Problem = Solved but the Aftermath = In Process

Today, the underlying problem that started my hysterical laughing (a full two weeks ago) was finally fixed.

What we determined from Watergate was that there was a blockage in the waste line of our master bathroom. It wasn't so blocked that the toilet and sink wouldn't work, but 50 gallons of bathtub water at one time was just too much for it to handle. So it backed up. When it happened, Paul was tiling the shower, where he had removed the cap to the drain pipe installed by our plumber in order to attach all the necessary drain connections, water proofing pieces and the tile. Had the shower already been done, we still would have had a water issue, but it would have all just ended up in our bathroom, flooding our new tile, bathroom walls and vanity. It would have potentially flooded our bedroom as well and the damage could have been extensive. While it sucks that the shower wasn't done and it flooded the floor/ceiling cavity and ruined our living room ceiling and fan, this was probably the lesser of the two evils. None of the walls have to be removed, none of the flooring in the bathroom and the vanity upstairs never even got a drop of water on it.

We also determined that the blockage had to be in our waste line only. Addison's bathroom was having no issues and we had used the shower, drained her tub, flushed the toilet and used the lavatory many times already. The problem had to be at a point before the two lines connected and left the house.

 

Paul went to the basement and started searching for the clean out from the master bath. I asked him how he was going to be able to locate it. He waved me off, gently (if you know Paul) and headed down. I heard the pry bar working at a piece of wood and he had found it, immediately of course and sent me a text with this photo and caption:

 

 

"BOOM"

 

And yes, you read that correctly. He sent a text message from our house, to our house. When Heather Armstrong of dooce.com and her family bought their new house a few years ago, T-Mobile or some other cell company did a sponsored post. They got new phones or new walkie-talkies to use and because their house was just "soooo big", their new tools were coming in handy. I gagged a bit at the ridiculousness of the sponsored, and what I perceived to be made up and forced story. But as it turns out, when you are navigating three stories and you have a toddler upstairs asleep, the good ole fashion, yelling up the stairs trick really cannot be utilized. And so now we find ourselves sometimes texting or calling each other. In our own house. So what I am really getting at is: AT&T, whenever you are ready, we're happy to accept your compensation for using our wonderful smart phones on your wonderful plan in our own wonderful house. Call me. You have my number.

 

Well, back to our story. We called out Roto Rooter because as their website states, they are the plumbing experts we've trusted for over 75 years. Well not us but someone. Our plumber doesn't snake lines. Isn't that the bee's knees? The local Roto Rooter franchise sent out a technician and he watched Paul work for almost 30 minutes in the middle of the day. He was rude, unhelpful and then charged us upwards of $60 for doing NOTHING except driving to our house and walking up and down a couple of flights of stairs. Needless to say, Paul was hacked. He sent a scathing email to Roto Rooter and of course nothing was fixed. Their a national chain. What do they care if they have an unhappy customer in Oklahoma City. Their suggestion was that we uncap the waste line ourselves, then they would come back out and snake it.

 

Not wanting to go through this with anyone else, Paul decided to cut out the pipe, re-fit a new piece and allow us access at a higher point.

 

 

(As a quick side note: when Paul made the first cut to remove some of the pipe he started pretty high up. He had considered going pretty low to the ground but chose to go higher for whatever reason and then made the 2nd cut at the top to remove the separated pipe. He was unbelievable lucky because the blue painters tape you see on the 2nd photo was the water line of the standing water, still clogged.)

 

Today, the waste line was snaked and cleaned out and unfortunately the work was done by none other than Roto Rooter. I won't even get into the whole saga of what went down today. Let's just say, I give the company a C for the whole ordeal. It could be worse, if you'd asked me this morning, they would have gotten an F. All the plumbing fixtures are back to being operational so I bumped up the curve a bit. 

Luckily, the damage was covered by our home owner's insurance. Amazingly enough, in all of this process, this is all that has occurred, so far. This type of situation (floods and water line blockage) happens to normal people, ones not tearing out their walls and doing the insane things we have done. This really was a minor set back. We do have a deductible ($1,000) and after all the paperwork was completed it was determined that this repair would cost more than double that (water mitigation isn't a joke people, nor is the price tag). We'll still out some money, probably $600-800, but considering we could be out our entire deductible - it could obviously be worse. I'm thankful all the damage was a sizable amount more than the deductible too. There might not have been much else that could have been worse than the dollar amount coming in right under that grand and it not even making our insurance worth it. So see, this is all going to work out just fine.

