There’s something so lovely about winter. It gives us the opportunity to be in, cozy, and hibernating, or to be out in this beautiful cold wonderland. One of the things I love the most about winter is winter bike riding. Winter biking gives me so many opportunities that summer never could.

And one of those opportunities I love so much is the opportunity to take my bike, complete with studded tires, out over a frozen lake.

Now, we’ve had some nice severely cold temps, so the ice is about 18 inches thick right now. I think the deal is that you only really need 4 inches of ice to be ok out on it, so the extra 14 inches makes me feel perfectly safe.

We got a group of hearty cyclist friends together yesterday for a lake to lake ride. We rode over two different lakes, as well as through a ton of snow and all over the neighborhoods in between the lakes.

The lakes are pretty snow covered this year, as we keep having decent snow events. In the past, every time I’ve ridden on lakes it’s just been open ice. It’s actually a lot harder work to get the bikes through all the snow, but the rewards were the patches of open ice we managed to find.

A little cold lake selfie for Mr. Ink and I. It really was a beautiful day, sunny, and quite a bit warmer out than it has been.

 

I just love seeing those red lines head right out over the blue lakes!

I really didn’t have the opportunity to do a lot of knitting this weekend. A block of entrelac here, and a few rows of knitting there. Nothing to speak of beyond completing the scarf which was so near to being done on Friday that it was very little time spent on it.

I did get some spinning done though! It was a busy weekend but not so busy that I couldn’t find time to spin.

We went from this light fixture:

Which was cheap, and ugly, and wobbly to a new light fixture:

While it’s hard to photograph, it’s square, the fixture has these lovely crystal looking details, and it has lovely flair reminiscent of the 1960s. I also couldn’t resist adding in the picture of our towel ring, which is brand new, and absolutely wonderful. Not for the fixture itself, but for it’s very existence.

Here’s the funny story. Miss Bug is not too impressed with the light fixtures since they hang off the side of the mirror, being too long to just be over the mirror. Mr. Ink and I are not irritated by this, but Miss Bug is having a real problem with it. After the 3rd time she’d mentioned it in an evening, I finally said “Bug, that’s it. The light fixtures stay. They are the ones we purchased and the ones we installed and I like them. We aren’t going to continue discussing this.”

And then I hear her singing some silly song under her breath about how everything should be perfect according to her OCD.

 

 

We had a sad moment yesterday when we realized that one of the new bathroom light fixtures was too messed up to use and must be returned and exchanged. I am so eager to have the bathroom project done, but I had to order that light fixture in, so no telling when the next one can be procured.

If I am smart, I’ll use this time without the light fixture to install recessed lighting over the bathtub, as it seems the darker paint has darkened the entire room down a little too well. But I am not sure if I am feeling that smart at the moment.

So, as I am on hold with the bathroom, and STILL regularly changing my mind about flooring in the kitchen/dining room, I figured I’d take a few photos of that and try to gear myself into looking at flooring options rather than obsessing over the not quite finished bathroom.

Here’s the dining room, with the transition between living room and dining room. We have lovely hardwood floors throughout the entire house, except the kitchen and dining room, which is carpeted. I believe that a kitchen has NO BUSINESS being carpeted. And I had hoped that this would be the first change we’d make. It didn’t work out that way, when I realized that the moisture in the bathroom was getting behind the walls badly, and I don’t regret taking care of that before it became a very large problem. But now I need to think about flooring again.

Under the carpet is 1960s linoleum. (Or vinyl, not sure which, but I am learning that they are two different things.) It’s covered in carpet glue, and even if it wasn’t, I couldn’t restore it and stick with blue, as it seems to be orange and yellow tones. Our kitchen and dining room are blue, and the countertops are blue toned as well, so orange and yellow are right out.

Here’s the transition into the kitchen. Beyond that is the entryway for the side door and also leading into the basement.

Now, let’s talk about this kitchen and this house for a moment. The home has wonderful mid century details, and Mr. Ink and I have been working hard to keep as many of those details as possible while still keeping up the house properly. Unfortunately, this kitchen was redone in the mid 1980s, and there ARE no mid century details left. Those cabinets look pure ’80s to me. And I do not like them.

I originally wanted to go with marmoleum flooring, as it’s as close to original linoleum (not vinyl) that I could get. But, I had trouble finding places that sell it and install it.

I switched my thoughts to laminate flooring in my overwhelming urge to do as much of the work myself as is possible. I even had settled on something I liked well enough. And then kept hearing reports that maybe it wasn’t the wisest choice for a kitchen. While I am not too worried about the kitchen itself (besides a disaster like a sink leak or dishwasher leak while we weren’t home) I did start to think about the fact that the entryways we use the most all put us on that flooring first. And in the snow or rain, I will need something that really holds up.

So while I had repeatedly said I most certainly did NOT want vinyl, I changed my mind, decided on vinyl for the ease of taking care of it, and as a cheap option in case I decide to redo the kitchen completely in the future.

And in my search for vinyl I liked, I came across a company that seems to install marmoleum. So I’ve come full circle. We look at flooring this week or this weekend.

But, as far as that kitchen goes, I think that painting the cabinets and getting new hardware for them will freshen things up quite a bit, in addition to new flooring. In the future, perhaps we can get cabinets that are a bit more simple looking, and fit our mid century theme.

 

Not quite done, but part done.

