Ta-Da!!!!

And now for the after pics-

As you can see- everything is new. Down to the sub floor and all the sheet rock, even on the ceiling. Casey did everything himself (with a lot of help from his Dad) with the exception of a pretty major plumbing job. The great majority of the project was done in 10 days. As you can tell from the pictures, the bizarre-o closet is gone and the bathroom feels much larger. Contrary to the story the pictures tell, it isn't dark in there. It just happens to be an unfavorable place to take pictures- as is the case with most bathrooms oddly enough. The cabinetry was custom built and Casey stained it. The counter tops were custom poured cultured marble and delivered and installed. All the hardware is brushed nickel and I LOVE the new rain style shower head- Casey doesn't love it, he said he prefers the one that feels as though it's peeling your skin off, yeah sounds pleasant honey. All three light fixtures are new and they all coordinate -after a super headache and two hours in the lighting aisle at Home Depot. The tile is really nice and it was super cheap. As in 69 cents a square foot cheap. Okay, so ready for the final price?

First off, we got bids from a few contractors to do this job because we didn't feel Casey had the time. Their bids ranged from $6,600 to $20,000 plus the cost of the bathtub, plumber, electrician, hardware, mirrors, and light fixtures. From our figures it would have cost an absolute minimum of $10,000 to pay someone to do this and I highly suspect it would have been more than that. Our grand total doesn't include the two mirrors because I bought those at Target and somehow lost the receipt for them. The best I recall they were approx. $50 each. Ready? Are you sure?

Total cost $3,522.53

I told you it was unbelievable. Add to that the fact that almost 1/3 of that was to pay the plumber for the 12-14 hour day he was here and it's even more amazing right? If you look at the before pics and then the after you'll see the bathroom now has double sinks instead of just one and has a shower when before it was only a bathtub. Money very well spent when we sell, I think.

If you click on the word comments below you can leave a comment for Casey and let him know what a good job he did. He worked so hard and it really turned out fantastic.

The Good, The Bad and the U-G-L-Y

Well, not really. Today is the just the Bad and the U-G-L-Y, tomorrow the good. We're selling our home. It's been a nice house for us but we're ready to move on especially into something we've spent so much time and effort on. The new house will be wheelchair accessible throughout and that's a huge blessing. We are not really the type of people to be sentimental about a house. This one has served it's purposed pretty well for us, but we're fine leaving it behind. I guess I am trying to say, nobody around here will be crying on moving day. In reality, that statement may be untrue but the tears will have nothing to do with house.

So, on to the bad and the ugly. When we purchased our home 6 years ago the only thing holding us back was the bathrooms. They were built in 1956 along with the rest of the house and had never been updated. Well, I take that back. In the "blue" bathroom someone had taken the time to add a lovely wallpaper border in an Asian style complete with blue pagodas. You can't make this stuff up people. The other bathroom was the "pink" one. Not just sort-of pink, either. Full on, decked out, up to your eyeballs in pink. I like pink. It's my favorite color and has been since I can remember. This bathroom may have cured that.

Now, what comes next may shock you. And you should be advised that these photos may not be appropriate for all viewers. I assume no responsibility if you get a little nauseous. With that, here are the bathroom before photos-

You might have guessed- judging by the fact that I was willing to post these pictures for anyone to see (all those past tense verbs could have a been a clue too) that the bathroom no longer looks like this. My big, strong, handsome husband remodeled it himself with some help from Pa-Pa. He did a fantastic job and for an amazing price. Seriously, it's rather unbelievable. And I will give you a tour and a price tag tomorrow.

Rain, Rain........Go Away?????

I got up at 5:45 this morning and it was raining again, still is raining, in fact. So, my pretty, pretty porches ain't happening today. And the dude who is painting the trim on the outside of our current home will not be working today, either. And that's all fine, really. No, really it is. I think the part that is scary is not knowing how long this will go on. One day of rain can delay construction alot longer than one day, something I never knew before. And certainly, a small delay on our new house is no concern compared to some of these construction guys who aren't working, therefore aren't getting paid. I understand all that, I am really not that selfish. No, I am not.

Actually, I probably am but I'll never admit it. I am not admitting selfishness, I will admit greed.



No, seriously. Until we moved to Stephenville I thought of rain as just another weather option God had. After being here for 6 years, rain is like God is throwing money down from the sky. It really affects the economy that much. At Selden we prayed for rain every Sunday, or we thanked God for the rain that week. Every single Sunday. Once the preacher stopped during his sermon and said "Is that rain?" Not even kidding. Rain is good. So, even though my pretty porches won't be poured today, my hair will look like I stuck my finger in a light socket a few times, and I cannot breath yet again thanks to my allergies which just LOVE all this rain- this rain is a blessing.



Since I am not about to take my camera out into the rain and mud to get a picture of our concrete, I thought I would share one of Caroline. I took this a while ago, on a day we had taken her braids out and she wanted to wear it "frizzy" I feel old now because I am fondly remembering my pink crimping iron and the hideous things it did to my hair. Ah, the 80's. Good times.