 

We've gotten our quote for our drywall, we're hopeful that they will be able to do the work this weekend. If so, it'll get us back on track pretty quickly. So while the problem is fixed, the entire issue is still in remediation. Stay tuned.

Paint - The Final Color Selection Part 3

Our master bedroom has that ominous paint #3 I mentioned a few weeks ago. The master closet, master bath and the sitting room are all the Repose Gray that is throughout the rest of the house but the actual bedroom portion is a shade lighter than our bathroom vanity. The vanity was painted to resemble the kitchen cabinets as closely as possible.

We had a sample of our kitchen cabinets color matched for a closer formula to actually use but Sherwin Williams' Coastal Plain is pretty close as it is. So we took that Coastal Plain one tint lighter and used SW's Contented SW6191 for our bedroom walls.

While I was in the living room downstairs painting the mantle and fireplace surround, our bedroom was getting painted. My parents brought another helper with them this past weekend and he painted our bedroom so quickly and so well I just thought I might cry. For two weeks, since we moved into the house, painting our bedroom was high on the priority list. Yet, something bigger and more important kept knocking it down the list. I had high hopes for it to get painted but no expectations. But, back to my story, because I was painting with an oil based paint, I didn't want to stop in the living room until I had finished with the entire piece. The paint quickly became tacky and I needed to ensure it didn't dry unevenly. Paul took a picture of our bedroom in the middle of the painting and brought it down for me to see the color.

 

"That looks terrible!" was all I could say. He stared at me like I was nuts and started to voice his approval of the color when I quickly clarified that I loved the green, but the pink-peach-off white trim was what looked horrible. Thankfully that color isn't staying so that doesn't matter much.



 

The photo above was taken right after I painted the fireplace in the bedroom. The door frames and baseboards, doors and window trim all need to be painted white now to match. Just painting the fireplace alone gave me a good feeling about the overall room. It's going to feel clean and I cannot wait.

I love the color tie in from the bathroom to the bedroom. It makes the rooms feel cohesive and balanced. Well, minus all the junk and unplaced furniture and of course the half painted trim. As cohesive as this is supposed to feel at this stage. My dad cleaned and oiled the wood floors in this room and we laid down our new rug before moving our bed into place and calling it a night. It's starting to get comfortable around here and we are not complaining. 

Our Fireplace (2 of 4)

I painted our living room fireplace mantle and surround this weekend.

I don't love this fireplace. Not like my last one. My last one was beautiful and chunky, original wood and had built in bookshelves from 1914 flanking each side. I miss that fireplace. This fireplace feels too stodgy to me. Too "look at me, I'm marble".

But, with limited funds and some desire to leave original pieces with the house, it stays.

But it was dingy and gross, covered in a thin layer of nicotine.

So it desperately needed a coat of paint. We had bought a quart of high gloss door and trim paint for something else but decided to use it here instead.

 

It was a bit more difficult to put on in a vertical application than a regular latex would have been but looking at it today , it was well worth the effort.

Painting the First Floor

I failed to mention we painted the first floor last Saturday. Another 7 hour commitment but again, in the scheme of things, 7 hours to paint the entire first floor isn't all that bad. I've yet to cut in down here, so it'll be a long time coming until we're "done" with the paint part of this project but it is progress none-the-less.

 

 

Look at how nasty that door and trim looks against my freshly painted walls. I plan to tackle the fireplace painting pretty soon. It should be pretty quick. I'm trying out a new (to me) product. Here's hoping it goes well.

Priorities - Who Needs 'Em?

A few days ago, I had Paul swing by Home Depot at lunch and pick up a quart of paint. Color matched of course because that is how I roll.

Black Fox.

It's the darkest shade in the swathe of paint shades that my Repose Gray falls in. It appears as if it is the perfect mixture of black and brown. After finding this room on Pinterest, I wanted to paint the interior cavity of the faux fireplaces in the sitting room and the master bedroom dark.

