I guess it's not a heavy reporting week over here in Humboldt Park.  Hm, my apologies.

I had an idea.  I am probably a bit nutso for thinking about doing this.  Maybe it's because it's much warmer here in Chicago today than originally predicted and my brain is cooked from being outside for a few hours, I dunno.

Hear me out.

As you may recall, I'm in the midst of working on the pantry floor.  It was a train wreck with awful cheap carpet that I couldn't vacuum and Hailey did her best to encourage me to rip it out.  My hands are still sorta recovering from pulling all those darn staples.  Cannot wait for the main stair carpet removal.....cough.  Although every time I step on one of the staples in those stairs, I get a little bit closer to yanking it all out.


The lovely and charming current state of our pantry floor is above.  Finally sans staples though.

I've come across so many ideas on the internet but nothing has been striking me.  Last night I was perusing Pinterest as I tend to do every day.  Again, as it turns out, I ended up pinning these tiles designed by my most favorite architect, Antoni Gaudi.  Staring as these tiles I was thinking, wow, wouldn't it be just so ridiculously cool to have tiles by him?!

Then I thought, heeeeyyyyy wait a second, didn't.....Yep.  My parents brought me back a trivet from their trip to Barcelona.


I dug it out of that cart I hate and the pattern wasn't as shallow as I had remembered.  Mmm hm.

I bet you're gathering where I'm going with this now.  I mentioned a bit ago that I found a tutorial on how to make your own DIY concrete tiles.

So yeah, see?

I was thinking of creating a mold from this trivet, maybe more than one, and making my own concrete tiles a la Gaudi.  Holy crap, that would be super excellent, yes?  A replica of his design in my own house?!?  Hang on, I gotta go wipe the drool off my face.

I could do a center field of these tiles then maybe a la Gaudi mosaic, do some penny tiles as a border framing them.  I could possibly add color to the Gaudi tiles, or even stain and seal them afterward.  Then something like these penny tiles from Floor & Decor would be fun but I'm sure there are a bazillion types I can choose from.  A color, or multi-colored like these that I'm sure I'd need a winning lottery ticket to afford, could be nifty since all his mosaics are so colorful.

Hmmm....yesssss.  *chin rubbing*

I will mention this to Mike, see what he says.  He'll think I'm utterly crazy for even suggesting to make my own tiles, but he knows how much I love Gaudi....We shall see!

I seriously don't get it.  I went downstairs to go grab some finished laundry and before I knew it, I find myself standing in that basement bathroom again, working on the sink.  How does this happen to me?!

I opted for more 2x, no legs, by the way.

Bolstered by the overall somewhat general ease of getting the sink on the wall the other day, I thought, all righty, it'll be no problem to wrap this puppy up.  So here's how it went.


Impressed that the sink was still on the wall and not on the floor in a million pieces, I took it off the wall then took out that little free floating piece of drywall filler.  Next I cut down the remaining piece of 2x6 I had to about 3.25"-ish wide so I wouldn't have to make the hole in the wall much bigger.

After a few fits, re-tries, more cutting, trimming, wiggling, I got the piece of wood in the wall, much as I had done the last time.


Using that crummy fiberglass tape, I taped up the seams then dry fit the sink back on again.  Here's where things rolled into bigger-struggles-ville.

Thankfully my grandfather had been an accountant and had five hundred bazillion pencils in varying sizes and thankfully I inherited them.  Once that sink went back up, so I could find the hole placement for the next round of bolts, I needed an incredibly stubby pencil.  Thanks Grandpa!


The instructions said to drill 5/8" holes so the bolts with toggles could go through.  What they really meant to say was drill two holes more like 11/16".  Mm hm, that was fun, because of course I drilled the holes, put the sink back up, tightened it down, then discovered that the toggles wouldn't fit through the 5/8" holes.  Heh.

Loosen lag bolts, take off sink again, dig around tool box for bigger paddle bit, battery on drill dies, replace battery, drill bigger holes, test the toggles to fit, yes!, gussy up the wall with the crummy lightweight spackle, put sink back up, tighten lag bolts.  Ok!  Back in business.

