Drowning in Home Repairs

So you know all those little things you let slide when you live in a house? Well, they all have to get fixed if you want to try to sell it. Our list of things include:

• Find a longer tub spout (the one we had was too short and water would run down the side of the tub... we've had it off and just the pipe sticking out of the wall for years)
• Screw in busted off deck rails... and buy a couple of replacements for the ones that are missing
• Replace weather stripping on doors (where the cat scratched to get in)
• Take off screens (many of them have holes and replacing them is too expensive)
• Fix the kid's closet door
• Repair some of the bathroom and kitchen counters... the laminate is coming off in places... one option is to just replace the ones in the kitchen.
  

Then there are the things that I need to do just because it will look better:

• Paint the darker blue kid's bedroom
• Paint trim in kitchen (possibly repaint kitchen)
• Replace carpet (okay... I'll hire this out, but I've still got a lot of work to do to get ready)
• Tile Kitchen
• Major yard work

So... anyway. I'm on a bit of overload right now. I'm in the middle of the kid's bedroom this weekend. I'm trying to decide if I should repaint the entire room or if I can get away with just repainting the trim... Not sure. The blue is a bit too blue... I don't know how well it will show... but then I think, "Whatever." So... I'm definitely painting the trim today, but I don't know what else right now. I have a box of things packed up that we don't really need from that bedroom. Hopefully it will help with some of the clutter.

Okay... enough complaining. I gotta go paint.

Time with Zach

Today Zach and I had a date planned. I was going to get him out of school around 2pm (school lets out at 3:45) and we were going to go do something fun. We discussed it a lot and finally last night decided to go to the bowling alley. I had a couple of coupons and have my own bowling shoes, so the cost would be minimal. They have an arcade there, so he could play some arcade games. So off we went today and bowled our two games. He did it without the bumpers, so he did pretty bad, but started getting the hang of it. I'm not real fond of my bowling shoes, but figure I better get used to them, so I did worse than usual. But we both had fun. Zach got a slushie and a pretzel from the snack counter. And the "old people" (as Zach called them) were doing their league bowling, so Zach thought it was funny that they were doing something that was a stereotyped behavior for old people. Of course, the "congratulations for Blah Blah on a 300 game" going over the microphone over and over again made me think that they weren't as old as Zach thought. :)

So... we finish up our snack and bowling and head over to the arcade. Zach has 5 dollars to spend... a great luxury in our family. He chose to spend 2 dollars on a Deal or No Deal game that gambles with the number of tickets instead of money like on the show... good idea, but he walked away with 8 tickets... not so great. We then headed over to ski ball. I don't know what magic button Zach hit, but he did really good on his score (he got 2 10,000s and a 5,000) and somehow ended up with a Bonus light going off and he got about 500 tickets from that ski ball machine. I wish you all could have seen his reaction as tickets are pouring out of this machine. He was bouncing all over the arcade with his mouth and eyes wide open. :) It was funny. So we ended up with 554 tickets to spend. He got a beanie baby rabbit, a weird squishy thing, a big popper thing (Good descriptions, huh?), and I dared him to get a Fireball. He did and kept it in his mouth for about 30 seconds before spitting it out.

Fun day for us. :)

Toad Suicide

When I got back from Texas, I noticed that a toad seemed to be missing. They can hide in small spots, so I didn't think too much about it then. The next day I looked for him again, but didn't see him. I called Mike in (I don't really want to discover a yucky, dead toad) and he searched, but couldn't find him. That night Mike found him in some packing paper that I keep under their tank stand (for the worm composting). He was all dried out and dead. In the past few months we've lost our kitty (most importantly, and the only sad loss), Kane, the three millipedes, and now a toad. I guess the animals are making room for the baby. I hope to find a new home for the rest of the toads before long... 3 years is long enough to have them around. Kory can be our sole pet for a while. He likes the attention. :)

Breaking Through

So, yesterday was a super productive day. We finally finished up our bathroom. We got all the baseboards attached and painted and we got the toilet installed. We got the counters all cleaned up and it just looks so beautiful now. I'll send pictures soon. We still have to re-install the doors. The kid's bathroom door didn't have to be trimmed, but ours are going to need about a 1/4 inch taken off the bottom. Good thing our neighbor Derrick has a bunch of woodworking tools. :) (We're bums and we're proud of it!)

