The main bath remodel completed in October, with additional work on other rooms completed in early November. Painting and cleanup took us right up to Thanksgiving and a little after. So all of that in the heart of the holiday season made for a hectic schedule and household. But we couldn’t be happier with the remodel. We no longer have a crumbling cave for a bathroom, but a nice and shiny modern-looks-old bathroom. Also, the ceiling repairs in the other rooms of the house made a drastic improvement in the way the rooms feel. Now we’re itching to redo the kitchen! But that will have to wait for a while.

The room is really looking like a bathroom again.  This past week has seen big changes, and I only have pictures for half of the them at the moment.  Late last week the drywall was all sanded and the infloor heat installed.  That meant that we needed to paint over the weekend.  We primed both hall ceilings and the bathroom, and then painted the bathroom and the second floor hall ceiling; the first floor ceiling needed some additional drywall work that showed up once the primer was on.  Early this week a good portion of the tile went up.  Tiling had to stop when they ran out of ledge tile (whoops) and also discovered that the tile company sent the wrong border tile.  That’s not a big deal because the tiling cannot proceed much further anyway because the counter top needs to be installed first.  So no schedule impact there.  The cabinets are also installed and the trim around the window and door.  Part of the remodel required changing the direction the door opens, so Tom completed that yesterday and the door is ready for painting.

Just to point out how good these guys are: tiling the arch above the tub was completed with using all full tiles.  That is, the circumference of the arch worked out to be a sum of the full tile widths and grout.  So, we don’t have a runt tile at eye level.  I asked the designer, Rebecca, how long it took to figure that out, and she attributed it to 23 years of good, clean living.  Works for me.

In-floor heat installed

Drywall sanded and primed

Paint above the arch

Painted before cabinets and tiles

Jess busy painting the second floor hall

Second floor hall. Note the scoffolding to get at the high wall. Fun.

Tile around the tub and on the arch

Tile on the floor with the do-not-enter level

Here are some pictures of the bathroom sheetrocked and partly mudded.  The cabinets came yesterday and are waiting for the room to be complete enough to be installed.  The mudding should be done by this weekend so that Jess and I can start painting.  The tile setters will also be in on Friday and will lay out the in-floor heat.  By next week the tiling should be well on it’s way.  Things are moving fast.

Window and toilet area

The hall bookshelf/plumbing access

New arch; Tom had to plaster it because sheetrock wouldn’t make the corners

New lights and vent

New tub installed

Recess where the upper cabinet will go

Here are pictures of the demo and framing back in.  The drywall will all be in by the end of this week, and then we’ll be spending the weekend priming it.  I don’t believe I mentioned in the previous entry that we are also having the first and second floor hall ceilings redone, too.  Since the carpenter will have some time, we might also have him repair cracks in the plaster in three other rooms.  The carpenter, Tom, and his son, Anthony, are pretty good guys.  We’ve found them throughout the house fixing little things here and there just for the heck of it.  I think they just get a little stir crazy working in the small bathroom and need to switch gears for a little while.

When the bathroom was gutted, I took the opportunity to run phone, data and cable lines to the master bedroom and third floor bedroom.  I ended up crawling into spaces I didn’t imagine I would fit just to fish some of the line.  I’ve made a mental note not to tell the kids where those spaces can be accessed.

We were hoping to find something interesting during the gut, but there was little to be found.  Someone in 1949 did a repair job and stuffed the hole with an old newspaper, but it was too deteriorated to keep.

Old knob and tube wiring

Roof rafters above the bathroom space

The old framing for the built-in medicine cabinet

Where the old tub was and the new tub will go

Plaster and lathe – messy stuff

The bookshelf/plumbing access from the hall

Tub/shower area with the original arch

Sub-floor installed

Tub/shower area with the new arch

Framing around the window with increased depth for insulation

Wiring in progress

The arch all framed in

The old built-in storage access framed over to allow for cabinetry

Framing, plumbing and electrical rough-in

When we moved into the house, the second floor bath, the main bath, was mostly in an unusable state.  We made some updates in order to make it usable, but it was a far cry from what we wanted.  So, we hired the services of Rebecca Lindquist of Lindquist & Co to design a new bathroom.  She came up with a design we were satisfied with, remaining true to the style and architecture of the house.

