This week we finally faced head on the water damage in our bathrooms. The repairs have begun! The problem was a little more limited than we thought. And a little more extensive… look at me being the grumpy pessimist. It’s kind of a scary job though.
First we had to rip up the floor in the master bathroom. After that we had to take out some of the wall next to the tub. Then we had to saw apart the plastic plumbing connected to the bathtub. Daniel and I moved the tub out of the way into our bedroom. (Thanks to Daniel for pointing out that the tub could be pushed through a hidden service door. Before that I had been unsuccessfully trying to lift it out of the bathroom over a toilet and sink.) Then we had to cut up the flooring and then the subflooring in the guest bathroom. By Saturday afternoon all the decayed wood was cut away. You could stand in the center of a 4′ x 6′ hole that connected both bathrooms and went down to the dirt underneath the house. As far as we know we are not being invaded by too many bugs and critters, though we do have a bathtub sitting smack dab in the center of our bedroom. It really quite romantic, and we may suggest it to contractors in the future.
We finished the day Saturday by putting some boards down for subflooring. It is super-strong, thankfully. The house was built really solidly everywhere else and we didn’t want to make it any weaker in our patches. There’s still a lot of work to do this week before we can use our shower again! It’s our only shower, unfortunately. We have borrowed the showers at Jeff and Lauren’s and at Tara and Larry’s already this weekend. I especially needed it after climbing out of the crawl space with dirt and sawdust and fiberglass insulation all over my clothes and body. Family has been super helpful this project, from the showers to truck errands, to my Gramma Sophie buying Chad a yard stick, it has been really nice.
I was so proud of Elisa on our last hardware store run. We needed to find plywood subflooring that was exactly 15/16″ thick. Nobody sold the right size. Then Elisa figured out that the previous owners must have stacked two pieces that were 15/32″ thick.
We’ve had a really busy week. Elisa and I took a nap this afternoon and we were out cold for several hours.
Nick Adamson came to visit this week. He works for Ameriprise in Dallas. We got to have dinner with him on Tuesday and Wednesday night and catch up a little.
On Wednesday night I was in charge of Scouts so we started the Space Exploration merit badge. We made spaghetti rockets. You take a bunch of dried spaghetti and you glue it to a model rocket engine. Then you add fins and decorations made of paper or cardboard. Nick and Elisa each made one too. It was a blast. You would never have guessed that I was never a Boy Scout. Mine was pretty pathetic. It made it halfway off the launch pad and then got stuck without ever getting airborne. Nick and Elisa both got some good distance out of theirs.
On Thursday night we had a campout for the Scouts. (They were off school on Friday). We did the car camping thing. We also launched the boys’ rockets off at the campout. It’s a fun activity. The boys also had fun playing with starting the fire and stuff. They were always a little afraid and waited for an adult to say it was OK before they tried anything. We also played murder in the dark until midnight.
There was a harvest festival on Saturday where they had prize pumpkins on display. The winner was 1,010 pounds. Daniel grows a big pumpkin himself so we thought it would be fun to go with him and Tara. He didn’t think his pumpkin would be able to compete though.
On Saturday evening I got really brave. I ripped up the linoleum in our master bathroom. Elisa and I extracted the toilet. We are going to cut away a big section of the floor that has water damage. I think I know how to get it all put together now. The damage was a lot more contained than we had thought. It doesn’t extend into the kitchen and barely extends into the guest bathroom. We are going to be able to do repairs without moving any plumbing in the guest bathroom, thankfully. The bad news is there are a billion bugs and spiders coming into the house, which Chad blames on the colder weather but which I know is really due to the hole in our floor.
On Monday Elisa and I bought tickets for our honeymoon. Finally. Woohoo! We’ve almost been married for six months. The tickets are for a trip over our first anniversary. We decided on going to Italy. We’ll spend a couple days in Rome, then a couple days in Florence, and then finish the week in Paris. I guess we don’t really know what we’re doing in any more detail yet. We talked about other itineraries further towards the Mediterranean but in the end it just seemed like in Western Europe we wouldn’t have to spend as much time traveling.
Elisa got the info she needed from BYU to start preparing for her school program. I have been pre-accepted. There is a 1 credit student development class I need to complete and then I’ll be free to finish my degree online. That should keep her from going stir-crazy this winter. I am thrilled to be able to take classes toward my degree again. It is starting to feel like I’ll actually complete it instead of just talk about it being done sometime. It will just be in general studies, but there are some interesting emphases to choose from. I’ll probably do psychology or family studies.
So, Elisa and I were thinking about something that I know sounds silly. We came up with a name for our house. I’ve always wanted to have a name for the house. For a few months it was once nicknamed “The Ranch†(because of the large backyard) or “The Casino†(because we were always playing poker in the middle of the night). Cheryl Smith wanted us to name it “Ché Parry.†That one’s not my favorite. Anyway, our latest choice is “Ameixas.†That’s the Portuguese word for plums, and we like it because there’s a ton of character in the plum tree in the middle of our yard. Plus I think it sounds cool. Does it sound as cool as I think? Maybe don’t answer that. I still like the idea of having a house with a name. Let me know if you think that’s a good idea. We looked “house naming†up online. It is a pretty big deal in England. They have house names rather than house numbers. One naming suggestion was to find something that was a unique feature of the place. We also like the idea of making it say something about us too. Some other words that sounded lively were “Campoverde,†“Ameixa Azul,†“L’Arbre Bleu,†“Par de Cerejeira,†“Ginjeira,†and “Âbundancia.â€
I got to go to Hilary Kruetz’s baby shower for Carter. It was originally planned to happen while we were at Lake Powell but was rescheduled. I was very excited about that! Hilary has been like a sister to me forever. Her and her husband Brian adopted Carter in June. Their story is so amazing and I am overjoyed for them! It was a lot of fun to celebrate their little family.
