Is it Monday Already????

Where did that weekend go? It seems like just yesterday it was Friday, and then boom I blinked my weary eyes and it was Monday.

We have been deep in the world of home improvements....yes it is true, and I have pictures to prove it, but DD has departed with her camera, rude child, how dare she take her camera away when I need to post pictures of our bathroom remodel? Oh well I will just have to tell about it and then post pictures at a later date....like when the camera returns to the house and I can get my hands on it again.

It started sometime back, we had a leak. A leak that was oozing behind the tile around the bathtub. This leak was not good. The tile was starting to come unattached from the wall, and...gross..it was getting moldy. And there was this smell.......more on that later.

DH mentioned to his boss that we had a problem. The boss mentioned that DH should call the carpenter. DH found our that the BIG BOSS fired the carpenter. The only other carpenter that was available needs several fifth's of whiskey just to start a project. DH mentioned that he would not let him come out to build a doghouse....he seemed a little bitter about it, but that whiskey drinking fella has worked out here before....and the results were not good. He never finishes a project. Never. With promises of....' I will be back out with that quarter round trim next week.' Five years later...we are still waiting.

Well my DH hardworking perfectionist husband declared that he would just take care of this project himself. He zoomed to town with his PO book and charged a load of materials to the ranch. And then the project proceeded to commence.

First the tile needed to be taken down..very hard job. I now am an expert tile remover. The more we removed the more grossness we discovered. And what was going to be a somewhat easy job..was slowly turning into a nightmare.

Water and sheetrock do not mix. Sheetrock hates water. We found to our horror that the water had seeped all around the tub. This all had to be taken out and replaced. And behind that sheetrock was old sheetrock...very old sheet rock and it had seen it's share of water. When DH started to remove all of this I thought about a motel room for a few days. The smell and just general yuck was unreal.

Finally he got it all and hauled it out. But the smell.....what was that smell? It smelt like...oh no...could it be....not that dead mouse in the wall smell! Poor DH, he removed the cover to the space behind the tub, the one that is supposed to be easy access to work on water leaks and such. And what did he find? A hole in the floor underneath the tub. And what had been crawling up in that hole? Pack rats! They apparently were settling in quite nicely for the winter. They had tomatoes, bits of cucumbers and bones that I had thrown our for the dogs. And the smell. One of their comrades had died...maybe choked on a bone..I have no idea. I really think they drug his lifeless body in there, it could have been a pack rat tomb. They might have been burying all his precious treasures with him. Anyway I was so grossed out. I mean I had been taking baths over dead rats! It was almost more then I could stand.

DH had to pull all of that nastiness out of there and then proceed to fix the hole. This was not easy and finally required him getting under the house. Not his favorite place to be for sure. Finally that was done. This was Saturday by the way. He started this project on Friday. We are 24 hours in a half a day project.

Fast forward to Sunday. DH skips church. He is on a mission. He will not be defeated! The kids and I leave for church. I leave to the sound of hammering and power tools screeching.

I arrive home to a 95% finished remake. He and I work at it until 8 last night and we are 99% finished. Thank the Good Lord. He had to go to his real job....doctoring sick calves. He was huffy about that...he had on his carpenter hat and wasn't ready to change roles right yet.

All we lack is putting up some trim, staining it and such as that. Finish work.

I won't tell you what we did........A picture is worth a thousand words so they say. But I will tell you this...it is different. At one point DH kept asking me...." do you like it?" I know when he does that about 100 times that he is having doubts, and when I keep asking him the same thing, it's a sure sign that we are unsure.....but....it worked out great. DD keeps saying she feels like she is showering in a barn...that's a hint, and that's all you are going to get for now.

God Bless and Happy Trails
RanchWife