Why won't these darn toggles stay in the wall?  What the hell, man?  After about ten tries I finally figured out why the toggles weren't staying inside the wall.  Duuuuhhh.  Screwed them on backwards.    Nice.  I'll tell ya, sometimes I'm a real genius.

Once I got that silliness resolved, the tough part was finding a small enough Phillips head screwdriver to fit under and within the cramped space of the sink to tighten everything down.  A challenge, but I overcame.


After a few tiny wiggle tests, I slowly backed away.  Is it up?  Is it?  Will it stay??  Did I really just do this?!

I attached the water lines and the water runs though I need to tighten those bolts with a tool, not solely by hand as the cold is dripping a bit at the wall.


I got more spackle goo on the walls and those walls are looking a little less eaten by a maniacal chipper-shredder.  They'll never be the same.  Scarred for life.

But wow, I did it.  I installed a wall mount bathroom sink.  A little in shock, I am, a little amazed.  Rather proud of myself.  If I can do this, you can do this.

I picked up the random towels left in the room, tidied up a bit, took the sink box out, and wow, it's slowly returning to normal.  Yes.  Now to try and get this horrible kink out of my neck that I woke up with.....that, I dunno, I don't think I can fix that as easily.

Jump to part uh, five thousand here!

Ah yes, the kitchen.  There was, or is, something wrong with every. single. room. in this house but the kitchen is the icing on the cake, if you will.  Or it's in a very close battle for First Worst with the master bathroom.

I haven't brought it up, other than the day I installed the faucet.  Oh and a quick mention about having no drawers.  And right, the suite of fantastic appliances we were able to get thanks to Abt for giving us a credit for a return of all these cardboard ones below.

Heh, I remember the evening I noticed the kitchen had no drawers.  I was flipping through paint chips and checking out the photos online when I finally looked, really looked.  I remember saying to Mike, "hey, uh, ya know, um, there are no drawers in this kitchen we're buying."  He looked at me all strange, like an alien had just popped out of my mouth and said, "what, seriously?  That can't be."  I showed him the pictures and together we sighed.  Siiiiggghhhhhh........


Yeah.  Look at that.  No drawers.  This is one of the original listing photos.  Here's the other:


It shows well in the photos.  And it looks huge too!  Those are obviously the only two things they were going for though as once you get in it, it's small, not useful, not well-planned or planned at all actually, and not an efficient kitchen.  I won't even go near mentioning quality because, forget it.

I mean, it's not terrible nor a disaster zone, and you probably think I'm crazy for thinking this kitchen sucks, but it does.  I remember calling around for homeowner's insurance quotes and one woman I spoke to got all a-twitter over these photos saying "oh yeah, that's not a contractor grade kitchen, that's fantastic!"  I said to her those cabinets are not even made of wood.  She didn't believe me.  We didn't go with them.

So yeah.  I haven't mentioned the kitchen at all because, well, because obviously something like a kitchen is a huge undertaking.  Mike's big plan is to redo the kitchen, possibly knocking out the wall to my office, so he's a No Small Plans kind of guy.  There are ways to redo a kitchen that aren't so expensive and brutal, like Ikea cabinets for example.  My folks recently got some from there and they like them quite a lot.

In the mean time, there are so many things wrong.  The dishwasher is across the room, not next to the sink.  Open anything and there's a major traffic problem.  Right, no drawers.  Cabinets are hard to reach for shorty me.  The space within them is not practical.  Two cookie sheet cabinets?  Why?  Not enough storage.  There's only room for one person to do anything in there.  Only one itty bitty tiny area to prep so if Mike is in there making his yummy breakfasts, I can't get to plates, cooking pans, the dishwasher, the stove or microwave, nor prep any of my contributions to the meal.  Toss in a large sniffing crumb-snatching cheese-loving three-legged vulture under foot and it's useless.

