If you have been following my blog for the past six months or so, you have noticed that I try to post something every week. These past two/three weeks things have been different. I want to try and explain what is going on around our home.
The first thing is that we started a complete bathroom remodel in the boys’ bathroom. It is a big bathroom (9’x 10’ 3”) and my husband is only getting work on it after dinner and on Saturdays. I am helping where I can, but most of the work requires both of us to work. If the days end up like this last Saturday, it takes all four of us to work in installing one thing. That just means the work is slow and I am making lots of trips to either Home Depot or Lowes to buy what we need. I am just trying to say that the work is going SLOW. Yet, every DIY project we have done has been that way.
The boys’ bathroom before we started. Notice the paneling and butterfly wall paper. Also the pee yellow floor. Demo almost done. See the black rotted sub-floor? Under that rotten sub-floor we found a perfectly fine floor made of 1″x4″ pine boards. We had to cut out the drywall for a larger tub and new tile surround. The drain and water lines have to be moved. The toilet drain was not done properly, so we had to cut out the drain, put in new supports around the joist, and install a new drain line for the toilet: done correctly. Then we had to replace the rotten flooring. We are going from a single vanity to a double vanity. We moved the drain line from the floor into the wall. My husband and youngest boy were under the house for over an hour. They had to attach the new drain line to the existing one. Good thing I bought all of that extra stuff at Home Depot. We are putting in an engineered wall board in as flooring. With the existing pine flooring, we didn’t have the depth to put a 3/4″ sub-floor with our new tile. It would cause a trip hazard. This 1/2″ board has a water barrier built in and we glued and screwed it in the floor. The new tub sat here most of the week as we figured out how to get it everything level. Good thing it was light, because we had to move it so many times to measure and level things. My husband Scott and my eight-year-old, Isaiah. They spent nearly 3 hours under the house on Saturday moving the drain line for the tub. We had to cut into a joist and then block everything back in properly under the house. The tub finally installed. That took almost all of Saturday to get done. I know it doesn’t look like that big of a deal, but to do it right (as DIYers) it takes a while. The water lines for the tub and shower are now installed. Sometimes you have to use the old tools to do things like this right. We got out a plumb line to make sure everything will line up with the tub drain.
Also, the weather has finally warmed up here and garden season has started. I have an in-ground garden at home and we run a community garden that has 15 raised beds and one 26’x40’ in-ground patch. We also have six other beds that are for flowers and strawberries. Then there are 16 fruit trees. Our tiller is in the shop, but I was able to buy a mattock and get the potato patch turned over for my garden at home.
The red Worland seed potatoes. I also have Yukon gold and Kennebec white that I planted. I cut up the potatoes around the “eyes” where they had growth or where the shoots will grow from in the ground.
I put in (planted) my potatoes yesterday because I knew it was going to rain today. I also planted my onion bulbs. I was very disappointed in my onion crop last year. I thought about half of the onions I planted just died. It has been a warm winter and as the case would be, the onions I thought died grew this winter. They are not large enough to harvest, but now have a good start to this growing season.
My potato patch. It doesn’t look like much right now, but it is early spring. It is about 4’x16′. I grew around 40lbs of potatoes out of this patch last year. It will be well composted again this year. I know it is hard to see, but there are around 20 onions out of the ground left over from last year.
We have also found about three young people who are becoming a part of our family too. You have to appreciate people who are willing to come over for dinner and hang out with you when you are in the middle of a remodel. I have found the 18-28-year-old crowd is really easy going and don’t mind a bit of a mess. We don’t’ mind sharing our lives when we are in the middle of living.
If I appear to be away from the blog for a while, just know that I will be back in a while. We are just busy working. I will attempt to take pictures so I can catch you up on what we are doing.
After 14 years in public education, I am starting a new direction in life. I am a skilled public speaker and educator who is now using those gifts for ministry.
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Growing Hope 
I enjoyed this! You guys have been busy.
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