Moved In

Saturday was our very first night staying in the Money Pit we now actually call home. We didn’t have a big move in day or anything. We’re still living out of our suitcase four days later. Case loves his room and big bed where he can entertain himself for quite a while. Especially if he has his alphabet blanket & Pup-pup the talking dog head. Today we got a new front porch! As you may know it was in much need of serious repair before we found ourselves with a lawsuit on our hands from someone falling through. It was also a major eyesore. Mr. Larry (our retired contractor renter from Jasper) found composite decking boards at Home Depot on sale for half the original cost because they’re discontinuing the color light gray and going darker. Just so happens light gray is just what I wanted for the old house. It took Colter and Mr. Larry all day finish the project which would have taken Colter and myself two weeks to complete. They said the columns were very tricky and they’re apparently not secured in any fashion to the house but are just sandwiched in between the roof and the ground. Go figure.

Funny story about the tile job in the master closet, live and learn. We finally decided that tile was the way to go to “fix” the hole in the floor of my now master closet from where the chimney once resided. They had to even up the floor before they could actually lay the tile because of course like everything else in this house it was level or anywhere remotely close to it. They started with premixed thin-set and set the tiles on top accordingly. They soon found out it took much more than they anticipated so they had to use something else that Colter had picked up at Sumter Supply. Let me just say for the record don’t ever ever listen to what those guys tell you. They convinced him into buying tile adhesive, which was literally like glue and nothing at all like the cement type material that it should have been. Once that was all cleaned up they drove 45 minutes to Demopolis to purchase more thin-set. Of course Marvins doesn’t have the premixed stuff so they get the sack of sand. Proofreading must not occur in product manufacturing. The directions on the bag were backwards, so most of it was wasted but they did manage to get a soupy mixture of the thin-set down. The next day it didn’t look too bad except for this one tile on the front that popped up and was wet underneath. Come to find out you can’t use the premixed stuff to add volume because once the tile is on top it is just like its sitting in the bucket again never drying. Five days later Colter pulled up all the tiles, bought the bag of mix (mixing it correctly) and applied two layers one to level and the next to adhere the tile. And the day after it was grouted and looking beautiful! Again live and learn.

Another funny story about a rug. Mom had this huge rug that was in the master bedroom and literally took up the entire floor. Instead of paying someone to rent a machine or taking it somewhere Mom was determined we could clean this thing ourselves no problem. Boy was she wrong. Her little carpet cleaning vacuum did absolutely nothing to penetrate it so she had the bright idea of taking the water hose to it. Let me put this into perspective for you here – we can barely carry this thing across the house out onto the back porch dry. What do you think it was like wet? Yeah, like 500 pounds heavy, seriously. It still lies on my back porch. Not sure what to do with it now.

Pictures to come soon.