Two Months Later

Guys, the roof is FINALLY 100% DONE! After working on the soffits for the last month or so, we are completely and finally finished!

This month I experienced the joys that come from cutting metal. Metal shards exploding in your face never feel great. Metal dust in your eye causes pink eye... who knew? Hot metal, sharp metal, dumb metal... lol

This is a wonderful and exciting experience as well as exhausting, taxing, wearing, frustrating and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. I love this house!!! (Disclaimer: I am allowed to take back this last statement as soon as the next unexpected catastrophe hits.)

RESTLESS

It's 1:45 am. I can't sleep because I'm worried about Will. He's had a bad cold/flu/idontreallyknow for a few days now. He's hardly eating. He's throwing up, but not like a flu throw up, but more like a gagging throw up. Tonight the cough went into his  chest.

2:05 am. Will woke up coughing and gagging and crying in between. Took his temp, and it was 102. Administered tylenol and rubbed his back until he calmed down and fell mostly asleep.

I'm just a worried mom. I have to wake up early to take a friend into Twin, which is convenient because I'm definitely done fighting this sickness all by myself.

Did I mention the other kids are sick too? Yep. It's great.

Now, to remember the name of our doctor.  I wish I was kidding.

Luck and Derbies

Last night was the Cub Scouts Space Derby. It was the last pack meeting for logan before he has his birthday and is out of Webelos.

I'd like to say that we worked really hard on his spaceship... but.. well... we didn't. The night before, we remembered that we needed to build it. Trevor was sick and asleep in bed, so it was just Logan and me.

Having never seen a space derby before, I felt completely lost. We watched a few youtube videos on how to assemble the thing, and then we went to town building it.

Then we went to bed.

The next morning, I was editing pictures in my room, and Logan decided to show Samantha what we had built. Unfortunately, these spaceships have parts that can fall out very easily. Long story short, logan lost a very vital piece to his spaceship.

*sigh

We looked for the lost piece all day, but couldn't find it. Luckily I had some wood that was just the right size, so about 20 minutes before the derby, we cut it out and notched it and made it work. Also, we didn't have time to paint it, so Logan used a black sharpie to add a little zest to it.

At the derby Logan won his first match-up.

Then his second!

And in the end, the very last race was Logan against this boy whose rocket was really fast, but not as fast as Logan's.

He won!!!!

He finally won something!!!

I'm convinced these things are all just luck. I don't know what we did to make the rocket so fast.

But just in case you ever have a space derby and want to copy us, here's what we did: carve it a lot. Keep carving until it's really round. Make sure your wings are balanced and straight. Don't paint it. Resist the urge to wind it up and try it out. Every time you wind it, it stretches the rubber bands out and it won't go as far the next time.

Push & Shove

This was the weekend from H-E-double-hockey-sticks.

We worked our rear-ends off.

We got the ceiling joists in. We framed our bathroom and closet.

Good thing too.

I was feeling so down about the whole thing.

This whole never-ending project.

We are close now.

We need to 1. Frame the entry.

2. Lay sub-floor in the bedroom and laundry room.

3. Install the front windows and master bath window.

4. Install door frame into pantry.

Three of those projects are large, and one is small. I figure it is about 1 months worth of work.

Then the inspector can come!!!

Woohoo!!!

Also, notice that the ceiling is now gone along with half of the wall in our closet/bathroom. We took that down and bagged all the loose insulation to blow in later. That's not an easy or quick job. We really got a ton done this weekend. Thanks for your prayers!!

Goodbye Nasty Linoleum

Now that the roof is mostly done, it's back to the inside of the house.

The laundry room was one of the last untouched rooms and it had the nastiest gold and yellow linoleum. That was ripped up, exposing the sub-floor. Yay.

We tore out the old 2x4 wall beside the stairs. We replaced it with a wider 2x6 wall, which is where we will run plumbing for the washer and sink. Yes. I get a sink. Yay!

We also raised the ceiling height to above 8 feet, like in the kids' bedroom on the same side of the house. Now the final step is to put the ceiling joists back up across the whole thing, then that side of the house will be done.

That means we will only have one room left to frame: our closet and bathroom!!! Wow!!!

It feels like it's taking an eternity!!! Someone give me some patience!

Let's move on to more exciting things. I'm thinking about the pink stone and mortar on the front of the house. If I were Chip and Joanna Gaines,  I'd paint it white and call it good. Man, I'd love to do that, but Trevor would kill me. Plus, I kinda want to prove there are other ways to fix this horrible kind of problem besides just painting it.

I found this cool company www.dyebrick.com that has a really cool way of literally dyeing the brick or stone in this case. It is not a new company. It's formula is tried and true against the test of time. I'm thinking about ordering a sample and having a go at it. My  hesitation, if I have any, is regarding the color of the mortar. What color do I go? Light? Dark? I'm ordering browns and grey to play with for the stone color. I'm thinking of a variation in the stone color, but I don't know. Having never done this, and seeing that none of their customers have either, I'm on my own.

Luckily, I have a whole pile of pink stone with red mortar attached sitting on the side of the house just waiting for me to play with. The people who put the fireplace in were kind enough to use the exact same stone as what they used on the front of the house. Lucky us. We saved the stone when we tore the fireplace out to reuse on the front of the garage.

Enough of my boring life for today.

More later. Maybe we will do soffits this week.