Let's Talk Front Doors-

So, because of my little porch project I have now delayed our house by one week. Who knew? Well, I can probably answer my own question. I knew. Don't tell Casey. I knew it would take longer and I knew it would cost more yet, I did it anyway. Hmmm, maybe that's why men don't always like women so much? Ya think? Nah.

But here's the beautiful thing about that. They say God works in mysterious ways and I now believe that to be true because- I have an extra week to pick out my windows and doors AND I get extra pretty porches!!! All for the low, low price of.......no, we won't go there.

And I need that extra week, actually if anyone has extra hours in their day they don't need could you send them to me? Pretty please? We went to McCoy's after watching our concrete being poured - and let me just say $17,000 worth of concrete- do you know what I could buy with that much money? Well, it turns out I could buy about 4000 sq ft of concrete.

So, we go to McCoy's to pick out our windows and doors which I knew was going to be a trying process but a house must have windows and doors, right? So we went. We went there with both of our lovely, well-behaved children after picking them up from the last day of school. Dang, sometimes I am D-U-M-B.

So we're there and we finally find the person whom Casey has already spoken with and is supposed to know we're coming. After asking if wanted the popular Lone Star etched in glass on my front door- Umm, no I do not- I explain that want something with no glass at all. Yes, I know it won't let light in. I understand it might look plain to some people (not this people, by the way). Unusual, yeah I get it. I want to be able to go to my front door in my PJ's, look through the peephole, see the person bearing news about the "important meeting" at the Jehovah's Witness hall and simply walk away. NO glass! Great, McCoy's has 2 choices. I am building a custom home. I spent three days discussing which water heater to get- of which I will inform you about later simply to make sure you are all as bored as I was. I have more than 2 stinkin' doors to choose from! Everything we chose was only available in solid wood and we wanted fiberglass that could be stained to appear to be wood. Because at the Cumby house a real wood door would appear to need maintenance. All the while my children have become completely hostile to one another- the whole "stop looking at me" "don't touch me" "she pushed me" bit. This became too much to bear. So we move on to windows and this is when they explain that they'll order them. "You'll order what?" "Your windows, we know the sizes from your plans." "I haven't picked them??" "No, need to."

I'll save you some time. The 2 choices for doors, turns out that was twice the amount of choices they had for windows. I was near tears, my lovely, well-behaved children were bickering and whining and I think my dear husband was afraid of what was going to happen next. We left and went to Chili's to eat. And we have no doors or windows. But, thanks to those "mysterious ways" we have some extra time to find some.

Visiting the lot is more expensive than you might think...

They poured our foundation on Thursday (I'll add pictures when it stops raining or when we board the ark, whichever comes first!) Anyway, we went out to see this very exciting time in the building process. So, as we stood there in the rain watching these guys work (which actually, now that I think of it sounds sort-of mean, huh?) we start talking to our contractor. He is also building his own house right now. I am asking questions about the whole concrete process and he starts explaining how they'll pour his house differently because he's having all concrete floors. He's having them dye the concrete before it's even poured, then they stamp it to look like stones or they use a large stamp and come back after it's cured to cut it into stones. This is fascinating to me because it seems so - crafty. Very un-macho. Almost girly. To think of these guys working their rear-ends off out there in the rain to go about stamping was humorous to me. Like later they might make a scrapbook of their time together making floors- yeah, probably not.

I do have a point, I promise, I'm getting there. So, the contractor goes on about how the stamping of all their floors and then we are side-tracked by a conversation about a well house. I then must leave the lot to go to Duncan's end of school picnic. After having a water gun fight in the rain and feeding Duncan pizza while I sat in a First Graders chair (and they say the life of a SAHM isn't glamorous!) we returned to lot to- well, basically to gawk at the very large rectangle of concrete that we are spending all of our money on. And that's when it happened, all the thoughts from earlier in the day became clear in my mind. I cannot have the lovely stamped concrete floors in my house because we have already agreed that's too hard for Duncan, and really it's probably too hard for all of us. However, that doesn't mean I can't have them on my porch. My beautiful back porch where I will sit and blissfully watch my children play in the lovely, tranquil swimming pool. Shhhhh! You don't have to ruin it for me. Right now it's simply a pile of dirt so we can pretend all of that is true. My back porch! Suddenly, I need stamped concrete porches. I explain my thoughts to my husband who was all TOO eager to go spend our money. As they back the cement truck up to the back porch to begin pouring, Casey runs to the foreman of this crew. He begins explaining -which I'm thinking went something like, "Look, my wife is a pain in the butt. She has changed her mind AGAIN!" So, I stand there and watch back and forth- the cement truck, Casey,the cement truck, Casey, and on and on until the foreman yells something in Spanish and they stop just before they were to pour the cement into the form for the back porch. And now we wait until Tuesday when both our front and back porch will be dyed, poured and stamped to look like stones. And we look at the budget and scratch our heads.

Hooray! That was pretty easy! This is our lot, taken last week. Looks a WHOLE lot different now, though. I will add pics in the next day or two of what we (and I use that term loosely, as I have not done anything even resembling work) have built so far!

New House Updates

I tried to start a blog about a year ago and just never really got going with it. Thought I would try again since we are building the house and it's summer time to keep everyone updated. Now to try to figure out how to get pictures on here!!