We're making progress in the bathroom!


Before


The tub corner with framing, tile backer board and the beginnings of plumbing.
After.

Wall board, tile and tub set in frame.  The plumbing is done now and we've all had a chance to take a real bath but I don't have photos yet. 










Before

The upstairs hallway - messy angles for wall board.
After.

Still a little messy - but much better than open insulation.  Bry says this is what mud is for.












Before - laundry nook -  open insulation

The bad news:

It is cold.  Very cold.  The windows are not finished being framed in yet so all the warmth from the house pours out from around the windows on one side of the house, being replaced by cold pouring in from the opposite side of the house.  Most of the doors have big gaps where cold air screams through, too.

So basically, we're cold.  Very cold.

The shower pipes froze last night.

By turning off the pump in order to address the frozen pipes issue, we have discovered that the steady trickle of water coming into the basement is not ground water seeping in but rather is water being pulled up the pipe by the pump and spilling out through a crack in said pipe somewhere between the house and the well.  Luckily for us this discovery was made After the ground was frozen and there is 2 feet of snow on top of it.  Good Times.

The good news:

Bryan was NOT killed by a stupid driver who pulled out right in front of him this morning on his way to work.  (That pretty much trumps all that other bad news up there.  I'm unbelievably thankful for that.)

The upstairs bathroom now looks like these photos and actually is a little bit warmish.  Bry is actively working on getting the shower installed upstairs ASAP.  The downstairs shower is no longer a viable option because, obviously, it freezes too easily.

There is now a drier in the upstairs bathroom.  (Thank you, Neighbors Tabors!)







P.S.  Sorry that these photos are a bit sea-sick.  The lighting is really weird up there and I was being quick with the camera.










. . . .

Yes.  I am also learning how to tape up seams in drywall.  It's actually sort of fun and satisfying.   I must admit that I would be having MORE fun if the drywall mud were purple or turquoise  or even lime green instead of off grey.  


They could come up with something like that.  Right?  Kind of like purple fade to white elmer's glue-in-a-stick?  
I also must constantly fight the instinct to just run to get the duct tape and spray paint, but the process of smearing goo into a crack in the wall and smoothing it down is a lot like painting.  Or pottery.  It's messy.  It accomplishes something.  Your work is immediately visible.  I like that.







I do not like this.
















Or This.

What crazy person put this toilet and sink in here before finishing the drywall?  I mean, really.  Who can reach in there?

I can't even fit the blade in this corner.  Oh - wait - yes I can - If I crawl Underneath the sink and carefully wedge the corner knife up between the sink and the wall, I can sort of smear it downwards . . .





Oh - and installing this light fixture before mudding was a brilliant plan.

You would think this guy was under some pressure from his wife to get a functional potty room into the house NOW or something.

I'll tell you something else brilliant.  It turns out that the water supply fixtures for this sink have some sort of "emergency flow restriction device" or something.  Which means that if you turn the water on full blast too quickly, the sink seizes up and shuts off the water on you.  For HOURS.  Or until a plumber comes and takes the Whole Bloody Apparatus Apart  and resets it.  It's supposed to protect homeowners from water damage if their faucet breaks and starts spraying all over the place.

Well, do you know how many times I've had my faucet break off and start spraying water all over the place on me in almost 41 years? 

None.  Never.  Not at all.

Do you know how many times I've had something go horribly, hideously wrong in the kitchen or the studio and need several gallons of water at 40 tons of pressure NOW! in order to contain the damage or rinse out dye or spilled paint or caustic chemicals or just to pressure wash the burned rice off the bottom of the pan?

Daily.

There had better not be little flow inhibitors on my studio and kitchen sinks.  Let me tell you.


This photo makes it look like I've been put in time out, but I'm actually putting mud in the corner behind the toilet.  (I wonder if there's a difference?)  While Moly runs around taking pictures of herself with the cat. . . .   BTW - that cat has been through about 5 names already.  The latest being something Irish which I can neither spell nor pronounce but which means "she who inspires terror." 

We are still holding the line on it remaining a barn kitty.  Molly may have to go live in the barn, too.  I am appalled at the amount of garbage this kid has.  There's no way I want it all to come into the Beorningsetead.  She has more laundry than most third world villages.  But she thinks up awesome names for cats.

