Slow Week

Wednesday 02.03.10
It's been a slow week here at the Yellow Cottage.  Tomorrow I fly off to the (hopefully) warm weather of Florida to visit family and have a nice long weekend away.  Kip, unfortunately, is stuck here at home with a major software upgrade project at his work. He will be comforted, however, by the delivery that arrived today.  His very own Mac.  Of course, my plans to start on the home office as the next project doesn't bode well for a happy setup for him.  He will likely be ousted to the upstairs guest bedroom or perhaps the dining room for a month once that is started...but first, we still have to conquer the bathroom.

So in my last entry I talked about running out of steam (and patience).  One thing I learned about starting with a small room...never consider a bathroom a small room.  Also, the concept that I would be able to do 90% of this myself and not have to drag Kip away from his own substantial projects was a fallacy. 

I'm hopeful once I move away from plumbing that I can be more independent, just seeking advice and an occasional tutorial in power tools from Kip, but the fact is we live together in this space and the simple act of prepping, cleaning/purging a space requires both our involvement.

Last night Kip took on the plumbing under the sink again - now with all the right parts - and managed to get very wet when the water was turned back on.  We fear, after all this DIY activity, we will still need a professional plumber to come check it out.  We think some of the pipe or the on/off valve was just too old to survive the activity of the last month and has given out.  Luckily we have a good plumber we can call, but Kip will take one more look at it first.  If he comes, we can take the opportunity to also have him look at the steam radiator in the kitchen that has a leaky connection as well.  It's always something.

I've been reading the House in Progress blog started by Jeanne and Aaron in 2003.  What they took on in that old bungalow certainly makes our house look like child's play.  I'm sure I would have given up within 30 days, but they've kept at it for 7 years....a real lesson in stick-to-itiveness.

So, I'll begin to inventory what we've done and what we've spent on the bathroom thus far.  And just as a reminder, this was a facelift job, not a true renovation or restoration effort.  At some future date we hope to re-configure the space by taking square footage from the adjoining (bed)room and closet to add a shower and at that time, we will put in a real tile floor instead of the inexpensive (but not bad looking at all!) adhesive flooring.

Going dark now....back up next week.