Packed Car!

On with the bathroom renovation...


One cold Saturday morning in early December Pete made a master shopping list of all materials that the bathroom was going to need, I made a giant cup of coffee and we headed off to our closest Lowes. Which just happens to be in Delaware, so thank you DE for the no sales tax! Four and a half hours later Pete and I emerge from Lowes pushing a loaded cart out from the contractor side of the store. Then we went down the street to Home Depot to get the rest of our list. Thankfully the Home Depot trip was only an hour.


When we got home we took a good look at all the materials crowding our SUV. Then we looked at the tools that needed to come along for the job, that is when everything clicked and we realized that one trip down to the condo was not going to be enough.


Pete decided to go down for a quick trip with all the excess stuff and start doing some floor prep, which ended up being smart to get done ahead of time because of proper curing time needed . After ripping up the linoleum Pete put down a self leveling cement and then screwed the backer board into the floor. The reason for the two step process was to make sure our floor was reinforced enough to handle getting tiles on top of it. If you put the backer boards directly onto your sub flooring there can be too much movement with the wood contacting/expanding and the tiles could eventually crack. Same goes if you put tiles directly onto a plywood sub floor as well. I would cry if all my hard work was ruined because of skipping steps, so consider that a little PSA.


Two weeks later and we're headed down for the real start of the renovation. Please believe me when I say we could not have packed another friggen thing in our SUV. It was so loaded that our suburban family mover turned into a low rider.

This is in the condos parking lot, right before I started unloading. Pete took a trip upstairs and started working asap on some time sensitive plumbing issues. Did I mention that the condo is on the third floor? And there is no elevator?

It was the-best-time-of-my-entire-life unloading the car and bringing everything up three flights of outdoor stairs during a windy evening in late December. I must have looked like some sort of deranged ninja running up and down the stairs to any casual observer. Dressed in black leggings, black fleece jacket zipped all the way up, with the hood up and tied so just my eyes could see out, black gloves and bright pink Uggs.

In total it took me 20 trips to get the SUV almost completely unpacked. That is 60 flights up, 60 down. Enough exercise that I didn't feel bad about the Sonic we stopped at for lunch on the way down. Or my Rt. 44 sized Strawberry Limeade.