Yes!   A shower at the Beorningstead!















And this is what Molly wants to bring home. 

How can we refuse?

(Please - help me find a way to refuse!) 






It's so soft.

And cute.

And fuzzy.

And it rides on her shoulder.

















And it hasn't actually pooped on anything or clawed up any sofas or barfed any hairballs yet so I'm still susceptible to the cuteness.   Beorn is remaining strong, though.  He says it must live in the barn and she can visit it out there.  He remembers stepping in cat puke and having shredded furniture with much more ire than I do.

Molly took some beautiful photos this weekend.











We all love the Dinner Bell.  However, seeing this photo, I can sense trouble a-brewing.  One of these days, Maxx will start yanking on that chain and all 50 feet of it will come slithering down out of the sky onto his head. 

He will cry and then someone will have to climb up onto the roof to wire it back on.










We have running hot and cold water.
















We have a potty to flush.

Yes.  This is a teeneency little room.  That's O.K. 

It will be very handy when Sissy is using the washroom upstairs and Maxx begins pounding on the door insisting that he has AN EMERGENCY! and needs to come in right now.  Very few things rouse contention as quickly as that scenario. 


There are also two working lights in the kitchen, one on the front porch and an outside motion sensor light above the side entry door.  Thanks, Mom!


This is a poor photo because it was getting dark and we were in a hurry to get home for baths and bed.  We're making progress!!

The roof, which was tight and secure all through the storms of summer and record rainy season of fall, has decided to leak.   Everywhere.  Thousands of little rivulets, puddles and pools.  Dribbling down into my studio and warping the ceiling in that room.  This is maddening. 

On the one hand - it is only the back roof, relatively small, over the part of the house we intend to put the main bathroom and, eventually our bedroom.  Because of Bry being so sick post surgery, we did not have time to install the insulation and wall board as planned over the winter.  No building supplies were ruined.  No labor was wasted.  That is a good thing.

The ceiling in my studio was ugly anyway.  We've talked about putting in a skylight in the bathroom because there is no window there but since we didn't plan on doing anything to the roof, decided not to.  Now maybe  we'll put in a small sky light over the bathtub.  (How much costs a little skylight?)

On the other hand, we wanted to move in over Spring Break.  We were all set to install the pump, finish running the plumbing, install and prep the sub-floor, install the shower, potty and vanity, insulate and put up wallboard and prepare the spot for the tub over the next three weeks.  Now those three weeks, and probably more, will be spent pricing, procuring and installing roofing materials.  That will delay our move-in which will delay our ability to really push the Ft. Jackson house (Which is really at it's most lovely at lilac & poppy time) on the market.

We're not sure yet what the extent of the repair/replacement will be.  The back roof is OLD.  The reason it is leaking is because the original tin roof was installed with nails that have no gaskets or other kind of weather proofing.   For decades, those nails have been doing their job, keeping the roof on, without leaking.  We don't know if it was because the house spent the winter without heat (doubtful - that part of the house wasn't heated anyway) or if this spring was just THE END for that particular aspect of the house's construction.  That's likely.  It's been there for at least 30 years.

A good roofing screw will have a bit of rubber thing-gummy under the head so that when you screw it down tight, it creates a water tight seal against the tin.  When we fix this roof, we should be able to expect it to last for the next 30 years or so.  Happily, the rafters are still good and solid so this will only be a repair, not a re-build.  We are a little concerned because most of our available escrow money is tied up in - guess what - insulation, wall board, sub-floor, plumbing and fixtures for the bathroom that is supposed to go under that roof.  We can't get more $ out of escrow until those are installed and the bank inspector comes to check out our progress.  We can't install these beautiful things until the roof that will protect them is repaired.  We can't repair the roof until we have more money to buy materials. 

What fun!  We can probably get some more escrow money freed up when we finish the downstairs wiring, install light fixtures in the front of the house and put wall board in the kitchen and living room again.  That roof seems to be sound - it is newer and better constructed.  We may also need to come up with some creative ways to boost our income in the next little while to provide more cash for this process.

Anybody want to buy a scarf?