Mike cleaned out the garage and fixed two bicycles. That was no small feat. Our garage can get really, really bad, so I'm all impressed with him on that.

I went to Shareware and got a few baby things. They didn't have a whole lot that wasn't stained pretty badly, not my style, or just enough of what I was looking for. Still... I came home with a small bag of clothes and that will help.

And I ordered a onesie that I had seen before. I think Kristin sent me the link to this site called wrybaby.com. They have some really funny "snapsuits" (as they call them). Here's the one I bought (they're having a sale through 6/1).


It's probably designed more for people who have daughters with no hair and people keep asking them if she's a he... however... I like the fact that my girl is "not a boy", so I'll share that with the world when she wears this shirt. Oh... and if she's like her brothers, she'll be bald for a long time, so it will work that way, too. :)

Stumbling Block

So. I'm having a girl! That is about the most exciting thing that I can think of. I truly am on cloud nine. I had so much fun calling family to tell them. Everyone's responses were great. If you ever watch the sonogram DVD, you'll see where after we saw the "money shot" as you might call it, my tummy was shaking because the sonogram tech asked me if my tears were happy tears. Uh...yeah! :)

So what's the stumbling block? Girl stuff! :) I have always only bought a girl outfit here or there out of hopefulness or dreaming. I've always thought, "I'll just give it to someone else if it doesn't work out." And now I'm having to think realistically about dressing this baby girl and my mind doesn't quite know how to go about it.

It's possible that it's just been 14 years since I really had to buy baby clothes, so that could be the problem. Or maybe it's because I'm still so early in the pregnancy, so buying clothes doesn't make sense now. But I look at all the clothes online and guess I go into sensory overload and just shut down.

We are having a Shareware this weekend at church, so there will be clothes there that are free for the taking. I think that might help me get through this block if I can go pick up some free things. Then maybe I'll start to be able to sink my teeth into the reality of dressing a baby girl.

And again, I'm just so thrilled. I've always told the Lord that I would be willing to take a daughter any time he wanted to send her to me. When I heard the whispering of The Spirit to try again to get pregnant, I listened and feel completely rewarded.

Luke 8:48 And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good ^acomfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.

I feel whole. Completely and utterly whole.

Texas Stories

I got to Texas Friday afternoon, May 9th. Darlene and I ran lots of errands, ate out for dinner, and had fun getting ready for Saturday's surprise party. On Saturday, my dad came back from his camping trip and was greeted by lots of people there to surprise him for his 60th birthday. I was hanging out in the hallway listening to the hubbub of the moment and Darlene came around the corner and told me to come out in just a second so she could get set up for a good picture of my dad when he saw me. She gave me the word and I came out. It was great because he had his back to me and when he turned around, he was shocked. :) Darlene got the good picture she wanted and my dad and I hugged. Many teary eyes were in that room.

It was nice to be there for the party to see people there who truly appreciate my dad. It was really nice. James (my step-brother), his wife Kim, and I stayed up way too late talking. It was nice to catch up with them and talk about how cool my dad is. :)

The next day was the day I had planned to tell them I was pregnant. I was planning on doing it during breakfast, so we all sat down and were chatting for a while. Then I finally said, "So... can I dominate the conversation for a minute?" :) They were shocked (it was my dad, Darlene, James and Kim) and happy.

Later we headed over to Shelley's (my step-sister) for a Mother's Day lunch. Everyone there was happy to hear the news.

