Master Bathroom (Part 2)

Good news . . . our master bathroom is completely tiled! Bill and Shirley came over for the day so Bill could help Greg and I with the grout.

While we were working, Hannah and Camille set up their tent and played "house" with MeeMaw.



Next project to tackle: the master bedroom!

Master Bathroom

Today Bill and Shirley came in so Bill could help Greg and I tile the master bathroom. We didn't think anything was wrong with our master bathroom and had no plans to do anything to it, but our adjuster pointed out that because the place where the tree came through our bedroom ceiling is right next to the bathroom . . .

. . . there could be mold behind the shower tile and the only way you're ever going to know is if you tear it out. They gave us money to redo it, so we decided it's better to be safe than sickly (hee hee).

We're glad we made that decision, too, because this is what we found when we tore out the old tile:

See the nasty black stuff in the middle of the picture? Mold! We also found some in our bedroom, which required yet another call to Uncle Allstate.

We finished tiling the shower area and started on the floor before Bill and Shirley left, and Greg is finishing up the floor right now. Although I can't say that he enjoys working with tile (in fact, I think I heard the word "hate" thrown around a couple of times), I can say that he's doing a great job with it—especially since this is his first time to do it! His parents are planning to come back again next week so Bill can help with the grout and Shirley can help with the kiddos!

Thank you for all of your help, MeeMaw and Kimpaw! We love you!

And the winner is . . .

Well, we reached a decision with the fireplace dilemma. In order to make the French door idea work, we would have to move another doorway on the inside of the house so we wouldn't lose space for seating. Right now it just seems like one more thing to add to a list that seems to get longer every day, so we just decided to stick with the original plan of a wall. And Greg is framing the wall even while I type this, so there's no turning back now!


I hope we don't regret it in a couple of years, but I think we'll be happy with it either way.

Our own little Jericho

After three days of work, Greg finally made it to the end of the fireplace demolition. I had this vision in my mind of taking a sledge hammer to the thing and just busting it out (I think we both pictured that, to some extent), but come to find out the inside of a fireplace isn't hollow. There are several layers of bricks nestled inside of each other.

Here he is somewhere in the middle of the outside portion.

Finally time to start on the inside!

This was the moment we waited for. Goodness gracious, it took a lot longer than we thought!

And somewhere around in here . . .
. . . is when all the fun started. I finally had a relatively unobstructed view of my backyard, which has never happened from inside my living room, so I said, "I have a great idea!" Greg rolled his eyes and said, "Great." (If you read that enthusiastically, like, "Wow, Honey! That's great that you have a great idea! I can't wait to hear it!" then please go back and read it the way it was really stated, which was the same kind of "Great" you say when you see red and blue lights flashing in your rearview mirror. There you go. Now you've got it!) So I proceeded to tell Greg my "great" idea, which was to put French doors where the fireplace used to be rather than just making a wall.

Because my husband adores me
Because my husband knows my ideas are always nothing less than amazing
Because my husband tolerates my indecisiveness and at least attempts to entertain my various and sundry ideas, he patiently . . . lovingly . . . grudgingly rearranged furniture for the next hour to see if we could come up with something we like that will allow us to get more natural light into our house and have this great view of the outdoors.

As of now, we still don't know exactly what we're going to do, but the brick guy is scheduled to show up on Monday, so we better have a decision made by tomorrow!

Up on the House Top

Greg, his dad, and a very good friend of ours spent a couple of weekends working on the roof to replace all of the decking that was damaged during Ike. Now that that's done, we have been waiting for someone to be able to come out and reshingle our roof. Understandably, roofers have been a little bit busy lately.

Greg was at Home Depot in Mid-County the other day and saw a roofer's business card on the bulletin board, so he grabbed it and gave him a call. The guy was busy, but he told Greg he would see if he could pass the job on to someone else. Well, Greg got a phone call today from a guy who said he was ready to come do our roof now. Like "right now." Like the "right now while Greg is at work" kind of "right now." Normally it's not a big deal for people to come do work on the house while Greg's at work; but because we decided to take the chimney down and remove the fireplace, there was some work he needed to do in that area after the old shingles were removed but before the new shingles were put on, which meant he had to be there while the guys were working. But today was Day 1 of the Bulldog Classic; and as pretty much every coach will tell you, when your school is hosting a basketball tournament and you're one of the basketball coaches, you don't miss your tournament for anything. Period. But then again, pretty much every coach doesn't have the wonderful Brian English for a head coach. Brian told Greg to go ahead and go.

Fast forward 30 minutes. Greg has permission to leave the tournament so he can be there to get done what he needs to get done, when the guy calls again. Turns out they're turning around and heading back home because the weather is too nasty to work on a roof. Greg explains to the guy that he has to be there with them and won't be able to be there again any other time, so can't they just come out and least try to work if it's not raining too badly. So the guys agree, and to make a long story short, the rain clouds were right there but not one single drop ever fell!

They worked until dusk, but they didn't completely finish. They'll come back tomorrow morning and do the rest before the girls and I leave for a new co-op we're trying out. After they left, Greg felt a definite responsibility to get back to the tournament and at least finish up the evening, and the girls and I decided to go with him. I'm so glad we did because this is what we saw on our way:


It looks like mountains in the background, but this is actually the wall of storm clouds that I'm convinced God held back for us, showing us once again that He is taking care of us through this whole process!

Rejoicing that He cares about the details in our lives,