Utah and New Mexico & more home reconfiguration

Life has been busy lately, and it's about to get a whole lot busier.  We made a few changes to the configuration of our rooms to create a dedicated baby room, made time for outings with friends and even had time for a short vacation.

Let's start with the bathroom vanity.  In case you did not get the memo, golden oak is not in style, and our house has(d) plenty of it.  I did some reading on the internet and found a technique that was worth trying.  The key to this cabinet transformation recipe is this--you must start with a product that has an existing finish; this will not work on bare wood.  You simply give the cabinets a quick rubbing with a scotchbrite pad, lay on a coat of General Finishes Java jel-based stain; wait 24 hours----> add a second coat, wait 24 hours----> third coat, wait 5 days----> add a coat of General Finishes water-based poly acrylic, wait 24 hours----> second coat of poly, wait 24 hours----> third coat and you're done.  The amount of time spent prepping and actually doing the coats is fairly minimal, however the time inbetween seems rather significant.

I also replaced the vanity's old exposed hinges with Austrian-made Blum Blumotion european hinges with soft-close, which required drilling the back of each cabinet door to accept the hinge cup, and also added some fantastic looking brushed stainless door hardware that matches the finish of our shower door.  Here is the result:

We couldn't be happier.  We have about $60 in materials (stain, tape, brushes, etc.) and around $150 into hinges and hardware.  We could have found hardware for less (we paid full retail at Woodcraft store), but we fell in love with these.  Why Austrian-made hinges?  Because Hanna and I LOVE Austria and it's because it's what was available.

Last week we had the carpet in house replaced with Mohawk Smartstrand, which seems to be some of the most durable carpet out there.  Smartstrand has softness that approaches that of silk carpet, but with the stain resistance of polyester.  Since we had to remove all of the contents from the three bedrooms and closets, we found this to be a great opportunity to do some reorganizing.  We went to IKEA and bought a HEMNES bookcase and HEMNES floating shelf to make up for some book storage we lost in the room that will now be a baby room.  One side of the floating shelf is bridged to the upright bookcase, the mid-point just happened to fall right on a stud in the wall, and the two corners are supported by sheetrock molly bolts rated for 66 pounds each.  We found the IKEA BESTA BURS desk to fit almost perfectly underneath.  The desk is sort of iPod-like, finished in a 'floating glass white.'

We also bought some IKEA BESTA shelves that we configured with one drawer on top and two shelves below for additional storage in our master closet.  I bolted them to the interior of the closet, leaving 29-1/2" of space between the wall and the shelf so I could mount the sliding IKEA KOMPLEMENT pull-out pants hangers.  Finally, there is an angled wall inside the closet that was perfect for mounting three IKEA TRONES shoe cabinets.  The closet is organized like nothing I have ever owned before.  (No picture, yet)

Outside the house, I finally did something about our weed garden in the front yard.  I picked up 1-1/2 yards of decomposed granite and applied it about 3" thick to suppress weeds, then threw a few Arizona sandstone pavers in that I had leftover from another project.  This should significantly reduce the amount of weeding I need to do compared with the pea gravel that it replaced.

Hanna's brother got married in Jemez Springs, New Mexico on May 25th, so we drove out to attend and do some hiking along the way.  We are officially sick of Interstate-5 through the Central Valley and SoCal, so we went over Highway 80 past Tahoe and Reno, then took Highway 50 across Nevada, then south on Highway 93 and stayed the first night in Cedar City, Utah.  There is a reason they call Highway 50 the "loneliest road in America" but man is it beautiful compared to I-5, particularly if you like high desert.

Loneliest road in America

The next day we picked up Interstate 15 and went south, with the cruise control set at 85 mph, mostly in compliance with Utah's incredible 80 mph speedlimit.  We skirted south of Zion National Park on Highway 59/389, picked up 89A/89 to Tuba City, then east on 264 to Gallup, New Mexico.  The drive from Cedar City to about Tuba City is pretty nice, but we find 264 and the route we took last year across Highway 98 (out of Page, AZ), Highway 160 and 191 to be pretty ugly, mostly spoiled by the Indian camps where trash is openly and almost purposely piled everywhere.  It is such a shame because the land is beautiful.  From Gallup we continued east on I-40 to Albuquerque, NM.

Navajo Bridge over Colorado River

 On Saturday we hiked part way up Sandia Peak, Sunday was the wedding, and Monday we headed towards home. Wanting to take a slightly different route, we went west on I-40 to Flagstaff, AZ, with the scenery starting to get pretty nice at this point), and took 89 north back to Hurricane, UT, where we spent the night.

The next day we woke up early and headed into Zion National Park.  Last year we went through here during the National Park closure, so we got to see the park completely de-void of people, but we did not have the opportunity to hike.  We boarded the shuttle and hiked Lower and Upper Emerald Pools.

Following the Emerald Pools hike we re-boarded the shuttle to the top of the park (furthest north) for the Riverside Walk Trail.  This paved trail leads to the mouth of the Zion Narrows, which is a hike people gear-up and hike *in* the river and up through the narrow gorge.  This has been on my bucket list for a while; and when we reached the end of the paved trail and the start of the Narrows, we decided we needed to do at least a couple hundred feet of it.  We plunged in wearing our hiking shorts and hiking shoes, and found it to be refreshing on this 97 degree day, and it felt safe, so we pressed on for about a mile.

The Narrows is a pretty remarkable place, with the Virgin River flanked by several hundred foot-high sandstone walls on either side, it is a must-do.  We plan to return some time in the future and hike more of the trail.

We stayed that night again in Hurricane, UT, then continued home by driving west to St. George, Utah, north on Highway 18 where we saw the "Biggest Loser" vans and contestants doing a film shoot at Snow Canyon State Park, then reconnected with Highway 56 to 93 and US50 back home.  It was a great little getaway, and we plan to return to central Nevada with the 4Runner at a later date to explore the myriad of dirt roads that lead off to cool places around the Toiyabe Mountain range.