 

The fireplace in the living room downstairs has a black tile on the interior and I like it quite a bit so I guess nothing screams "I'm fake!" more than a fireplace all painted one color - especially peach or white. The sitting room is quickly becoming my favorite space of the house, all I want to do is finish it out, and so last night at 9:40 I busted out that quart of paint and went to work. While the paint was going on it was less black, more fox. I trucked through the painting and am so thrilled I did.

But first, lets talk about where this little paint job fell into our priority ranking shall we? We have a SIX page, typed, 9-pt font, double columned punch list of items that we need to accomplish to consider this project "done". The items listed are quite detailed, which is why the list is so long, but items nonetheless and items that are much higher on our priority list than painting the interior of the fireplace in the sitting room. If you guessed that this rated around the -17 on the list you'd be a rich, rich individual.

But I painted anyways. I needed a small victory last night and this was it.

I've decided since the heater doesn't work, but I really want to leave it in place, to paint it the same color as the cavity. I want that whole inset to feel heavy and weighted. I want it to draw your eye in and I don't want a dusty old, inoperable heater distracting you once you get there.

I've promised myself that this task won't happen until long after our to-do list is done though. It's too frivolous to justify until then.

I love a good contrast storyline in a room and this one is just getting started.

Another insignificant priority that I am choosing to be obsessed with anyways is finding a barrister bookcase for this room. If you're out junk shopping and find one in relatively good condition that won't cost me a fortune, let me know! I'll take metal or wood.

Separating Doors - A Double Entendre

Doors serve very few purposes. Noise separation and visual privacy/separation. That's it. Pretty straight forward, not a lot you can do to mess that up.

 

 

This door serves neither of those purposes. It's purpose, back in 1930 was of a more social nature. It was a separation of public and private space. This door controlled who was allowed to visit. You could come knocking all you wanted, but until you passed through the second door, you were no more a welcomed visitor in this home than the stranger walking down the sidewalk. In 2013, it serves practically no purpose at all. Other than it's history and it's reminder of days and social expectations of the past there isn't much for this door to do. It won't serve as a "functional" part of the house as it will either always be open or always be closed. Closing it behind us when we go to answer the front door will be a hassle, not a statement. But I absolutely, positively love it. I love the entry, I love the door. This door, along with the curved, french dining room doors and curved living room trim directly adjacent to it are the reasons I fell in love with this house in the first place.

 

But a door, having only two purposes, only functions one way. If it closes it works, if it doesn't, well, it doesn't. This completely, un-purposeful door in 2013, didn't even function correctly. It was broken when we bought the house. The wood was separating (this is where the title actually makes sense - took us awhile to get here, huh?), causing the whole door to be extremely out of alignment and far from being able to fit snugly into it's frame. I had no idea how we we're going to fix it. I've never repaired a door, especially one that is separating and full of 15 individual glass panes.  A sub-contractor we had bidding a job offered us some free advice, "Get you some large clamps and glue that sucker back together." Wow, geez, thanks. We hadn't really thought of that before. But, seriously, we hadn't.

 

Well, after pricing out clamps, we decided we were not buying large clamps to repair one door (turns out we have another one to fix in a similar fashion). A clamp large enough to secure this door was too expensive for our blood. So we phoned a friend. A friend who had four of them. My dad and Paul injected a strong wood adhesive into the separating panels, clamped the puppy together and I knew immediately it was going to do the job. We let it sit for a little over 24 hours, per the instructions on the bottle.

 



 

The next evening, we took off the clamps and I was right, it had made an amazing recovery. The door still doesn't latch properly but it at least sits inside of it's own frame. I love it even more than I did before.

 

 

I get excited when I pass the front door and catch a glimpse through that leaded circular window of another (closed) door. I get excited when I wake up in the morning and come downstairs to see a separated space. It's weird, but it's my thing.

The door directly across from this door, separating the passage to the kitchen/stairs, will need to be shored up as well. Maybe we'll tackle that this evening, or tomorrow, or this weekend, or at some point in our lives.