My mom sent me an idea for a cart with drawers and at the time I honestly thought it would work.  It's not my favorite style or look, or price, but Mike went absolutely gaga for it, so I ordered it.


It's awful.  I dislike it immensely.  I venture to say I hate it.  My mom feels bad for suggesting it, so now I feel bad that she feels bad.  But Mike looooooves it and will not let me get rid of it.  Ugh.  To this day, almost a year later, our silverware is still sitting out because even the smallest silverware tray will not fit in the damn thing.  The whole intended purpose for the cart.  It does hold some stuff, but not very well.  I truly hope nothing dire befalls this thing on accident one day.  Ahem.

Last fall I did repaint the kitchen since it was that charming dog vomit yellow color.  It's now a very subtle creamy color, Gravel.  A placeholder.  Oh and yes, we have rugs everywhere for Hailey now.  She is still too scared of trying to walk on tile and hardwood floors.  That's fine, please, anything to help her.

The room itself is in the middle of the first floor with no windows (well, there was a window but the flipper covered over it, the actual window still there as we see it walking down the gangway) so it's already dark.  Add in darker colored fakey wood cabinets in a cheapy semi-traditional style and it's just a black hole, sucking down the center of the house.  In some cases darker colors do recede and make a room look larger but contrary what designer folks and magazine editors are touting all about town these days, that's not always the case.

The other night I suggested to Mike that I paint the cabinets.  He was shockingly open to the idea, an idea to keep us afloat in toleration until we can redo the kitchen.  This Old House has a lengthy tutorial on how to do it, Rustoleum makes a pre-packaged kit in a variety of colors, but there are also plenty of DIY tutorials out there on the interwebs as well.

Hopefully I'll have the patience to be all precise and well, patient with the extended, painstaking process.  I suppose just knowing that anything will be a help, that should carry me through all right.  So, stay tuned!

As we last left off, I unintentionally started working on the basement bathroom.  It has somehow turned into a big project for such a tiny and mostly unused room.

This was to be Hailey's bathroom actually, where she would get baths because it has a large stand up tiled shower.  It worked out well the time or two that we did give her a bath in there.  But now with her being a tripedal and the stairs to the basement are done in the slipperiest tile known to man, and the whole basement is tiled, we can't get her down there and back up easily.  She's 81 pounds of squirmy spitfire if we try to pick her up.  So we don't.  Heh.


Lookie there, three different types of tile in the stair.  Go figure.  And of course they put the slipperiest one smack in the middle.  Great logic, right?!  Someday I will do something about these stairs as they are mighty scary even for just a human.  Actually, I was thinking about cutting strips of that Tee Time stuff from Menards which comes in black, and taping it down.  Who knows if it'll stick though.  Tearing out that tile sounds highly unappealing at this juncture.  At any juncture really.

Anyway....

So when I was working on the bathroom, I felt like I was on a roll and should try to get the wall mount sink installed since I was there.  I opted for a wall mount so that we'd have easy access to the water shut off.  This sink is pretty basic, the uh, Glacier Bay wall mount sink from Home Depot.  Good deal and not horrible looking.

Opened the box, found the instructions and hey, not so tough.  Although I'm glad I read the instructions first last fall when I bought the sink.  I knew in advance I'd have to, heh, open up the wall yay and get a 2x in there to support it.  This is not something that can hang off of drywall with a few wall anchors.

Menards has a little section of their store where there are short pieces of lumber, cut off leftovers, so I had picked up a piece of 2x6 several weeks back in anticipation.

I did some measuring, tried to figure out how high up the sink ends up being based on their instructions and it's not clear.  I could have done some measuring of the bracket and the back of the sink, but the height isn't critical to me here and it just seemed like too much measuring and math.  I vaguely went with a suggested height in the directions.


I measured a height which I can't remember and drew a straight line across with my level.  Those vertical lines are about where the studs are.  I traced the bracket on the wall.  Then I stood back and thought a good while about how to do this, how to get the 2x in the wall, attach it to the studs....

