No More Promises, I Promise...

After my last post where I vowed to be a better blogger, life was just busy and I didn't keep my promise.  I am sorry.

Let's see - what has been going on here?

Well - the master bath is done.  Finally.  I never posted the story on here, so I guess I should fill you in.  Derek and I took out a small shower (36 x 36) and a disgusting jetted garden tub and replaced that with a large walk in shower.  The shower is about 37 x 99.  It is HUGE.  There are 6 body jets and a rainfall shower head and a handheld shower head.  Instead of a shower curtain, there is a large glass panel.  It is really a stunning shower.  We thought we were done with this massive shower we had built - and we took our first shower in it.  Shortly after, we determined that the grout in the base (the "specialty" grout we were advised to use by the home improvement store) was getting soft and pliable.  A bit of research later, we determined that it should have never been used in our shower.  So, all of it had to be removed and replaced.  Luckily, we had only used this grout on the floor of the shower.  After hours and hours and HOURS of removing grout from 2X2 tiles (seriously, I spent about 3 hours a night/day scraping this stuff out), we have gotten the grout replaced and the new grout is sealed.  At this point, we are giving it plenty of time to cure to ensure that we don't have to repeat this process again later.  The finished product is really beautiful and I really need to post some pictures for you all.

We also renovated both my closet and Derek's with Clo.set.Maid Systems that we had purchased a while back.  The resulting closets are pretty awesome.

Derek and I both celebrated getting a year older.  OK, so celebrating is a bit of an overstatement.  It happened and there was no stopping it.  'Nuff said.

Then we headed off on a vacation to Michigan to spend some time with Derek's family.  We were gone for almost 2 weeks.  It was marvelous!!!  The first week we were in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at a fishing camp - Derek's grandpa has been going to this place for over 60 years and he was super excited about going.  The area really is beautiful, but without quite a few modern conveniences.  Like TV.  Or cell phone service.  We actually had to drive around to find cell service so that I could call my father to wish him a happy father's day.

During the last week of the vacation, we spent time scouting out a couple of the locations that we had on our list of possible places to move.  We spent time with real estate agents in both of these locations seeing what kind of houses we could get for the range of money we were anticipating spending on a house.  We also spent some time getting to know these areas to see if they were really places we would want to live.  We were able to pretty much rule one of these locations out (we realized that it didn't have all of the amenities/quality of life items that we were looking for).  We also narrowed down the areas we would want to live in so that when we were looking online, we would know if we were interested in house.

We didn't get home until Wednesday night.  We worked both Thursday and Friday.  Then we spent this 3 day weekend on more house projects.  We painted the front door and did touch up work in that area, did some touch up work on trim in the rest of the house, painted the door to the garage, etc. 

We have a checklist that we are working through and I am hoping that we can knock a few of these out on week nights after work and this next weekend or two so that we will be able to get our house on the market in the next couple of weeks.  Then we wait.

Until then, I can't promise that my blogging/commenting will be anything more than sporadic.  I hope you all understand.