I will post a series of blogs covering the construction.  This first one is to describe some of the issues we had with the old bathroom.

Tiles

Years ago, someone glued tiles to the plaster around the entire room.  The bath did not originally have a shower, so tiles were added to the bath surround to make it shower friendly.  However, nothing by way of a vapor barrier was added, and grout alone will not stop water from seeping behind the tiles.  So, after years of moisture, the plaster behind the tiles started to crumble.  By the time we bought the house, the tiles were hanging off of the wall and would let loose at the slightest pressure.  Plaster neither, is a good vapor barrier.  Now that the walls are gutted, we see the effects of this in water damage throughout the bathroom.

So as a quick fix, I tore out the tiles and plaster around the tub.  I then installed a vapor barrier, cement backer board and new tile.  It wasn’t perfect, but it allowed us to take showers, which was critical since that was the only shower space we had in the house.

Toilet

As far as I can tell, the toilet was original to the house.  From the day we moved in, it never flushed properly.  The flushing hardware was all caroded and some parts had been jerry-rigged.  The stopper stopped doing it’s job and water seeped slowly out of the tank.  Replacing the hardware was out of the question since the government mandated that parts for those old toilets should no longer be manufactured.  That was a way to get home owners like me to replace those old six-gallon flush toilets.

Water Pressure

Over the years, corrosion in the hot water pipes reduced the flow to no more than a trickle.  The tub/shower thankfully had enough to bathe comfortably.  But the sink had almost none.  Once in a while, a chunk of calcium deposit would let loose and clog up the fixtures, effectively shutting them off.

Electric

The outlet in the bathroom was on the same circuit as most of the second floor and all of the third floor.  Since our house has knob-and-tube wiring, there is no ground, either.  So, of course, a GCFI outlet would not work (I did install one, however, because it does add a little more protection than a regular outlet.)

Demolition began the day after Labor Day.  At this point, the room has been gutted and the plumbing roughed in.  The electrician has pulled some cable, but the rough-in will not start until next week.  Some foundational work has been completed as well, with floor joists being strengthened and wall placement adjusted.

The house is a mess, with old sheets covering most of our furniture.  The kids take a bath in a Rubber Maid container in the kitchen.  Jess and I make due with bathing in the old and leaking tub on the third floor.

The family headed up the North Shore to Grand Marais for a couple of nights this past Labor Day weekend.  We stayed on the harbor in place called Cobblestone Cove Villas.  The “villa” was a townhouse with two levels, two bedrooms and three bathrooms, which provided ample space for the kids to run around inside.  It was a nice break from the cramped single hotel room we typically rent.  Jess and I could sit in the living room on the first floor and talk without the risk of waking a child.  The townhouse was also in the center of the action, with restaurants, shops and beach just steps away.  We discovered that Sydney’s, a small cafe right outside our back door, has some of the best frozen custard we’ve ever had; a stop there became mandatory for dessert after supper.  We ate at Sven & Ole’s (if you haven’t heard of it, you’re not from Minnesota) one night.  Neither of the kids are big pizza eaters.  Plus they were tired, which made for a less-than-peaceful meal.  After a tantrum and a “time-out”, we decided we would make our eating-out experience lunch and have a simple supper.  So, we ate at the Crooked Spoon for lunch the next day, and then grabbed hot dogs, Chicago dogs and gyros as take-out from Sydney’s for supper.  Who would have thought that Ethan loves gyros?  He’s normally not a meat eater, but he probably chowed down a quarter of a gyro.  Grace’s hot dog disappeared before I even had a chance to bite into my Chicago dog.  Unfortunately, I guess, our kids are not restaurant kids.

