Twas the night before...

So on Friday I had the day off.  I did last minute grocery shopping.  I needed to make sure we had cookie ingredients and food so I could stay home over the weekend. 

I spent Friday afternoon painting the bathroom.  I got my first coat of primer on.  Covered the tub with plastic and taped the edged so I didn’t get paint on the tub.  So far so good.  I got a half gallon of paint on and I can still see green.  I will get a second coat on Saturday.

I made ham for dinner and even made creamy eggs for Christmas morning.  Jason told me he doesn’t like ham.  He doesn’t like bacon either.  I may need a paternity test.  The kids are very excited about the next day’s festivities.  We are even supposed to head out to Uncle roger’s at 4 for dinner.

Even my dogs like ham.  Jason could be an alien.

Absence...

Forgive my absence.  We really haven’t done much.  My house looks like a cardboard box factory.  Chris ordered many of our gifts from Amazon or other online retailers so I have many boxes all over.

This is the kids last week before winter break.  It is the same break that we used to call Christmas break before the PC freaks got a hold of it.  I am going to leave them at the YMCA for the weeks they have off.  I will take Fridays off to give the kids a break, and save me a buck or two.  Plus it gives me more time to spend slow leaking a bathroom remodel.  I am currently into the drywall mudding stage.  I am not really proficient at it so it is slow going.  I am also repairing the crude job I did when we removed the laundry chute.  It has always looked bad and now it should look slightly less bad.  Getting the walls smooth is not as easy as it should be.  I found a lot of spots that I gouged the walls or the screw gun jumped off the screw.  I am on my third coat of mud and I have gone through two sanding and washing of the walls.  Sanding is fun.  I have on goggles and a dust mask.  I look pretty silly but the dust is mostly contained in the bathroom so clean up has not been bad.

I need to prime and paint before tiles go up.  I don’t want to take a chance at getting paint on the tiles and if I get paint on the floor, who cares!  I will be tiling over it anyway.

I need to start wrapping now so I don’t end up running to CVS the night before Christmas the night looking for tape.

I have enough trouble figuring out Christmas Eve and Day.

Pre-Thanksgiving construction

This weekend Jason went to Uncle Roger’s house.  He got to hang with his cousin and goof off.  I however, got to hang out in my upstairs bathroom and goof off with plumbing and wall board.  The plumbing was made much simpler with the advent of SharkBite push on connectors and flexible tubing.  Sam came and helped me when we turned on the water and tested my abilities.  I goofed on one of them so I heard Sam yelling, “I see water dripping!”  She is so cute.  It was pouring straight out of a connector I had not seated correctly.  Once I corrected that we had a moment of laughter and joy as once again water flowed from the upstairs shower and tub.

Putting up cement backer board sucks.  There is no good way to say it.  I can feel every joint, knuckle, and bone in both my hands.  “Just score it like drywall.”  BS!  I had to score it on both sides and then work like hell to get it to snap.  Getting the holes right for the shower side was nerve wracking.  I was on my last sheet and I really did not want to cut more of it.  Trying to get it all correct and lined up took me longer than it probably should have but I am new.  I went through both batteries, twice.  That stuff is tough.  I guess it has to be to hold up the tiles.  I did find that the window guys put the boards in crooked.  I fought for awhile to fix my error until it dawned on me to check their work.  I can work around it but it threw me for a bit.

I had to run up to Home Depot to get a hole saw to cut the board on the shower side.  While I was gone Jason came home.  I walk through the front door and he is sitting there watching TV.  He scared the hell out of me. 

I was too sore and tired to make dinner so it was leftover night.  Luckly I made dinner all weekend so Jason and Sam had good leftovers.  (Good as far as I am concerned.)

Chris ordered the new Diary of a Wimpy kid books for the kids.  I gave them to them tonight so they had something to read during their 30 minutes I tell them to read each night.  Jason was very excited.  He has loved those books from the start. 

I was complaining about my back being sore and Sam made these signs:

(It says:  Dose your back hurt? If it does go to Sam's office! 46918 Basement in the lab.  She will only charge you $.50)

She is so cute.

This weekend looks better for bathroom remodeling.  Since I had Friday off for Veterans Day and the kids still had school, I had a lot of time to get stuff done.  I was able to connect the drains for the tub and sink.  The toilet will wait till I am closer to tiling as I don’t want to break the flange.  On the second try no water leaked.  There is one fitting that is not glued, just tightened.  It wasn’t tight enough.  Second time was a charm.  Making the drain lines larger was definitely the right move.  Water rushed out of the tub so fast I don’t believe we will have any standing water issues.

