Bathroom makeover!

So, the first week of MAF training is done. Today, I ran 45 minutes, and it ended up being a terrible run! There was actually frost on the ground when I woke up. This unusually warm weather has been so odd, it was kind of nice to see that it's getting colder. My weather app said the temp was 34 degrees when I headed out for my run, so I wore a fleece top, gloves, and a headband to cover my ears.

I felt fine when I started running, and I decided to do an out-and-back route, turning around when I hit the midway point (22:30). Usually, I run at least a mile before I get a beep telling me that my heart rate is high and I need to slow down; today, it took only a quarter mile. After that, it was beeping so much that I just ran as slow as I felt my legs would allow. Even then, my heart rate was right on the border of 146 the whole time.

I had a low calorie day yesterday (not on purpose--I was super busy and didn't have time to eat lunch), and I wonder if that had anything to do with my heart rate being high today. I think I'm going to start taking my resting heart rate in the mornings when I wake up, just to see if there is any correlation with how my run goes--does a high resting heart rate mean my run is going to feel harder? It'll be interesting to see.

Anyway, my average pace was 12:11, and my average heart rate was 145 bpm. In comparison to my last long run (6 miles on 11/5), my heart rate was also 145 bpm but my average pace was 10:59! Big difference. Today's run was very out of the ordinary for me. We'll see what happens next week.

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I've spent the last week or so really cracking down on getting our bathroom finished. The whole project started out to be SO simple--remove the thin strips of trim that cover the drywall joints. (The strips are something that manufactured homes have--I have no idea why.) Sounds like no big deal, right? I couldn't have been more wrong.

As you may remember, I took down the strips (I think in July) and I used drywall joint compound and a special kind of tape to smooth the drywall joint (this would make it one smooth wall, rather than having those vertical strips every few feet). Obviously, after doing that, I would have to paint the walls. Again, no big deal--the color clashed horrendously with my bedroom (which I'd painted in the summer as well).

When we had issues with the water heater and furnace recently, we knew we'd have to replace the floor in the laundry room (where the water heater and furnace are). We bought the materials to replace the flooring, and it was messy, but we got it done! (Many thanks to my brothers and Becky).  Since we had all the materials, we figured we might as well replace the small section of subfloor in the bathroom that had some water damage from the shower. We fixed the leak years ago, but the wood needed to be replaced.

Our bathroom floor actually had CARPET in the whole thing except for where the toilet is. Carpet is a really bad idea for a bathroom! We always knew we wanted to replace it, but it was never a true necessity, so we put it off for "someday".

Another issue was our bathtub. In addition to a stand-up shower, we had a huge corner bathtub, but I very rarely used it. It sounds stupid, but I was always afraid that there would be spiders inside of the jacuzzi jets in the tub, and I feared they would come out when I took a bath, so I just rarely took baths. (I'm terrified of spiders!)  The tub was basically a big waste of space in our bathroom. We decided to remove that as well--which would have to be done before painting the walls and doing the flooring.

This led to one big messy project: We needed to paint to cover the drywall mud; but, we couldn't paint until we removed the bathtub (for obvious reasons). Once removing the bathtub, the flooring would all need to be replaced, because there would be a big empty spot where the bathtub was otherwise. Everything was reliant on the previous thing, so it wasn't a project we could work on a little at a time, unfortunately. It reminded me of the "If you give a mouse a cookie..." scenario.

I had no idea what color to do--my bedroom is yellow and white, and I wanted it to match that, but not perfectly (I didn't want the same yellow walls in the bathroom as my bedroom). So, for the first time since becoming a homeowner 13 years ago, I actually painted the walls WHITE. Plain old boring white walls ;)

Jerry and I picked out vinyl plank flooring, and Jerry did the dirty work. He cut the bathtub in half to get it out of the bathroom, and then tore up the carpet and linoleum. Then he fixed the subfloor in front of the shower that needed fixing. He had never done flooring before, but it would save a lot of money to do it ourselves, so we decided to give it a try (and by "we", I totally mean "Jerry").

He laid down the underlayment over the subfloor, and then started on the vinyl planks. It actually didn't end up being that bad! The planks fit together really easily, and they don't need glue or grout or anything like that. Jerry got the plank part done in probably five hours total. We put in a new toilet, and it was finished!

The only part that we still need to do something with is the cabinets in there, because they completely clash with the floor; but, that isn't something that has to be done right away, so we'll save that for later. Like always, I forgot to take a "before" picture of the bathroom, so the best I can do is this stupid pic Jerry took of me flossing my teeth, haha. But you can at least see the drastic difference!

Here are some photos of the progress:

This is what was under the mirrors--floral wallpaper

No mirrors, no trim strips covering the drywall joints

Drywall joint after removing the strip

This was after I put the joint compound on. It looked like this from July until now!

Jerry tearing out the bathtub

After priming and removing the flooring

After painting and starting the vinyl planks

Finished! Well, until we decide to work on the cupboards...

Obviously, we need to put something in that right corner (the toilet is off to the left; you can't really see it in the pic). Someday, maybe we'll put a linen closet there, or maybe some nice shelves, but for now, I'm just going to leave it as-is. My mom said I should use chalk paint for my cupboards, so I'm going to look into that. It'd be much better (and cheaper) than having to replace them.

Anyway, I absolutely LOVE the floor! Jerry is super proud that he did it himself, and we're already talking about what we can do with the rest of the house--again, for a "someday" project, haha. I really wanted to get this done before my friends come over next week, because there will be FOUR women in the house that need to take showers and get ready, so having two bathrooms will be nice!