It's a damn good thing we have simmilar taste...... The funniest part of this is the last line...


BERLIN (Reuters) - The color of your home's walls can be a matter of life and death, as a German man found out when he was fatally stabbed by his wife after they had an argument about what color to paint them, police said Wednesday.

The dispute flared as the 53-year-old man and his Polish wife of 30 years were redecorating their house. Angered and frustrated by the escalating feud, the man got a kitchen knife and suggested to his wife she use it on him, police said.
The 50-year-old woman then grabbed the knife and plunged it into his heart. Rescue services were unable to save the man. Both had been drinking alcohol, according to police.

"It's a tragic story," said Christiane Leven, a spokeswoman for police in the western city of Hamburg.
Police arrested the woman, who now faces prosecution. Police could not say what colors the couple were arguing over.

I came to a decision last night - I love the textured tiles for the back splash in the kitchen HOWEVER Mr. Reality Check pointed out that it would be difficult to get tomato sauce, mustard, brownie batter etc.... off of textured tiles.


Some times I hate common sense.

When I got to the house last night, Rob was mowing the lawn. For a minute I had a vision of the future. It felt like I was comming home from work and pulled up to see my husband mowing the lawn. It was no big deal or some great fantisy but it felt very warm and comforting.

Enough of this mush, I got a lot done last night. While Rob was mowing the lawn-battling the mosquitos, I painted the kitchen. Unfortunately as I'm taping off everything I see a piece of tape sticking out under the primer and I do the thing you should never do..... I pulled the piece of tape and opened up a hole in the drywall about 1/2 inch big. Argh. I cut some drywall and jammed it in there then spackled the living daylights out of it. Unfortunately this prohibited me from painting that wall, AND when I was removing the molding on the floor, I put the end of the mini crow bar through the drywall so I need to cut out a square and replace the strech I blew out. The walls (except for 2 spots) and the celing are painted! They need anther coat but the color looks great. I'm a damn genius with picking out paint!

While I am patting myself ot he back for a job well done, Rob is in the bathroom putting corner bead (sp?) on and cutting out damaged drywall. I waltzed into the bathrrom and let him know that I am done and he jumped up and announced he was done also and we actually made it home by 8:30!

We have the water shut off at the house so I can't wash off my paint brushes and rollers, so I bring a big laundry detergent jug of fresh water. Last night, I didn't have the umph to clean the roller and brushes so I delegated it. When Rob was done cleaning them off he came upstairs and said we needed to buy me some nice brushes. Oh Boy.... I smell a trip to the hardware store!

Friday we went to the Chart House for dinner so no work got done on the house. Filet mignon and seared tuna - life is sooooooo good. I wore capri pants to the resteraunt and didn't take a goooood look in the mirror before we went out. When I got home, I crossed my legs and something cought my eye. I had a 1 inch wide, 2 inch long stripe of paint on my leg. It looked like Rob and I got in a paint fight before we left the house. Pretty damn funny if you ask me.

Saturday was a preperation day. In the AM we prepared Rob's appt for an Open House. In the early afternoon we went to the hardware store to prepare for working on the house. We pulled the cabinets out of the kitchen to prepare for tiling and flooring.

Additionally this is the time of year when there are friends/family in town every weekend, my Father stopped by with a pizza on Saturday. Gotta love visitors with food. When the day was ove,r we didn't get a lot accomlised but we were prepared for Sunday.

Sunday, we got a lot accomplished. Connie stopped by to get a 'before' look at the house. She said the house looked a lot bigger in person...... hmmmm, maybe I should put a disclaimer on the before pictures "objects on internet are bigger then they appear"

I got all the vinyl wallpaper out of the bathroom. It was an icky job, I would stand on the lip of the tub and smear enzyme remover all over the wallpaper while the enzyme remover dripped down my arm into my armpit and down my side. Eugh, just thinking about it makes me squirm and itch. I had a hard time getting the removed under the vinyl paper so I did a lot of scraping. I'm sure it was pretty funny to watch me, I was complaining and making icky, blechy noises and mutternig under my breath. Then, I would run outside and pour water on my arms becuase when the enzyme dries it itches. At least it's over and under the wallpaper is blue walls, painted to match the tile. Ironically, the blue paint matches the drywall! HA!

Since we are talking about the bathroom, Rob did the wiring and we have a GFI unit in the bathroom, an outlet on the back of the bathroom wall in the spare bedroom and electrical ready for the medicine cabinet lights.