After pizza on the first night, we took a walk out to the lighthouse.  We were expecting a paved path to the breakwater and then a nice wide breakwater like there is in Duluth and Two Harbors.  So we brought the stroller.  Luckily, the stroller folds up and can be carried easily on the shoulder.  The path to the breakwater is gravel and bedrock.  The breakwater is only a couple of feet wide and is periodically interrupted by exposed bedrock.  Jess had Ethan in the wrap, but I had to hold on to Grace’s hand to ensure she wouldn’t topple down the side.  It was a beautiful walk, but we had to always be aware of our footing.

The next day, we walked out to Artist’s Point, which is to the north of the breakwater and makes up the bulk of the outcropping.  The geology of the harbor is such that the “island” that is Artist’s Point was an island, but a peninsula was formed when the battering waves of Lake Superior deposited rocks between the land and the island.  The peninsula was made usable and the breakwater was added to make a safe harbor.  A Coast Guard station and marina now utilize the harbor.  Artist’s Point is so named because of the artists that sought inspiration there.  It is a family-friendly walk, with numerous trails through the pines and brush.  It has beautiful views of the shoreline and a wide expanse of exposed bedrock on the lakeside.

Ethan is an early-riser.  We discovered on our trip to North Dakota that he likes to take walks with me in the morning.  Thus, we continued that tradition in Grand Marais.  I’d wake up shortly before Ethan, brew a pot of coffee and get the stroller set up for our walk.  When he woke up, I got him dressed (or partly so), filled up a cup of coffee, strapped him in the stroller and headed out.  A few souls were also out and about as we made our first stop of the morning at the World’s Best Doughnut shop (the walk-up window opens at 6 am).  We would share a doughnut back at the townhouse after the walk; I’m not sure if they were the worlds best, but they were fresh, warm and very good.  We walked to the beach next to the Coast Guard station and watched the sunrise each morning.  We’d then stroll around town, stopping periodically to watch a bird or a dog or anything else that interests a one year-old.  We’d walk back to the room, eat our doughnut and then walk out to the harbor, which was a stone’s throw away.  Ethan would toss rocks in the lake and we’d watch the fishermen and the sailboats move in and out of the harbor.  It’s easy to spot the fishing boats; they’re the ones with a flock or noisy gulls trailing behind.  We’d have a couple hours to do this before Jess and Grace rose.  By then, their doughnuts cooled down.  You snooze, you lose.

When everyone was awake, we spent a few hours just sitting on the beach and tossing rocks in the water.  Grace loves to collect rocks.  She filled her purse full of smooth stones from the beach.  She likes to hand them out as presents later.   Ethan is also starting to pick up the habit.  When we arrived back at the townhouse, Jess noticed Ethan’s little fists were clenched tight.  In each was a little stone, which were pried out amidst vocal protest.  By the time we left Grand Marais, there was a nice little pile of rocks on the counter near the sink.

Grace loved the townhouse, which she generically named the hotel, and thanked us numerous times for taking her to such a nice hotel.  She also thanked us often for her own bathroom.  It’s funny how a three year-old can be heart-warmingly sweet one minute and how-much-would-she-go-for-on-ebay terrible the next.

It was good to get away for the weekend, though, as the construction on our main bath started the day after Labor Day.  There will be a series of blog entries about that.

(Note that the following pictures were taken with my iPhone.  We did bring the SLR, but I haven’t had a chance to download those pictures, yet.)

This how Ethan spends our “walks”

World’s Best Donuts

Sydney’s Cafe

Ethan oblivious to the sunrise

Thought this was an interesting angle

Flowers outside our townhouse

Crooked Spoon Cafe

Ethan tossing rocks in the harbor

U.S. Coast Guard station

Sunrise with a seagull

Sven and Ole’s Pizza

Yellow flowers and red-leafed trees

Nautical themed boardwalk guard

Grace had some fun tossing rocks, too

Daddy only half-dressed Ethan

Artist’s Point

My dad turned 60 this past weekend.  Sharon held a party for him at her house.  We had grilled burgers, grilled brats, baked beans, potato salad, veggies, dessert salad, and, of course, birthday cake.  The sun was quite warm, but the shade was perfect.  Sharon dug out some toys and sidewalk chalk for Grace, who the ended up spending a little too much time in the sun.  She started to get flushed cheeks, so we put Ethan’s hat on her and stuck her in the shade.  Ethan was in one of his  moods, so we had to find ways to entertain him.  He’s a busy boy and wants to be exploring, and exploring mostly things that he  shouldn’t.