The Inspector

Tub drain - Check

Much larger sink drain.

The nut part leaked.  Once it was tight, all was good.

I wired up the light and plug in the bathroom.  I had all kinds of problems and came close to electrocuting myself twice.  It turns out what I thought were hot wires wasn’t.  In fact the line I thought was live was dead-ended in an electrical outlet in the next room.  It was just dumb luck that I hadn’t grabbed the live wire on accident.  I saw a cut in the wire so I decided to replace it.  As I chased it back I found the ends taped together in the plug box in the next room.  I have been connecting these wires as if they were live for a while.  This means the plug in the spare room had hot wires just sitting in there.

Before - Old wire on far right.

All better.

This gave me a chance to remove some old wiring.  I found another line just sitting there going to who knows where.  It runs into the attic so I cannot chase it.  I cut and taped the wires so they cannot touch each other.  (Mike Holmes would not be happy)  So I spent much longer than necessary hooking up a fan and a light.  In the end it worked out.  Today I am hoping to get furring strips up so I can put cement board on the walls.  The strips keep the walls level.  Then I can attack the supply side of the shower plumbing.  

Yeah!

Who’s idea was this again?

Last Weekend

So I finally got moving on the bathroom again.  I am not moving to quick as things keep coming up. 

Last Saturday I met my mom for dinner for Jason’s birthday.  We ended up at Red Robin up near mom.  Sam had her purse with her money and phone in it.  She is such a big girl.  Jason was spending the weekend with Uncle Roger.  Roger dropped off Jason at the restaurant.  (Not sure why he didn’t stay.)  Jason looked so tired.  It was funny. 

Sunday morning as I was starting to work on the plumbing, Sam informed me that her purse was still at Red Robin.  Off we went.  Sure enough it was there.  Since we were out that way we stopped off at Grandma’s house.  She has made a lot of changes since dad died.  The backyard has been de-forested; the stacks of papers have been mostly consolidated; new stuff all over.  I don’t think dad liked change.  We hung out so long I called Roger to get Jason.  He was on the way to our house.  Oops.  Off I went to try and get there first.  Turns out he dropped off Carter first so I had plenty of time.

One remodel weekend gone.

LJAL Banquet

So I go to turn in Sam’s uniform on Wednesday.  I give the stuff to the coach and she says, “See ya tomorrow.”  I looked at her with much confusion on my face.  She picked up on this and said, “The banquet.”  Oh Crap! I had completely forgotten about the LJAL end of year banquet.  Where they get awards, sign the yearbooks, hang with the team one last time.  Sam would have killed me if we hadn’t gone.  She sent the team an e-mail reminding them of the banquet.  I am pretty sure the reminder was for me.

The kids were so cute.  Sam was all dressed up in a dress.  Jason tried to figure out how to tie a tie.  I throttled him back a bit and just had him wear nice pants and a shirt.  I didn’t need food stains on his suit coat.

Goofy face.  She had tons of fun.

Joe cool.

We went and had a good time.  It was short this year and only ran 2 and a half hours.  They did a great job keeping it moving.  

Hopefully I will be back next year.

Halloween

We set up for Halloween and the arrival of my in laws for the weekend.  Although it was hard to tell we cleaned the house.  Both dogs shed something like 12 pounds of hair a day.  I have put the vacuum away, turned around and found a hairball the size of a cantaloupe.  I leave the vacuum out now.

Making Sam’s costume was tough.  We needed an outfit, props, and let’s not forget a hairdo.  Oh yeah, she is going as Taylor Swift.  This is not a problem but since she won’t be singing songs from house to house we have to identify her somehow.  We decide to put the name on a guitar.  Sam and I went back and forth as to real or not.  We went with not and made one out of foamboard, a stick and a strap.  Sam painted the guitar and we printed the name and glued it to the front of the guitar.

In the end she looked good.  Jason was easy.  A zombie.  An 11 year old boy dressed as a zombie.  (Most of his normal clothes make him look like a zombie)  I found a great costume at costco for him.  It had pieces of foam that looked like bones and guts.  I picked up some spray blood and with a little face make up he was golden.  I was a bit liberal with the blood.  I read the directions after he left and it mentioned that it should not be left on the skin as it may stain.  I was really hoping for the may to be correct.  I sprayed him all over.  It looked pretty cool.  I would put up a picture but I didn’t take any.  I was remiss in my photo taking and did not get a picture.  I am hoping someone got one so I can get out of the dog house.

There is hair in there too.