I sanded down all the bits and pieces of spackle in the kitchen and painted the walls with primer. Boy was that a satisfying job!

While I waited for the primer to dry I spotted Rob while he climbed on the steep roof to patch up a hole that was dripping on his new drywall and then landing in a puddle in the basement every time it rained. The poopie pipe that runs up to the roof had a breach where the tar holds the pipe to the shingles. Thank goodness we decided to make the bathroom bigger or else we never would have found that leak. That was a nerve racking experience, I hate seeing him on the roof, it's just too damn steep. He was very carefull and meticulous about all of his movements but I was still concerned.

While I was stanging in the knee deep wet grass, watching Rob on the roof, I was doing a science experiment. We have mosquitos the size of flying elephants and they are multiplying like bunnies. After itching and scratching my way through last week I went out and bought the heavy guns, I bought DEET. I deet-ed my ehtire body except my face and stood in the middle of mosquito central and didn't get bit once. I am ready to start doing advertisements for Off with DEET!

After the roof ordeal I was ready to really taunt the mosquito's by mowing the lawn with our brand new 4.5 horsepower lawn mower however the grass has not dried out enough from the monsoon so we called it a night and went home.

Oh, I forgot!!! I cooked my first dinner at the new house! I brought the crock pot over, plugged it in and let the crock pot sit on the kitchen counter (which is actually in the living room) for 6 hours. Rob pointed out that our Pork BBQ is the first dinner smell of many in that house.

Our work on the house has slowed up a bit. I'm not sure if our projects are now to big to tackle after work and need serious all day weekend type work or if we need to recharge our batteries. We took Tuesday night off for much needed rest. Home from work - nap - eat dinner - back to sleep. It was so decadent!

The insurance compnay was coming out to inspect the handrail to the basement so we HAD to get that done by today. Since Rob and I are abolute geniuses, we decided to do that project on Wednesday, that way we would have an extra buffer day in case there were any snafus. We stopped by the little expensive hardware store that is 1 mile away and got the appropiate drill bit but as it turns out, the drill didn't have the umph to tackle concrete. We decided that going home and making a big dinner would be a better idea.

Thursday night, I went straight over to the house and started spackle-ing the walls and tape-ing up the cabinets to prepare for putting the primer on the kitchen walls. By the time I finished taping, Rob showed up with a super duper bulldog drill? In 5 minutes he had all the holes drilled in the concrete and despite the swarms of mosquito's in the backyard he got the handrail on relatively quickly. As you know, it's monsoon season in Maryland so Rob added extensions to the gutters so the water goes away from the foundaiton instead of pooling in one area and sneaking into the basement. While he was doing this, I primed the celing and painted the trim on the kitchen window. I am currently covred with little specs of primer.

As I write this entry, it's raining big fat raindrops in sheets. I've never seen a wetter spring.

I got home last from work last night and when I walked in the door, I announced I wanted to get a second coat of paint on the cabinets. I think he was ready for a night off but I knew that I could get that last coat of paint on the cabinets in one evening and I am desperate for 1 room to be done. I need a victory.

Man, those cabinets look so good. The change from the dark wood cabinets to the light colors is amazing. I was looking at the 'before' picture and it looks like a totally different kitchen. The only thing left is to paint the walls, celing and lay the floor. I truly believe that it will be done soon. Maybe I am grasping for straws....

Rob started putting up more drywall in the new bathroom and it looks so wondefull but he got to an impasse pretty early on so I got help painting. I get the impression that Rob does NOT like painting but once he got in there on the ladder he did a better job then I did. I simply do not have the attention to detail needed for that kind of job. Painting walls is my gig, doing corners and intricate edges ... that's not my gig. The paint took to the cabinets well and now that there are 2 layers on them, I think that job is done.

YIppee!!!

I'm very glad we took Thursday night off because it was an exhausting weekend.

FRIDAY night we went over to the house right after work, no dilly dawdling. I tackled the kitchen and Rob spent a lot of time in the bathroom measuring, standing with his hands on his hips and saying hmmmmmmmmmm and 'what do you think…'

After taking it easy for the past few days I jumped on the do it yourself wagon with both feet. I got the kitchen ready for the big paint. Currently all the cabinets are dark wood. Ick, so I decided to lighten it up and add some color.

I took all the cabinet faces off and pulled all the drawers out, then I took the sander and started scuffing. It was a little frustrating because some of the cabinets still had grease on them and it made sanding difficult. I had a little hand sander and Mr. Guitar Sander kept telling me I did a damn fine job of sanding. When we were heading home my finger tips felt like they were still vibrating!!

