Let's Renovate a 1920s Bathroom: Tile Edition...and Tales of Parties.

My dad called a few weeks ago to say he and my mom were planning to come up and help us tile our bathroom. I made them lemon poppy seed pancakes the morning after they arrived.

They love their little pancake princess.

My dad fixed the bottom portion for Meadow's rocking horse. I will have to finish painting it this summer. My mom thought Meadow was too young for the attachment, but she loved it.

We started by doing some plumbing work. We had to put in a new valve and reconnect the old shower pipe that is still in the wall. That made the job much easier. I even learned how to solder.

Why the shower was ever taken out I will never know.

Gigi showed Meadow how to play her favorite games on her tablet.

While the guys worked, us girls explored the Linden Hills neighborhood. We first stopped at the library. I was surprised there were no other children or many toys to play with.

We checked out a few other stores before ending up at the Wild Rumpus Bookstore. I had never been here before and totally wasn't expecting to see wild animals roaming around. 

We had Nueske's hot dogs for lunch and seaweed snacks.

Those aren't hot dogs, those veritable weiners!

The next project after completing all of the plumbing was moving the lights. 

Mr. Mike thought it was going to be easy to get the new light above the mirror. It took a lot finagling by the two of us, but we got it done by nightfall.

My mom took a nap in Meadow's bed and Meadow tried to nap with her, but that didn't work. Meadow seems to have given up naps officially even though she clearly gets tired and super crabby in the evenings.

Mike covered up the old sconce hole in the shower and put in a closed junction box on it in the closet.

Yay a shower in our bathroom! No more basement showers.

While Mr. Mike finished up, I made my famous cabbage and sausage pasta.

Whenever my parents come to visit they always bring cheese.

They don't call them cheeseheads for nothing.

I made some molassses cookies after dinner. Mr. Mike and G.G. sounded excited for my favorite cookies.

I bet you didn't see this coming. I made my famous hash for breakfast.

I was able to be alot more helpful on the second day.

We tiled the bottom together and then I took over on both sides of the windows. Meanwhile, Mike cut the tiles.

While the guys worked again, us girls headed over to Olive's birthday party. This year her theme was hearts. Emma asked if I had any heart shaped bakeware that she could borrow. I laughed and said "Do I?!"

When Emma brought out Olive's cake she said, "Oh good, it's exactly how I wanted it!"

She borrowed our heart filled cake pans. We had tried making this before with an ice cream filling and it didn't turn out as well as Emma's. My mom was super impressed.

Hi June!

There were lots of kids at this party.

The guys had gotten a lot done while we were gone.

This looked so good. I dig the contrast between the tile and woodwork. We finished up while Brooke made dinner.

We ate some beer-glazed chorizo on cornpole with oranges. Well, I ate it with the oranges.

We were invited to a get together at Cayla and Amanda's for our old friend Brittany who was visiting. Since my parents were in town we weren't going to go, but we both really wanted to so we changed our minds last minute. Everyone was excited to see Meadow.

It was great seeing Brittany and some our other college friends that we've grown apart from over the years. Meadow found everybody to be a blast.

Amanda runs a vintage store, Tandem Vintage, for a living. She had some random toys that she brought up for Meadow to play with. The dogs wanted to play too.

She even got together a bunch of clothing for Meadow. Amanda is so wonderful!

I love loved their house. I often wish we had bought a smaller house. 

It was hard separating these two at the end of the night. It was so great seeing Brittany, my roommate from college, Jon, and the whole gang. This needs to happen more often.

The next day, the guys finished up the last of the bathroom work while us girls went to church and had brunch at the Co-op Creamery.

After tiling all day on Saturday, this seemed like it would be easy. Grouts hard work, especially when you use black.

Mr. Mike put up the rod with our help. I was too afraid to drill into the beautiful new tile. 

I did not think they would finish all those projects in one weekend. Good work guys.

I spent too much of my life cleaning grout lines when I did house cleaning. I said no to white grout, but wanted gray. We had to settle for black which ended up being okay.

OK? It looks great.

Here's some before photos of what the bathroom looked like when we bought it.

We basically only kept the original 1920 toilet and bathtub plus the sink that works well in the room.

The renovation looks more period appropriate for our house. Next up, the kitchen. 

After my parents left we were pretty lazy. I always hate when visitors leave. We tried to convince them to stay the night, but my mom wouldn't have it.

We all read to keep our minds off it. We missed Mr. Mike and G.G. too much.