Changing the Changing Table

There are a couple books written on what kinds of things to buy when you're expecting a baby. We've now read them all and are currently rereading they just in case we missed any gems of wisdom. One of the near-universal suggestions in these books was that we didn't need to buy a separate changing table. So we didn't. What the authors of these books apparently didn't have was a mother that saved a changing table for 30 years!

When we picked up this table things looked pretty grim. But, as we've proven with our house, a coat or three of paint can work wonders. We consulted our books a ninth time to see what kind of paint we should use so the baby wouldn't contract scurvy or plague from the paint fumes and proceeded.

Which is dirtier: the table or the outfit?

This project looks pretty easy. You know what's not easy? Trying to sand, prime and paint in the little crevices of 87 little dowels. There was a point where I thought we might just go with the "distressed" look, saving me the time of priming. And there was another point when the primer itself didn't look so bad. But we ultimately decided that our kid deserved a painted changing table and the job was seen to completion.

Much better! Plus, no dirty Redhook shirt!

...And After

So it's not totally finished - the electrician still needs to come and do some electrician stuff - but it's mostly done. You know, kind of like how Cary Elwes was mostly dead in The Princess Bride. But it's functional and we're approximately 187% happier with this room than we were with it's drabby former incarnatinon. It's weird how you get so used to something that you don't realize how really, really bad it truly is. Such was the case with the "before" version of this room.

Unlike the previous bathroom renovation, we hired people to do most of the work. Again, I'm fine with paying someone to cut and install the tile. They're quick, competent and nice to work with. For this job the only work that was done ourselves was the demolition, vanity and counter installation, faucet installation and...that might be it.

Anyway, this project will likely put renovations on a bit of a hiatus. The baby is due in less than a month (and I'll say this again: we're always late so this kid will probably be, too). We have this house in a state where it's comfortable, functional and livable. And that's not really even giving it enough credit.

Anyway, on to the after pics:

Those wires are supposed to be there!

Slightly nicer counters...

I installed the curtain myself!

Probably could have used another shelf.

Before

We're pretty hesitant to post these pictures as our master bathroom was such an embarrassment. We should have called this blog "Look How Shitty Our House Was!" It's amazing what you don't realize when you look at a house and decide to buy it. While doing a walkthrough of this place we were told (by someone very wise and sagelike), "You know, you're going to have to paint all this wood trim." We though it was no big deal...100 hours later, we realized the implications of this fragment of the project. Anyway...away from that digression and back to the crappy bathroom.

It was a lovely shade of blue that brought to mind a beautiful sky or a rolling ocean. I imagine it was supposed to be tranquil and/or peaceful. I don't even think they sell this color at Benjamin Moore anymore. Check it out; this is why we debated just showing the "after" pictures.
I am more certain that they don't manufacture a toilet in a matching color. The original interior designer of this room found a shower stall that was closely matched, but not quite. I had to do some work on this shower awhile ago and pulled out a hair clog that was older than me. I named it Carl (no pics, though).
The sink was supposed to look like a single slab of marble that had been carved out to create a sink. It was a joy to break apart with a sledgehammer, though. We tried to casually put the marblesque remnants for the garbagemen to pick up but they politely declined. The toilet is still in our garage, awaiting its final destination of the Madison-Guilford waste transfer station. Call me quick and you can have it for your throwback blue bathroom.The water faucet thing is because someone told the previous owner that she had bad water. We had it tested and it was great. I tossed out the filtration system - didn't want to bother with selling it on CraigsList.

Everything came out really easily: vanity, mirror, sinkcounter, floor. The total cost of this room when it was built in 1972 was definitely around $1k. Hopefully our take on this room will come out a little better, and last a little longer. More to come...

Almost Meatless Potluck

Welcome to the Almost Meatless potluck dinner at House Chapin: Spinach and Chickpea Pouch edition! If you don't know what the heck this hullabaloo is all about, read about the project at Tara's blog.

