Taking it on

 Woodchuck and I are burning the candles at both ends. You know how bees get towards the end of the season? A little aggressive? A little frantic? And that is us. 

Land work, home, work, appointments, appointments, appointments. Why would we even need to take on any more than we already have? I lit the fire under my arse to get more areas in the home purged and organized, and I felt like I was doing really well at it! I had the workshop to a usable status, thinking ahead to cooler months, and the going within months, and possibly more time to sit and work on art projects. My altar was first and foremost. A place of specialness and devotion and I constantly let it build up with found objects and dust.

I know how much better I feel, and spaces look, when I keep up on them and always chastise myself when I am done that I don't keep up on them along the way. What a difference it made!

 

I even did the inside of the cabinet! And I have used some of those supplies up since, inspired now by having everything at my fingertips, and clean.

I have A LOT of rocks that I have picked up along the way of my outdoor adventures, and I am always surprised at how they look dry, compared to wet. It makes me ponder humanity. How exteriors seem to either be dull or brilliant given certain conditions, how each one of those can change to the other at any moment. 

I also finally found the proper place for a vintage broom a friend gave me! I think it was meant to be.

I also supported a small resale shop by purchasing their old sound system from their previous location. I loved my old one, it played cassettes and CD's, but each function was going out on it little by little. I started to rely on my phone, but then the signal out in the workshop was too weak to support playing videos without constantly buffering. Now that my car doesn't have a CD player, I haven't listened to them for a long time, and am looking forward to using this a lot and it sound UH-mazing!

All of these unfinished projects laying around are calling my name! This stitched BabaYaga hut looks PERFECT on the vintage aida cloth, and in this thrifted frame. 

Woodchuck and I both have had lots of medical appointments and I went with him to a morning of appointments at one facility. I don't know why, but they scheduled his tests nearly two hours apart, which left of us sitting in a crowded lobby in between the tests. We don't sit still well, and we don't like getting exposed to stuff, so we told them we were going for a walk. It was a lovely day, the sun was warm, but the wind was a tad chilly. Better than sitting inside though!

Back in the facility again, looking through the window at some Crane's Bill.

And then diving head-first into one of the largest projects we've done in awhile. Remodeling our oldest sons shower (eventually his whole bathroom). This idea of the remodel, but not us doing it, has been in the works for a long time. He's had a handful of companies, big and small, come and give quotes. Most were not interested (the small companies), and the big companies had a hefty price tag. His house was built in 1890, and the updates to the home seem to have stopped somewhere between the 50's and 70's. His bathroom is tiny...a vanity/sink, toilet, shower/tub combo, and the most recent company quoted $30,000 to redo the whole bathroom. Um. No. So against my better judgement, we took it on. Woodchuck quoted me 4 days to complete the shower. I guessed 3 months. We are now over a month into it.

The ceiling above the shower is what originally started going bad. Peeling, mold..... 

There is only a window, no exhaust fan, and he doesn't ever open it. I had a hard time opening it myself just to get some ventilation while we were working. Most of the windows in his house don't work/open, so that is something he eventually needs to address.

ALL of the walls in the bathroom are a mica board, and the stuff IN the shower area was disintegrating.

This spot was so rotted, water was getting behind it.

He has REALLY hard water, and the caulk was so old, that it was stained and let loose. The shower walls were so old, they were losing their surface with every wipe.

Demo is always the fun and worrying part. What will we find?! Are there any surprises? The space was so small, and built around the tub, that we couldn't just lift that tub out. I was really hoping to save it and resell it, but Woodchuck cut it in half to get it out. We will give it to a local scrapper who could always use the extra money. Looking back now, I wonder if it would have gone differently if we had removed all of the wall paneling before trying to get the tub out? But I took Woodchuck's lead on this one and it went how it went.

That little wall jut on the left side mist likely would have been the hold up even with the paneling down, and the window ledge too would keep stopping it.

Now that the tub is out, we can start removing the paneling and exposing the plumbing.

Lots and lots of rot! Glad we caught this when we did!

Oh yeah, forgot to show you the tub cut in half 👀

We took a look at the pan and walls of the shower, and while the walls were fine, the pan (the floor of the shower) was damaged in about 5 places. The box itself was not damaged, so we think it was boxed up this way. And even more unfortunate, it's going to take WEEKS for the replacement because it's a custom piece. So we will work on absolutely every other thing that we can to get this space ready for when the replacement comes in and we can fit the new shower.

Making everything is square, and replacing the rotting wood. Those lathes did eventually come down as well.

Original plumbing

About 5 layers of flooring, and some of it used as shims. Lots of rotten wood here too.

It's always fun running back and forth from the house to the garage in a storm! The roads became rivers, and it became an avoidable fact that our son also needs gutters!

The other thing that he needed was a new house vacuum. He had been using the one that was left with the house, and it already wasn't that great. 6.years.later. (meaning this year), I was still asking him to replace it. He had no choice when I plugged it in to vacuum the carpet outside of his bathroom, and it tripped the outlet. Out to the garbage it went, and we made a trip together that weekend for him to get a new one! This is nearly identical to the one I have, and I love it! Mine is gray....I kind of prefer his color, lol.

And so Woodchuck and I continue to burn the candle at both ends. He is still working 6 days a week, and now we are going to our sons house for a couple of hours each evening to work on the bathroom. When we reach a stopping point at that, we go to the land....but as it stands, we are weeks behind on that work. I think the lesson in this is stop trying to save others money and help them at our physical expense. 😂