My sister, Caroline (she of tremendous talent), crocheted blankets for my babies when they were born.  The kids each latched on to them immediately.  Although I lack the talent she has, I was somewhat inspired.

So, a few years ago, I found someone who knew how to crochet and I bought a book for South Paws and figured it out.  For the most part, anyway.  I think I made three or four blankets, none of which were exactly square, or pretty, but still, they’ve come in handy.

This time around, I got the courage up to actually change colors!  So, I made a blanket with a stripe pattern.  I like the blue and brown combo, but I don’t know… these particular colors may be too dark for a baby.  And, it’s kind of big.  But, hey!  It’s my best effort yet!

Jack has taken his project and run with it.  He chose to do his project on Anacondas (much to his father’s dismay) and the diorama he created is wonderful.  While I think there is NO WAY any second-grader could have done a better job, Dan assures me that we’ll see some other things at the fair that exceed it.  Humpffff. Chalk it up to pregnancy brain (or laziness), but I failed to take a picture, otherwise you could see for yourselves what an outstanding artist my first born is.  I WILL take some pictures during or after the fair so you can see, but for now, you’ll just have to trust me.  It’s AWESOME.

The preschoolers are not to be left out…  They have been working hard on a large display of various animals that live in different parts of the world.  As I was the mommy helper on Wednesday, I was bestowed the honor of stuffing and stapling giant penguins.  For THREE HOURS.  I’m still having trouble using my hands since completing that task and am beginning to wonder if I’ll ever get all the feeling back…

Maria’s class has been studying teeth (hers are VERY clean lately) and I’m looking forward to seeing the fair display they’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks.

My project?  Apparently I’m gestating a dinosaur, although I doubt he’ll be ready to make his appearance in time for the science fair.  No… he’ll probably wait until he simply BURSTS THROUGH MY SKIN one day.  Seriously, I don’t know if it’s because I’m so old this time around, or if it’s because my body is worn out from the first four, or if I’ve just completely lost my mind and forgotten what it’s like, but I don’t see how I can be this big and still have SEVENTY NINE more days left.  While I certainly don’t want this baby to pull a Sam and come 8 weeks early, I’m desperately hoping he doesn’t try to wait the whole SEVENTY NINE more days.  (Don’t expect pictures of this project in progress.)

Go… now!  Browse! Create! Shop!!!

Window "Box"

I’ve been wanting window boxes for the front of the house, but have found that the ones wide enough for our windows are waaaayyyy out of our price range.  Coincidentally, as I was lamenting this, our March issue of The Family Handiman arrived.  And in it, a quick project that can be done in lieu of window boxes.

It took us a few weeks to gather the materials, make the cuts and do the painting and assembly, but we finally got it all done and the first one is complete!  I am soooooo excited!

The others should go more quickly, as I think we’ve gotten past all the learning curves.

What do you think? (Keep in mind that the foliage will mature and hang over the ledge eventually.)  Oh, and we plan to replace the shutters with wider, hunter green ones.

Landscaping

Oh, and besides the window decor, you can see that we have planted a redbud tree (my Mother’s Day gift), several rhododendron at the back (which will reach 4 ft. high and wide when fully grown), some hostas to the front (transplanted from the backyard) and some purple thingys in the middle.  Nice to have a little landscaping!

Landscaping

Here’s what we started with this weekend after trying to remove some grout:

And then we went to this:

to this:

to this:

and finally, to this:

While we’ll continue to do some things on our own, we’ve asked Mario to come back and change out the plumbing to an anti-scald faucet (thank goodness!) and to do the taping and mudding of the drywall.  I wish I could show you the whole bathroom, but it’s just too dang small.

While I sit and type this, we’re still all freezing our asses off.  The furnace guy is coming sometime between 10 and 2.  Doesn’t look good for him being on the early side.

Coffee anyone?

So, we’ve been using the first floor tub for showers (Dan and I) and baths (Jack, Maria, Luke and Sam). Despite the stopper not working, we’ve been able to give baths using a make-shift drain plug.  It’ll do until the plumber comes back with the correct parts.  One day.

This is the same tub I’ve complained about due to excessive water on the floor.  It was driving us crazy.  We tried everything to stop it or divert it.  All to no avail.  Then we discovered the problem.  The previous owner (loathe to do anything right) “repaired” the failing caulk line around the tub with this.  In case you’re wondering… it doesn’t work.  Actually, as one bathtub guy told us, it makes the problem worse.  Water runs down the wet tile walls, gets under this strip and then is channeled around the tub and onto the floor.

