Bathroom Remodel: Part 2

Moving on past demo, we began to rebuild our bathroom. I did lots of measurements and cutting of styrofoam and moisture resistant drywall. Tim and his dad totally rewired the room.

We knew that high quality tiling was out of our league, so we called up Eric at Jensen Tile. While tile prep and setting were happening, Tim and I were running between Home Depots, Menards and Lowes to make sure we had everything we needed. Tim learned how to cut tiles in half (for the marble floor) and I was busy in the basement priming and painting the baseboards, trim and beadboard.

Since we had a tile team at our house we decided to also go ahead and tile our kitchen floor, which had been a project in waiting for about two years. So in our small Broad Ripple house, both the bathroom and kitchen were out of use. During the workday, we got accustomed to going to the Lowes or McDonalds bathroom. At night we stayed at a friends house who so willingly put us up for what totaled 8 nights! As Christmas approached we got the project to a good stopping point, one that involved a working toilet and shower, and headed out of town to spend time with family in a non-construction zone house. Directly following family Christmas gatherings, we left bright and early for the Urbana Conference in St. Louis.

I am super excited to shoot my first wedding of the year tomorrow for Amanda and Adam. They are so in love and so ready to be married!

Bathroom Remodel: Part 1

As I mentioned earlier, Tim and I have been tackling some major home renovations this past month. A few weeks ago our bathroom looked like the before pictures below. It is our only bathroom and we knew that work was looming. It was spacious and pretty functional but water damage had begun to show on the wall by the shower and we had already removed a large section of wet and loose wall tile this summer. Our sweet handwork to get us by so far involved lots of caulk and a bit of duct tape.

You might wonder, why home improvement in December? Sure it's freezing outside, time to enjoy the holidays, but it was also time when I had little Megelaine Images commitments and Tim and his dad's man power were available. Yes we are frugal and yes we tend to be do it your selfers. I knew it was the real deal when the dumpster got delivered to our driveway. This pictures are the first two days of work. Lots of crow-barring and bucket loads of debris hauled to the dumpster. At the time of these photos we were still staying at our house overnight.

As a note, our house was built in 1926. Let me tell you that they built them to last back them, which is great but made demo hard work. It was neat to see how different the construction was from techniques and materials used today. Turns out the bricks for our chimney were made right here in Indianapolis. More to come soon in our adventures of home remodel...

Urbana 09

Well, to say my life has been a little out of the ordinary lately would be an understatement. With all of my 2009 clients taken care of and my next wedding being this weekend, Tim and I have been tackling major home renovations (which are nearing completion) as well as visiting family for the holidays and photographing Urbana in St. Louis, all in the last month.

Urbana is a giant (17,000+) mission conference for college students that is put on by InterVarsity. Last year I helped out photographing InterVarsity's Greek Conference in Indy. I was thrilled that Tim and I were able to be a part of the photography team at Urbana. Working on a team was fun and essential to share the load of documenting such a huge event. The other fabulous photographers were Dave, Barry and Adam, who's wife just had her first book published. A special shout out to the other wedding photographers on the team, Wayne and Angela! You can check out their Urbana pics here.

Urbana felt like shooting 5 weddings in 5 days with very tricky lighting situations. It was great for me to have the challenge of shooting so much. Each day consisted of two large gatherings, hundreds of different break out sessions, manuscript study, a 200+ mission organization exhibit hall, and feeding 14,000ish people in 2 hours for dinner. It was incredible to see so many passionate people in one place that are committed to living purposefully.