The Woes, I mean, Joys of Home-Ownership

I am forcing myself to write today.  For one thing, it's been a week and I feel I need to, and for another, if I don't, I will simply stress out about my house.  I'm at that point right now, where there is so much to do that my mind all but shuts down trying to figure out where to start.  I feel like one of those Looney Tunes characters put in charge of a baby.  A baby that crawls across the telephone wires, over the crocodile pit in the zoo, bounces off an awning onto a car in rush hour traffic, only to be miraculously saved by a window washer who picks the baby up by the diaper with his squeegee and plops him into his room.  Right now, I'm Sylvester, frantically running in all directions trying to take care of things.  I'm getting electrocuted by the wires, snapped at by the crocs, falling onto the pavement and getting mowed down by oncoming traffic. I should take solace in the fact that the baby will ultimately be saved, but I know the window washer is going to dump his dirty water on my head as I am about to enter the building and head upstairs to check on him.

What has started this not so slow descent into madness is the "quick" powder room remodel my husband and I planned to do over the weekend.  We're no strangers to DIY projects.  We had the vanity built and stained, my husband has had experience installing a toilet and sink, so most of our trepidation was related to installing a tile floor.  That was new to us, but we figured, we did our research, it was a small room, we'd get through it.  All of that changed as we started to demo the existing bathroom.  (I should clarify, that while I am using we, it was really my husband that did most of the work).

Without taking you step-by-step into the project (I will save that for a later post, hopefully after we have the room finished and are laughing about this whole thing); I will say that we found extensive water damage in the sub floor.  We now have the floor removed to the joists, and need to throw out the existing insulation and remove a section of the ceiling below.  I don't see how the water damage wasn't showing on the basement ceiling.  My only guess was that it must have been painted over by the previous homeowners or by Fannie Mae.  I'm just glad we started this project six months after we moved in, and didn't wait a year or two from now.

I know there is an end to this project in sight, but in the meantime, I have tools scattered all around my first floor and everything that was in that bathroom is in a corner in my kitchen.  When I come downstairs in the morning, I literally pull my hair when I see the chaos.  I need to have some semblance of order (and safety) before I babysit for a friend on Saturday.  She's never been to my house, and I'm afraid she's going to cancel her plans and march out with her son as soon as she puts her foot inside the door.  So right now, deep breaths, patience, and hard work.  That will see us through.