Out came the drywall knife.  I winced then went for it.


Oh and hey, what did I find!  It's always a surprise around here, I'm realizing.  This threw me for a loop -- how was I going to squish in the 2x with the copper and pvc pipes right there.  Luckily there was just enough depth for the 2x but that meant the drywall couldn't go back on over it.  No biggie.


I pilot drilled the holes for the screws, except for the screw I put in on edge on the top.  And I knew as I was putting in that screw that the 2x would split but it was a day of hands doing one thing, brain another.  I trimmed the piece of drywall that had come out and placed the pieces in there, taping them with the fiberglass tape since I couldn't screw them to anything.

I traced the bracket onto the 2x and pilot drilled holes for the lag bolts that hold the bracket.  Oop's, chose a bit too big so I had to move the bracket.


Ok!  Moving right along I was!  This was great!  And so easy!  Nice!  I hang the sink off the bracket next.  And it stayed!!  Holy cats and dogs, people!  I was proud.  Next up was to secure the sink to the wall.


Ooooooohhhh.  Wait.  Ok.  I screwed up.  See those holes in the sink, above that piece of blue tape?  Yeah, those are what you're supposed to put other bolts through into the wall to secure the sink.  But I can't.  'Cuz, remember, that piece of filler drywall I put back in is loose behind it.  Crap.

Crappity crap crap poop.  I could take it all off and cut a larger hole, put in another piece of 2x above the first piece.  Or I can get some legs for the sink.  I haven't decided.


Isn't it funny how the paint color changes in every photo?!  What is this color?!?!  I think the official title of it is Awful and Wrong.

The towel is stuffed in the drain temporarily to keep the smellies at bay.  Bleech.

I attached the faucet that I got from a defunct Hobo store for $15 which looks really not bad at all for a utilitarian no need to be stylish bathroom, turned off the lights and walked away.  I didn't attach the water lines in case the sink fell down but I haven't heard any major crashing noises so I think I'm still good.


The guy at Hobo practically yelled at me about this faucet too.  "Do not install this anywhere other than a utility sink, ok, it's not meant for anything else, you got that?  Don't do it," he said threateningly as he walked away.  He must have somehow known that I was going to put it on something other than a utility sink.  Pffft, snap snap, I do what I want, Buster.

So that's where I'm at with this business.  The walls need a ton more work.  Gotta make a hole for the water shut off.  The sink, I haven't decided yet.  I'd prefer no legs, hence buying a wall mount to begin with, but legs are probably safest.  Although now I'm leaning towards more 2x, no legs.

I'm not sure what's on tap for me today.  It was chemo day number three for Hailey.  Poor girl is all pooped out from going over there.  Vets stress her out big time.  Hopefully this round will be complication-free.  Getting there, only one or two more rounds to go.  They said she's in great shape, keep doing what we're doing.  That made me feel really good.

Maybe I'll look into painting cabinets.  The kitchen.  The one room I have not yet mentioned.

Jump to part three here!

The day started out like any other.

I ate a bowl of cereal, had chocolate milk in my Menards mug, and planned what I was going to do today.  Well, I should really vacuum.  Clean the stove top.  Ah, first mow the weeds down in the backyard.  Then, eh, maybe I'll pull more staples out of the pantry floor.  

So I mow, after Mike kindly fixed the mower before he left for work.  I guess the handle bars were down too low blocking the blade so the string couldn't be pulled.  (Why.  Why.  Why don't mower people make mowers that are easier to start?)

With that done, I then think to myself, well, I should do a quick vacuum in the basement and maybe steam mop a bit down there.  I go and do a quick vacuum and before you know it, for some crazy asinine unexplainable reason, I've opened the door to the basement bathroom.  *insert horror movie music here*  I watched my hand go for the knob too, like an out of body experience.  My brain was screaming no! no! no! no! no! don't do that! but my hand, it just went.

Why is that a big deal, you ask?

Several reasons (ready?  I'm not....)