SATURDAY morning we went to pick up the kitchen flooring and then straight to Home Depot to spend more $$$. Rob went to the 2x4's and I went to the painting supplies. We left with drywall, a ton of 2x4's, primer, drain spouts, bathroom fixtures AND a bathroom sink!

When we got to the house I finished sanding the cabinet fronts and faces, then wiped everything down with acetone to prep the kitchen for the primer/sealer. Mom showed up to help with the sanding and acetoneing later on that day. Her help made it go by much faster and we got a lot accomplished. By the time Saturday was over, all the cabinet faces were sealed/primed and the cabinet bases were ready for primer/sealer.

The part of the bathroom that bumps out into the spare bedroom is framed. The separator between the closet and the vanity space was not framed, nor was the space for the ductwork ... and now that I think about it the space to the left of the vanity was not finished so Rob went to work on that. Sounds of hammering, sawing and mumbling wafted from the bathroom into the kitchen where I was hard at work.

Mom left at a civilized hour but we wrapped up about 9ish, on the way home we decided to give the Shooks a call and go out to dinner and maybe have a few drinks…… Once we got home reality kicked in (actually, exhaustion kicked in) and I fell asleep on the couch before 11:00 on a Saturday night, again. Boy, am I lame.

SUNDAY we took our time getting to the house. There was no food in the house so I went to the grocery store and re-stocked. When I got to the house I had an "Ah ha!" moment with the framing. Rob took the first piece of drywall, cut it, put it in place and screwed it in. Once the wall was in I understood all the framing he was doing was to support the house and to give the drywall something to hold on to. I don’t know why that didn't hit me before but it made so much sense. Rob cut plywood to fit in the floor that we pulled up, he moved the vanity in there, placed the toilet in the approximate space, put the sink and faucet on the vanity and I could actually visualize the bathroom. Expanding that bathroom was such a good idea.

My mother came over again to help with the painting. We finished up the sanding, acetoning and priming of the cabinet backs then started to paint!!!! The cabinet faces are sage and the cabinet base is the color of vanilla ice cream. We got 1 layer of paint on everything and set it down to dry.

We got home around 7:30 ish and convinced ourselves that since we have the truck for the weekend we SHOULD go to the hardware store and pickup the door for the bathroom and the lawn mower. We dragggged ourselves out the door to the hardware store. We got there and were excited that it didn't look crowded only to realize they close at 8:00!!! At first, we were mad because we have to give the truck back on Monday morning and now we have no way to get the door and that holds up finishing the bathroom and then it struck me…..
We have no business working after 8:00 on a Sunday night so we went home and had a lovely dinner, just the 2 of us.

We did nothing last night.
It was the greatest nothing ever.

The power went out at my office so I got out of work early. The first thing I did was a trip to Home Depot. I found the sink to go on the vanity and picked out the fixtures for the sink. We like the goose neck with the old fashioned faucets. I tried to pick out the flooring but I've had a brain freeze and can't seem to find anything that would look good in there. I just can't visualize very well. The tile is light blue and black, the walls will probably be white and the vanity is a light wood, what kind of floor looks good with that? I wandered around Home Depot for at least an hour looking at all the flooring samples and have come up with a big fat nothing.

Rob spent yesterday finishing up the frame work, and the little tiny room is now a formidable sized bathroom. I got over to the house, after my Home Depot trip and a visit to my chiropractor, and didn't have much to do. I'm not ready to sand yet so I laid on the bed in the spare room, read the new issue of Gourmet and watched Rob finish the framing.

Yes, I am a Princess sometimes, but I did bring him snacks and kept him company. I provided some comic relief as well. As Rob was using the level to make sure the beams were straight, I gave him a new nickname - Sir Fix-A-Lot and I starting singing "I like straight walls and I can not lie.. you other brothers can't deny" (Sir Mix A Lot is an early 90's rapper who wrote the song Baby got Back with the famous first line "I like big butts and I can not like, you other brothers can' deny") Boy, I crack myself up.

Rob was hammering in the 2x4's that run from the floor to the ceiling. He is meticulous with the measurements and the spacing of the frame, which is a good thing because I do not have that attention to detail. All that measuring takes a lot of time, cutting the wood and lining up the posts takes time as well.

