Sunday - Anything But Restful

Sunday morning came and Curtis got out there some time after 7am to start digging first. I changed my clothes and joined him shortly after. It was just the two of us for a little bit while we let the boys sleep a little longer but then it was time to wake them up and have them help. We dug for about 2 hours and made a 4 feet deep hole and thought for sure we should have seen a pipe by now.  Alice was already up and got dressed for church. All she needed was her hair brushed. Later Charlotte woke up and came outside to see what we were doing. She thought it was the coolest thing and of course wanted to help. Alice tried to come out in her dress and help. I finally had to tell her that she couldn't help while she was in her church clothes. She got sad about that but then decided she would change her clothes for now.

Working on the first hole.

We tried turning the water on at one point to see if we were digging in the right spot. We thought we saw dark water spots come up from the bottom where we were already digging, so we kept digging in that spot. Curtis didn't keep the water on very long. It was just a quick little blast. After we dug that hole 4 feet and still weren't seeing anything we decided to try the water again and left it on longer this time. Pretty soon we saw water coming from the opposite end of the hole, a little ways off and pouring over one of the corners into our hole. We were close but at the same time way off.

Now we have two holes. Charlotte thought it was so cool and of course had to get in the first hole.

After Alice changed her clothes, she joined her sister.

We dug and dug, taking turns. Curtis would break up the dirt with his bar and then either the boys or I would scoop out dirt with shovels. It was cold with the wind blowing, but when the sun shone through the clouds, it warmed up. By about 11:30 we finally located the pipe and uncovered it!

To our dismay, the pipe was not made with copper, like Curtis thought it would be. It was rusted over galvanized steel. There was no way he would be able to repair that. And even if he tried, it probably would have busted somewhere else in the line while working or later on. It became clear that we were going to have to replace the entire water line. Curtis quickly looked up rental places to find a machine to dig a trench with. There was no way we were going to dig that much by hand! The usual rental places were closed because it was Sunday, but fortunately we were able to get what we needed at Home Depot! 

While we had been digging I had received a message from our Relief Society president, Megan Benedict, asking when would be good for her to come visit during the week. I told her pretty much any time but then told her we weren't going to be at church that day because our water line broke and we've been digging all morning. I don't know if she told anyone or not but I assumed she would. When the boys went to Home Depot to get the machine, the girls and I went to Walmart to get bottles of water, Gatorade and donuts (because we had been working so hard and deserved it 😉). The girls and I took the opportunity to use the public restroom while we were there. Ah, I could finally flush a toilet and wash my hands with soap and water! (instead of hand sanitizer) I had told the kids we were basically pretending to be camping in our own house. 

When we arrived home, the boys weren't there yet, but I saw three men talking on our driveway, two of them wearing church clothes. They helped carry our water into the house and then gave us names of a couple of guys that could possibly help us because they have experience with this kind of thing. They also asked what they could do and one of them was the Elder's Quorum President. He said he would talk to people at church and see about finding a home that we could come shower in or do laundry if we needed. I told him I don't think any of us would be comfortable with that but we'll see.  These men told us that we were not alone and it made me feel good. Curtis came back before they left and so they talked to him also. 

Curtis got right to work on digging the trench. We were trying to go as quickly as possible to get this done. 

The water line originally went under the front steps, so Curtis decided to reroute it through the bedroom closet in Jack's room (right next to the stairs). 

Jack wanted to pose for a picture on the excavator.

Curtis made the trench line go right through our first hole we dug, so it wasn't a total loss that we dug it. We were digging out all sizes of rocks along with the dirt. There was one massive rock that even the machine had a hard time getting out, but thankfully we got it out.

That rock definitely won't be going back in the hole when we're done. I'm not sure what we're going to do with it though.

By about 3:45, after church got out, we were about halfway done with the trench. A couple that lives close (and he was one of the 3 men who stopped by before church), stopped by on their way home and wanted to see what they could do to help and were amazed at how much we had already gotten done. I told them it would be good to have some buckets of water just for flushing. She also asked what we were doing for dinner and I said I hadn't even thought about it. Their names are Donald and Glenna Gale. They left and came back around 5:30 with 3 buckets filled with water plus 3 gallon jugs for flushing toilets. They had also taken our 5 gallon water cooler that we use for camping and filled it up, along with their own 5 gallon cooler, with warm water. We started using those for washing our hands. It was also meant to use for cooking food with or whatever else we needed clean water. For dinner, they brought us pork chops, mashed potatoes, gravy, canned green beans, and some rice krispy treats. These treats had chocolate and berries in the mixture. They were good and we were thankful to have them.

