To give you an idea of what is going on around here, let me just say the tilers have been here all day. Ooooooo! Am I getting nice shiny new bathrooms? A new powder room?? A new kitchen floor??? Nope. Sigh. It's all repair.
We had the evil polybutylene plumbing. Really bad news. After the last leak, which damaged the kitchen ceiling....now we don't....and have the corresponding holes in our walls and ceilings to prove it. The week before Christmas found us taking down the kitchen ceiling and prepping ourselves for several days of no water. (We had water at night thank goodness.) The weather hasn't exactly been cooperative either. It's been seesawing between warm and extremely wet, and COLD. The plumbers worked hard outside trenching the front yard (in red clay mud) and replacing the water to the house, then replaced all the hot and cold water pipes, installed three dual-flush toilets, shower and bath controls, two faucets, pressure reducing valve, and hot water heater. As it's really COLD again, it's also nice to know the feeds to the sinks are now coming up through the floors rather than being in the outside walls. No more barking our shins on open cabinet doors on cold nights. Yay!
So the kitchen was swathed in plastic, after which I left The Tramp in peace with his demolition and went back to The Sandbox to finish up some Christmas sewing.
Unfortunately, one of the ceiling fixtures came down with a crash in the process.
Christmas lights twinkling on the screened porch cheered us up a bit.
My poor shower!
Aaaaaaaaahhhhh! (There is another hole just as big on the wall to the right, the back of the other shower.) Tiles came down over the bathtub on the back side of the wall too. From all the banging I presume.
Oh dearie dear dear.
The downstairs powder room suffered indignities too, with a floor to ceiling hole and a chunk out of the ceiling. And the ceiling in the garage, made necessary in part by a steel I-beam rudely getting in the way.
But all the new pipe is in and looking good. Even better, the town inspector thought so too. :-)
Meet the new hybrid hot water heater. Yep. It's big. It reminds me of the robot in Lost In Space. "Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!" Me and HHWH are best buds too. I say hello everytime I go out to the refrigerator. :-P
So Christmas goodies were cooked in the dark. Swiping a lamp from the living room helped quite a bit. Maybe I should say it was "atmospheric." :-)
And today tile was replaced. Of course you can't match 30 year old tile. (Surprise, surprise.) It's an eighth of an inch smaller these days....for goodness sake. So the tiler came up with the herringbone pattern to fill in and we think it looks very nice. The whole shower has been acid washed and recaulked, the rusty shower door removed, grout fixed in the bad spots, and will be sealed tomorrow. Almost like new. Almost.
Now if we could just get rid of all the nasty wallpaper.....shudder.
As if there wasn't enough mess, I got the itch to do some shuffling in The Sandbox and The Tramp obliged once again. Isn't he a sweetie? He put up another pegboard for me and built an insert for the top drawer of my little bureau for all the Bernina 710 feet and bobbins. He rebuilt a table and installed shelves too. :-D
ESD has been busily sewing away in New Zealand. New hats were the project last week. Sweet! (I'll save all my recent sewing photos for another post.)
ED posted this photo on Facebook to show off "a boy and his dog." Pepsi is a rescue and a new member of their household.
Which prompted me to post this photo of "a boy and his other dog." Piglet is a new member of our household. Isn't she a love....and she puts up with small boys too!
Just so there is a little bit of sewing I include this photo of a quilt my bee is putting together out of our scraps. Last week we got the finished blocks up and placed to our satisfaction on R's design wall, and divided it into quarters. I've put the lower right quadrant together. It's going to be fabulous.
AND....drumroll please....for 2015. A flimsy finish. Already! Woot!
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