PS: There are very few doors in our house that don't need some TLC. They all desperately need a good cleaning and fresh paint but I would say at least 1/3 of all the doors need to have a wood plane taking to their sides and tops to get them to close. We'll also get to this maybe tonight, or tomorrow, or.....

Stainless Steel Single Sink Sickness

Or S.S.S.S.S to those of you who also suffer from our obsession.

At our first house, when we remodeled the kitchen in 2010, we went with a single basin, deep, stainless steel sink. Mainly for aesthetics. We had been using an old enamel, double sink and didn't really spend much time considering the pros and cons of both types before making our next purchase.

2.3 seconds into our first use of our new sink, we were sold. It was amazing. We could fit ANYTHING in the tub (pasta pots, large Le Creuset Dutch ovens, later an infant). I've never really used a double sink for washing dishes, clean water on one side, dirty on the other. Um, hello dishwasher. So having a double bowl just proved to be cumbersome.

We sold that house, sadly including my sink and moved into an apartment. With a double basin, enamel sink and it was utter torture. Every dish I rinsed, every pot I filled, I would take a moment to dream of the day I would have a single basin again.

In 2010, they were everywhere. We bought our last one at Home Depot.

Apparently, I'm either out of style or stores in Oklahoma weren't selling them well and it was impossible to find a sink. I really wanted to see before I bought this item.

We did finally find one locally and just as before, I am in love. I'm telling you guys, this is the only way to wash and fill. I have a feeling all of the sinks in heaven will be just like this one.

Hysterics

While not quite this insane of an ordeal, our evening went a little something like that.

After using 3/4 of a bottle of wood cleaner on our banister alone, my hands were covered in oil, my brain and my body were tired I decided to take a bath in my brand new operational bathtub. This was such a big deal. MY freestanding bathtub, with hot water! And a pretty tub full of water it was going to be! Paul was in our bathroom tiling the shower, I filled up the new tub and took a nice hot bath to relax. Washed, rinsed and repeated and then started to drain the tub.

"Man, this thing drains extremely loud. I wonder how loud it is in the living room. Like will people notice?"

Paul was standing there watching me, listening to it drain as well. I closed the drain, let it sit for a minute and then reopened.

"Like really loud," I said again as I tried to listen to where I could hear the water rushing. Maybe it was just reverberating through my tub?

Seconds later the toilet started gurgling. We looked at each other, laughing, thinking that was going to be an old house thing. "Oh don't mind the toilet gurgle when you empty the tub..." we'd say to guests. And then Paul turned around and saw inches of water rising in the shower pan floor (waterproofed but not yet tiled).

Expletive.

We remained relatively calm, but when we realized the tub was empty but the shower wasn't, we thought maybe there was a vacuum type of issue occurring in the pipes and so we tried to flush the toilet to release that bubble.

Nope. Wrong. Try again.

The toilet started to fill up quickly so I immediately shut off the valve at the wall. Paul ran down two flights of stairs, grabbed his shop vac, back up two flights of stairs and started sucking the water out of the shower floor and drain.

Whew. We got it. We both sat back for a minute and thought, "Well that sucked. Guess we'll have our plumber come take a look in the morning." Little did we know that this was the calm before the storm.

Paul sat there for a minute looking at the shower floor and drain pipe.

Expletive.

He threw down the shop vac hose and bolted down the hall, down the stairs. There may have been another expletive or two or three.

I followed him down the stairs thinking he had lost his ever-loving mind, he threw on the living room light and there, oh there, was water pouring from our brand new living room ceiling fan. I quickly turned the light switch off as he flew to the basement to throw the breaker. Water was coming down all over our floor, supplies and coffee table. Paul grabbed our paint canvas drop cloth and started catching the water, grabbing three 5-gallon buckets we set up under necessary spots and then went to work.

Midnight people. We were doing this at midnight.

We took the ceiling fan off first since that was where the majority of the water was coming out of the ceiling. Remember the laughing at the end of the clip? We're getting there.

 

Once the ceiling fan was down we started noticing two other spots where water was starting to leak through the drywall. We didn't want the water to just sit up there and we didn't want to leave it to fall on its own overnight so we cut a small hole at the first location to let the water drain. And drain it did. If you look to the far top left corner of the photo you can see the line of the seam starting to telegraph through the drywall. Lots and lots of water up there people.