Curtis kept going because he at least wanted to have the trench dug before the next day. One man from church had come around 5:00 I think and started helping Curtis with digging the last 6 feet by hand (shovel). Curtis didn't want to damage any more pipe now that he was close to the end. He was told by one of the Dig Line people that the city uses about 6 feet of copper pipe from the main connection. So, it starts out with copper, then most of it was galvanized, and for some reason the last part of it that went under the stairs and into the house was copper also. They should have just used copper the whole way! 

Anyway, after the Gale's brought in the buckets of water and food, Brother Gale went over and started helping Curtis and the other brother (I can't remember his name). It was funny because Sister Gale said they hadn't intended on staying. They had called a son or grandson to talk to because it was his birthday and were expecting a call back, but they didn't bring their phones with them when they brought stuff over. So she was anxious to get back so they wouldn't miss the call. They were real life savers in bringing all of that stuff over!

Cutting through a thick root.

The trench is dug and Jack is just hanging out.

Jack enjoyed being out there so he was digging some of the trench even after everyone came in.

Curtis chose the path well. We dug up most of the old pipe along the way. It looks like someone tried to repair this pipe at some point. It has a white connection piece on it halfway through the galvanized part of the pipe.

The end of the trench. We had to cut through many roots since it's close to a big tree. The line actually went right between a big tree stump and the big tree. What were people thinking to plant big trees next to the water line?

Brother Benedict had texted Curtis to see if he could help but said he had to feed his kids first. By the time he arrived, we were already finished digging. Curtis had a good conversation with him though. He and his wife were one of the couples we had sat by at the adult Valentine's activity and she's the Relief Society President. I have to admit that even though this was a lot of work and unplanned, I felt like the kids, that it was kind of a fun adventure. The nice thing about being down in the trench while digging is that it helped block the cold wind. 

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, which we needed very much after working all day Saturday, but it turned out to be quite the opposite and anything but restful. We were all exhausted by the end of the day and turned in early.

Demo Work Is Fun

So many things have happened this last week that I'm going to have to break up my blog posts again. First of all, I did find out that GOAT stands for "Greatest Of All Time". Funny thing is, Nikki knew that. I'm not sure how she knew that but she did. 

Anyway, Thursday evening Curtis tackled the removal of the laundry room floor. Surprisingly, it came off a lot easier than the bedroom and hallway floors, thank goodness! We still haven't finished the other floors but we're hoping that the flooring guys will be willing to just lay the new flooring on top of the old flooring, especially in the family room. 

He started in the corner by the back door and used soapy water to spray onto the flooring pieces to hopefully help it come up easier. I'm honestly not sure if it did help or not.

Got it all removed except for under the water heater. We'll wait to do that right before the new floor gets installed.

There is a drain in the middle of the room that Curtis needed to raise up so it would be level, since the floor was sloping toward the drain. The flooring people need it level to be able to do that room. Curtis broke up the old cement, raised the drain and then laid new cement.

While he was doing the flooring, I decided I could try to help prep the family room for doing texture. I taped up some paper around the whole room.

The file cabinets were in the way, so I had to sit on one while working, ha ha. I also had to have Garrett take a picture for me. That's the only way I get pictures, is if I tell someone to take a picture of me. Again, it felt good to be doing something again after being so tired.

We ended the night with watching the last of the Twilight movies. It was fun watching the boy's reactions to the fight scene and us knowing what would happen. They did enjoy watching that movie, even Jack.

Saturday morning Curtis and I had to run some errands that took a couple of hours, so we let the kids stay home and play their video games. After we returned, it was time to work again. Curtis spent his time that day in the bathroom downstairs moving electrical switches and cutting a spot in the ceiling and out the house to add a vent. While he did that, I started removing the old flooring by the front landing that was covered in old tile stuff. Garrett assisted Curtis and Jack assisted me. We had to use a crowbar to peel the board up and then take out the nails underneath that ripped through.

