If It's Not One Thing, It's Another! Such is Life!

Our fixer upper is keeping us busy as we knew it would. Officially this past Sunday, Kirk and I were doing a happy dance for saving over $1,500. by not hiring a plumber to re-route plumbing (washing machine, dishwasher, a shower, a bathroom sink and the kitchen sink) to our septic system. All these items were going into a mysterious location in the ground next to the house (we still don't know exactly where it was going for sure). We bought all our own supplies, and after 5 trips to Home Depot on Saturday with Kirk and I working on the project together all day Saturday and part of Sunday, we successfully completed the work and got our plumbing updated, new bathroom floor down, and new toilet up and running! We are very happy DIY'ers!

A beautiful sight! Plumbing going where it's supposed to!

A PVC "Wye" Connection. A week ago I wouldn't have known what that was... now I have a new vocabulary of plumbing terminology!

Another beautiful sight. A 1/2 " cement floor thin-set and screwed on top of a 3/4" plywood sub floor; nice and sturdy for our new toilet and future tile floor (end of March)!

A toilet that is brand new and doesn't leak!!! The box it came in even says "flushes a bucket of golf balls". I'm hoping it's safe to assume our toilet won't get plugged too often.; a bucket of golf balls is quite a load if you know what I mean.

My plumber man, Kirk! Just finished the last connection and realized his place on the ground is quite comfortable... a body shaped hole (that used to be where our grey water drained down a pipe); a clear blue sky above, a dryer vent blowing warm air on him; and a weekend plumbing job that just got done! All he needs now is a nice hot shower.

Now that this plumbing saga is behind us, I wanted to get our focus back on finishing the kids' bedrooms... we started getting back on track with the four kids actually getting in on the action working on the rooms~

Andrew pulling out carpet staples from his bedroom floor...

...and getting rid of the old vinyl 1" mini blinds.

Kelsie starting first layer of primer in her closet.

Joe and Jessie want to get in on the primer job in Kelsie's room since theirs isn't ready for work yet.

Our focus back on the bedrooms only lasted about a day. We are NOW contending with some very outdated electrical cable and outlets we discovered in the process of getting the kids' rooms a few steps closer to progressing. GO FIGURE!!! The electrical issues are from the original part of the house that was built in the mid 30's. As Kirk and I have taken the 3 kids' bedrooms down to the studs in most places, we've discovered that only part of the electrical has been updated and much of it hasn't. The electrical is this old black fabric covered stuff that sounds after 70+ years sounds "crunchy" when it's moved. Kirk crawled under the house and found places where mice (or some critter) had chewed away the electrical casing exposing bare wire. YIKES! Not something we want to overlook so we will be side tracking our attention to electrical instead of bedroom drywall.

I'm frustrated about this because we had two separate inspections done that should have caught this- one done by a general inspector, and one by a reputable local electrician. Why the outdated, chewed up electrical cables under the house wasn't caught, I don't know. Kirk saw them almost immediately among the many old electric cables. He is now taking off his "plumber hat" and putting on his "electrician hat". I'm so proud of him. He has his DIY strengths, I have mine. The electrical updating project seems pretty basic and thank God for web sites like THIS ONE.

As the title of this blog post states,

"If it's not one thing,

it's another!

Such is life!"

Through this home renovation experience I am learning so much...

one thing I've learned~

I have learned the secret to being content in ANY and EVERY situation. (Philippians 4:12)