Mini Jim Brickman

F truly loves piano. He picked one really easy and one really challenging piece for his spring recital this year. The challenging one, an arrangement of the Jim Brickman song Rocket to the Moon, marks the first time he hasn't had his recital piece 100% memorized,  but it's also the longest/most complicated piece he's played. 

When he chose this song we came to an agreement - he could perform it only if he put in extra practice so he would be prepared come recital day. Boy, did he ever practice. Most days it was about an hour and he only complained once  (he bargained for practice a different time of day, not to give it up altogether). It paid off! 

I want to give a very special shout out to my aunt Pam who decided F would be a good recipient for my grandma's piano. I hope you know how wonderful that made F feel and I believe that having a piano that is his very own is part of what makes music so special to him. 

Demo Complete

Stage 1 is done, with demolition completed and the first part of new framing underway. We also ran into our first hiccup...

Everything out, wiring exposed, noticed some holes in the sub-floor. No biggie, provides wiring access and easily patched.

Plumbing all capped off and ready for next step, moving it all over the room.

 Existing pocket door exposed and ready to be taken out.

Master view of torn out wall and existing pocket door.

Making extra sure we like the way our new layout is going to look by using F's art paper and drawing out tub and vanity to scale. Tried out the look of the new tub filler, too bad it'll get mostly covered up by the tub, it's pretty!

New framing for the new pocket door location. Our first hiccup, they added a 2x4 to the header and it made the door opening small enough that now Travis has to duck. They'll be back in during the next framing stage to correct.

Master bedroom view of new pocket door location.

The Before for Before and After

We've lived in our house 5.5 years now (the longest I've ever lived in one place) and our 35 year old house has some parts that are just wearing out. Like this:

That's my super disgusting rusting master bath sink. Note the painted over tile surrounding it.

The bathroom wasn't bad when we moved in, the tile paint update had been done recently so it was still in good shape and the previous owners had updated the plumbing and light fixtures with big box grade items. But over time the sinks are rusting, the tile finish is cracking, the big box fixtures are failing, and the non-functioning jetted tub is just too darn small for a decent soak.  After my sink took a turn for the worse we decided to push back our planned kitchen remodel and instead of patching up the bath just tear the whole thing out and do it the way we want it. 

We started getting bids early this year, picked out fixtures and finishes, drew up a plan, and this week we finally kick off demo.  Already all the lights are gone (Travis is our electrical contractor).

 The door on the right leads to the master bedroom. It's going to shift toward where the bath/shower are now to make room for a soaking tub. Where the shower walls are now will shrink to just shower size (now it's shower and tub together) and we'll have a vanity in between where the sink is in the above photo.

See that nasty tub? That's sort of almond colored? That's because the whole bathroom used to be almond colored until they painted over the tile and added white vinyl wainscot. You can see the almond tile in the places where the coating is cracking off.

We've moved into the guest room for the time being. Next week is demo and framing, week 1 of a nearly 2 month project.

Mother's Day Composition

This morning I was presented with a lovely card and an announcement that in my honor FFM was releasing his first ever composition on Mother's Day. He's been working on it for a few weeks and yesterday he finalized it. Presenting, "Shooting Star" by F. Moore.