Actually, the whole last week was kind of crazy. We have begun the renovation on our master bathroom. It's basically a total gut job. The ONLY things we are keeping in there are our closets, the shower (which looked pretty new), and the toilet which we bought when we moved into the house.
This is after day one of the destruction:
We have removed the wall paper, stripped the paint off the cabinet and sanded it, we're taking out the soffits, and getting rid of the awful vinyl floor. This past weekend I removed the lights and finished up the floor. Next steps are to completely remove the soffits, take out the countertops and sinks, and begin wiring for the new lights. Unfortunately, that was the plan for the weekend but we got behind. Hopefully we can catch up. Dave has the week off next week and we hope to get the floor laid. We bought beautiful tile that's going to make it look like a spa!
Dave spent all of Wednesday night running around town with my dad, renting a truck and bringing home drywall, the tile, and all the accessories that go with it.
Then on Thursday we had to head to Best Buy to replace our broken TV. We bought a new TV in April that we had professionally mounted above the fireplace. A month or so ago the screen just went blank. The Geek Squad sent out someone to look at it and he basically said, "yep, it's broken." Well no shit! They ordered a part for it and said they could fix it January 2nd. Then the part got back ordered and they said they would fix it January 9th. Good grief. They called again this week and said, "yeah, the parts still back ordered so we're just going to replace your TV." That's what they should have done in the first place!!! We get to customer service and they have NO IDEA what we're talking about. They've never had a replacement code given to them for an in-home repair. After speaking to a bunch of people we finally spoke with a manager who took our old TV and just did the replacement. He didn't care if there was a code. Plus, because the new TV was $20 more, he just waved that fee. Good job. Dave was up until after midnight putting in the new TV.
So what took all our time this weekend that I'm so happy it is Monday already?
As I mentioned a while ago, we've been having problems with our water. A week ago Dave ordered a new water softener from a wholesale company here in Ohio. It was more than half the cost Culligan had quoted us, however, unfortunately, we were going to have to do the ENTIRE installation ourselves. The new water softener arrived in two different shipments last week. It was massive - two resin tanks and a separate brine tank in addition to five bags of resin and all the mechanical stuff. Saturday morning we went to Home Depot to pick up all the plumbing stuff Dave would need. The day started off well-ish. It took two of us to put the resin in the tanks. Dave would hold it and pour it, while I stood on a stool trying to get in through the funnel. It was like wet, slippery sand. And if it got on the floor, which it did A LOT, it was like ice. We were literally skating around our basement. After the resin, Dave started doing the plumbing to hook it up to our water pipes. Around 8:30pm, just as we were putting the baby to bed, Dave had to head out to Lowe's. The piping was a different size than he thought and he needed a different kind of connector. I should mention our water had been turned off now for a while. I was peeing without flushing and washing my hands with baby wipes.
Dave got back from Lowe's, we ate dinner at 10:00pm and then he headed back downstairs to finish the installation. No lie, 12:00am he finished it up and we turned on the water. Everything seemed to be going well until it wasn't. We noticed a drip between the new water softener and the connection to the pipes. Shit! We turned the water back off, packed our bags, woke the baby up and headed to my parents' house to spend the night. We would try again on Sunday.
I slept horribly at my parents'. Their dog kept barking, the baby was tossing and turning, Dave was snoring, and I couldn't get comfortable. I probably got less than five hours of sleep. I was in a great mood on Sunday when we had to start over again.
We returned to our house with no water and Anderson and I napped while Dave began again. I was awoken some time later with the sound of a flushing toilet. Was our water working??? Dave hooked up the brine tank and then it was time to figure it all out. We had to flush the water through the pipes and through the new tanks. It probably took 10 minutes to run the water and clean it all out. That was some gross water coming out of those faucets!
Finally, we poured some water and checked it out. It appeared to be much much better. Check it out:
The water on the left is before we installed the water softener. Yep, that is straight out of our faucet. Yuck! The water on the right is after the new water softener was turned on. We even taste-tested it. Although I could tell the difference between bottled water and the new faucet water, it was much much better. MUCH BETTER! It will take a few days until the hot/warm water gets clear (because there is already some in the hot water tank), it looks like maybe our water problems might be solved.
This weekend was exhausting. Unfortunately, our weekends look like this for the next several weeks. But, the Cats and Brass house is starting to come together. More pictures to come!!!
1 comment:
Wow. It makes me tired just thinking about it. And to do it all w/ the baby underfoot- yikes!
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