The Lavan crew

Grace and Ethan enjoying the large swing

Dad opening his gifts with a little help from Grace

A full house

Jess trying to calm a crabby Ethan

The Lahti family “Christmas Party” was held this past weekend.  Normally, the party follows shortly after Christmas.  But it was delayed this year and rescheduled to July.  Also, instead of everyone descending on Jim’s house in Duluth, the party was held at the Finlandia Beach Club.  A much better venue in my opinion, because everyone could spread out and the kids had room to play, complete with a lake.

It was a cool and windy day for July, with periodic sunshine.  The hearty Northlanders showed up in shorts and t-shirts, whereas those from the southern reaches of the country were geared up for winter.  The kids could have cared less about the temps; they went swimming anyway.  The skies threatened rain all day, but luckily held off until a little later in the afternoon.  And then when it rained, it really rained.  Most outdoor activity ended with that.

Rousing games of badminton, bean bag toss and mölkky were played.  I think Gary even tried to get a game of ladder golf going.  Ethan tuckered out and took a nap in the car.  I was confined to the car (due to rain) to keep and eye/ear on him.  The little stinker slept for 2.5 hours.  I should have brought a book.  It’s a good thing I had my iPhone and could use a little nap myself.  Grace played and played and played.  She was having a blast and skipped her nap.  She slept well that night.

The relatives

Grace playing in the lake

Clyde and Gary playing bean bag toss (Clyde brought the win)

Al and Reino playing bean bag toss

Enjoying the lake

Jim, Duane and Mekeio playing mölkky

Blue skies to the south

Dark skies to the north

Grace scraping up brownie crumbs

We packed up the family and drove west to North Dakota for the week before the Fourth of July.  We weren’t crazy enough to attempt the drive out to Medora in one shot, so we broke the journey up into legs that would fit in the two two-hour nap windows we had each day.  Thus, we spent nights in each city as such: Jamestown, Dickinson, Medora, Bismarck and Brainerd (more on why Brainerd later).

We went to Yunker Farm (Fargo), Red River Zoo (Fargo), Frontier Village (Jamestown), Stutsman County Museum (Jamestown), Fort Seward (Jamestown), Dakota Zoo (Bismarck), Heritage Museum (Bismarck), Governor’s Mansion (Bismarck), Dinosaur Museum (Dickinson), Museum Center (Dickinson), Theodore Roosevelt National Park (Medora), Chateau de Mores (Medora), Pitchfork  Fondue (Medora), The Doll House (Medora) and the city of Medora itself.  We drove the “Enchanted Highway” and saw the large metal sculptures.

Grace loved Yunker Farm.  Located near the Air Force base, it’s an old farmhouse that has been converted into a children’s museum of sorts.  They have a lot of indoor learning activities for kids, including painting, a real honey bee hive, agriculture displays, a model cow for milking, a theater, music room, gravity demonstrations and a lot of other stuff. Outside, they have a scaled-down train for rides, a carousel and a playground.  About the only entertaining thing for us adults (other than watching the kids have fun) was the train ride.  But Grace played so much that she put up no fight when it was time to get in the car for the afternoon nap-drive to Jamestown.

The drive to Jamestown was a bit rough, weather-wise.  Storms were moving through the region and we were driving against a stiff west wind; I could literally watch the gas gauge drop.  We also drove through some pretty heavy downpours.  One thing about North Dakota; you can see the storms coming toward you from miles away.