If you've spent any amount of time with Erika or me over the past few months you have assuredly heard of us talk about our new favorite cookbook: Almost Meatless. Of course, we're a bit biased as our friend Tara is one of the co-authors. We might have also tested some of the recipes that made it into the book. That said, we've put quite a culinary dent in this little tome and have yet to run across anything resembling a letdown.

Recently Tara asked us to make a recipe and document the outcome. We had our choice of a couple different recipes. We chose the Spinach and Chickpea Pouches because it was something we wouldn't typically make. I've not used filo dough very often. It's one of those "ingredients" that I don't put to much thought toward, but whenever I use it I'm pleased with the outcome. It makes the finished product look like you've put a lot more time into it than you actually did.

This recipe serves 6 and uses only 8 ounces of ground beef. The filling also contains spinach, garlic, fresh oregano, roasted red bell pepper, chickpeas and feta. It calls for a 1/4t of dried chile flakes, but that ingredient was vetoed by my heat-intolerant assistant. We roasted a fresh red pepper about an hour prior to beginning this dish - I cannot recommend this enough. A fresh roasted pepper is a few worlds better than the jarred stuff. It's like comparing fresh herbs to dried. There's just no comparison. I highly suggest that if you choose to make this that you take the extra 5 minutes to make the tzatziki - so easy and so good!

Making this took about 30 minutes of actual prep time including roasting the pepper. It's a complete dinner, but is also good served with a simple green salad. Anyway, here's the finished product:

Reprinted with permission from Ten Speed Press and the authors.

The Last Ultrasound

Yes, this is Deacon!

I've seen these sonogram images before. Usually I'm looking at them, trying to make out what it is I'm looking at exactly and scrambling for something meaningful to say, but all I can think about are things like, "Hmmm...is 'The Office' new tonight, or is it a rerun?" They all kind of look the same, but after getting them done for us...they still don't look very different than any sonogram image you can Google search. I don't think I'd be able to pick our sonogram out of a bulletin board full of other people's sonograms. Still, it's a pretty cool experience and we're kind of bummed that the 20 week ultrasound is our last. Of course I like to point out that our baby is so advanced that we had its 20 week ultrasound at 18 weeks. We're at the appointment for our ultrasound and the midwife came into the room and asked what we were doing so early for our ultrasound. Erika kind of looked back at her with a sort of "you made the appointment, expert" look and then everything worked out. All the femurs and hearts and pancreases and brain halves showed up just fine. I would seriously go with Erika to these appointments every week if they let us. But this is it...the last time we see our kid with or without the help of sound waves until Octoberish.

As Promised

First of all, I'm going to start using "he" and "she" interchangeably because I feel kind of weird calling our baby "it." We are still not finding out the sex, at least, not on purpose. Our friends Lauren and Brandon, though, just had an ultrasound at about Week 20 and said it was kind of obvious. If we have a notion one way or the other, don't worry, we're not going to guard that information like a top secret cryptogram.

There are a multitude of these websites and books that tell you essentially how far your baby is in its development. "It's Week 6, your baby is beginning to develop the top half of a small intestine" or "it's Week 9, your baby now has a gall bladder!" Well, we are currently in the throes of Week 15. What does that mean? Apparently not a lot goes on in Week 15, actually. Let's see...our baby is developing taste buds and he or she can sense light. The latter development is kind of useless information, considering our baby's current environment. Pretty dark in there, I suspect. Not sure I want to even learn how we came to the conclusion that at Week 15 a baby can sense light. This week is apple week, by the way. They have these other websites that tell you how big your baby is and they usually use fruit as examples. This one website did use a shrimp as an example a week or two ago, which was kind of weird. Are we talking a curled up shrimp? One stretched out? We talking 31/50 count shrimp? Or maybe U8 shrimp - those are pretty big. Anyway, we seem to refer to each week as "apple week" or "lime week" rather than what number we're on. This seems to confuse the people at the OB/GYN.