 

We really needed to know what was happening so that hole got larger and larger and larger.

 

 

 

That is where we left it at 12:30 last night. With the water out of the ceiling (as far as we could tell) and the plumber already alerted we dried the wood floor, cleaned up some of the mess and called it a night.

 

That's when the laughing started. I went through the gamut of emotions or more likely I went through the entire stages of grief. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression and finally acceptance. They were all most certainly present.

 

This afternoon I am meeting with a company that our insurance claims adjuster has sent out to assess the damage and help come up with a replacement cost. Unfortunately our deductible is probably right at the threshold so we'll see how it all works out.

 

So not only do we have a lot of work to complete - we've unfortunately had to move backwards.

 

We'll get there. And thankfully this is all work we can hire out. And one day we'll look back on this and laugh. Hopefully not like Tom Hanks and not like we were laughing last night but we'll laugh nonetheless.

Lessons I've Learned this Month

1) We are not contractors. We are capable. We are handy. We are organized. And yet, we are still not contractors. There are times I really don't want to get dirty. There are times we can't make something look right. There are times.

2) I am an extremely co-dependent spouse. Which is sort of strange since I am the outgoing one. Maybe I've always been that way. Maybe Paul's willingness to do whatever I don't want to do has spurred it on. Maybe it's because I was never single, living alone, having to do all sorts of things by myself. I watch my friend Tara handle a paint machine and tools like a boss and I have no desire to get into it that deeply. And if it were me instead of her or without her, I'd just ask Paul to do it for me instead. And he would. Not because I'm the boss, but because he would never turn down helping me if I asked and I think I take advantage of that.

I'm not upset about either one of these things. They are what they are but I need to work harder on the 2nd one so that Paul doesn't constantly feel pressure to do everything himself.

3) I've also learned that wedding rings shouldn't be worn while performing certain activities. Hopefully a good cleaning can take care of this poor thing.

4) And that chaos breeds chaos. Tackle a space at a time and move on. We're getting there and it'll be glorious once we've arrived.

One Week Post Move In

It has been a little over one week since we moved into and started living in our house.

It is utter chaos.

There are boxes and random pieces of furniture and art EVERYWHERE. There are construction tools and supplies strewn in between. It is a mad house.

 

Tomorrow 1,400 linear feet of base and base shoe arrive in 16 foot lengths to the chaos. We just keep piling on the crazy around here.

This past weekend my parents came up to help us out again. My mom was on Addison duty who was adamant about wearing big girl underwear. Girl is obsessed with them which just added to the heightened alert we were all on. Everybody wears panties and she tells everyone so. Including her dad and her Papa. It's adorably exhausting. She drug me into her bathroom yesterday to try and go potty. She had already pulled out a pair, draped them over the side of the tub and was ready to rock and roll. She never intended to pee, but she knew sitting her butt down on the potty was a necessity to getting out of the diaper and into the underwear. 45 seconds later she had peed all over the floor. Again, exhausting and yet adorable.

My dad and Paul finished installing the upper cabinets in the kitchen. We have to put on the refrigerator end panel and trim out the cabinets, after the grout is done we'll install the shoe mold and the kitchen will be 98% complete.

 

 

And we painted. And we painted. And we painted.

Tara, our dear friend who grouted our shower, and her family own an industrial paint sprayer, with a roller attachment. She rolled, I cut in. Other than the disastrous "paintacolypse" of 2013 that happened in our spare bedroom, the thing was a life saver. And even when the disaster struck, no one died and other than our clothes and Tara's pride (and maybe not even that), nothing was hurt.

On average, it takes about 3-1/2 to 4 hours to paint one of our  bedrooms (big rooms, tall ceilings). Two hours for all the cut in around doors, windows. outlets, switches and ceilings and then another hour and a half to knock out the rolling. We had these bedrooms done in less than 2 hours. I have to finish cutting in the sitting room, our bathroom, closets and the hallway. All that cutting in and just in order to catch up to where we stopped rolling Saturday night.

 

I'm not entirely sure what we're going to do about this wall/cut in at the ceiling. I guess something will come to me if I keep staring at it.

