Thursday, January 25, 2007

Traveling with My Bathroom

As you probably have read before, our bathroom was one of the worst features when we purchased our condo. The shower head and faucet was old and corroded. The floor was this ugly checkered vinyl flooring, and the toilet....woo, that thing looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years.

So before moving-in I promissed my wife that I'd fix it up. So as part of our renovations, we changed the flooring, put in a new toilet, changed out the shower head and faucet. Today the shower looks a lot more modern, but is still not complete.

Both my wife and I love to travel. So our goal in the renovation of the bathroom, was to take our favorite things from hotel bathrooms we liked and bring them into ours. So for our shower head, we put in a fancy chrome Kohler Revival head. The shower head is nice and big and sprays a wide soothing stream of water. Then for our shower rod we went for the curved rod that gives you a lot more space in the shower. For the toilet we trusted our plumber, and we went with Toto...which is cool because thats what they have in a lot of hotels as well.

Anyways, this week I am at a conference in San Antonio and what do you know. Staying at the Marriott, my hotel room has the exact Kohler shower head, curved shower rod, toilet and similar tile. Wow...its like I never left home.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

The Empty Wall

This weekend I finished chopping down and throwing away our Xmas tree. We really lucked out this year, we got a really nice symmetrical and tall tree. But now that the tree is gone we no longer have anything to put there. As you may remember we got rid of the old entertainment center unit that was left behind by the previous owner. So now we have a bare wall.

Since buying our dining and sectional sofa in October, we haven't really bought any other major furniture that defines or adds function to the room. I guess I would like something that will fit with our modern looking place, but also be functional. I've been obsessing over the perfect item for that wall and I have found 2 credenza's that I think will really look dope next to our bare wall.


From Pottery Barn
From Crate and Barrel


I know my wife will want to see them in person first, and I'm split...so figuring out which one to get will be a little tricky.

So what do you think?

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

The Leak Behind the Wall, I Think

Ever since the kitchen sink leak a few months back, I am really paranoid about our plumbing. These days it seems that every little noise I hear, immediately sparks an investigation for puddles, water damage or moistness.

One noise that has been driving me crazy for the last few weeks is in our bathroom. Every time we turn off our faucet, we begin to hear this dripping sound from behind the wall. Its like drip, drip, drip, drip.....dang it, it must be a leak. At first I tried to ignore it, I pretended that I wasn't hearing it. But as time went on, it just got louder and louder. So I decided to go speak to our association, who referred me to their maintenance guy. He asked me if there was any water damage on the walls or any moistness. I said "no," and he was like "then don't worry about it!" His theory was that the vibration of pipes from the water pressure can cause that dripping sound and is very common throughout our complex "Besides," he said "you live on the second floor, so you're good as long as your neighbor doesn't complain."

Somehow this was not the type of reassurance that I was looking for.

Typically in a condo one owns the space but nothing that's inside the walls. This is good to some extent, because in the event a pipe breaks behind the wall we don't get stuck paying for the repairs . The bad thing is, what if the water floods our place and damages our stuff....that's all on us and our insurance that hasn't kicked in yet.

Saturday, January 06, 2007

New Year, New Home, New Me

Phew, the holidays are finally over and its time for a new year. Due to all the expenses recently I haven't really worked on the condo much, but I will probably start putting to use some of the gift cards I received.

One big accomplishment in the last few weeks was finally hooking-up my DJ setup in our second room. In another life I was a dj, and I would spin records almost everyday. I was a turntable junkie obsessed with post-modern disco and deep house. Unfortunately over the years, my career, lack of space and lack of time have pulled me away from my passion. So after 3 years of having my equipment stored away in a closet, I finally have a place to set it all up and lose myself for a bit in my music collection. So now our second room is an office/dj studio/guest/storage room. Wow, hopefully I can narrow the rooms function a bit more over the next few months.

With 2007 here, I am trying to tranform the old RAR into a new lean mean fighting RAR...well no, I'm tripping, but at least get back into running shape. In yet another life, I use to be a long distance runner. But ever since I ran the San Diego marathon in 2002, the furthest I've run recently is from my living room to the bathroom after some bad Mexican food...and that was more like a sprint. So our complex has a small gym with tredmills and weight lifting machines, so I figure I should start using them. Not to mention, we have a local community college nearby with a nice track. Hmm, yup I can do it....and to get me started I even bought myself some new running shoes. Alright, now I'm convinced I am going to do it. Wish me luck.