1.)  The MeterSave people made the train wreck of a wall worse.  As is always the case when someone needs to get into your wall, they make it infinitely worse.
2.)  We sold the vanity from out of there and the flipper had inserted it in the wall, just like upstairs.
3.)  The flipper destroyed the wall and hid the evidence with a mirror, only to be discovered when we took the mirror down.
4.)  Taking the vanity out revealed a poor floor tile job and that the quarter round trim at the baseboard doesn't go all the way around.
6.)  Opening the wall more by the MeterSave folks revealed an old unsealed sewer pipe the flipper didn't cap.  Stinky.  We had smelled it but couldn't figure out where it was coming from.  Nice, right?  Found.  Luckily.  Thank you MeterSave people.
7.)  We had to leave the bathroom door shut all winter because the hole in the wall was sucking the air out of the first floor into it.
8.)  I'm sure there's more but that's quite enough for now.  It's amazing how one little room could be such a major headache.....

Pardon my bad Craigslist photo.  Amazing I sold the vanity using this crappy shot.

Above is the peaceful, if you will, before photo with the awful cheapy vanity we sold.  Seriously, every flippin' bathroom sink in this house is/was glass.  Sooooo practical, lemme tell you.  Only one more glass sink to go.

Below is the.....let chaos-rain-upon-you-Becky after photo.


Omg.  Yeah.  Hands to face.  So just below the light fixture, see #3 in my list above.  That was such a nice surprise.  Number 1 is represented at the bottom corner.  And #2 is that strip on the wall that has the oh-so-attractive towel thingie.  "Eh, the vanity don't line up? Cut a freakin' hole in the wall, I don't freakin' care.  Make it fit."  I'm sure that's how that one sided conversation went.  Quality people, I'm tellin' ya.


Oh, and number 6 represented here.  All it took to fix it last fall was a mere $4 expanding pipe cap from Home Depot.  That's it.  $4.  I guess a $4 purchase would have cut into profits too much.

Aaaannyyway, upon opening the bathroom door, a huge sigh rushed through me.  Ugh, this sucks, I thought.  All right, just work on patching up that damn hole.  Our water shut off is in there somewhere which is why there was a smaller hole to begin with and part of the reason for selling the vanity.  We couldn't open the little access door to get to the shut off with the vanity there.  It blocked the door.   So smart.

I picked up little scraps of 1x and drywall at Menards last week so before my brain could stop me, I was suddenly in the thick of it.  Wtf am I doing, I thought....(pardon my almost-French.)  Shut up, this has to get done, said my hands in response.


After a lot of trimming and shaving and cutting and fitting, I finally got most of the hole covered up.  Yes, I did a crappy job, but the hole was crappy to begin with.  I put some of that mesh fiberglass tape on the "seams" which I don't like.  I can't ever get it to disappear under whatever goo I put over it, but it's all I had so something is better than nothing.

I picked up some of this DAP Fast and Final lightweight spackle stuff last week too.  It's fine for small holes and such but for bigger stuff, forget it.  I only picked it up because last time I opened my tub of joint compound, it was moldy so I had to throw it out.  But again, as with the tape, the DAP stuff is what I had on hand.


Yeah, I know, it's a mess.  Hopefully one day it'll get better.


I also patched the disaster area below the light fixture.  I opened it up first to see if there was something important back there since the drywall was only loosely attached by two screws.  Nope, nothing important.

At this point I thought, ok, maybe I should try getting the wall mount sink up and in since I'm down here.  I'll save that escapade for next time.

But wait....I bet you're wondering, hey wait a second, didn't she say her water shut off is behind that big hole?  Why yes, my friend, I did.  And it is.  At this point in time, what matters to me more is to have the hole covered and patched, and to be able to leave the door open.  I can cut a small hole back in and install a little access door, in a size of my choosing, later.  I figured it would be much easier to do that then buy a door and work around it.

Why I did this to myself today, I don't know.  I should have left the bathroom door shut, let ignorance be bliss and hope the whole room vanished, got sucked into that hole.

Jump to part two here!