Maryland is bracing for another week of rain. ANOTHER WEEK OF RAIN!!!! Hence, Echo Base needs to be braced for another week of rain so tonight we are foregoing work on the house in lieu of a hardware store trip. The most important thing is to get the drain spouts so the water runs away from the house and we have no more flooding in the basement. This is also a race for time, the rain is supposed to start in the late afternoon. We may be outside in the monsoon, working on the drain spouts.

Stay tuned ... same bat time ... same bat channel

Rob took off yesterday to work on the house. That man is so motivated!!!! When I describe what he has done, it pales in comparison with seeing it and it doesn’t take into amount the manual labor he put into the bathroom.

He is in the process of framing out the bathroom, this means laying 2x4’s along the perimeter of the bathroom on the floor AND on the ceiling. After all of that is hammered in, then he puts in beams that go from the wood he just put in on the floor to the wood he just put in the ceiling. This creates the frame for the drywall. If the wood is straight and at the appropriate angles, putting the drywall up is much easier.

Last night, I got home from work and was getting changed into my work clothes when I heard the garage door open. Rob came racing into the garage, grabbed the billion ton jack he uses to prop up the cars, said he broke his Honda jack and zipped back out. Since I do not know much about framing I thought this was pretty funny and could not imagine what on earth he was doing with the jack.

I get to the house and he is in the bathroom with the jack on 2 pieces of wood and has the end of a 2x4 on the jack and the other end pushing up on one of the joist’s. It was quite a scene! The joist had dropped to 1 inch below all the others. Apparently, the attic bathroom did not have appropriate support under the floor, hence the upstairs bathroom floor is sloped down and if you were to jump on it – you would fall through. Rob fixed that problem by addition so much additional support if a F5 twister ran through our house, the only thing left standing would be the framing in the bathroom and an elephant could walk through the upstairs bathroom and the floor wouldn’t give an inch.

While Rob was hammering and sawing in the bathroom, I was prepping the kitchen for painting by sitting outside, trying to get years and years of grease off the kitchen cabinets. Yuck, yuck, yuck. I soaked those bastards in 409 and they are STILL GREASY!!!!! Arghh. I’m going to sand the grease off them.

I’m a little limited in what I can do, so once I got all the hardware off the drawers and cabinet fronts and got the mostly de greased I went home and made a huge vat of Jambalaya that will feed up for the next few nights.

Last night, I convinced Rob that I was healthy enough to go to the house and do some light manual labor. We drove over to the house and started our evening. I meandered around the house for a while, collecting stuff that I missed. Pasta strainer, measuring cups, big pot, wooden spatula ... you know, the kitchen essentials.

Rob's big project has been the first floor bathroom. The walls are all removed and we have the vanity and toilet in place to see what it will look like. Oh boy, it's going to be grand!!!! That teeny tiney bathroom is going to look HUGE when we are done. Last night he pulled down some more drywall and started to cut and nail in the 2x4's to get the walls ready for the new waterproof sheet rock he bought. I'm new to this bathroom construction stuff, but I believe it's call frame-ing. He is frame-ing in the new bathroom. Rob took the afternoon off and is determined to do a full's day work on the bathroom. I'm very curious to see what he accomplishes todady while I am here at work.

Let me tell you the disgusting job I tackled last night. Just thinking about it makes me want to wash my hands in 409. I unscrewed all the kitchen cabinets and stacked them up in the living room to prepare them for de-greasing and sanding. Each one of those cabinets had 1 1/2 years of old lady empty house grease on them, my hands stuck to the inside AND the outside of the cabinets. It was almost enough to make me gag.

THEN, when those were all removed, I started pulling out the drawers. It's amost too disgusting to type it here but I will try. First, there was black shelving paper with big neon GREEN flowers on it. Pretty icky. There were pieces of old food, crumbs, grease, scunge and ick on the shelving paper and under the shelving paper. I pulled out an old pice of lettuce and started my profanity littered muttering. For such a germ-a-phobe I did pretty well. Rob came into the kitchen while I was sitting on the floor pulling shelving paper off the cabinets and mutternig "I hate this f*#@^ing job! Ew! Ew!Ew! I hate this, I hate this, I hate this! I'm gonna barf" and suggested we pack up.

I lept to my feet, sprayed 409 on my hands and announced I am ready to go home and then called 'first shower'.

My first task today is to buy 409 and rubber gloves. Yuck.

