This Old House...

... will be the death of me! And my marriage!

It has been a grueling week. It started on Monday, when B's parents were scheduled to arrive, and Victoria decided to kid. As I posted earlier, we had to call the vet, and though the babies are healthy, we have one bottle baby (for now) as he is unable to stand. The kids are working with him to get him to try and learn to stand so he can nurse on his own. He is making progress, but not yet ready to go back out to the barn. So his every-4-hour feedings are taking their toll. Since Monday. Even in the night. And everyone knows how much I like my sleep.

All week we have been scrambling to get the bathroom fixed-- at least workable-- so that our company does not have to share our delightful sawdust toilet. We were successful in getting the fixtures installed (on Thanksgiving Day), except for the clawfoot tub, which fell off of its claw feet. So we have no bathtub (still). This wouldn't be a problem, since we did fix up a shower downstairs, but M decided it would be fun to fill up the flexible hose on the shower head and watch it expand like a water balloon, and then BURST like a balloon. So he shower head is no more.

So here it is Sunday, church day, and we cannot shower. We will work hard to get it fixed today. And we do love the look of the bathroom-- pictures coming soon. We just have to do the tub, install some trim and crown molding, and then the finish work, which is fixing joins that don't meet perfectly, touching up paint, fixing a broken tile, grouting, hooking up the heating duct, etc. Those are small projects that are easily done after work or in an evening. Not these all day, 2 day projects that are crucial to get done asap.

We found last week-- the same week we had electricity fixed and the propane leak fixed-- that we had yet another water leak. This time it was from the washing machine, and it was under the crawl space. It was a small drip, and we decided that for the moment we would just turn the water on and off at the shutoff valve so that it would not leak. We would just turn it on when we did laundry. But we forgot how much laundry we do. And the leak got larger. So running new lines from the washer (through the icky crawl space), installing a new shutoff valve and testing our marriage again, was on the books for Friday night.

In (almost) hindsight, I am happy that we did not know the magnitude of this project. We would never have taken it on ourselves if we had known how long it would have taken or how difficult each step is. I think back to the cement board that was so difficult to install-- heavy, dusty to cut, unforgiving in composition, how dry and hard it is on the skin-- and it seems like we did that months ago. It was tough to get through that stage of the remodel, but we thought that once we got that done, a finished bathroom would be right around the corner. We didn't know we'd have problem after problem.

But we are both glad that we did this project ourselves. We have learned so much about the systems of our house. We are not afraid to do plumbing (though we leave most electric and certainly all propane to the pros!). (We did move a light fixture and cap off a couple of outlets.) The bathroom encompasses so many projects across the board: demolition, some minor framing, insulation, walls, window installation, sheet rock, cement board, tiling the floor, plumbing, electric, patching, painting, installing the exhaust fan, and on and on. there is no other room-- save for building another bathroom, which we are not inclined to do anytime in the next 5 years-- that will require us to use all of those skills at once. Even our kitchen remodel will not require us to gut and redo. We may replace cabinets, or move plumbing, etc., but no floor tiling, etc. So we have learned a lot and are thankful for that.

Today we shall attempt to install the tub! She's going in feet first... :)