Obviously, it does not provide a good seal.  Which means: WATER DAMAGE.

We found the WATER DAMAGE not long after I peeled the strip off.  We figured (since it was ineffective and terribly ugly) that we’d peel it off and then caulk around the tub properly.

Despite Dan having suggested that we wait until the upstairs tub was in good working order, I took the bull by the horns and got to work.  (After all, waiting until that tub is fixed could be… forever.)  I chose last night to start the project.  At 10 p.m.

Lo and behold, the strip was easy to pull off.  I mean, it’s not like there was a good seal there or anything.  So far, so good.  I brought the strip to show Dan, who wondered aloud what the heck I was doing peeling that stuff off that late at night, especially when we only had one working tub.

Ummmmm…?

It didn’t look too bad, really.  We just needed to remove the old caulk and put down new.  Dan and I got out our window scrapers and putty knives and went to work pulling up the old, very icky caulk.  It was very easy to pull up, as it was all rotted.

Unfortunately, once the caulk at the front of the tub was removed, it was easy to see that there were some  very loose tiles.  And rot.  I pulled out one little piece of tile at the edge of the tub.  Behind that tile was rotted backer board.  Black, rotted, useless.  Dan stuck his finger in there (ewwwwww) and pulled out black and gray, wet, crumbly cement stuff.

Due to my brilliant, go-getter attitude we now had NO working tub or shower.  And, it was 11 p.m. at night.  And, we both needed showers.

Here’s what it looked like:

And, here’s a nice, gross close-up for you:

We started talking about putting our new fence on hold, buying tile, going to the Home Depot tile clinic and what it would take to repair our bathroom.  We wondered how bad it was behind all that tile.  And, we wondered, what the heck were we going to do for a shower/bathtub? Like right now?

We decided to chance using the upstairs tub for quick showers last night and committed to finding a way to patch things up enough to use the downstairs tub until the upstairs one is permanently fixed.  Once that happens, we’ll get back to the downstairs tub and work on it in earnest.

So… after mass this morning, we worked on the tub some more.  We pulled out the rest of the little tiles along the front of the tub where the problem is.  Dan (oh, so brave) cleaned out all the rotted gunk.  Now we had a whole strip about an inch tall that needed to be filled in.  Then the whole tub needed to be caulked.

Off to Home Depot Dan and Jack went while I served lunch to the youngest three and put Sam down for a much-needed nap.

The boys returned home triumphant.  Dan had been able to find a strip of “never rot” that was just the right width.  He just had to cut the length down a bit to fit.  And fit it did.  Perfectly.  Whew!

My hero then caulked around the entire tub, rendering it water tight.

I figure by the time we get everything done around this house, Dan and I will be experienced enough to get into the flipping industry and make millions.  Look for us on HGTV.

An unexpected working weekend.  But, at least we weren’t bucketing water out our basement windows like the neighbor down the street.  They’re also new to the neighborhood, God bless them.

]]> http://fourinarow.net/more-bathroom-repairs/feed/ 1 http://fourinarow.net/tempting-fate/ http://fourinarow.net/tempting-fate/#comments Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:15:50 +0000 Susan http://fourinarow.net/?p=244 Desperate for something to do today, I took the kids to The Pottery Room with my Mom’s Club.

Yes. You read that right. My kids… The Pottery Room.

You know, one of those places with shitloads of breakable things different types of pottery pieces that you can paint?

My kids didn’t break anything, so I’d say the experience was a good one. Not that I’m ready to do it again any time soon or anything. After all, at our table, both bowls of water were spilled. Sponges were dropped (or thrown). The paper tablecloths that didn’t disintegrate with the water spillage were torn to shreds. The table and chairs and children and I received as much paint as the pottery. (I guess that’s what I get for having Sam sit on my lap with a loaded paintbrush.)

There was a little screaming when a particular 3-year-old didn’t get his hands washed IMMEDIATELY upon request, and there was a bit of running around after the projects were completed.

But, all in all, it was good. We all left together in one piece, albeit a little more colorful, and everyone now has a mug to pick up come Saturday.

P.S. Yes, there is a child-not-my-own in the picture. That’s our friend Jessie. For some reason she wanted to sit at our table.

I also put together this project – a monogram on white canvas. It’s one of the projects in the Uppercase Living Spring/Summer idea book. It turned out beautifully, don’tcha think? (Obviously, this isn’t the place it will reside – I just needed an existing nail to hang it from for the photo.) Again, the bow was the hardest part for me. Not too shabby, eh?