This image is from a couple of weeks ago. We went in for that triple screen test, which we debated getting for awhile but now are glad we did. The tipping point in the decision to get it or not was, I think, the "free" sonogram. It was a pretty lengthy sonogram, too, because they had a new technician who hadn't used that particular type of equipment before. Unfortunately, they only gave us 2 images, and one was either a hand or a foot - we really couldn't tell which - so I'm not posting it. This time we saw legs and arms flailing about, the baby was rolling around...it was pretty amazing. Yeah, it looks like every other sonogram I've ever seen...but it's ours!

Another Project Completed

A half bathroom is usually the smallest room in one's house, and our former travesty of a half bathroom was no exception. This room was as depressing as it was tiny. It really needed to be put out of its misery. This was one of those rooms that, when we first saw it thought, "well, at least it's clean." To call it an embarrassment would be like saying GM is "financially challenged." To say that it was outdated would have been like Erika going to work in a hoop skirt and bodice. Let's take a look at what we had to work with:

Three things kind of stick out. First, I don't even know what kind of floor this is. Is it supposed to look like cracked marble? Like little dingy interlocking stones? I have literally no clue, but it appeared perpetually dirty, no matter how much it was scrubbed, mopped or wiped down. Next, the tile on the wall was that classic 1970s harvest gold. It might have been a touch lighter than that, but you get the general idea. Here's a confession, though: I actually thought we could leave this tile and paint the walls a bright orange. Erika pointed out that this might cause either seizures or flashbacks by anyone confined to our bathroom for more than 2 minutes. So we took the tile down. Finally, you can kind of see the wallpaper, but you'll have to take our word for it when we say that all 3 layers were completely unpalatable.

Ah, there's a better shot of some of that wallpaper. Whoever patented that design must have made a fortune because I've seen that crap everywhere. There was actually an additional, hidden layer under the mirror that was a kind of neon green paisley - which I am sure actually did cause someone at some time at least a mild seizure. The mirror/medicine cabinet/lighting combo is one that we see elsewhere in our house. My theory is that the contractor either had a relative working at the store where these were purchased, or he got some sort of 3-for-2 deal on them. If you like them, let me know quick, because the remaining 2 in our house are not long for this world.

The vanity is another piece that we have more of in our house. It's made, I think, of cardboard. And while your eyes might be telling you that the counter is carved from a single piece of creamy yellow marble, joke's on you! It's not! Actually, I don't know what it is made from, but I think some sort of polymer was involved in its creation. And while it's in the picture, has anyone else taken up a toilet? I thought there would be some intricate, secure connection between the toilet and the pipe that takes stuff to wherever. Yeah, the toilet just kind of sits on this hole. All that stands between a dry floor and utter, awful disaster is a relative thin ring of wax. Luckily my father was able to walk me through the proper removal and reinstallation of this thing.

So there you have it: the before shots. Now to the after!

Obviously we needed to repaint, adding to the current tally of repainted surface in our house. Instead of tile we put up beadboard or wainscoting (heard it called both and I use both terms interchangeably). The tile is, well, tile. I think it's marble but I honestly don't know.

Little bit of an aesthetic upgrade in the vanity/sink department. Although I feel a little hypocritical because we got a very similar vanity for our master bathroom, just as the original vanities in our house seemed to be from the same litter. No medicine cabinet because it's a half bathroom and it seemed superfluous. The granite is this really cool (in our opinion, anyway) piece that looks like a cross section of a fossilized river bed. We spotted it in our original stone safari when we were looking for a surface for our kitchen but didn't think it looked right in that kind of setting.

So that's it. We did everything ourselves except for the floor. I'm sure at some point I'll learn to cut tile, but until then we have no problem paying someone to do it. Sure, it took a little while, but it came out pretty darn good. Only two rooms to go now! Still...Dad, if you're reading this, I'll probably need just a little help on those toilets, too!