Remodel

JP has had a project of his own going on for several days.

He has been self isolating in the guest room and bathroom downstairs for 3 weeks now.  However, if he were to get COVID 19, he should not come out of the room.  Since the guest room and guest bath are side by side, he decided to put a door between them.

The girls helped to tear down the dry wall.

I held up the door and the trim today while he nailed it in.  Then I found some carpet scraps and cut a piece to fit where the wall had been.

It still needs painting and filling in nail holes, but that can be done after the social distancing thing is a thing of the past.  (When, oh when will that be???)

Leap Day

This morning I found myself faced with a conundrum:  it is Leap Day - an extra day this year, a "freebie" so to speak - what to do with it?

I considered taking the easy way out, stretching out on the couch to read, and at some point watch Downton Abby.  I also try to do the housecleaning on Mondays, so there was that.  Finally, looming over my head for the past 13 or 14 months, is the task of painting the girls' bathroom.  I've had the paint, but not the willpower.

I decided to bite the bullet and get the bathroom done.  There was a lot of prep-work:  removing 2 dozen tropical fish stickers, taking down 3 towel racks and an over-the-toilet cabinet, taping off the trim and shower surround, and filling a couple of largish holes that were one of the reasons the bathroom needed to be painted.  The other reason was that light yellow flat paint was not working out in a bathroom where the children don't really wash their hands before fumbling for light switches, etc, meaning that any place on the walls that they frequently touched was sort of a grayish-yellowish-brown.  Disgusting.

I'm happy to say that the entire bathroom is now a lovely blue-green shade with a satin finish, and most of the pictures and fixtures have been replaced.  The entire room has been cleaned, and once the shower curtains have been washed tomorrow, I'll rehang those.

At this point I feel like I've been on my feet all day, so I am turning in.

So what did you do with your "freebie" day?

* Deja Vu All Over Again

* Let me preface by stating that I never use the above expression, except when I am trying to pull some humor out of an unpleasant situation...or if I already used the title "Deja Vu" in a previous post.

While preparing for our Super Bowl party last weekend, I noticed a bad smell that seemed to be emanating from the girls' bathtub. It improved after I ran water down the drain for a while. Fast forward to last night, when we noticed water backing up into the bathtub when letting the lukewarm water down from the kitchen sink after doing dishes. (Deja vu number 1.) This time it did not appear to be as significant as last Spring when the entire bathtub was full of grey water and didn't go down, since it s-l-o-w-l-y drained away.

Did you notice my reference to "lukewarm" dish water? Right...we discovered when cleaning up after dinner that there was no hot water in the kitchen. (Deja vu number 2.) This is nothing new, if you've followed the on demand water heater saga that stressed me out when we first moved into our new house. This time, however, when I was researching the problem, it appeared that the pilot light was out on the gas water heater. Neither JP or I could get it re-lit. The propane tank was at 40% of capacity, so we weren't out of gas...some other problem.

Fast forward to this morning when we woke up and the house was 60 degrees. I realize that some people do this every day in the winter time, but we have set our thermostat to go up to 68 degrees about half an hour before it is time to rise and shine. Yep. The furnace was no longer running. (Deja vu number 3.) JP whipped out his Droid to check the freezing point of propane (it's 150 degrees below zero, by the way). At least this time when we flip a light switch, the lights come on!

Now we are waiting for repairmen to return our calls. (Deja vu number 4.) We are still able to use the showers on the West side of the house...that grey water still drains outside and is connected to an electric water heater. Unfortunately, the upstairs shower is still filled with 5 gallon buckets of water, so we have to go downstairs for a hot shower. Inconvenient, but not the end of the world. We have the wood stove blasting and again, we are thankful for having it here. Even better, this time we actually have firewood split and ready to use!

Sometimes being a home owner in the country is a pain in the you-know-what!

Toasty Warm

JP and I visited with the Loan Officer today to refinance our home loan. We were able to decrease our mortgage by 1.3%, take 5 years off, and decrease our monthly payments by about $100. All good news!

My Dad finally got the stove pipe needed to get our little squirrel wood stove up and running. We have been using it for the past 2 days, and things are staying toasty around here.



Dad got the trim and fixtures in the guest bath, and I managed to get the trim painted this afternoon, so I figure that it's done enough to showcase. Ta da!