Like whoa walls and ceiling! And then there were lights…

and shower plumbing…

One day I came home, though, to the best update yet

And then we took a weekend trip to Chicago to hit up Ikea and, I guess, have a mini-vacation, too. Semantics. Anyway, we came home to this…

Yay floor! It was finally coming together.

At finders4keepers on Etsy

At BeatificVintage on Etsy

Why? For two reasons. First, my mom loves scarves. She has a million of them and she wears them all the time. Second, these are vintage and Made in the United States. My mom is a very conscientious shopper and it’s important to her that she support domestic companies so I think she’d really appreciate that aspect. As for the colors, I don’t think she has a pastel scarf, although I know it would complement a lot of her outfits, and I just couldn’t resist the blue and orange polka dots. She might not wear that one (i.e. I might steal it from her), but it’s too cute to pass up.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that, for Scott’s part, he suggested that the best present under $25 any mom could get would be an apology (you know, for all the grey hair you gave her as a kid).

I last left you with the finished demo.

Ouch. The first order of business was changing out some pretty terribly plumbing. Our main stack, which we had never really scrutinized other than hiding it behind a neat wall panel on the den side, turned out to be a hot mess. So much of a hot mess that our options were 1) redo the main stack or 2) buy a huge vanity so that the entirety of the underneath could hide the piping for the sink. We opted for choice 1 because I was dying for pedestal sink and was not about to lose that space-saving goodness.

We also discovered that the toilet plumbing ran all along the exterior wall in a haphazard way and, although the pipe to it *probably* wouldn’t freeze, it just wasn’t worth the risk. Instead, the plumber ran the pipes through the ceiling and down a faux wall that Ray built out for the new shower (on the right side of the picture below). Extra insulation, extra protection, extra happiness.

Then came moving the shower drain. Here’s where I was super glad we didn’t DIY this mess. Oh, what’s that? Six inches of cement and totally cutting a main water pipe? Pass.

Spoiler: you can also see straight into our basement from this angle. Don’t worry, that view goes away once the hardibacker goes up.

Luckily that was the worst of it because once the drain was put in the place, the rest of the shower pan moved pretty fast. But that’s a post for another day.

For a long time, the door to the office was the last brown door left in the house.

Now, it wasn’t the worst-looking door in the world, but it definitely didn’t make me happy to see it everyday. We thought about replacing it with a glass-paned door or something a little snazzier, but after installing one of the Craigslist barnyard doors upstairs and having so many left over, we figured waste not, want not. Instead of totally gutting the frame, though, we only changed the door since the strike plate itself was in good shape (unlike the guest room door upstairs, which had a huge crack down the side).

Because this project happened in the midst of “finish this crap up and get on with the weekend” mode, i.e. the entirety of the last two months, I have absolutely no process pictures. Changing out a door is super easy though – take the old door off the hinges, screw the new door on the hinges. Optional: change out the door knob.

I know that’s grossly simplifying it, particularly because we actually had to cut the new door with a jigsaw, route out a new center hinge with a dremel, and paint, but, really, the essence is there.

Here’s the same angle now.

See how it’s a slight, but nice, change? I’m really glad we took the time to do it instead of just painting the brown door. The six panel ties into all of our other doors, now, not to mention the white really lends a finished aire.

I know you can see some new things in the pictures, too, like curtains and paint swatches. It’s embarrassing, really, that our living room has looked like this since March (one curtain panel our of four – the others are waiting to be hem-taped, random paint everywhere), but I promise that soon it’ll be back in shape. Seriously. Soon.

After Craigslisting the crap out of it, we realized we had a little problem – no place to put our Blu-ray player or Google TV. Conundrum!

Since the wall already had a shelf built in, thanks to the odd design of this portion of the house, we figured out that we could just add a small piece of wood at the same level to make a wide enough shelf for the components.

I liked the idea so much that I decided to add a second one for consistency. I don’t think the DVDs will stay on it long term, but we just had them sitting downstairs so I figured they’d at least be organized this way.

It was a super short project that took maybe an hour to assemble. The hardest part was actually choosing the brackets. Scott and I had a lot of disagreements about whether to use more traditional and/or expensive brackets. but in the end I talked him into the $3 jobbies from Home Depot. They’re grey metal and I know they’re usually used in garages and other out-of-the-way places, but I just loved the tapered shape and contrast they offered. The shelves are just two 1x8s painted white to match the color of the wall ledge.

Now the only big question is how to hide the cords. Any suggestions?