Projects!

Every day I keep thinking I'm going to get more accomplished than I actually do. On Monday I worked on the window sills in Jack's room. I sanded stuff down and of course while I'm sanding, I see holes that I missed filling. So I have to fill them and wait for it to dry and sand again. I made the mistake of not wiping down the wood before I painted though. I thought vacuuming up the dust or sweeping it off with my hand would be good enough. Nope. While I was painting the primer on, I could see sawdust getting mixed in. I only got as far as priming one of the window sills because I went back and filled holes on both. The next day, I sanded again and got primer on.

On the bright side (pun intended), I told Curtis we really needed to get lights hung in the bedrooms because it's still difficult to work with the halogen work light and one bulb has now burned out already. He talked to a buddy at work about lighting options and took Jack with him to pick out some lights. We decided not to replace the ceiling fans because they're in the basement but also because the holes that were already there were not centered and they were not built right for hanging ceiling fans. We really didn't want to mess with making more holes and patching up, so we opted for these long lights.

He didn't realize until after he hung the first one up how close he was to the vents. Oh well. He was focused on centering it with the shorter wall and having the lights line up.

Hanging one up in the girl's room.

Better lighting with that work light off in the background. It's still not the best lighting but we'll just get a lamp for the corner or something. I'm just happy we finally have lights again!

The boy's project on Tuesday night was ripping out old vinyl flooring in the girl's room and hallway. Wow, it was hard! I didn't realize just how hard until I tried the next day during the day. The boys tore off all of the top layer but the paper that was glued underneath was very difficult to remove. The next day is when I tried to soak the paper in hot water for several hours and try scraping. It only helped a little. We took a break from that for now.

Scraping the top layer off.

Jack was cleaning up. They managed to get some of the glued paper off but it was very difficult.

This is the first area I soaked. It helped some but it was still tough. I decided to water it down more and get most of the room and just let it soak for a long time.

I let it soak for several hours but it still did not help much. Ugh.

We got our license plates last Saturday but I didn't get them put on our vehicles until yesterday, when the weather was finally good again. It had been windy and freezing on Monday and Tuesday. I was crazy enough to go with the girls out in it on Monday because they were begging to ride bikes again. Anyway, looking at Washington license plates on our vehicles is weird. We like the way the Idaho ones look better but oh well. 

The sun was shining and it was warmer so I told the girls it would be a good day to ride bikes. Once again, we rode to the school. Sage followed us over again. She's so cute.

Going up the hill to see the track.

Sage even joined us walking on the track. Sometimes she would stop and just watch us.

After we got back home, Alice and I were about to work on a school project when I realized I didn't know where my phone was. We ran back to the school and fortunately, my phone was still sitting on the bleachers. I'm glad I thought to look for my phone before much later and it was still light out. Whew!

The project that Alice and I were working on was for celebrating the 100th day of school, which is tomorrow. They were instructed to make a project that had 100 items on it and to work on it with your family. Charlotte did help us a little bit as well. Alice and I looked up some ideas online and found this fun project to make a centipede using foam balls and fuzzy sticks. It was fun to do.

Before our walk we had colored the balls with marker but they were very light and hard to see.

After the walk, I checked to see if we had paint. We did and so we painted the balls instead.

It took awhile but we finally got it put together. 100 legs!

Charlotte decided to make her own little spider while Alice and I worked on her centipede.

While the girls were working on crafty projects, Curtis and Garrett were downstairs cutting holes into walls and dismantling the downstairs bathroom. Jack went to mutual and played capture the flag. (Garrett got confused on when the priests were meeting this week, so he stayed home.)

Curtis cut a new doorway into the wall. We didn't like how it went around a corner when entering the bathroom. And we'll be able to put a full length shower in or tub.

Looking through the hole he cut. 

Ripped out the sink.

Now the old shower and walls are gone as well!

We just have to deal with the partially lower ceiling on one end of the shower because of pipes, etc. running across the house.

It's exciting to see Curtis do the bathroom. He kept talking about needing to do it and now it's done! We've still got a lot to do before we can get the floors installed downstairs but at least we're making some progress.