Peeling the boards up.

That particular crowbar was good for getting the nails out as well. It has two ends to it.

After we finished with that, Curtis asked if I wanted to start taking down the chimney "rocks". They aren't real rocks, just made to look like it. We're going to redo the outer layer of chimney but not sure how just yet. To get the flooring done we needed to at least clear out the bottom area. And trust me, the rocks aren't as pretty looking when you see them in person. I thought I wanted to keep them when Curtis and Stillman were saying to get rid of them. My thoughts immediately changed after we moved in. There was one rock at the bottom that had chipped and there's green colored material underneath.

I started with just a small chisel and hammer because I wasn't sure how he wanted me to do it, but then he brought me this nice power tool. It was so much faster! I can see why he likes his power tools.

I have to admit, I enjoyed doing this! It's very satisfactory when a big chunk falls down.

 

I got quite a bit done. I wanted to keep going but I decided I better quit so I don't over do it again. Also, I was blocking the front door with all of the "rock" mess. It took awhile to clean up. We had to throw away the "rocks" into the garbage and vacuum up the small stuff and dust.

My project created a lot of dust, so I had the girls help dust things off. I had to vacuum floors and couches upstairs too because it was everywhere. It was still so dusty after vacuuming, that I had one of the boys mop the floors.

Curtis working in the bathroom. 

After I was done cleaning up my mess, I decided I was going to do my shaving and showering before any of the kids took showers or baths. I wanted to make sure I had plenty of hot water. I'm so glad I did! After my shower, Curtis needed to turn the water off to reroute one little section of plumbing pipe to have room for the vent.  I told him the girls were about to take a bath, so he let me fill it up for them before he turned it off. 

Awhile later, Curtis turned the water back on and heard a weird noise and wasn't sure what to make of it. He turned the water back off again and as he was walking through the front yard, it felt squishy and wet. Uh oh, we have a water line break/leak! We couldn't turn the water back on so I told the girls not to drain their tub water because we'll need it for flushing toilets that night. We had to grab a bucket to bring to the bathroom and decided we were only going to use one bathroom until it got fixed. Wow, that totally threw a wrench in our plans! I'm so glad I showered when I did! Poor Jack really wanted to shower that night but wasn't able to since the water was off. The plan was to just wake up early the next morning, get us and the boys to dig a hole where it was really wet on the grass, find the broken pipe and hope Curtis could fix the leak quickly. Boy, were we in for a BIG surprise.....(to be continued in my next post)

Not A Normal Valentine's Day

On our date last Friday night, Curtis talked about having to go to a work conference in Vancouver on Monday and be gone until Wednesday. I reminded him that it means he would be gone on Valentine's Day but I said that's okay because Valentine's is overrated.  Well, he got right on it to do something for me anyway. I knew he was doing something on his phone and didn't know for sure what until a surprise package of flowers and chocolates arrived at our front door on Monday afternoon, the day before Valentine's.

This is the first time I've ever received flowers in a box.

This was an inside joke. The funny thing is, I don't remember what GOAT stands for. Apparently it came up in conversation Friday night at our table but I must not have heard that part. A little corny but cute.

Two bouquets of roses and a box of chocolates.

I won't say no to flowers and chocolate.

I didn't have a vase to put them in so I had to use a tall blue cup. It's a little small but it works!

I only saw Curtis a few minutes on Monday when he rushed home to pack some stuff after work and then just like that he was gone again. Well, on Tuesday I wanted to help him out by trying to clear a spot in the garage for our floor pieces to be delivered. We were told they were being delivered on Wednesday to our house, so there was no time for him to clear the space and our garage is pretty full. Thankfully, the weather was gorgeous (felt like spring) and so it was perfect for doing stuff outdoors with the garage. First, I had to start with putting the shelves back together. I only had to call Curtis once to ask him how to stack the shelves together. After figuring that out, I was able to get it. It took a couple of hours and it wasn't easy doing it by myself, but I did it! And it was fun jamming out to 80's music while I worked.

Building the frames first.