We visited the Frontier Village in Jamestown in two installments; one on the way out to Medora and one on the way back. The Frontier Village is a hodge podge of historic and recreated historic buildings.  They also have miscellaneous old artifacts, a stage coach ride, pony rides, a theater and a park.  It is probably best known for it’s massive cement buffalo.  On the first visit, we mainly just wanted to walk the “town” and see the buffalo (real and cement).  Grace was so caught up in watching the scenery on the path to the buffalo that she wasn’t watching where she was going and belly-flopped onto a flower pot.  She suffered no damage other than a little embarrassment.  The storms were still marching through the area, so it was quite windy, even by North Dakota standards.  When taking pictures at the buffalo, Grace was blown to the ground by a big gust of wind.  She scraped up her hands a bit and shed some tears.  And then to prove that bad things come in threes, she was blasted by rocks (yes, rocks) in the wind on the way back to the car.  We all got hit, and it stung.  Poor Grace was traumatized by the ordeal.  For the remainder of the trip she needed us to reassure her that there were no rocks in the wind.  Needless to say, we didn’t stay at the village for too long. Unfortunately, our hotel offered little by way of relaxation.  The pool was partly closed due to construction, and was crowded with teenagers who splashed too much for Grace’s liking.  The room itself smelled of sewer gas; we needed to stopper the drains and fill the bath and sink with water.  We were to stay at the hotel again on our return trip, but we canceled and booked the much nicer and newer Holiday Inn Express down the street.  Also, Ethan decided to up the ante, offering two new teeth for the pot.  He was crabby for the remainder of the trip, but a little Motrin helped us all get through it.  On the second visit, we toured the Frontier Village more thoroughly, and without the high winds.  We took the stagecoach ride, which Grace was looking forward to and loved every bumpy minute of.  Ethan was less impressed and needed us to convince him that the kidney-crunching bumps were fun.  We also let Grace go on a pony ride.  We also visited the Fort Seward site and the Stutsman County Museum.  Fort Seward has no actual fort, but an interpretive center, veterans memorial and a large US flag.  A local farm dog, Homer, was our tour guide.  The museum is housed in an old mansion and contains a pretty impressive collection of artifacts.  Without kids, Jess and I could have spent a lot of time in there.

We also split our sightseeing in Bismarck into two parts; with the Dakota Zoo on the first visit and the Governor’s mansion and Heritage Center on the second.  The Dakota Zoo is a pretty nice zoo, or at least much better than what we were expecting for North Dakota.  They have a very nice wooded walking trail with an impressive variety of animals.  Grace loved it, and even Ethan could appreciate the accessibility of the animals; his finger was flying all over as he pointed to things of interest.  On the second visit we toured the Heritage Center, which houses a very nice museum full of artifacts relevant to North Dakota.  This was another place that Jess and I could have spent a long time exploring.

We enjoyed Medora much more than we thought we would.  It was our target destination on this trip, so we stayed three nights there.  Medora is what an old western-town-turned-tourist-trap should look like.  It has panoramic views of the badlands, old and new frontier-style buildings, train tracks with frequent trains and a Valley Fair kind of entertainment feel.  We stayed at the Badlands Motel right in town.  It’s a no-frills place with an outdoor pool and a mini-golf course.  Jess was pretty sure that the place hadn’t changed much since she was last there some 20 years ago.  Breakfast was not included, so we ate at the Cowboy Cafe, one of the few places in town not operated by the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation.  They had fresh caramel rolls every morning, which we bought for the kids, while Jess and I had Texas toast “French” toast and meat.  The place was packed every morning, and with all of the clamor of a typical cafe, the kids’ noises simply blended in.  Toss in a cup of hot coffee and it was the perfect place to start the day.  Medora could easily be seen in a full day with the Medora Musical in the evening.  But with two little kids and naps to work around, we needed the full two-and-a-half days.  We toured the Chateau de Mores, the summer home of the marquis who started the town.  We walked the town and looked in on any of the historic buildings open to us, and of course the little shops.  We ate at the Roughrider Saloon one night, which has been remodeled into a fine dining establishment: I had duck and Jess had lobster ravioli while Grace’s mac ‘n cheese came with an orchid for decoration.  It was a good meal, but quick as always with the kids.  We were in no rush though, as it was storming outside.  We also ate at the Pitchfork Fondue.  It’s part of the Medora Musical property and serves as a pre-show dinner (we didn’t go to the musical, however).  It’s a large covered space where steaks skewered on pitchforks are cooked in a few large barrels of oil.  There’s a buffet full of sides to complement the steak.  There must have been 300 people there when we ate, but it didn’t feel crowded.  The food was good and the panoramas were excellent.  During naps, we drove the loop through Theodore Roosevelt National Park South Unit.  It’s a beautiful drive with views of a variety of landscapes in the badlands.  We drove the loop a total of eight times, which gave us the opportunity to see a lot of wild life, mainly buffalo and wild horses.  We also visited the park’s visitor center and Teddy’s badlands cabin.  Ethan wasn’t sleeping well, but of course, the one night he was sleeping OK, we received a call at 12:30 am from the police department.  A bus had backed into our car during the night and did some damage to the spare tire cover.  After 30 minutes of talking to the cop and looking at the damage, I was fully awake.  It took a while to get back to sleep, and just when I did, the power went out…and on, and out and on.  Which turned off our A/C.  Apparently, the A/C doesn’t start back up easily, either.  It growled and moaned and threatened to wake Ethan and Grace.  Needless to say, I didn’t get very much sleep that night.