We plan to utilize the sprayer again to paint the entire first floor pretty soon. It's all one color downstairs so it'll be fast(er) work. And then our bedroom needs to be painted. It's a different color so of course we'll be doing it the old school way. Yipee. 4 hours of painting, here I come.

Paul spent the majority of yesterday installing our waterproofing system for our shower. We went from plywood and some plumbing fittings to an orange, panned, ready for tile system in less than a day.

It was a busy weekend. So much so that we are both feeling terrible today. With the time change, a toddler, full time jobs and this pretty physical project our bodies are about to hold up the stop signs. Hopeful that we can make it a few more weeks. Just to get finished, cleaned and slightly unpacked. Then we can do nothing for months on end. N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

A Blurred and Disorganized Update

We've slept in the house for three nights now. Which is exciting and exhausting.

Have I mentioned we aren't done yet?

There is still A LOT left to finish. We're living amongst our packed and disorganized belongings and construction materials. We're using temporary shades and wearing shoes all the time. Our refrigerator is in our dining room, only one shower and toilet works and the only working sink is in the kitchen.

Jealous?

Last week was an insane dash to get to where we are now. We had electricians and plumbers and counter fabricators working all at the same time in order to get the house "livable". We still have a long to-do list of items to complete before they can fully finish their work but they've been very accommodating. Here's a sneak peek at our kitchen and master bathroom vanity from last week (both obviously unfinished but getting close):

We've tried getting Addison's room as set up as possible so that she has a place to play and can feel comfortable. It's not there yet but we're trying to work on it. It's also not her newly designed room. It's practically her nursery, picked up and placed in a new house. I am excited to have time to actually design and shop for some spaces, this one especially.

Half of our closet system went in last night in order for us to get our stuff off of the bed and stacked boxes. It was such a low priority item pre-move in but now that we're in the house and having to semi-function, it has become a necessity. Which meant painting Addison's closet and our closet moved up the list a lot faster too. Also, seemingly meaningless tasks.

Our good friend Tara also helped us grout Addison's shower. After she finished, I grouted the rest of the her bathroom floor. Her bathroom still needs paint, caulk, a cabinet above the toilet (which is down the road) and the plumber has to finish installing the sink/faucet. All of these items are high on the priority list. It's time to buckle down and get some of these things checked off. Hopefully Tara loves me enough that she won't murder me for posting this picture. And maybe just maybe, she'll still let Addison marry Levi. Look at that gorgeous tile (and installer) though!

 

And lastly for my post today, our amazing new home security system was installed this morning. Paul and I like old neighborhoods and the urban core. We don't however love how rickity the old houses can sometimes be or how most of these neighborhoods are surrounded by "fringe" neighborhoods. It's all safe enough, but we knew we would feel better with a new home system. This is a much larger house (i.e. much larger target) than we've owned in the past and while our neighborhood is great, crap still happens. This system is so high tech that I think it could cook me eggs in the morning if I could figure out how to program it correctly.  

 

We have been working hard to try and get finished or as finished as we're going to get. We are so thankful to all of our friends and family who have helped us with labor or with child care. My parents come back up on Friday/Saturday to help a little more and hopefully Friday night we'll have 95% of the entire house painted.

More Bathtub Talk

Remember the whole saga of getting our 1,000 pound cast iron tub out of the bathroom, down the stairs, into our living room and then finally into the dumpster? Remember how we decided the 2nd 1,000 pound cast iron tub would stay?

Well, it received some damage during construction, and even if it hadn't, we decided to reglaze the tub. For approximately $350.00, we couldn't justify not doing it. So once the sledghammer fell and knicked off some of the existing finish it was official.

All of the companies we looked at gave a 5 year warranty on their refinishing job, and after looking into the standard refinish length, this warranty looked to cover a pretty average life expectancy of the refinish job. So, we'll possibly have to spend $350.00 every 7-10 years to maintain the original tub if we are good about taking care of it in the meantime. I'll deal with it.

Once the drywall was installed and the tile set, we had the refinishers come in to do their work. It took them about 4 hours. They taped up the plumbing covered the tile and all surrounding surfaces before starting. They even vented out to the exterior of the house in order to keep the small gritty dust out of the air.