My picture seems a bit fuzzy. In any case, this shows the transition between the old tile and the new tile work, as well as the painted walls and the shower curtain that inspired it all.

I was able to use it last evening instead of our creepy basement shower, which I did snap a photo of so you can see what we’ve been using for the past two weeks.

It’s an unfinished basement, and this shower stall is just….there. It’s vaguely plumbed in, and drains into our ejector pump. It is not even secured to the floor in any way, the entire thing shifts about. It’s up on a frame of cement blocks, and so you have to keep both feet to the outside of the shower frame, as the inside sinks down alarmingly. I am thrilled to use it as a “utility sink” again.

What’s left on the bathroom reno project? Well, Mr. Ink found that the faucet for the tub was too short for the pipe. He changed the size of the pipe, but now has to rethread that pipe so the faucet fits. That hasn’t been done, so it’s solely a shower now. The painting is done, but I’d like to go back and fix some of the mistakes at the ceiling. Things got a little sloppy toward the end there, and while I am not complaining because I had help, I think I can fix it with touch ups. And, then there’s the light fixtures which are on order and I am obsessively tracking to see when they’ll get to our local hardware store. They are paid for, I just need to pick them up.

I do, however, now have a new towel rack. And I had Mr. Ink install a new towel ring for a hand towel, we’ve never had that before and it’s madly convenient. The pictures are back on the wall, the faucet knobs are in, and the shower head extender piece which has never worked since we moved in has been repaired by Mr. Ink, and reinstalled, and works beautifully.

That’s all the updates for now, I am back at work, and we can get back to some regularly scheduled programming as well.

Well, yesterday was a lost day. Mr. Ink and I binged on Making a Murderer, I think we watched 6 hours of it, and we also watched a movie with Miss Butterfly. We lay prone on the couches with blankets, tissues, wastepaper baskets, liquids, and meds. I am thanking my lucky stars that Mr. Ink keeps us obsessively stocked with extra tissues, they sure came in handy yesterday.

Now, when I last posted about the bathroom, I had just finished grouting the tile. It wanted to cure for 2 days before I applied sealer. The other thing which I don’t believe I posted about was our sink. We have a tiled counter with a set in 1960s blue sink. The grout around the sink was starting to fail, and behind the faucet, someone had caulked it to cover up badly crumbling grout. So, before I grouted the new tile, I removed the caulk and the grout with the anticipation of regrouting the sink. Except, I was so sick while grouting, and I completely forgot to do it.

I maintain that if I wasn’t sick, I’d have been inspecting and noticing sooner that there were two spots on my new tiles that I didn’t manage to completely cover. They are small, but I am one of those people who obsessively inspects her work. But I didn’t notice them until midnight this morning. I was so disappointed! And Mr. Ink said “Why not just fix it right now?” And I realized he was right. I could just quickly mix up a very small amount of grout, fix those two spots, and also quickly do the sink.

Bam, DONE! And it looks a whole lot better now.

On the agenda today, we are going to be looking for a new light fixture. I took a quick photo of the one that’s currently in there. It’s like, the cheapest of the cheap, like someone slapped something on there for the sale of the home and called it good.

There’s actually two of them up there. They rattle and move and they aren’t even and they IN NO WAY match. I’ve tasked Mr. Ink with finding something new. As, basically, he seems to be invested in that, and I don’t care, I just want something that looks nicer than what we have. (He’s got great taste, and similar to mine, so whatever he chooses will be just fine.)

And then we also have to finish painting!!!

Yesterday, for the majority of the day, it was impossible to do anything. No knitting, no spinning, no cleaning, no renovations. (These are basically all my indoor hobbies.) And then somewhere later in the evening, I started to feel a bit better. Knitting took too much brain power, and spinning on my wheel asked me to be more upright than I could manage. So, I got out my support spindles. And a bump of fiber I have which shares a colorway with something I’ve already spun into a 2 ply laceweight. I figured I could just make another skein of the same.

There’s only one problem. My support spindle spinning has gotten so much better in the interim, that the skeins aren’t actually going to match, as the new singles are very even, and the prior singles are not.

Ah well, more yarn is good yarn anyhow.

With Nyquil.

Happy New Year friends and readers!

When I last posted, I had just finished grouting the bathroom despite being sick. We had a party to go to that evening, which I was to cook for. And company coming this evening.

Well, as it turns out, I wised up a bit and realized that I shouldn’t be preparing food, and I was in no shape to go anywhere but bundled up under blankets due to being unreasonably cold ALL OF THE TIME.

I sent Miss Butterfly off with her dad, even though she had mentioned she wasn’t feeling so hot, and had even taken a nap, which is entirely unheard of for her.

Mr. Ink returned home from work, and I informed him of how I wasn’t going to be going anywhere, but he was free to go to the party if he liked. He said “Well, to be honest, I haven’t been feeling that well today either.” He then said “Maybe we could go look at light fixtures for the bathroom at least?” And I said “No, too sick.” Which is the point where he knew I was quite sick indeed.

He then mentioned that maybe we could paint today, since we would both be at home. I didn’t agree to it, as I figured he’d be feeling even worse today.

We rang in the new year with nyquil.

Today? It’s just…full on miserableness in this house. We are plodding around all bundled up, and nothing at all is getting accomplished. I truly hope to rally tomorrow a bit, as I need to get that grout sealed, and it would be NICE if we could finish the bathroom renovation by the end of the weekend!