The Adventure: September 2009

My parents came up last week to work/visit. It was such a huge help. The laundry room seemed like a big project to tackle since Derek hasn't ever done tile and has heard good things and bad things about doing it. Some people say it's not that hard and others who have done it say they will never do it again. My dad was one of the ones who was confident in doing it, so the laundry room was his project for the few days he was here. Derek was able to take Friday off (while I subbed in his class) and work with my dad on the floor. It was good practice for him and he feels much more confident about having to do the guest bathroom. They both did such a good job, the floor looks great!

Meanwhile my mom spent her time painting. We still needed to pain the hall. It was difficult to pick out a color for it since the rooms off of it are such different colors, red, green, yellow, brown and blue. We picked a pretty neutral tan color but it was hard for me to imagine any color that would look good next to all those different rooms. It turned out really good. I actually love the color! And somehow it doesn't look out of place next to all the other colors of each room. That's the good news.

It's coming down to the last projects and we feel like we are really taking a beating. We're doing finish-type projects and things just aren't seeming to come together quite like we had envisioned. There are two shower heads in the shower. When I installed our main showerhead (yes I did it, although all you have to do is screw it on) water was not flowing out as strongly as it should have. When we checked the other one nothing was coming out at all. This meant a plumbing problem. We were afraid that our brand new walls would have to be opened up to fix it and we were sure it would require crawling around under the house. This caused Derek to lose some sleep for a few days until his dad had a chance to come and help us out. Of course he fixed it, he literally can fix anything! Something about valves and hot water had to be tweaked.

When our vanity was delivered it sat in our living room for a week or so. We really liked it but thought it looked kind of green. Derek and I figured it was because it was sitting in a very green room. NOPE. We moved it into our bathroom and it still looks greenish and the counter doesn't go with the vanity as well as we thought. We talked about returning it or having it painted but decided to just live with it. It's not horrible but it's a shame because having it in that room just doesn't do it justice.

Then Derek and my dad tried to install the toilet in our bathroom but it was really wobbly and they couldn't figure out why. The floor is level so they though it must be the toilet (great something else we have to buy). Turns out that the drain is too high. Fixing that really will require going under the house and cutting pipes to lower the drain so the toilet will sit flat. The good news is we can still use the old toilet.

The list of things we have to do doesn't seem to be getting any shorter even though we're marking things off. Derek is in the middle of putting up the shelves for our closet, the vanity and sink faucets need to be hooked up, the toilet needs to be set, washer and dryer need to be installed, and everything has to be deloused! At this point our budget is pretty much tapped. Luckily I have started to sub and I'm making money for the first time this year but because of the payroll system it takes an extra month to get paid. So it will still be extremely tight for the next couple months and then it will just be plain ol' tight. Hopefully my next post will be pictures of moving day. I don't think it will be that soon though unfortunately.