My ouchie fingers have gotten better, thanks to the avoidance of the pantry.  Unfortunately, the pantry still remains in its disastrous, staple-filled state.  Where are those secret worker elves that come in the night and finish things?!

Now that the cat is out of the bag (ah ha ha, I made a pun again) about what I was making for my sweet little nephews for their birthdays, I thought I'd share a few photos of The Story of the History of Ice Cream, by Aunt Becky, Uncle Mike and Hailey.

I used this simple tutorial as my guide in making the pop up book.


I ended up creating all the pages on the computer using Adobe Illustrator as I'm just not as good at drawing as the guy in the tutorial.  But I did create the cover by hand.


I used some 9x12 heavier weight paper I had on hand but trimmed it down to regular paper size so it would go through the printer.  I almost threw that paper out on a random raging purge day, and actually did throw it out but then later rescued it from the recycle bin wondering what was wrong with me.  It always happens to me -- get rid of something I've had for years then lo and behold, I suddenly need it.  Always.  Without fail.  Which is why I struggle to throw things out sometimes.  Well, that and the semi-packrat tendencies I have due to being a prop person.


As I mentioned, I found a cool history online but then other sites said the history of ice cream is pretty unsubstantiated.  :(  Boo.


It was easy to put together this book using that tutorial I linked to above.


I had fun making it.  I hope Jake enjoys it!  I know he'll enjoy the gift card to the ice cream shop.  How could you not, right?!

Heh, it's true, ouchie finger day.  I've got a couple of blisters from pulling those staples out of the pantry floor so I thought I'd take a break, let my hands recover a bit.

Plus I needed to get hopping on making birthday gifts for my cute little nephews out in California.

(Ok, Jeff and Yan, stop reading now if you want to be surprised.  I guess you can probably see the photo below though, so part of surprise spoiled.  Rats!!  But seriously, stop reading if you don't want to know!)

I have to get the gifts done and to my folks before Wednesday as they are heading out there to visit, so the heat is on.  I've been thinking about what to make for the boys for, oh, about two months now.  And, as is always the case, I can't ever seem to come up with anything until nearly the last minute for some reason.

So I thought I'd take a break from flipping the flip and make this sock cat since the younger one loves cats.

www.makezine.com (Professor Pincushion)

Super cute, right?  Here's a link to the tutorial.

Here I thought, oh ok, give my poor widde hands a breaky-poo but little did I know, this cat took a lot of hand stitching, some of it not so easy.  Ouchie!  Now along with the blisters, all my finger tips hurt.  Heh!  No win, right?!  :)

By the way, don't be fooled by the half hour long tutorial.  It took me about 3.5 hours to make the cat.  It's also not really a novice gig either.  Not that it's hard, it isn't, but if this is the first thing you ever try to stitch, you might have a spot of difficulty here and there.  And what they don't tell you but should is that having a half round curved needle will help tremendously.  If only I figured that out towards the beginning of the project....

Anyway, despite my desires to have it come out perfectly just like theirs and it didn't, I still think it came out kinda sweet.

Huh, wait.  I guess it kind of looks like a dog now that I look at it again.  Hm.  I better get some whiskers on it like the tutorial though I can't find any black embroidery thread anywhere in the house.  And maybe that pink nose too instead of the button I applied.  Being a non-cat person, I guess anything I make will turn out looking like a dog, huh?


The best part about working on this today was listening to Hailey snoring behind me all afternoon.

Jake is getting a handmade pop up book.  It will be the story of the history of ice cream along with a gift card to what looks to be a ridiculously tasty ice cream shop.  (Thanks Mom for the gift card idea!)  Having been a huge fan of ice cream all my life, a fan of making and eating my own ice cream, and even working at a Ben and Jerry's scoop shop as a teenager, this is right up my alley.

In researching the history of ice cream, I came across a lot of nifty information.  I was excited and prattled on and on about it to Mike who was a history major in college.  He was highly amused by my enthusiasm.

