Our New Car!

As promised, we got a new car last weekend. We wanted to get a larger vehicle that we could haul things around in. This will primarily be driven by me so it won't be traveling very far each day. It will pretty much take me to work and back which is only a 12 minute drive. Here are a couple of shots of the car.

Yes, it is a Toyota Highlander. The car is actually built on the Camry chassis so it drives much more like a car than a truck. The ride is pretty smooth. We decided to go with the limited edition as we wanted leather seats and liked all the extra features that this version comes with.

Here is a picture of the front seat. It has a push start which is a very cool feature. As cool as it is, it is also weird and a little scary. Having to turn a key all your life and switching to pressing a button is strange. However, I'm getting used to it and actually like not having to deal with keys. I do have a "key" in my pocket that you must have in order to start the car. It is really just a clicker that also opens the doors automatically when I walk up to the car. It's a completely frivolous feature but also one of the coolest. The car will also not lock if there is a key in the car so you can't lock your keys in it. It has a 6 disc changer, AM/FM, and a port for my ipod that I have to get a hookup for. There are 6 cup holders in the front seat, 4 right there and 1 each door. That is a little excessive as well but I do like having more than 2. It's nice when you have a bottle of water and then maybe a Jumbo sweet tea from Bojangles. The seats are automatic and the driver's seat has some thing that extends the seat to make it more comfortable for my long legs. I can't really explain it so you'll have to take my word for it. It gives me plenty of room. I can actually straighten out my legs in the front seat.

Here is the backseat. It has two captain's chairs that morph into a bench seat with an additional piece that is currently stored just under the back seat controls there on the right. There is a ton of room in this section as well even with the front seats all the way back.

Here is a picture from the tailgate. That thing across the back is there to hide your stuff from people looking in. It comes down and stores below that mat there and then you can pull up the third row of seats. They are not spacious but they actually aren't terrible either. Elizabeth could fit back there pretty good. So, we can haul around visitors when we have them. We can also haul around stuff like new vanities, toilets, lawnmowers and other things that were impossible in our older cars.

That was our excitement from last weekend. This weekend I took my final test for school so as long as I pass the two classes that I took this semester then I will have my masters in business degree. Now, we just need the economy to get better. I'll write next about some of my coolest classes and experiences. Have a good one!

New Bathroom!!

We recently renovated our bathroom. We did some of the work but we didn't try and handle the hard core plumbing of the job. I'm not a skilled craftsman by a long shot so we hired some help for that. However, we did some of the work and we did all of the painting. I'll take you through what we did.


The first thing that we did was take down the molding in the bathroom. Does a bathroom need molding around the middle of it? No, Elizabeth didn't think so and she took it off. She is responsible for the majority of the work in the bathroom as I was more of an assistant. So, the "we" could really be Elizabeth 90%; Ben 10%. I had a ton of school work this summer so I was doing that a lot of the time. When she took the molding down she had to put joint compound in it's place.

As you can see, we have a little bathroom but it works. We also took out both medicine cabinets that we had. There is some new drywall up there on the left of the second picture. Elizabeth and Ryan put that in place.


After that was complete, we decided to paint the bathroom before the plumber came in to install everything. Here is the primed bathroom.

We then painted the ceiling and the walls. We had some issues with the paints that we bought from Lowe's not showing up right so Elizabeth decided to do a faux finish. We have one of those downstairs in that bathroom. I think that one is very cool so I pushed for it. Elizabeth was concerned that the next people buying this house would not like it but we had no real choice since the paint did not turn out. It also helped to hide some joint compound issues. Here she is making some touch ups.





We then had the plumbers and then a handyman come in and complete the work. One of the coolest things is the seat on the toilet. It does not slam. It goes down extremely slowly. It's very cool. It's right there with tissues as the coolest things in the house that don't require batteries or power to work. Here is the finished product.

Next Week . . . A NEW CAR!