Pen and Moon

musings, life lessons & poetry from Theresa Jarosz Alberti

Category: Update (Page 1 of 4)

Bathroom Remodel – Before and After!

June 15, 2023 / / 0 Comments

It’s done! I’m excited that I can now share with you the process and results of my bathroom remodel, and more about the repairs and remodeling that were done on the rest of the house. I always love looking at other people’s remodeling photos and hearing how the experience went, so I hope you’ll enjoy this dive into how mine turned out.

This was the third big remodeling project that I’ve been through in my 32 years in this house. The first (in 1997) was to chop off the back of the house and do a 3-story addition including a much larger kitchen, giving us the space we’d need to live as a family of 5 in a small house. The second (in 2006) was mainly finishing the attic space into a bedroom and bath, giving us a second bathroom in the house (yay!).

This current remodel project encompassed a lot of bits and pieces to improve the house, repairing things that weren’t working, replacing parts that were rundown, taking care of long overdue tasks that needed maintenance. The work was done by Wonderwoman Construction, a wonderful woman-owned company that had also done the previous attic and bathroom remodel. I’ll get into more of the nitty-gritty about the full project below.  But first, a few Before bathroom photos. Continue reading

Remodeling… My Life

January 31, 2023 / / 10 Comments

I’m sitting here with an itchy nose from extra dust flying through the house as loud sawing, drilling, and other power-tool vibrations rattle through the house (really unsettling for Loki-the-cat who hovers around me needing more reassurances and soothing). The construction workers for this current project– a major remodel of the main floor bathroom– started two weeks ago.  We are in the Messy Middle: a few months of living with one upstairs bathroom, workers in and out of the house every weekday, noise, dust, and random inconveniences (like the water being turned off for most of a day). It’s a hassle, exciting to see dramatic changes, frustrating, hopeful, all of the above. On the other end will be something a lot better than what was there, so it’s worth it. Continue reading

The Bear Awakens

May 15, 2022 / / 9 Comments

Greetings from the doorway of my cave of hibernation. That’s what it’s felt like for the last many months, hunkered down in my house, Okay, maybe I wasn’t really sequestered in some self-imposed solitary confinement or sleeping the winter away, but I was definitely going through some big shifts that kept me from poking out my head much on social media. I was still staying social by zooming with friends and seeing family, running some basic errands, but the winter was kinda brutal and I stayed home a lot, grateful for my youngest son living with me and being around to talk and hug.

Spring wasn’t helping much either. Instead of being a hopeful time of new greenness, we had so many cold gray days that it felt like a continuation of winter. It’s only been the last two weeks where we’ve gotten some sun and warmth (YAY!), and in that all-or-nothing climate-change way, of course it jumped right into the 80s and even 90 last week. Sheesh! But this post isn’t really about the weather. My own internal weather is more like it. Continue reading

The Mermaids of Lake Nokomis

September 17, 2021 / / 10 Comments

What does it take to find bits of magic in your life? Sometimes all you need is a lake and friends and a desire to move your body. That’s what happened for me.

It started in July of 2020. Many of us women had been taking water aerobics classes at the YWCA for years together, several times a week. We’d become a community who knew each other’s faces and stories, who laughed and breathed hard, and sometimes complained together.

When COVID came along, of course the Y and everything else shut down. As the summer ticked by, one of our members who had been a former water aerobics teacher had the brilliant idea to start emailing to see if anyone was interested in having some unofficial classes at one of the city lakes a few times a week. Everyone loved that idea. Continue reading

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