Anyway, turns out a lot of the history is possibly a myth, which was a big letdown, hence now it's the story of the history, not the history of for my book.

As part of the purported history, we're related to Charles I so that's fun.  There could be hair of a chance that we're related to an ice cream cookbook writer in England from the 1880's, Agnes Bertha Marshall, which would be fun too and maybe explain my predilection towards ice cream.  If not, ah well, the book should be adorable anyway.  Or so I hope!

I plan on following this tutorial to help me make it.

All righty, back to nursing my poor little hands!  Happy Friday, y'all!

***Update***

Now it looks like a cat, yes?

Aw seriously.  Staples.  And more staples.  Staples staples staples.  Did I mention staples?  I didn't finish getting them all out of the pantry floor yet (sorry babe).  And I thought getting them out of the OSB was not easy.....well....getting them out of the old floor board lumber is even more special.


Even more special than that?  Trying to get that carpet off the step.  Heh, they really didn't want that carpet to go anywhere apparently!  Every time I would yank on the carpet, it would tear or turn into a zillion strings of yarn.


I had to stop pulling staples for the day as I'm getting blisters on my hand from the screw driver and pliers.

Just a few staples holding the carpet to the step corner.  Not many, no.

Sometimes I just don't understand myself.  Ever feel that way?

Like, for instance, why I felt the sudden need to start ripping the carpet out of the pantry at 5:30 pm.  It's clearly not a project to start working on in the evening.  It's definitely a get-a-fresh-start-on-the-day kind of thing.

And yet.

Oh.  5:30 pm?

Must be time to start tearing out carpet.

I'll be honest though.

I think part of the reason is because Hailey recently tinkled in there.  She has an affinity for tinkling on carpet, as we frustratingly discovered at our last place.  She didn't grow up with carpet so maybe it reminds her of grass, I dunno, no idea.   Smooth concrete is also a tinkle trigger, likely a leftover from doggie day care.  This recent tinkle bout could be attributed to her girl parts infection but most likely it's because she was mad at me for leaving the house.  She does that.

As an aside, I am quite proud of my baby girl -- she went up the back stairs by herself today!  Yay!!


I think the other part of the reason is that, despite running around town doing errands and taking care of other stuff today, I sorta felt like I hadn't accomplished much of anything.

I know, it still doesn't make a lot of sense.

But the carpet is out now.


So is the carpet pad.


Well ok, minus the step.  The carpet is still on the step down.

As soon as I started pulling staples and it took me twenty minutes to clear just a corner, I realized the folly of my ways.   Except now, because I started too late in the day, staples remain, sticking up everywhere.

The corner that took a twenty minutes to clear of two different kinds of staples.

So babe, if you're reading this, wear shoes in the pantry!

But now it's for real.  It's on.  I have no choice but to figure out what to do with the floor now.

It's a bit intriguing, as you can see, since it appears to be part floor boards from an outdoor porch or landing and then filler pieces of crappy OSB.  There's a gaping hole by the vent so I tried to peer in, see what's going on under there but alas, my attempts were futile.  All I could see was inky darkness.


I could see into the gaping holes here below though.  Not much news:  stair stringer.  And spider web, yick.


It makes sense now why the flipper carpeted this room.  Because he didn't want the hassle of doing something decent or correctly or waste his time/money/effort in fixing things.  My love and respect for him continues to flourish.  Ahem.  Cough.

Even though the pantry is a disaster area now, I will say I am quite pleased that the carpet is gone.

Ok, game on!  What's it gonna be?  I don't know!  Stay tuned!

Oh yeah, that's sore.  And oh, ache.  Ouch, sunburnt shoulder.  Yep.

We put in the patio yesterday!  Woo hoooo!  I am elated!  As you may recall, our backyard is umm, pretty awful.  Worse than the "befores" on those yard fix-'em-up TV shows.

Lucky for me it was Mother's Day, so I was served a tasty Mike-made breakfast in bed and got some cuddle time in with my girl.  :)  Laziness was not long lived though.  :(

This isn't going to be a how-to, folks, sorry.  We're not experts on this.  There are far better places on the internet to find patio how-to's than here, that's for sure.  Hopefully it'll be an entertaining story of how we didn't kill each other though!

Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and filled with optimism, Mike first up destroyed the sidewalk area.  And by destroyed, I mean destroyed.  I was suitably impressed.  Considering the day prior I tried to give it a few whacks with the sledgehammer (thanks Dad for the sledgehammer all those years ago!) and nothing happened.  Well, ok, c'mon, I'm nowhere near as strong as Mike.  But I was pleased that it broke up so easily.


And so was the impetus for my first run to the store of the day.  I was sent on a mission to get a wheelbarrow from Menards.  We still haven't figured out what to do with the broken up concrete but at least with the wheelbarrow we were able to move it all out of the way.  Rock garden perhaps?  Heh.  I guess I hadn't need worry about getting that wheelbarrow into the Rabbit.


While I was at the store, I picked up a few extra supplies.  They were on a rebate sale meaning I'll get the purchase price back as a store credit.  Sweet.  I'm trying to save up the credits to put a dent in a ladder purchase so I can paint the stairway walls and get on the roof.


Yes.  Menards coozies!  Darn autocorrect changed it to doozie four times before I had to manually correct the autocorrect.  Silliness.

By the time I got back from Menards (and I didn't dilly dally), Mike had torn up the area we were turning into our fabulous patio.  I couldn't believe it.  He was a bit cross-eyed and woozy, but still standing which is important.


As soon as I got back that's when Mike said, hey, glad you're back, we should go rent a rototiller right now.  Well ok.  All right.  Back in the car.  Unfortunately Menards doesn't have one so we went to Home Depot.  Boy, that thing made quick work of the yard.  Suitably impressed again.


We thought hey cool, this thing will work out well when we go to sod the yard!  (More on that later.)

It was suddenly quite hot out while I was trying to put together the wheelbarrow and Hailey was barking like a mad dog at the neighbors with all her tripedal might.  Mike took over assembly since I was now cranky.


Although, huh, here she is quietly overseeing and managing her dad's handiwork from afar while peacefully resting in the shade.  Now you don't believe me, do you?  Hmph.

Since we were on a four hour rototiller rental, we thought it best to take the weighty thing back sooner rather than later.  Back in the car we go!  We were both thinking, are ever going to get this done?!  Or at least I know I was thinking that.

After returning the rototiller and stopping for a spot of lunch, we returned home and started spreading out the paver base.  We were getting excited to see progress actually happening and the patio at the end of the tunnel.

And then.................


Oh crap.  Sh*t.  You're kidding me.  Not enough paver base?!  Uuuugggghhh!!  We just got back from being out!  Oy, dear me.  Really?!  That was a face rubbing, walk away frustrated moment.

All right, fine, so it is.  "What do you want to do, babe," he asked.  Two options:  a.) give up now and finish it all later or b.) just get in the darn car again, get what we need and finish today.  We went with option b even though now we were both weary.  We checked and rechecked and rethought and triple checked before we left Menards again to make sure we had everything.

Fast forward a bit and the leveling sand is down.  (What the difference is between leveling sand and regular sand, I dunno, couldn't tell ya.)  The edgings are in and then the Yorkstone wet cast paver blocks are going down.  We're finally cruising along.


Are we doing all this in the truly proper way?  Probably not.  Did we spike in some strings to keep things straight and accurate and measured?  Nah.  Are we checking for level?  Nope.  I have a pretty good eye for level, so Mike deferred to me and we kept plowing ahead.  Thunderstorms were on the radar now.  Like for real, real ones, not a metaphor, heh.


Got that paver lock sand down, brushed it around.  Discovered oh, we overbought on that.  Oh well.  (By the way, be careful when you're dumping that stuff out of the bag.  Whooie, a big poofy cloud of fine dust you shouldn't breathe in.)


Spray that puppy with some water to activate lock part of the sand and YAY!!  PATIO!!!