I’ve heard that there is a lot of news going around the internet about someone who died, but I’m going to take the high road here (THANK YOU TO OUR AWESOME U.S. MILITARY, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO SACRIFICED ALL TO MAKE YESTERDAY POSSIBLE!) and tell you what’s going on in my house.

Remember that little water leak and the ET capture last September? Well, after fighting with our bank on a few things and interviewing numerous contractors, we finally settled on a company we trust to complete the repairs.

The house got immeasurably worse once the work started. We needed a full repipe of the house because three pipe breaks in 5-7 years just screams “old plumbing!” Of course as the repipe work went on and they opened up the walls, they found more and more things wrong and opened up more and more wall. This house was a normal tract house until the original owner decided to make a few changes. On his own. He might have had his heart in the right place, but he wasn’t a very good builder and he took some short cuts. The second owners (who we bought the house from) also did as little as possible it appears, when something went wrong. They had a pipe break at some point and only replaced the section that broke and not the entire line. Yes, it was cheaper but ultimately led to some minor complications for us. Sigh… The funniest part of the work though was having the walls open to the studs so that we could see straight through from the living room to the laundry, and the dog and the cat using that as egress to escape Melody’s enthusiastic yet not pet friendly play.

Regardless of the bathroom fan that was not venting to anywhere and just blew the air into the rafters, the kitchen attic space that was not insulated, and the difficulties in selecting a tile floor that both John and I like, we are progressing nicely. We replaced the tacky 1980s vintage single florescent kitchen light (you know the ones, they look like a trellis hanging off your ceiling) with gorgeous recessed lighting, got rid of the also tacky 1975 vintage vanity and sink in the powder room, to be replaced with a sleek and beautiful pedestal sink, had additional lights installed in the hallway (long hall which had only 2 lights) and it’s now bright and beautiful, and best of all, upgraded from the faux wood floors to a beautiful tile. The tile’s not installed yet, but we placed the order and are excited to have the job done.

Our house is filthy right now from all the drywall and construction dust, but it’s coming along. Once all the work is done, the rest of the house will look like crap, but the floors and walls will be pretty, right?

Oh, and I sprained my ankle last week at work, was attended to by good looking firemen, rode in an ambulance for the first (and hopefully last) time, spent several hours in the ER waiting on X-ray results, and am now in one of those soft cast thingies. Again. For the record, this is my third soft cast in 15 years. That has to be some kind of record.