Running, Backsplash and Brick Walls

My weeks in Secaucus, with the exception of dinners in NYC, usually aren't too exciting. However, this week I had the opportunity to go to the Jets vs. Bears Monday night football game. Since Andrew has never been to a regular season football game, he drove up for the night as well.

The stadium is fairly new and really nice, so it was a great night. I even brought warm clothes so I was comfortable for the 50 degree weather! I was sad that we didn’t see Jessie James Decker cheering on Eric but it was a fun night overall!

It was a long week in Secaucus, lots of work, a funeral, and my running is really ramping up, so I got home Thursday pretty exhausted. This was our last weekend before our kitchen party so I knew we had a ton to do. We made a plan to complete the backsplash Saturday morning.

The final kitchen picture before the backsplash

We were both up early Saturday to exercise before the backsplash. I am finally at the point in marathon training where the long runs are really long, so I ran 16 miles while Andrew went on a bike ride.

View from my run

Surprisingly, I felt good during the run and was ready to get started on the backsplash by 12. We laid out the tiles to get a gauge of where we should start, and decided to lay the first tiles in the back corner of the kitchen.

We borrowed a wet saw for tile cutting from my Aunt Hallie and Uncle Larry, which was great because it saved us the money we would have spent renting one. My dad did all the wet saw cutting while we put down the floor so we had no idea what we were doing, so we crossed our fingers and hoped the tiles would cut easily.

The first cut!

We finished about ¾ of the backsplash by about 6pm and started to get tired and sloppy so we called it a day. We decided on a white grout so it will look much different when it is done, but I loved the look so far.

While we were working in our kitchen all weekend, we listened to the sounds of the houses behind us being built. I had mentioned the blighted houses that were here previously in a post awhile ago, and they are finally building them now (and they are huge!).

On Sunday we were up way too early, ready to get back to backsplashing. The cats, per usual, were a huge help in the whole process. Timmy especially wanted to know what we were doing and why and, as always, wanted to drink water out of the kitchen sink.

The remaining backsplash involved a lot of intricate cuts, especially around the sink, so it was still a solid four hours of work. We made a good team and while Andrew did the cuts, I put down the tiles and tried to figure out the next piece.

We were feeling a little stressed about all the other projects we want to have done by next weekend so we recruited Dan to help with the exposed brick wall. We STILL are not done with this project but I wanted it to be one step closer to complete, even though it needs a lot of work. We asked Dan to put the wires in the encasement and replace the old outlet box while we finished the backsplash.

The remaining hour required some good music so we blasted Erics On Fire Volume 7. The creator of this fantastic mix is a friend of Dan's from Duke and it is the best music to listen to while working on frustrating house projects and long runs. Thanks to EOF, the backsplash was finally finished around 3:30. Andrew got straight to working on homework while Dan and I rocked out, cleaned up and finished up the brick wall. 

Next weekend is the big kitchen reveal and we are so excited to be done with the kitchen. The house is really coming together and we are proud of how it is turning out!

Updated brick wall

On September 24^th we celebrated one year in the house and it has been quite a year! Now that our kitchen is complete, we will take a break from big, expensive projects and focus on saving money and travelling :)