SSSSSHHHHHH.......
I'm posting this because I know there is no way Justin will see it before he gets home. He and my Uncle Dale (who was awesome enough to flew out there to drive home with him - thank you so much Uncle Dale!) left Southeast Georgia around 10-11am yesterday morning. As I post this they are only about 350 miles away from Chandler...Woo Hoo! They are marathon drivers and we are excited to have Daddy home. I'm really excited to show him his belated surprise birthday present. We have lamented over our Master tub since we moved into our house a year ago. The guy who did the rest of our floors was GREAT! We loved his work. He would have finished the tub surround but we had some plumbing issues with the faucet (the first faucet we bought didn't put out enough water to fill a 90gal tub very fast - it would've taken an hour to fill up the tub) so we didn't want the surround done. Justin had so many other things on his list that it took a long time to get the plumbing resolved, and it was a low priority since it didn't need to be done for us to move in. When you build your own house and are living with your parents, you don't take your time and wait until absolutely everything is done before you move in. You get the minimum required for a Certificate of Occupancy from the city and you move! Well, having a finished master tub, or mirrors, or a surround on the island, etc. are minors items that aren't required for a home to be habitable. As soon as we moved in we also wanted to get the yard planted with trees and grass so we didn't lose a whole season of growth (as well as have to deal with the dirt and dust for a whole year) so our first priority was grading and planting the yard. Within a few months of moving in we also found out that more than likely we would be heading off to Georgia, so Justin had to take on the task of finishing off the apartment above our garage so we could try and rent it out to help pay for our rental in Georgia. I could go on and on about all the projects, but I'll get to the point: Justin did finish the plumbing problem, but the tub still never got done! Our tile guy was nowhere to be found because it was now over six months later (finishing the tub was part of the entire job, and we trusted him so Justin paid him in full even though the tub wasn't done).
Justin came home for his Grammie Irma's funeral a few months ago and was going to surprise me by hiring someone to finish it, but the guy wanted like $900 and we just couldn't afford that (plus that price is crazy in this economy!). Well, when I got home I thought it would be cool if I could surprise Justin with a finished tub instead! His birthday pretty much sucked since we were here in AZ and he was alone in GA, plus I couldn't think of anything cool to get him, so the tub seemed like a perfect idea. Turns out one of the guys framing our basement also knows how to lay Travertine. I offered him $300 to do it and the rest is history. Unfortunately I probably should've gone with a professional tile layer as the framer may have known how to do it but it wasn't with the same perfection as someone who does it for a living. At first when he got started it was looking really good, but toward the end he got sloppy. The dark tiles that line the bottom have intricately carved flowers in them and the dumb guy got grout all over them and grouted in-between them! Totally wrong because they shouldn't have the same color grout as the tile since they are so dark, and I had to get on my hands and knees as soon as he left (after grouting) and spray the grout out with water so I could get it out before it dried. Essentially at the end I got what I paid for, and maybe one day a few years from now we'll have it re-done, but for now it's done and is definitely an improvement!
Before:
See my vanity on the right? Yeah, a mirror is next on my list! I still don't have one because we installed a 4-way outlet on my side but it happens to be in the area where the mirror should go, so we have to get the mirror custom cut to go around it. Dumb mistake on my part to ask for it there!
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