Frames are built but I waited until the boys got home from school to help me move them. I also wiped them down with a wet cloth because they were covered in dirt and webs. I have to say, I feel pretty proud of myself!

Originally I was going to put all 3 of the shelves on this side of the garage so I only took a before picture of this side but you can kind of see the other half of the garage in the other pictures with the shelf frames.

It took me awhile to figure out where to start. Finally, I just started clearing an area by the wall where I wanted at least one shelf to go. From there we were able to get a bunch of things off the floor and onto the shelf. All of Curtis's tools on the right side floor needed to stay though because we will need them for our projects on the house for awhile. Well, after getting one shelf filled and clearing a large area, we still needed to put the other two shelves in the garage. I ended up putting them on the other side of the garage. I just couldn't seem to stop myself when I got started. What started out as a project to make just enough space for two pallets of flooring, turned into a lot more!

I was pretty pleased with myself and so was Curtis when I sent him these pictures. I told him this is my gift to him for Valentine's, ha ha.

I love how high I could stack boxes and stuff. 

Garrett and Jack did help some of the time.

It's so nice to have that much space in the garage finally. I can almost park my van in there. Many of those boxes will be able to come inside when we're finished with our house projects, even when we just finish the basement. For now, this is where they will be.

The girls had fun Valentine's parties at school and brought home lots of goodies. Charlotte was more excited though about her Pokémon books that she finally received. They are the books I bought her when we made the deal to read the whole first Spiderwick book and do the reading activity with it.

Just got off the bus with her goodie bag.

Charlotte's goodies were in her backpack because of course she was looking at her new books.

Alice made this Valentine for mom and dad.

After finishing up the garage I came in and made ham and cheese sliders for dinner. I was in such a hurry because I thought it was Wednesday and that the boys had mutual at 7:00pm. It wasn't until I had the sliders in the oven that I realized it was only Tuesday and that I could relax. Whew!

I couldn't believe how much energy I had to do all of this. I was pretty tired by the end of the day but I didn't know just how tired I was until Wednesday morning (yesterday). I woke up feeling utterly exhausted! I was too tired to do anything all day! I laid in bed for at least half the day, trying to get some more rest. My muscles ached and on top of that, I had a little sore throat and sniffles coming on. Oh boy, what did I do to myself? I also learned that Home Depot changed the date the flooring pieces would be delivered to Thursday, so I had a little more time for that than I thought. Well, I'm still glad it's done. Needless to say, I didn't feel like making dinner yesterday so most of us had Cup Noodles (Ramen noodles in a cup) and Jack cooked up some pot stickers.

Curtis got home around 3:00pm from his trip and decided to use that extra time to get more stuff done on the house. He finished off the popcorn ceiling removal in the family room and painted primer afterwards. Then he did some plumbing for the bathtub. I dropped the boys off at mutual and laid down to rest while Curtis worked and the girls took a bath. Pretty soon we heard our doorbell ring several times in a row. We're not used to that sound so Curtis and I both came to look. I knew the youth were going to be heart attacking some people in the ward, but I didn't think we would be one of them! The adults actually wrote all the messages on the hearts last Friday at the Valentine's activity. I thought it would have been funny if we had received hearts that we wrote messages on, but we didn't. The boys didn't even know our house had been done until we got home. They had fun participating in helping to heart attack other people's homes. I think it was real nice that they did it for us. I felt like someone must have known I was having a hard day.

The other half of the family room ceiling after removing popcorn texture and priming. Curtis had extra primer so he painted some of the wall. I had told him not to paint the walls yet because I still need to fill holes but oh well, maybe it will be easier to spot holes on that wall with the white paint. We are just going to paint over those panels like my grandma did in her basement.

Curtis doing some sawdering for plumbing on the tub. 

Pipes all hooked up.

 I feel a little better today but I'm still really tired and have sore muscles everywhere. I was able to clean up the kitchen this morning though and do a load of laundry. It felt good to get something done again.

Work Filled Saturday

I did finally finish the window sill painting on Thursday. Because of the dust from sanding that I didn't wipe off properly, I had to paint 3 coats of paint after the primer. I'm finally satisfied. Yay, there's not much more that room needs. 