I was banned from all work on the house this weekend - My back was still bothering me, so I was forced to go shopping. I stopped by the house on Friday night with samples of flooring and picked out the Dakota in Grey/Peach. It looked like grey and white to me, I don't know where they got the peach idea. www.congoleum.com. I decided that we need to paint the cabinets a cream-ish color and paint the doors a nice soft sage. Additionally, I picked out the tile for the backsplash, and the colors of the tile match the floor and the cabinets! HA! As I was knee deep in little paint samples I was wishing Connie or Genevieve was there, I feel like such a color idiot. I just wished I had somebody with an art degree helping me, but I think I did pretty good.

On Friday night, Rob contined the manual labor. He removed the drywall in the bathroom, pulled out the duct work that was in the way and clipped all the pipes to prepare them for the move. You can really see the layout of the new bathroom and it looks great. We're so glad we decided to expand that bathroom, that extra space for the vanity and closet will make a world of difference.

Saturday, Mom and I went to Best Buy and Sears to price out all the applicances we need to buy. Fridge, washer, dryer and dishwasher. Best Buy clearly had the best buys so we will be purchasing all our appliances there, plus 18 months no finance fee on the Best Buy credit card. Sears is in the mall so we tried on clothes at NY and Co, I got a linen shirt and a summer swater. We had a lovely lunch at the mall and then I went home and took a nap.

Saturday morning, Rob went over to the hosue and piled the PRS truck with all the old drywall, posts, beams, tile floor, old toilets and hot water heater. Keep in mind there was a monsoon going on while he was doing all this. He took all that to the dump by himself and then woke the princess up from her nap.

Sunday, we decided that since we had the truck we should get all the big things from Home Depot, I can't lift, drag, pull or cary so we decided I would watch Max's kids while he helped Rob at the hardware store. This was my toughest job all weekend. A 5 yr old and a 3 yr old. "Brigette watch me!" "Brigette look at me" "My dad lets me have 2 pieces of candy". Later on that night I told Rob that I am having ONE child. I can't do 2.

Rob came home from the Home Depot with a new vanity, tiolet, sheetrock, 2x4's and (of course) more tools. That man collects tools like I collect shoes/bags. Now he has all the supplies needed for rebuilding and we anticipate that being accomplished by this weekend. We located a leak in the basement that has been perplexing us, the sump pump has a little ridge arount it that prevents water from flowing into the hole and shoots the water into the middle of the basement. Fortunatley it was an easy fix.

Sunday was our year anniversary so we took the night off and had a wonderfull romantic dinner. We ordered 2 appetisers and inhaled them. Our steaks showed up and we cleaned those plates as well. The waitier was pretty amused by us. All that work makes you hungry! Well, I didn't work too hard but I had empathy hunger for Rob and ate everything on my plate.

On Thursday night we started our hose work with a stop at Home Depo to pick up the super duper roto rooter of pipe unclogging. When we got to the house Rob went straight to work on unclogging old lady Singleton's poopies while I went into the kitchen and prepared to battle the wallpaper monster.

It was a very productive evening, I finished removing all the wallpaper from the kitchen. Now, when you look at that room, you can get a feel for what it will look like when it's done. We measured the floor and it's 10 feet wide!!! This is great news since the linoleum floor we like is sold in 12 foot wide sheets. Installing that stuff will be a breeeeeze.

Rob got the pipes draining like they are brand new and started distruction on the bathroom walls to prepare that little room for a big vanity and linnen closet.

We have mapped out what we need to do this weekend -
Me - pull down cabinets, sand, prime and paint. Start in on splash guard.
US - lay down linoleum
Rob - Finish demolition of bathroom wall and begin build out of new walls. Shift pipes, shift ductwork.

Wow, as I am reading this I am realizing Rob has some heavy duty tasks ahead of him. He's excited about doing them so that will make it quite enjoyable and satisfying when it's done.

I'm a little nervous about doing work this weekend. After spending 2 days on a ladder, pulling wallpaper and wallpaper glue down my back has decided to sabotage me. I took off work yesterday and spent all day in bed, with a heating pad on my back and a tummy full of anti inflamatories and muscle relaxers. I hurt today and am relying on my healing abilityes to kick in so I can paint this w/e.

Last night we dragged our heels getting over to the house. I had the daunting task of removing wall paper and poor Rob had the disgusting task of getting the clog out of the 50+ year old poopie pipe.

We stopped at Max's to pick up a snake and went straight to work. Since the wall paper remover needed to be mixed with hot water, we had to turn on the water and find a way to heat it up since the hot water heater is disconnected.

I leanred how to turn the water on at the street and turn on the main water under the house. Now that we had water we had to heat it up, but the stove was in the iving room. We dragged the stove back into the kitchen, hooked it up to the gas, plugged it in and heated up the neccessary water. I pulled off the vinyl wallpaper and soaked the next layer with the remover.