The rest of the week was fairly uneventful. I spent time on Monday and Tuesday visiting Kristin and Libby. I went to lunch and a movie with Darlene and Kim (my step-sister... different than Jame's wife) on Thursday and to dinner and a movie with Dad and Darlene that night. We saw Baby Mama in the afternoon and Leatherheads that night. Both were good. Leatherheads was better. :) On Friday, I spent a couple of hours with Kristin before heading over to have lunch with my Dad. We ate at an awesome store called Central Market. They have this cafe section of their store that is amazing! We ordered a sandwich to share that had: toasted sourdough, smoked ham, turkey breast, prosuitto, chipotle mayonaise, mashed avacado, carmelized onions, sprouts, tomatoes, grilled poblano peppers, and roasted red peppers. Yum! Dad and I enjoyed talking to each other and had a great time. On Saturday, we went to a family reunion of Darlene's family. I met a lady there who was the youngest of 5 children and the only girl. :) The youngest boy was 7 when she was born. She said her brothers used to hide her when her mom was going to give her a spanking. :) My little one was kicking up a storm while she was telling her story. I told her that I hoped that my little one would be telling stories like that of her four brothers one day. After we left the reunion, we went to visit my Aunt Addean. She's my Grandma Jo's sister. You all probably know that I'm named after Jo. Her name was Joyce and she had 5 boys. My dad was the oldest and she died when he was 13. My Aunt Addean has been like my grandma all my life. She loved Jo a lot and all of Jo's boys became like sons to her. And thus their children like grandchildren. She was very excited to hear that I am pregnant and told me she would pray for me to have a girl. :) I appreciated that!

I then went to John and Kristin's house to hang out that night figuring that that would be the last time I saw them on this trip. I was leaving for the airport at 5:30 Monday morning and it didn't look like Kristin was going to have the baby before I left, so we stayed up chatting until around midnight, said our goodbyes and then I drove home.

I got up early on Sunday and after a trip to Lowe's for a tool to fix the riding lawn mower, my dad and I sat on the porch and watched while Darlene mowed the lawn. :) Poor Darlene! We should have helped her, but I guess we were enjoying sitting there together. We did eventually go get some wires plugged into the right places for his new TV and the new HD-DVR box they got from their satellite company. We had a nice dinner of steaks and baked potatoes and watched a couple of movies. It's a good thing I had most things packed when I checked my mail at 9:15pm to find out that Kristin thought she was really in labor. I called her at 9:22pm and decided I would try to go down to her house. I finished up my packing and Darlene drove me down. It's nice to have them only live about 20 minutes away from each other. It's was also nice of Darlene to drive me that late. John and Kristin were very appreciative. Kristin's story of the birth is great and on her blog. My dad picked me up at 6am and took me to the airport. After little sleep on Saturday night and no sleep on Sunday, I was a wreck! I slept a little here and there during flights/layovers. I napped Monday late afternoon for a couple of hours, slept last night for 10 hours and then napped this morning for about 1.5 hours. I think I'm all caught up now.

So, a successful trip. It's the first time I've been out to Texas since Darlene retired and it was really nice to spend so much time with her. She and my dad will be married for 25 years this September! I've known her since I was 6, I think. I remember when Reid was born, we went out to see them when he was a couple of weeks old. I had no idea how to help this baby stop crying and would try to nurse him and he would continue to scream bloody murder. She could take him and just calm him down. It's nice to have her in my life.

I'm still working on pictures from today's sonogram... hopefully I'll get it figured out pretty soon. There are a couple that are great!

It's A Girl!

Adventures in Texas

I flew out to Texas on the 9th to surprise my dad for his already surprise 60th birthday party. He was very surprised by both things and it was really nice to be there to watch friends and family celebrate the Dad I love so much.

I just got home an hour or so ago and it was such a great trip. One major highlight is that Kristin's baby decided to be born just hours before my flight was to leave. This made me quite happy. You can read all the details of the delivery at her blog:

20somethinghousewife.blogspot.com

I'm exhausted (which is nothing compared to Kristin), but will write up a full report as well as current things going on with me very soon. Until then, here's a picture I really like that was taken around 4am this morning. :)

New Grout Color

The grout dried. :) And changed color in the process. I knew it would lighten up a little, but I'm surprised by how much lighter it is (you can compare to the previous post's photo). I still really like it since it doesn't stand out like the grout in the kid's bathroom, but I sure did like that darker grout color last night.


Oh well.

Hopefully tonight we will be able to get the baseboards back on. I need to do some touch up painting on Thursday and then we can seal the grout, get the new toilet in, and have a new bathroom.

We're planning on doing the kitchen in June. I hope I've recovered from last night's grouting by then! :)

Grout

Okay... so what did I do yesterday that got me so exhausted that I couldn't bring myself to do the grout last night? I can't remember. It's all a blur.

