Chapter 2: half bath update

Now that our upstairs bathroom was finished, we needed to make a bathroom usable for the guests. Our half bathroom is on the main floor next to the front door. This bathroom needed some desperate help! The wallpaper alone was such a mess. We kept finding layer after layer of wallpaper from years ago. 

 Before:

 I felt like I had walked into a house in the country... all the wood accents and the old tiny sink with the silvery plumbing corroding below. The faucet was so short that when you washed your hand you couldn't avoid touching the sink.

You can't see in the picture but the toilet tank was leaning against the wall. I was always worried the tank would just break off at any moment. 

and...the smelly floor needed to be removed. There was a hole in the floor where a heating/cooling vent use to be, but there is no duct work that ran to it. How mysterious! :o . We ended up removing the floor and replacing it with the same tile that we used in the master bath. 

We found a goldmine of wallpaper behind the toilet tank. There were 5 layers of wallpaper in total. The crazy thing was when we removed the heart wallpaper, we found a small note, "paper by Sandy U_____ Wooster, OH" with a date written on the wall. Would you have guessed "5-1-07"! I'm sure when she wrote that note she intended the wallpaper to stay up for more than 3 years.

   Can you see all of the layers of wall paper? 

hearts, plaid, another tan pattern, and finally 

the last layer...butterflies that was shiny like

aluminum foil...oh wait, there are more harts underneath the aluminum foil. 

AFTER: So refreshing!! 

     

We removed the wooden frame from the old mirror, but while the rest of our house was under construction, it broke. We found this mirror at the restore instead.

We love the new toilet. The tank is nice and secure on this one.

We found the sink cabinet at Lowes for an awesome deal! The hardest part was fitting it into my little Toyota, with the backerboard for the tile, and the paint cans:)

Yeah for having two working bathrooms!! 

Mankind's biggest step since the moon!

Yesterday, I was introduced to Watson. He (it) is IBMs new supercomputer. Supercomputers are not a new concept. Computers are extremely proficient at mathematical formulas but poor in understanding and learning information from literature. This computer was designed to analyze literature to formulate a precise answer. This supercomputer is consistent in winning Jeopardy. It has 15 terabytes (15,360 gigabytes) of RAM (most computers have between 2-4 gigabytes) and you can see it in action at this link: ibm.com/watson

This will revolutionize how we interact with computers. We will be able to ask (i.e. with our vocal cords) the computer a question, and it will produce an answer. IBM programmers hope to use this to help improve customer service and diagnose patients. Essentially this will be used to take in large amounts of data and spit out the most probable answer.

Our world will never be the same again.

frozen over...literally

Shaun and I woke up to our first "ice storm" this morning. This was definitely very mild compared to storms Ohio has had in the past. (we still have power, etc.) At first when we looked out the window it didn't look like anything besides a cold morning. However, when we got a close look at the car it was obvious there was more to it. It took our neighbor 45 minutes of thawing her car just to drive it to campus.

School was cancelled for me so I have been enjoying some catch up time around the house. We are supposed to get hit again tonight...more ice in the forecast. Spring never seemed so far away. I think I will be making soup for dinner!