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Saturday August 7th: John & Gillian, meet Menards-- otherwise known as the $100 club. A place where you can spend big money, & visit numerous times in one week. A place that reminds you of your growing to-do list of projects that need completing. A place that is wearing off the numbers of your prized REI Visa card. Menards meet John & Gillian--deeply in love, eager home-owners. They enjoy the many facets of completing a task near perfection & challenge each other's persistence to finish said projects. They enjoy good design, which is not something they find all too often with their quaint 900-square foot home nestled near downtown La Crosse.

The challenge? It's a marriage triathlon: Bathroom remodeling!

Leg one: Demolition
Leg two: Reconstruction
Leg three: (near) Perfection

Leg One:

It all started when I (Gillian), in preparation for my new mother-in-law & grand mother -in-law's first visit, was doing a bit of "touching up" along the window in our treasured 1950's style bathroom (think aqua tiles). I somehow managed to bump the small shelf that acted as a soap holder & much to my dismay, it fell completely off the wall, along with chunks of wet, crumbly something. Even worse, there was a medium-sized, middle class family of mold enjoying the warm, moist climate.

For the time being, I cleverly covered the mold with some plastic wrap & duct tape. It did the trick until we had more time to investigate what to do... nearly a week later, we found ourselves roaming around the daunting aisles of Menards, picking out tile, figuring out what grout would match, discovering there were not 1 or 2 kinds of mortar, but hundreds! And like we've ever done anything like this before? Heck no!

John, in all his brilliance, spend hours researching & chatting with the Menards' employees, & we finally gathered all the materials we would need to start the project. We really had no idea what was ahead of us, but as we started tearing out the tile, we noticed that it was very easy. Too easy... the entire wall under the window was soft & rotten. OK, so we need to replace the wall, too, not just the tile. Then we found the window to be a probable cause in some of the leaking.... I guess we'll replace that sucker, too.... & this went on & on... (& is still going on & on, I might add).

We had no idea that when we signed up to remodel our bathroom that we were in fact signing ourselves up for our very first marriage triathlon. It's amazing what comes out of you when it's 11pm & you've had your arms elbow-deep in mortar for 14 hours & you can't remember what you've eaten all day & you smell like a wildebeest & you have to spend at least an hour cleaning up & a good 45 minutes showering (because you have a rigged up shower in the basement that is tricky to use-- more on that later) before you can even think of going to bed. Why don't they put this in pre-marital counseling? :)

In all seriousness, our marriage is doing very well! We figure if we can still like each other after this project (we still do), then we can tackle anything that comes our way. Here are some sample pictures to indulge you... some before pics & ones during "leg one!"