We’re in!
Wow, two months since I’ve written! It was quiet on the blog but a lot happened in the remodel. Eddie painted all the walls and ceilings, doors and all. They refinished the wood floors on the “upper level” (the “big room”—previously family & living room are a step down from the rest of the house). The crown molding is complete, cupboards and drawers painted, and appliances installed—except the cooktop which is on backorder. Once the floors were done, we moved our bed in and started sleeping in the house. Yay! The trailer’s great but it sure felt good to sleep in our own bed again.
We didn’t really remodel our bathrooms but they both got new vanities and sinks, a new tub & shower, new floors, and walls painted. Also, in the hall bathroom, we moved the toilet to the opposite wall. We have a problem with that toilet, though. It won’t flush correctly. Basically, if someone uses it for “number two,” it clogs. When we tried to use it, it was clogging every other day. I called a plumber we’ve used before and they unclogged it but it stopped up again in another day. I asked them to use a camera to see if something fell in the pipes. They did, and I sat on the floor with the guy and watched him pull the camera up the pipe and out—it was clean as a whistle. Yet, it kept stopping!
The plumber who had moved it to the other wall came and he was sure there was something stuck in the toilet. He was going to buy another toilet but I reminded him we had another one in the garage—both the toilets were fairly new and we reused them. He agreed that we’d put the toilet he thought had something in it into the master bath and the one from the garage into the hall and that would eliminate—or not—the toilet as the problem. Well, that toilet worked like a charm in the master bath. The problem is not the toilet. But what is? No one can figure it out. The plumber and his guys worked on it for something like 3 hours and just kept saying, “It doesn’t make sense.” They didn’t change the pipes, they said, just put in one extension to move the toilet to the other side. Finally, he said he would come back and devote more time to it.
I also purchased a ceiling mount fan for the stove. I didn’t want anything blocking the space from the kitchen to the “big room.” (Shall I call it the “great room?” Keep calling half of it the family room and the other half the dining room??) First I bought a downdraft that would be mounted behind and under the stovetop, then when you use it you push a button to raise it up and it sucks the smoke and steam, then exhausts it out the side of the house. When they went to install it, though, it didn’t fit. I found a ceiling mount fan that looked good, sent a link to Doug to make sure it would be okay, and after he said it was, ordered it.
When he opened it, though, he said, “Mavis, what did you get?” I said, “Doug, you told me it was okay!” He brought it into the house and after a bit called me in. He said, “All the beams in this house are engineered beams. Do you know what that means?” No, I didn’t. “It means that they go all the way across and hold the weight. That’s why you can take down any wall you want—none are load-bearing. But that means I cannot cut a beam to fit in the housing for this fan.” Me: “What are we going to do? They won’t let me return it.” He said he could mount it but it would show about an inch and a half. He said he would encase it in wood so it would look nice. That sounded great and that’s what he did. I told him, “After this, you’re going to tell all your clients how cool this fan is.” And I think he will—he was very proud (rightly so) of how it looked in the end.
After 4 nights back in our own room, we went on a trip to Lynden. We bought the house we plan to move to in a few years and had a nice visit with family. The drive there and back was beautiful—so green. And now we’re trying to get everything back in. But I am trying hard to downsize, too. There are already quite a few bags of clothes and books to go to Goodwill. I’m trying to evaluate everything I unpack: Do I need it? Do I want it? Will I use it? Do I want to have to pack and move it again in 3 years? Do I want the kids to have to deal with it someday when I’m gone?