As a side note, they prefer to be the very last people on a job. I was afraid I couldn't wait for that. They do not like to repair a tub before the tile has been installed mainly because the chance of the tile contractor messing it up during construction is pretty high. Once I explained that I was the tile subcontractor and I would have no one to blame but myself, they relented but because of schedules and time frame, they didn't start work until this afternoon. The day our furniture arrived. This is cutting it close people. And after installing the wall tile, I can see why they want to be last. Every trowel of mortar I put on the wall resulted in a glob of mortar in the tub. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

It might be a little difficult to tell, but the top photo was before they refinished, dingy and cracked and the second photo is almost immediately after they finished.

 

Just as quickly as they had come in, they were gone and the tub was "setting up" or "curing". We could have used the tub in 24 hours. Since we stayed in a hotel for a few nights, that wasn't an issue. We'll probably use Addison's bath as a family for a couple of days while ours is getting finished out. It's nice to have a practically brand new tub.

Moving Day(s)

Moving day unfortunately turned into moving days. Plural, with an "s". It has been and is unfortunately a much rougher transition than we had planned or hoped for.

Tuesday night we worked on packing lost our mojo and then cram packed the remaining things we could on Wednesday morning before the movers arrived.

That part went fairly smooth. They took everything that was in a box and every piece of furniture. Not bad.

The plan was for me to return on Wednesday afternoon and do some more (just taking car loads) and then spend Thursday morning cleaning out the apartment, checking out and being done on the last day of the month.

But it took the movers twice as long as they had estimated (which meant it cost twice as much) but it was still worth their time/our cash. But because of how long it took them, I couldn't get back to the apartment in a reasonable amount of time to complete my remaining tasks for the day.

So Thursday morning it would be. We booked a hotel for Wednesday and Thursday night so we could make the transition a little easier while crucial items got finished (like plumbing and electricity). This was going alright.

Wednesday night, Addison and I arrived at midnight to the hotel, went straight in and straight to bed. Paul arrived two hours later, parked clear across the parking lot, also came straight in and went to bed.

Thursday morning, after the three of us had all had our hotel waffles, we set off to our different destinations. Except I couldn't leave the parking lot because someone broke into my car. They busted out my passenger window, stole my wallet that I had accidentally dropped and left overnight in the car. I cried. I was frustrated, hurt and tired. My phone was dead and I just couldn't take anymore setbacks. Having a talking two year old in these situations is always helpful. "Mommy OK?", "Mommy sad?", "My car broken?". Those little sentences made me smile every time even when all I wanted to do was to punch someone in the face.

So, after getting my kiddo out of the carseat I just put her in, we went back inside, phoned the police, and it turned out we've got lots of charges on all our accounts (bank and credit). So it was considered an Auto Burglary and a White Collar crime. After all that seemed to start clearing up, we realized the license plate on our other car, the one Paul parked clear across the parking lot was also stolen. So three open police reports right now. Three. Do I look like the kind of person that even wants to have one police case open?

The thief vandalized two random cars - only to be owned by the same freaking family. I might have lost it. What are the odds?!

So half of Thursday was lost. I spent practically the entire morning cancelling cards, checking accounts, on and off the phone with Paul, struggling to feel good about making process. It just sucked. Paul came by the apartment at lunch and we both agreed to ask the apartment complex for a one day extension. After we explained our sob story, they agreed and that gave us until we left that night to get fully out.

Which still didn't happen. So today, 15 minutes before we wanted to be out, we were loading the last pieces and vacuuming under the cabinets. But it's done, we are out. And everything we own is now in the house, in our cars or in the storage unit.

I got a new license today, so now I'm not driving an untagged vehicle without a license. Can you imagine getting pulled over for not having a license plate and then having to tell the officer you also don't have a license?! I'd have been in jail for sure. We're still without a tag on the Mazda and we can't get our window replaced until next Thursday, but everyone is safe, all the cards have been stopped and we'll start filing dispute forms as soon as everything has posted.

As 2:15 this afternoon, we are no longer paying rent and a mortgage. While the week sucked and I'm ready to be done with the entire process, those statement above make the week completely worth it. We officially live in Six Twelve (done or not).