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Our Bathroom Remodel - Episode 5: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Our Bathroom Remodel – Episode 5: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

FEBRUARY 23 – “TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK”

Okay, so I’m a week behind in my updates. I was going to be sneaky and try to back date my entries and pretend I was all up to speed, but I’ve had 2 glasses of wine and have a book club book to finish so I’m doing the speed-round version of updates instead.

So, the #1 lesson I want you to take away from our week in remodeling is “it doesn’t hurt to ask.”

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Our Bathroom Remodel - Episode 2 - The Toxic Shower Pan

Our Bathroom Remodel – Episode 2: The Toxic Shower Pan

FEBRUARY 8 & 9 – JUST A *LITTLE BIT* OF BRAIN DAMAGE

Well, things look pretty much the same in the bathroom this weekend, but boy do they smell different!

Saturday morning a nice man came bright and early to supposedly line the new shower pan with fiberglass. What it smells like he did was just fill the room with 20 gallons of 1970’s nail polish remover….remember the good stuff before there were FDA regulations on that kind of thing?

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Our Bathroom Remodel - Episode 1 - It Begins!

Our Bathroom Remodel – Episode 1 – It Begins!

FEBRUARY 6, 2015 – IT BEGINS!!!

It’s an exciting week in our house – after 3.5 months of selecting contractors, flooring, granite, cabinet-makers and paint colors, demolition has finally started for our master bathroom remodel.

For those of you who enjoy remodels (especially when they’re not yours), I’ll be documenting the process along the way. Think of it as “This Old House”, except instead taking you through the remodel of a charming 400 year old home in New England, I’m taking you through the repair of a leaky bathroom in a mid-90’s mass-produced planned-community home in Austin, TX.

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My Million Dollar One-Word New Year’s Resolution

For the past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying reading all of my friend’s “One Word” New Year’s Resolutions. Most of the words that they have been choosing are emotional, uplifting words like “grace”, “love”, “trust” or “gratitude”. They have shared beautiful and inspiring messages of how they will focus on the meaning of these words to help guide their purpose and energy in the new year. One after another, I find myself reading and nodding along thinking “That’s a good one – I should totally be focusing on that too.”

But instead, the one word that keeps coming back into my head over and over is “Edith”.
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Top 10 Reasons to Visit The Dusty Parachute in 2015

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New Year’s Day is the perfect time to reflect back on the past year (while lying hungover on the couch eating stale Christmas cookies.) Many of the bloggers I follow are doing fun ‘Top 20 Posts of 2014’ lists. I thought of doing something similar but seeing as how I have only done around 30 posts since starting The Dusty Parachute a few months ago, that would be like saying “Come to the site & read everything!”

So, instead I’ve categorized some of my 2014 posts to help give you an idea of which ones you will enjoy most based on your interests.  Assuming that many of my 2015 posts will fall into these same categories, it also doubles as a “Top 10 Reasons to Visit The Dusty Parachute in 2015”.
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Help Me Remodel (Two) Bathrooms

Our bathroom saga continues.

If you need to get up to speed, there are two previous posts:

Part 1:  A tale of how I’m so effective at denial, I can convince myself that a giant wet spot in the closet, accompanied by a mysterious musty odor is not a problem (probably just the cats, or the house settling…) And how my husband can break into a locked bathroom with just a slap bracelette. You can read all about it here.

Part 2: How a month after we finally accepted that the giant puddle in our closet was due to a shower pan leak, we still hadn’t even found a contractor to repair it.  It’s all here.

Part 3: How home repairs snowball quickly.

Here’s a breakdown of what has happened since Part 2: Read More

Wishing You a Very Craigslist Christmas

Wishing You a Very Craigslist Christmas!

I hate shopping.

And I’m not talking about Christmas shopping.  I mean 365 days a year.

I hear the stories all the time about all the moms who love their trips to Target and my eye starts to twitch a little (okay, a lot).

I hate the crowds, I hate knowing that whatever I buy will likely go on sale the minute after I buy it and I hate knowing that whatever I buy will be outgrown, obsolete, forgotten about in a matter of weeks.

So when I hear about people waking up at 5am on Black Friday to do the most extreme version of the thing that I do my best to avoid at 2pm on a Tuesday in April, you would assume that I would think those people are crazy, but I don’t.
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