A little progress at a time but it's progress. Window sills painted. The windows themselves will need cleaning as well but that's very low on the priority list right now.

On Thursday I also attempted to scrape the floor in the bathroom. It was HARD and wore me out. I was so tired on Friday that I relaxed and took a nap in the morning after the kids went to school. 

Last weekend was very busy.  I pretty much took a break from working on Friday. We did get to go on a date again Friday night but it wasn't one of the date challenges. Our ward was having an adult Valentine's activity at the church. Curtis and I didn't have time to eat somewhere nice, so we decided on Panda Express. We ate at the restaurant and then drove over to the church. They had us write messages on heart cut outs. The youth will be doing "heart attacks" for elderly in our ward with those hearts tomorrow. We sat by two couples that are close to our ages and had a good time getting to know them. I didn't even remember at the time that one of them was the Relief Society President! She and her husband lived in Boise at one time. Anyway, they had some Valentine trivia and then we ate ice cream and visited. Some people danced. It wasn't much, but it was fun. We then helped put all of the tables and chairs away.

We have been watching the Twilight series with the boys for our Valentine's movies this year. It's been fun and Garrett is so excited about watching each one, that of course we had to watch one Friday night after our date. We were on the third movie by then, having started the previous weekend.

Because we stayed up late watching the movie, we of course slept in a bit but after we got up and going, it was time to work! Curtis and I started by running a load to the dump and then getting a few things at Home Depot and Walmart. We had to get some goodies for the kids to help motivate them. This was the day we were finally going to remove some more popcorn ceiling downstairs in the hallway and more than half of the family room. We only did half of the family room because of the couches, desk and file cabinets being in the way. This time I helped Curtis spray and scrape the ceilings. As it always does, the prep work took awhile and then it just took longer than we thought to scrape. I'm glad I helped this time. It would have been a lot for Curtis to do on his own. 

Starting the process of covering the walls and floors with plastic to keep the popcorn ceiling off of everything.

Glad my boys can still have fun sometimes, even while working.

We did learn afterwards that we should have laid the floor plastic down first because a lot of the popcorn ceiling went through spaces where the plastic on the floor met the plastic on the walls. The idea was to have the plastic catch everything and then we just slowly and carefully roll it up into a ball and place in a garbage bag.

It took several hours from the time we started spraying and scraping to finishing our clean up afterwards. We had to take a break. The boys were really wanting Panda Express since they saw my leftovers in the fridge from the night before. I had forgotten about it but because I had worked so hard I didn't feel like sharing, ha ha. Curtis drove them to run some errands and get their own Panda Express food. While they were gone, I just sat in the recliner and took a little nap. I was so tired and the nap helped, because we weren't done for the day. After resting up, it was time to paint primer on the ceiling where we had just scraped off. I didn't want to use the sprayer but Curtis got it set up for me and I went ahead and used it. I have decided that I really don't like the sprayer. It gets paint all over me and all over the floor and anything else in the room. I got grumpy about it so of course I didn't feel like getting pictures with me in it. I had paint speckles all over my face and of course in my hair and on my arms. It was so hard to scrub it off my face! Using a roller brush would be a lot cleaner than using the sprayer. I am refusing to use it ever again. 😒 If Curtis wants something sprayed, he can do it himself.

While Jack was assisting me with painting, Curtis and Garrett were busy in the bathroom building the framework for the bathtub/shower. It took him longer than he thought also. 

The tub is set. Curtis says he wants to do tile for the walls. I think that will be a project we get my dad to help on (I hope) since he has experience.

It was dark by the time I painted, so we had to use the work light.

But it's good to see all of that popcorn ceiling gone!

Even though it was late by the time we finished, we still watched the 4th Twilight movie. We like the last movie the best so we can't wait to watch that one with the boys (next weekend). The girls went to bed on time but the rest of us were up past midnight. We were exhausted the next day at church, even though it doesn't start until 1:30. The Relief Society President was going to come visit us after church but needed to cancel and I'm glad she did because I needed a nap! Garrett had a big headache at church but didn't tell us until afterwards. He was feeling pretty miserable and had to take a nap as well. We all felt better by the evening and we finally watched the last episode of The Chosen, season 3. It was so good!