We're Back

I know that all of our fans are disappointed that we haven't blogged about our progress in the last several months, but the truth is we are lazy and haven't done anything. That is until recently.

We have 2 major projects going on right now; our master bath addition and we are painting the exterior of the house. Neither is going all that well.

First with the bath. We really haven't gotten that far into it. I was hoping to do all the work myself, but the city will not give us a permit unless we use a licensed plumber and electrician. We called 1 plumber who quoted us $6K for just for the rough in. He had some crazy ideas, like running the drain at a height that would take away any use of the basement. We didn't go with him. The second plumber, Bob Puff, is our favorite. We've used him before and he's fantastic. But, we still haven't made any progress other than jack hammering a hole in our basement floor. Once we tore up the basement floor, Bob noticed that our sewer drain runs right into a tree and we have roots clogging the drain. Also, our main water shut off is basically in the tree. To top it all off, the sewer line and water main are right on top of each other and they run underneath the garage. Bob is afraid to touch either one because if something happens we might have to tear down the garage just to fix it. Now the idea is to re-run the sewer and main to the other side of the street. Don't know how much that is going to cost yet, but I see me hiring a couple of day laborers and digging a very deep trench.

The painting isn't going much better. I bought a Paintshaver which is supposed to make sanding the house really easy. It works really well, if you have siding. We have cedar shakes, so we are stuck using grinder with a sanding attachment. After about 5 or 6 hours of work, I estimate that we have about 5% of the house sanded. Very depressing. So, we are trying to hire someone to come out just sand. I put an add in craigslist, get your mind out of the gutter, for someone to just sand the house. I think I got 50 responses and not a one of them had a real grasp of the job. We finally got a painter to come out and quote us $2500 just to sand. I was hoping for more like $1000. Maybe I can get the day laborers we hire to dig our trench to also sand our house. Then, I can just sit on the porch, drink mojitos and shout words of encouragement at my workers.

As if we didn't have enough work on our hands, Amanda went crazy and bought us a boat. There will be a boat blog coming very soon.