The remover had to sit for 15 minutes so I checked on Rob. He had been in the upstairs bathroom and decided the snake was not heavy duty enough to get the block from that bathroom and I found him in the downstairs bathroom with rubber gloves on and the snake 1/2 way down the hole in the bathroom where the toilet used to sit. The final decision was that we needed something heavy duty to get the clog out and we may need to get the clog out from the vent on the roof.

It has been raining in Maryland for the past 3 weeks and Rob pulls out the ladder, places it on the crumbling brick planter on top of a mega piece of wood and asks me to hold the ladder. I keep thinking 'this is a percarious situation' over and over again. He makes it on to the roof and then announces the roof is slippery. Argh! He spider-man's over to the vent and looks down. He smiles and snickers, he says it appears a big fat turd is sticking out and appears to be part of the clog so he shimmys down the roof, down the ladder and gets a 8 foot pipe. He spider-man's back onto the roof and the pipe is too short. At that point the project is ofitially put off to the next day when we can get the equipment we need to unclog the pipes.

The 15 minutes had passed and I head back into the kitchen to remove the wallpaper. Lo and behold!!!! the stuff just peels off without any effort. My God, that was easy!!!! So far removing the wallpaper has been my favorite job. I even got behind the stove where I discovered another onion. Layers of yellow 70's sunflower wall paper under the 80's farmhouse wallpaper. We got about 75% of the wall paper off the kitchen to reveal great looking walls underneath.

p.s. we got home in time for me to paint my toe nails! What a great day.

When we left the house on Sunday June 1st, Rob went up stairs to flush the toilet and we heard the worst sound a home owner can hear. It's the sound of a lot of water dripping in several places. ARgh. There was water pouring into the basement and water dripping from the celing in the spare bedroom. At that point we were too tired to start digging around to find the problem. We did a survey of the damage, placed buckets strategicaly and went home. Durring that survey we also realized there is a shit pipe that is located exactly where we wanted our 36 inch vanity to go. Rats rats rats.


Last night, we get to the house with this list that Rob sent me:

1.) Cut out the "bad ceiling" that got water damage last night-inspect.
2.) cut out some drywall in bathroom, and locate poop pipe for closet/vanity
clearance.
3.) smooch each other
4.) Yank upstairs toilet out and dump a significant amount of water directly
down the poop pipe and check for drainage/leakage
5.) smooch some more

Isn't that a great to do list?

We pulled the upstairs toilet out and plopped it in the bathtub. The floor around the toilet was in horrible shape, it looked like the toilet was fixin' to fall through the floor.

Then, we cut out the celing in the spare bedroom, and it looked like it had been replaced, obviously this had happened before.... once we got our heads in the celing we poured water down the hole in the floor that used to house the upstairs toilet. About 3 gallons of water went down and then we found the problem. The pipe filled up. We pured water down the hole in the first floor bathroom that used to be the toilet and the water went down just fine so we have a general idea of where the clog is. It's 3 gallons down from the upstairs toilet and before the downstaurs toilet.

When we cut out the wall in the bathroon, we realized the pip is definately in the way and now we are going to have a 24 inch vanity, not a 36 inch. Oh well, life goes on and that just means the linnen closet will be that much bigger.

As Rob was standing in the spare bedroom looking up at the poppie pipe, a light bulb went off over his head. He looked at the pip that vents up to the roof and said "I'll be there is no cover on that pipe, I saw a leaf in the sewer .... it must be clogged from the top" There you go! Problem solved, he's so damn smart. I only hope it's as easy as snake-ing the pipe.

Over last weekend we managed to move all of my worldly belingings out of my appt. We put the essentilas at Rob's house and the non-essentials in the spare bedroom of the new house. The moving was done by Midnight on Friday night, and since we are gluttons for punishment, we got up early on Saturday and headed over to the new house.

Rob cut out a 2x4 foot hole in the hardwood floor to get rid of the bump. We can see the subfloor and it is somewhat water damaged. There was some icky mold but not a whole lot. We are pleasantly suprised by the condition of the subfloor.

While Rob was doing that, I finished tearing up the onion/kitchen floor and then donned my biohazard suit and resperator for the bathroom onion/floor. As of today, ALL of the floors in the house are ready to be fnished. I feel a great sense of accomplishment.

Once we lay down the kitchen floor, that room will be done!!! Our first finished room!!! Oh Joy!