Steam Shower Door

We continue to work on the house off and on, but I haven't done an update in a while because it has just been little stuff here and there.  Today, however, was different and deserved to be posted.  We finally got our shower door installed for our steam shower!  We still have to hook up the steam unit and seal the tile and the glass, so we won't be using it quite yet.  I figured that we've waited over a year to shower in the master bathroom, what's a couple more days? 

We can remove the blue tape after the silicon dries, which takes about 24 hours.

 We also purchased blinds for our master bedroom and bathroom.  The blinds are cordless and for in the actual bedroom we got room darkening shades.  Shades up...

 Shades down...

Quite a while ago, we put mantles up on both fireplaces.  They are made of the blue pine beetle and then stained.  We then made a railing, so that when our nieces came to visit they didn't run over the edge to the right of the fireplace and fall down the stairs.  As nice as it was for our nieces, Mocha doesn't think too highly of it because now she can't look downstairs at us as easily.  We also brought our rug out of storage and soon we will have a big leather sectional couch with it.  The couch was on back order, so hopefully by the middle of March, we will actually have a place to sit upstairs!

We searched and searched for dining room tables that we liked and that were big enough for our dining room, but had no luck.  So, recently we purchased more blue pine beetle to make one big dining room table.  The slab in the top of the picture will be used to make the legs and we will join the bottom two together for the actual table top.

 The two pieces for the actual table top

 The end of summer/fall, we did a lot of work to the garage so we could park our vehicles in there for the winter.  We taped, textured, and painted the walls and ceilings; installed the garage door openers; made cabinets; epoxied the floor (it's really dirty right now, but it's a white epoxy with red, black, and silver flakes);  and more recently hung up some peg board.  This picture is just one section of three.  We still have work to do out there as we want to cover the cabinets with laminate.  We still have to tape, texture, paint, and epoxy the third garage bay as well.

 In the Jack and Jill bathroom, we installed a mirror and put a tile border around it that matches the floor tile. 

 We also started installing crown moulding in the dining room.

 Here's the mantle on the downstairs fireplace

 The newest addition to the "man cave" was a dart board.  We made our own frame out of leftover hardwood and trim.

 We have also started hanging up a few more decorations.  Now hanging by the bar are coasters from several breweries across the United States and some overseas.

Not sure why this picture got out of order, but here's the shower door again and the non-room darkening shades.

 It's funny as I started writing this blog, I was feeling like we have accomplished so much, but the more I wrote, the more I found things that still needed to be done!  Stay tuned as we continue on all the little projects we still have yet to complete...

Fireplace Mantle

Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone

Fireplace Mantle Close-Up Picture

Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone

Completed Driveway

We finished the rest of the concrete pad a couple of weeks ago and had a contractor come in and pave from our pad out to the road. They finished up today and it is so nice to have it paved, although we can't drive on it quite yet. Hopefully this will cut down on some of the dirt and dust we have been dragging through the house.
Here is a better picture of the concrete pad

Stamped Concrete Border

Over the last three weeks, we have been busy working on different things around the house so we could get started on putting a driveway in. Travis's dad brought the tractor over one weekend and we graded our lot a little better and compacted the area where the concrete pad would go. After that, we had 12 yards of gravel brought in. While I was on the road for work, Travis spread all 12 yards around the area for the pad, but it still wasn't enough. So another 12 yards was delivered, but this time I was lucky enough to help. I think my back is still sore from shoveling load after load into a wheelbarrow; I couldn't imaging doing all 12 yards by myself! With the gravel all spread and compacted, we started building the forms for the concrete pad. Since Trav and I don't like to make things too easy, we decided to not only do the stamped concrete ourselves, but to do a pattern with a border as well. We were up until there was no more light trying to finish last night because the concrete truck was coming at 7:00 this morning and out working by 5:00 this morning doing all the last minute details. I'm glad I took a couple quick pictures of the forms last night because there was not a minute to spare this morning. We were still running around like chickens with our heads cut off this morning when the concrete truck arrived.

Here are the pictures I managed to get last night of the gravel, forms, rebar, etc.

And the truck arriving right on time...The truck we had made it so much easier. I think they said it could reach up to 50 feet, so they were able to just shoot the concrete right into our forms instead of us having to shovel it around. You can also see what the concrete stamps look like in this picture. They are the blue rubbery looking things. We bought two of them to try and make it easier on ourselves.

This was just after the got all the concrete poured into the forms. We had help from two of Trav's friends, which I am so thankful for because there would have been no way that we could have done it ourselves. You can also see that Trav has been making quite a bit of progress on the rock on the front of the house. He got one of the columns up to the archway and is almost there on the other side.

After screeting and troweling, the concrete was looking pretty good and we just had to wait for it to set up a bit more before we hit it with the stamps. We actually ordered more concrete than we needed, so Trav built a quick step off the door coming out the back side of our garage. It set up a lot faster because there was a lot more direct sunlight on it, so we were able to do somewhat of a practice run with the stamp on that.

By 11:30, we had the release applied which is a powder colorant and the border all stamped. It turned out so awesome and felt like such an accomplishment. Unfortunately I think I will be feeling this accomplishment in my hamstrings for the next couple of days.

The stamp was a cobblestone pattern, so in this view from the front door, you can see the actual pattern a lot better. There is still a lot of release on there, so the grout lines aren't showing up as much as they will. We will wash off the release tomorrow and will probably also add a darker colorant to the grout lines to make them stand out even more.

Mocha even found a new favorite spot!

The next step will be to take the forms off and then pour concrete on the inside of the border. We are looking at doing a red release and a slate stamp which is what we used on our stairs.

Other Bar Updates

We had just a plain white beer fridge, which just didn't have enough flair. So Travis took the angle grinder the the front door and came up with this "stainless steel" look.
No more white door!

Here's a look at the bar area now. We got the shelving all finished and another tv hung.

We had a little Super Bowl party, so here's a video pre-party to show our downstairs made for entertaining! With 3 tvs going at once, it was hard to try and decide which one to watch!

Concrete Countertops

Travis had the past couple of weeks off, so he was busy finishing the bar area. He had to build a couple cabinets for our microwave, wine fridge, and single drawer dishwasher. Then he installed all the cabinets and framed out the countertops so that we could pour them. Here are the forms. There are 2 parts to it; one for the countertops to overhang the cabinets and one for an actual edge.
Then we put in wire

Next we hand mixed the concrete and poured into the form and smoothed out the surface.

Then we waited for it to dry a bit and then we took off the forms around the edges so that we could finish the edges a little better.

And here's the dried concrete. We weren't happy with the color and it dried differently in places, so Travis sanded it down a little bit.

Then we bought concrete coloring and our lack of artistic talents came out. In Travis' attempt to strive for perfection, we ended up putting so much coloring in it that it was darker than we wanted. So, he put another skim coat of concrete over the top and we attempted the coloring again.

A couple coats of sealer and here's the finished product