So, that left me to grout today. After I worked all morning at the cannery lifting heavy bags, filling #10 cans with food, canning, boxing, loading, driving... ugh.

So, Mike left with 2 of the kids for scouts (Jacob and Cole wanted to stay home) and I went upstairs to start the grouting process. Well, let's just say that my hands and arms were worn out just from mixing the grout. Once I finally got it mixed (it took a while), I was able to start forcing it into the seams. You have to wash the grout off and rinse and rinse and rinse the tiles over and over again... There is still a bit of a haze on my tiles and it's driving me nuts. I may just have to buy a "grout haze" cleaner to get it off with tomorrow. Sheesh.

But, here's a couple of pictures of the beautiful tile. The grout color is just perfect. And as always, you can click on the photos to get a larger, more easily admirable view. :)

I am so proud of how this looks. Better than I had ever hoped. So now that I'm 100%, t-totally worn out, I'm going to bed.

Pictures!

Finally I have some pictures for you:


The before picture. 16 year old linoleum with a big seam right in front of the sinks. There's another seam you can't see in front of the toilet... brilliant placement! You can see a few tiles in the back that I put out to make sure I liked the color.


Mike worked really hard at the demolition. He got up all the baseboards and linoleum in one night. It took him about three or four hours.


Here he is nailing down the concrete backer board. I spread the mortar, we placed the boards, then we nailed our little hearts out! It took about 200 nails.

This is the beginning of the dry run to determine the placement of the tiles and the cuts we would need to make. This was by far the longest step in the process. But doing it well made the laying of the tile go quickly.


Mike made a beautiful flange cut on the tiles.

And here is the final lay out with the mortar. The placement worked out better than I thought it might. I've got to work on my process a little, but overall, it came out nicely. The grout I bought will be almost the same color as the tile, so hopefully the little variances in the spacing between tiles won't be too noticeable. I'm grouting tonight, so I'll put up a picture of the grouted tile tomorrow. And I couldn't really take more pictures because I couldn't walk on it to show the other areas of the bathroom. :)

Tile!!!!!!!!

So, after a long day on Saturday of back breaking tile measuring and cutting, Mike decided that trying to lay the mortar and tile that night would not be a good idea. So we waited until Sunday night to do it. We started around 9 or 9:30pm after getting the kids to bed. Mike was the "helper" and I was the "tiler". He mixed up the mortar, re-cut the door jams a tad bit higher, helped me with wetting each tile before laying it (Dennis says to do this) and did the clean up. I pulled up one section of tile at a time, spread the mortar, laid the tile, prayed for level tiles around the toilet, and hoped for decent tile placement.

We were done by 12:30am. Not bad. And this morning, the tile looks really great. I think a couple of tiles around the toilet may have settled a little bit, so we may have a little bit of a leveling issue with the toilet. No matter... we'll get it worked out. And it's our fancy Toto toilet, too. We've had it in it's box since January, patiently waiting to be installed after we put in the new tile. So now Mike and I will have the fancy toilet, too. We're looking forward to that! :)

The nice thing about doing a project like this is that Mike and I really enjoy working together. We talk, spend lots of time together, tease each other, and just have a good time. I appreciate having the muscle around to help with things that I might be able to do, but would take me lots longer and wear me out. He likes having a wife who will take on a project like this. I think the kids are going to be glad when this is over so they get dinners again and have parents who pay attention to them.

So... as far as our schedule goes, we're a day behind. I will grout tonight and Mike will put the baseboards back on sometime after that. He has scouts on Tuesday nights, so he may do it late Tuesday. I used an expensive grout in the kid's bathroom that doesn't need to be sealed... our bathroom is way to big, so I've got to use plain grout. You're supposed to wait a while before sealing it, so I've got to figure out if I need to wait to put down the toilet until I've sealed it, or if the grout under the toilet doesn't need to be sealed... And you were all dying to know that detail, weren't you?

Oh... and we can't find the camera cord! We'll have to find that before we can download our pictures. So you'll have to wait a little bit longer to see the "finale".

And Happy Birthday, Ann!

ugh!

