saved back a portion of the salmon for dinner the next night.
6. Salmon Pasta Salad.  Made with the leftover salmon.
7. Kick Ass Stir Fry.  I made this with the last of the leftover ham from Christmas, a couple of scrambled eggs, and all of the raw veggies that were still left from the Christmas veggie tray.  (Celery, Carrots, Cauliflower, Broccoli, and an onion.)  I used brown rice instead of white rice as our base.

Are you cutting back on spending this month?  What are you doing to save?