Bathroom Make-Over on a Shoe String Budget

Here are the results of my husband's labor of love. I am so very pleased with it.


This is the small cabinet that was hard to access because the door was blocked. (See prior post for the "before" pics) We took the door off and made it into cubbies. There is a quite a bit of usable storage space. We must admit there is still one wall with the disguised tile on it. As you can see above we just painted it white. We are hoping that will last a while before we have to attack one more tile/cement wall.



Look, no more saggy wall paper. The good news is that there was not too much scary stuff lurking behind the wall paper.



Here is more new storage space. Brian put in a medicine cabinet with lots of shelf space in it. Yes, we know we mixed gold and silver finishes. That's how it goes on a shoe-string budget.



Here is one of the walls that Brian took the tile off of. What a difference a few days make. This is the final result. Note, yet another storage cabinet and hooks. Yahoo!! The lighter paint made the bathroom seem a lot bigger. It is a wonderful birthday present. I am so, so grateful!

He's Speaking My Love Language!

We have have just celebrated our one year anniversary in our, "new to us", home. The best we can tell is that it was built some time in the early 1900s making it around 100 years old. It is full of character and charm. The sweet family, that owned it before us, lovingly upgraded and restored most of the house. We were able to just move right into it. It has been the perfect home for us.


Over the course of the last year, we have continued to make small up-grades to our beautiful home. We are "DIY" (Do It Yourself), kind of people. Mostly because that is the only way we can afford to make the changes to our home, but also because, for the most past, we enjoy doing the work.

This year, for my birthday, my husband decided to tackle our upstairs bathroom. Now don't get me wrong, the bathroom was not in bad shape. It just had a couple of, umm.... well lets just call them "quirks".

Along with all of the "character" we inherited with an older home, we also inherited the lovely pink and blue bathroom tile. (Someday, I would like to learn the history of the Dalhart, pink and blue bathroom tile.) Anyways, the last family did an amazing job of disguising the tile with marble looking contact paper. It was a wonderful idea that bought us an extra year of not having to redo the bathroom.

Very clever tile disguise.

The second quirk was the lack of storage availability. It had a beautiful mirror over the sink that sadly, did not provide any storage options. There was also a cabinet over the toilet that was hard to access due to the toilet obstructing the path of the cabinet door. So, our one and only towel cabinet was very overcrowded.


Small unusable cabinet blocked buy the toilet.

The last quirk was that the beautiful, painted wallpaper, was beginning to sag. We knew it needed to be removed but we were fearful as to what we would discover lurking under the paper. So, we put the whole bathroom make-over on hold as long as we could.


Wall paper and shower steam proved to be a bad combination.

My birthday seemed to be the time to tackle the project. Knowing that my love language is "Acts of Service", Brian knew that the best gift he could give me was a bathroom make-over. Once he tackled the project, he realized how great of an act of love it really was.


Nice huh!

The tile was put on directly to a cement wall! Still, he persevered. A lessor man would have run away in fear. He is quite a guy.


The clever man in action...



And his helper


Here is what that giant hole in the wall began to look like a little while after the project was under way.

You won't believe how it all turned out. Tune into my next blog to see the finished product! (I know, I know, who knows then that will be:)

NOT LEUKEMIA!!!

We just heard from Peter. God is so, so good. He had great news. Rebecca's doctors have ruled out leukemia. Rebecca is a cancer survivor. Four years ago, she fought the battle against leukemia and won. With all of the symptoms she was experiencing, doctors feared that the leukemia might have returned. They have ruled that out!!!!

They believe she is severely anemic. This comes as no surprise considering the high level of stress and long hours of work she encountered while serving in Iraq. According to Peter, she is undergoing some blood transfusions and getting rest. We are waiting to hear from her later today, so we should know more as the day goes on.

Thank You Loving Papa Father!! Thank you that we all get to witness your mightyness and compassion. Thank You for sweet Rebecca and Your mercy towards her. Thank You that Peter gets to see Your love unfold before his eyes. Lord please don't let us ever take Your mightyness or mercy for granted!

More on Rebecca

I am so sorry that I have not put out an update on Rebecca. I have been hoping we would have some answers to give out, but we still do not. I talked with Peter just a little bit ago. He said Rebecca was having a MRI done about the time we were talking. I had talked with her earlier in the week and they had been running tests on her. She is hoping to start getting results back this Friday or Monday.

Rebecca sounded much better than I have heard her sound in a while. I think she has been able to get some much needed rest and that in itself has been healing. Thank you to all of you who have been praying for her. I have passed on all your emails to her. Your support means so much to her and to us.