So Dennis has been there all day! Mike finally went over to see if he could possibly use the tile cutter that was set up in our neighbor's driveway and Dennis was out there taking it down. He said he had been working there all day! Well, being the nice guy he is, he and Mike set it back up (it took 30 seconds) and now we have our fancy cuts all done. Mike just made the last two cuts and will take the tile cutter down. Then we will have our dry layout completely done. Much later than planned, but hey, I'm not complaining! It looks soooo nice. Again, I'll post pictures soon.

So now that my back is absolutely killing me from hunching over the tile splitter cutting a zillion little cuts, we're about to start the mortaring and laying of the tile. All "hunchy" kind of work. Oh well. It's all for a good cause. I'll just have to take it doubly easy tomorrow.

Oh, and I was wrong about my dollar figure before. It's only costing us $400. And I had a whole box of tile that I didn't need (I bought more than I thought I needed so we didn't have to run back to the store in the middle of today). That's $30 back! Woo-hoo!

I bet we'll be up until 1 am laying this tile. :) Still... it's all worth it!

Forced into Self Sufficiency

Our neighbor, Dennis, is no where to be found today! :)

Fortunately, the layout of the tile is about 95 percent straight cuts, so Mike is going out to buy a tile splitter for those and a tile nipper for the four non-straight cuts we need to make. Fortunately two of those cuts are for the toilet flange, so they do not have to be overly pretty. The other two will be a little tricky, but I'm confident we will do fine.

And given that we are going to tile our kitchen in about a month, we should probably own the little tile splitter anyway. So, in a few minutes, we will be mortaring and tiling our little hearts out. The layout looks really good. The tile color is really nice, and it's all coming along beautifully.

So far we have about $420 in the project. The tools will take it up close to $500. Really cheap for a new tiled bathroom, I'd say. One of the reasons I decided to do the tile (besides the fact that it's a good floor that increases the value of your home) is because the price of linoleum is outrageous. I wouldn't try to lay linoleum on my own, and when I had Home Depot price our floors with middle grade linoleum, it was going to be $3000 for the two bathrooms and the kitchen. The tiling is going to cost me almost half of that. Seems like a no brainer! :)

Bathroom Progress

Okay... we're a little behind schedule. I had a really bad day on Thursday. I think my allergies attacked really hard because my eyes were watering, my nose was congested and I had a major headache. So... we didn't get the backerboard down as planned. We did most of it last night, but ran out of nails late and Lowe's was already closed. I have laid out the tile in the area where we have the backerboard down and Mike just got back from Lowe's with nails, so we are ready to finish putting the backerboard down. There's only three smaller pieces, so it will go quickly. Then we can start making our marks for cutting and the see if Dennis is out and ready for us to start cutting our pieces.

Dennis is the neighbor with all the fancy tools. He's tiling another neighbor's bathroom this weekend, so he's going to have his saw set up outside their house, and we'll go over there to make our cuts. He's a really nice guy. I gave him a gift card to Lowe's after we borrowed his tools last time and he fussed at me about it. (Of course, as he was fussing, he said, "Well, I've already spent it.") :) Nice guy.

So... we have some pictures, but no time to put them up right now. We may just have a big finale picture show at the end. Let me tell you, though, the tile I have laid out looks really good! I'm sooooo excited to have this project being completed!

Tagged?

Okay... so I don't normally do this type of thing because I'm a fuddy-duddy, but Kristin tagged me and said I had to describe myself using words/phrases that begin with the letters in my middle name. I'll give it a shot:

N -
I -
C -
O -
L -
E -

Okay... here's why I don't do these things... I can't think of anything worthwhile and I don't feel like sitting here trying to think of something. So... I'm just plain, but there's no P in my middle name.

Demolition

Well, the demolition is done thanks to all of Mike's hard work last night. He got the baseboards and the flooring pulled up. I've got it bagged up and ready for the dump. Reid just carried up most of the backer board pieces that I'll put down hopefully tonight. It's so nice to have a strong kid. :)

So we are right on schedule. If all continues to go as planned, I'll have the backer board down tonight and can spend some time tomorrow doing the dry run of the tiles. That could take a while due to the odd shape of our bathroom floor.

I'll post pictures tonight or tomorrow of the demolition and the backer board!