This entry should be titled "What to do for five hours during a cold and rainy day" or "All this florescent light is hurting my brain!"

In order for our plumber to begin work, we had to go get the fixtures for the bathrooms. Sorry renters, but no designer fixtures here, we are on a budget! But we did want to find nice things for the bathroom. We drove down to Lowes in Thomaston and then to Home Depot in Rockland, and then back to Lowes. We were on a mission, but got sidetracked by all the twinkley lights and the 24 different stone tile patterns in varying shades of brown. Why no blue stone tiles or terracotta colored tiles, why just "faux-chateau" brown? Anyway, I digress. Who knew there were so many cheap toilets from which to choose??? All I wanted was a tall, oval bowled, low water usage toilet that looked halfway cottage-y and fit in with the deco cast-iron tub upstairs! Lowes had the best price on toilets and had the one we wanted, but it didn't have the right sink for the downstairs bath. But the slate tile was really pretty!....oh wait, we need to focus on toilets...but look at these light fixtures....no, focus on sinks!! Yikes, after two hours we went to Home Depot. We found a cabinet sink for the downstairs bath that fits in perfectly and allows enough space in the bathroom (which is long, but narrow) for it to feel like a room and not a closet. I kind of like the "antique" look of it too.

I was also on a mission to get a shower stall insert so that we could just put it in and voila, a shower! But, my gay gene kicked in when I saw how cheap they were and with that look from Greg that said..."you are not going to be happy with this" we decided to get the pressed fiberglass shower pan and then tile the walls ourselves. Building walls and tiling vs. a prefab plastic shower stall comes out to about the same price if one is doing the work one's self. But the resale value and the charm factor for a tiled shower are immesurable.

HD didn't have the right olde-time toilets we wanted, but Lowes did, and they had a better deal on a pedestal sink for the upstairs bath that really goes nicely with the deco tub we saved from the old bathroom upstairs. I am amazed that we didn't get sucked into the paint color department at Lowes, but after debating the relative virtues of which toilets had the best flush factor, I was tiring out! I cannot remember why, but we went back to Home Depot and ended up finding cool glass tiles for the bathroom for $4.99 a square foot. The colors in my photo didn't come out too well for the tile, which looks too gray and silver here, but is in reality more blue and green tile with silver. The tiles are less expensive than other glass tiles because they are clear glass tile with colored paper backing rather than colored glass. They'll do the trick and with a silver grout, will be quite smashing looking!

So, to update you. The plumbing is going in this weekend and part of next week and the foam insulation (yes, that's right, my man Glenn actually showed up to give me a quote) goes in the first week of April. Glenn has done some foaming for me here at our house and also at Little Bohemia . I was hoping to get a soy based foam insulation in here, but none of those guys got back to me. Glenn came and spent about 30-40 minutes measuring the house, telling me that we needn't foam the bathroom walls because pink insulation was a better sound barrier there. We are doing 3 inches of foam under the first floor, 3 inches in the walls, and 4 inches in the roof. He told me there was 8,100 board feet to cover and gave me a price, knocked off a good amount and rounded to the nearest thousand, which was EXACTLY what we had budgeted for the project. I like Glenn and am happy to give him the business. Incidentally, when he went upstairs and saw the view, he was blown away.

I originally wanted the foam to go in the last week of March, so this puts us only a week behind schedule, not too bad. (still have the seven week cushion at the end of the project before the first renters come in)