As she gets anwers, she will pass them on to us and we will pass them on to all of you. Again, thank you.

Quick Update

Rebecca is safe and sound in the United States! We talked with her yesterday evening. She was still very sick. Doctors will begin the testing process on Monday to attempt to find the source of the problem. Please pray for wisdom and discernment on the part of the medical staff that will be treating her. She sounded very weak and discouraged last night. Please continue to pray for her both for her physical, as well as emotional, well being.

Lord, Rebecca is struggling right now. Please make Your presence so clear to her. Please give the medical staff wisdom and compassion. Thank You for bringing her home safely.

A Response from Rebecca

The last email I received from Rebecca, she was still in Kuwait. She should be just waking up. They are about nine hours ahead of us. She should know by 10:00 am, her time, if she will be able to get a flight out our not. Please continue to pray that she will fly home soon. She posted a comment on my last post to all of you who have been praying for her. I have posted it below for those of you who have not read it. Thanks again for your prayers.

I just wanted to sincerely thank everybody from the bottom of my heart for all of your prayers for me. I don't think that any of you will ever realize how much it means to me. I am only sad that I can't finish out my service to all of you over in Iraq. Please do me a favor and more than me, just think of those I left behind over there. They still have time to serve, and are doing a lot of work in my place. It is to them I owe a debt. I thank all of you again for thinking of me. I am confident that God is going to take care of me and will work everything out the way it should be.

Update on Rebecca

Thank you so much for all of your prayers. We talked with her tonight. She is still in Kuwait. She is hopeful that she will get a flight out in the next day or so. She is exhausted and sounds run down. The doctors are unsure as to why she has been so sick for so long. There are doctors here in Texas waiting for her. They are very concerned about her red and white blood cell counts. She will be seen and if necessary, treated as soon as possible once she arrives in the states. She has asked me to pass on her gratitude to all of you who have been praying for her.

One of the things I did not mention in the prior post was that Rebecca had her military ID, bank card and her cash stolen after she arrived in Kuwait. Peter said that she would not be able to fly back to the states with out her ID. He was unsure about how she could get new ID or how long it would take. He was very frustrated and discouraged. We started praying, knowing that only God could sort the whole thing out.

One of the first things Rebecca told me was that they had found her ID and bank card. They had been turned in to the security office. Her money was gone but she is so thankful to have her ID. God is so, so good!

Lord, thank You for Your goodness and mercy. Please bring Rebecca home safely and quickly.

Please Pray

I just got a phone call from our son Peter. His precious girl friend Rebecca, is very, very sick. As most of you know, Rebecca has been serving in Iraq with Peter. Last month, she got her hand crushed while loading equipment. She was preparing to be sent back to the states when she got very sick. She has made it as far as Kuwait and is waiting for an available seat on a civilian plane. Please pray that she can return to the states very soon. She needs to be cared for in an American hospital.

Peter is very concerned and has asked me to ask everyone I know to pray for her. She is an amazing gal who we have all fallen in love with. Please pray for her quick return and recovery.

We Are On Our Way Home!

Wowwee!! It seems like we have been gone for a lifetime!! We are in Gallup at a really cute little hotel. I woke up at 4:00 AM ready to get on the road. Unfortunately, the rest of the fam. is not quite as anxious. So, as they sleep, I am able to do a little "blogging catch-up".

We have had a fantastic time. We stayed with my sister Emmalena and her family. She is an amazing host. There were nine of us staying in her home for two weeks. The time seemed to fly by. She made us feel so comfortable. We enjoyed her family very much.

We had a "second Christmas" with all of my family. My mom had put on a delicious Christmas dinner for us. The guys all shot skeet and the gals caught up on all of the latest news family news. It was a great day.

We packed a lot of things into our two weeks. Our vacation took an unexpected twist when our renters moved out of our Apple Valley house. They left it a MESS! So we spent the second week cleaning it up so we could get new renters in it. God is so good. We were able to move them out, sell all of the "junk" they left behind and get it all cleaned up and put back together in just five days!( All with the help of my wonderful family) Not excactly how we had intended to spend our vacation, but glad to have been there to take care of it. We were not able to visit with all of the fun pals that we had intended to, yet we saw God's amazing faithfulness through it all.

We look forward to being home. I have not even looked at our pictures that we took of the trip. I am hoping that there are some fun ones to post. If my family would just wake up we could get on the road so I can do a "We're Home" post. I guess I can let them sleep for a little bit longer. Driving six hours of driving with grumpies would not be fun:)