On the return home, we were to stay in Fargo on the Fourth of July.  We arrived in town and took the kids to the Red River Zoo, which is a decent little zoo with a very nice carousel.  We then drove to our hotel in downtown Fargo near the Red River.  The hotel parking lot was pretty much empty.  The gal at the front desk said we would be one of a few staying there that night.  She said Fargo empties for the Fourth.  And sure enough, we took a walk near the hotel and the area fealt like a ghost town.  We quickly decided to cancel our room and drive to the Brainerd area.  Luckily, the gal at the front desk understood (is that a good thing?) and didn’t charge us for our room.  We then left Fargo as quickly as we could and found a room at the Baxter Holiday Inn Express with a very nice waterpark.  We ate a nice dinner at the Black Bear Lodge and Saloon before spending the rest of the night in the waterpark.  Grace loved the park so much that the only way we could get her out of there was that it closed at 9pm.

In all, it was a good trip.  It would have been better, if Ethan would have held off on his teeth and the car would not have been hit.  Yet, it proved that our kids are ready and tolerable on long-distance road trips.

Yunker Farm in Fargo

Jess, Grace and Ethan on the train at Yunker Farm

Jess, Grace and Ethan at the world’s largest buffalo

Looks windy, and a moment later Grace was blown to the ground

Grace trying to feed a deer grass at the Dakota Zoo

Ethan mesmorized by the horse at the Dakota Zoo

Ethan cackling away while petting a goat at the Dakota Zoo

Grace in the prairie dog colony at the Dakota Zoo in Bismarck

Erik and Ethan at the Dickinson Dinosaur Museum

Jess, Grace and Ethan at the Dickinson Dinosaur Museum

Theodore Roosevelt’s cabin at the TRNP visitor center

Chateau de Mores in Medora

Some ominous skies in Medora

The “Doll House” in Medora

Wild horses on the loop through TRNP South Unit

Badlands with a petrified stump (lower center)

The heard of buffalo

Jess, Grace and Ethan on Buck Hill in TRNP

More wild horses being social

Prairie dogs in one of three large colonies on the loop

Pitchfork Fondue in Medora

Jess and the kids enjoying Pitchfork Fondue

Our family in Medora

The Cowboy Cafe – a good place for breakfast in Medora

The Rough Rider’s Hotel and Saloon

A heard of buffalo crossing the road in front of us in TRNP

A large bull buffalo lounging on the side of the road in TRNP

Prickly pear cactus in Medora

The governor’s mansion in Bismarck

A stagecoach ride in Jamestown

Grace on her much anticipated pony ride

The Stutsman County Museum in Jamestown

Grace feeding goats at the Red River Zoo in Fargo

Our family on the carousel at the Red River Zoo in Fargo

Erik and Grace at the waterpark in Baxter

Jess and Ethan at the waterpark

Sorry, this post will be short.  But I wanted to get some pictures of the kids’ birthday party up.  It was a good time and the kids had fun.