Blog? What Blog?

My friend said she noticed I haven't posted for a while and figured we must not be settled in our house yet. She hit the nail square on the head. This is NOT a joke: I have not completely unpacked a single box. That's right folks, we've lived here for almost 3 months and we're not settled. So Audra: congratulations on unpacking and feeling like you've been in your new place forever. Maryam: sorry your B-day card is STILL late. It'll be there before Christmas, I promise. I did actually buy one the week before your B-day.

But, we have good excuses!
A few weeks after we moved in we noticed that the kitchen sink was draining slowly. We stuck a drain king (high pressure attachment for hose) in there and tried to see if we could clear the line. Then water started dripping down the basement wall under the kitchen. Then the subfloor that we could see from the basement was wet under the kitchen. Then we determined that we would have to remove the cabinets to take care of the drain situation. So we did. We found where the pipe had broken in two places. Seemed a little strange for a drain pipe. So we put the drain king in the clean-out downstairs. After 30 seconds water started seeping up through the basement floor. This was a really special moment in our house owning experience. Roto Rooter wanted $6,000 to fix this problem. We fixed it our selves for under $500. And that $500 includes hiring 7 Mexican guys to cut and remove an 18 inch wide, 30 foot long hole in our basement floor. My husband is awesome.

Anyway, to go along with the drain issue, we had a moldy floor in the kitchen issue. So we got all that taken care of, along with removing the moldy cabinets. Much debating brought us to the conclusion that we might as well do our kitchen re-model now rather than wait. So, here we are, working on getting the last layer of flooring out of the kitchen (1975 asbestos filled linoleum) so we can start installing our new cabinets.

I'm so grateful that my husband doesn't mind working on stuff like this. The only thing we've had to hire someone to do was put in our new windows. So, the two of us (along with Ryan's dad sometimes...thanks Brent) have been able to get a lot done in the last few months. We did know we would have a lot to do to get the house in good shape, and we really don't mind the work. It's nice to have plenty of space, and know that it will all be how we want it...some day.