Bailey's Starting Over: April 2018

I see that the email notice you get for my blog shows the contents of the blog, but not in the nice way that the actual website shows it. Think it's easier to read from the website than the email -FYI.

Side bricks rebuilt

Cement instead of bricks

Where to begin this month? I think I told you the hardest part was going to be selecting the tile for the front of the fireplace. I'm sure Bruce would disagree at this point. Figuring out how to get the first 2 rows of bricks back in after they had fallen out was a real challenge. But my genius husband always comes up with brilliant ideas. He built a form and made it all out of cement. Days have been spent getting the brick relaid around the front of the entire fireplace. Almost finished....then a set back....more on that later.

Temporary opening to garage

Along the way, waiting for mortar to dry, he did get all the insulation in and most of the sheet rock back up. If you recall, the door to the garage is on the "clean" side of our plastic wall. He made an opening into the garage on the "work" side. Well the plastic wall needs to be moved in order to close up the hole, plus to finish up sheet rocking the rest of the wall where new light switches are. Then there's the ceiling taping and "mudding" to do.

Door out to garage/lights for kitchen

One of the main reasons we didn't close off the entire room to begin with is that the kitchen lights are on the wall next to the garage door. Once we move the wall we will no longer be able to turn on the kitchen lights without going out the front door, in through the outside garage door, back into the house on the work side of the plastic wall. I say we just eat every meal out but I don't think that's a great solution. Maybe just dinner...when it's dark in the kitchen. :)

While Bruce malls over how to handle this next step, he's helping Nick demo their guest bathroom. Everyone down here seems to set the tiles in about an inch or two of cement. Not making demo as easy as it should be. Because of that, I'm wondering if I'll ever get our master bath done. Anyway, they got most of it demoed the first day. The tub was cast iron and a real bear to remove. That was Sunday the 15th. Nick went back to work on Monday and they were to start again on Tuesday the 17th.

I've begun writing this on April 18th, at 3am. Yesterday (17th) we all had a busy day planned. Lots of different appointments, juggling kids schedules and the rest of the demo. Unfortunately, at 3am Bruce woke up with sharp pains in his abdomen. At 6:30 I took him to the ER. After a CT scan it was determined he had appendicitis. There were only 2 of us in the ER waiting room when we got there, so we got a bed right away. Within a few hours the place was so busy, his bed was moved to the hall way. There were several ER surgeries ahead of him. Since his appendix hadn't ruptured (thank goodness), he was low on priority. Alissa came down to visit while he was waiting for surgery. Fortunately, he was not in any pain. The surgery was at 6:30 last night. I waited until he was back to his room; couldn't go home without seeing him. Surgery went fine and easy. I was home at 10:15. A very long day.

Needless to say, he won't be working on the bathroom or our family room for 6 weeks. We had lots of time to talk yesterday. His plan was to clean up the family room of all the work stuff, take down the wall and put the furniture back. Start up again when he was able to work again. His thinking was we'd have the dining room back (it's piled with furniture.)

There's a few flaws in his plan. Number 1 being that he can't move anything heavier than 5lbs. Don't know how he thought he'd be moving and cleaning up. I can do some of it. But why, move all those bricks out and the furniture back when we will just need to move it all out again?

I'll complete this at the end of the month and let you know where we are.

Here it is the end of April. Tomorrow he goes to see the surgeon for his 2 week follow up. Two week recovery seems to be enough for him...be interesting to hear what the doctor thinks!

Right now he's scrapping the carpet glue off the floor in the family room. The original flooring was linoleum tiles. No need to take them up. It was the same linoleum we ran into down at the other house. He did take the plastic wall down but hasn't rebuilt one. For the most part he's been taking it easy and it's driving him crazy. He's expecting to get the "all clear" to get back to work tomorrow. We'll see.

Meanwhile he's been over helping Nick as much as possible with their bathroom remodel.

Here's a few pictures of a few of the Thomas Fire quilts I've made this month. The mostly plain one (1) was a challenge from our Ventura Modern Quilt guild. They had bagged (brown paper bag so we couldn't see) up fabric for each of us to take home and make something out of. It was called the "Good, Bad and Ugly" challenge. All fabric donated to the fire quilts. My first attempt at a "modern" style quilt. Quilt (2) was donated blocks. Quilt (3) I took all the donated blocks that didn't measure 12 1/2 and added stripped blocks made out of the "Good, Bad and Ugly" fabric. Think my only really "ugly" fabric was the blue one which is actually long horn cow heads.