exciting day

The last time I saw the bathtub, it looked like this:

grubby

Ok, not exactly like that, because that picture was taken a couple of weeks ago.  But I promise you, it hasn’t looked any BETTER than this in the last two weeks, and it’s actually looked worse.

Today I went over to drop off the dining room sconces which had finally been delivered, and George was there, working on his own.  We unpacked the lights and while we were opening the boxes he asked me if I’d seen the bathtub. Not in the last two days, no…..

“Is it ok?”

“Go see…”

All I could think was, oh my god.  The toilet has had a slight leak, the tub has been full of filthy construction dust, who knows what might have happened.  WELL, something did happen, something amazing, something I’d forgotten Chris had mentioned that he was going to get a sub-contractor to come in and do.  Reglaze the enamel.  This pretty much took my breath away, it was so unexpected:

80 year old bathtub!

I had no idea it could look like this.  I originally decided to leave it in because A) there was nothing wrong with it, B) ajax with bleach can work wonders, and C) it’s cast iron and I know enough about cast iron to know that removing a tub of that size from a bathroom this small is MAJOR work.  But this….well, I had no idea.

In other wonderful news of the day, the kitchen floor is in and now I’m thrilled that the tile didn’t work out.  Though if you would like 6 boxes of cheap tile let me know, ’cause now it’s just sitting there in the dining room, unloved and unwanted.  I’m still not over what that kitchen floor did to my budget**, but I’m super happy with the result:

new wood floors in kitchen

The camera is playing a little trick here, the floors aren’t quite this dark, but they’ve come up looking well.  Chris applied the same stain (Minwax Special Walnut, satin finish) that he’s applied to the rest of the floors, the only difference is that the rest of the floors aren’t finished yet and they’ve been under pink protective paper for two weeks now, so I haven’t seen them.  I’m curious to see how much of a difference there will be between the new oak floors in the kitchen and the old oak floors throughout the rest of the apartment.

Let’s go out with the sconces – hooray, they’re in, the lighting is done!

Let there...

be...

...light!

______________________

** On a side note, it’s interesting to see what this particular budget overrun has done to my state of mind – up until now everything was well budgeted, about what I expected, no nasty expenses, etc.  It was all coming in slightly higher than I anticipated, but overall, no problem.  However, there’s something psychological somehow about all new wood floors that were never in the budget and never intended that slid me directly from “I can afford this, look how WELL it’s going!” right into “Oh my god, we’re going to be eating ramen noodles for the REST OF OUR LIVES.”