Dreaming of a Bathroom on Such a Snowy Day ...

You know that feeling on a cold morning when you are snug in bed, and the alarm is going off telling you it is time to get up and start your day? I hate that feeling! I lay in bed buried under multiple blankets and comforters enjoying the last few minutes of warmth. I know when I get up that it will be cold. The fire has died out over the night, and I am headed for the coldest room in the house- the downstairs bathroom! Not only is this the coldest room in the house, it is also one of the most depressing! It required a quick fix after some frozen pipes about a month ago, and now it is anything but pretty. In fact, this is the view from the toilet as of now:

Because of this issue, Nick has begun the process of renovating our upstairs bathroom. I have been busy drawing pictures of what it will look like, picking out paint colors, and researching all those finishing touches that make a bathroom "just right". I think about it so much that I often have dreams about waking up in the morning and simply walking a few feet to use the bathroom! I'm hoping that once the bathroom is complete, I will have more motivation to get out of bed! As of now, the smell of coffee is my only incentive to get moving! However, if I happen to look up while pouring a cup of coffee, this is the current view:

The holes in the ceiling are there because Nick is currently working on re-plumbing the bathroom directly above.

Anyways, back to the bathroom downstairs and the frozen pipes... The pipes were installed on an outside wall meaning they froze and would continue to freeze unless something was fixed. Luckily, Nick was able to tear out the shower insert, remove the pipes, and re-install them on in inside wall.

Because the bathroom is so small, when Nick pulled the shower insert away from the wall in order to access the pipes, the door was blocked and he couldn't get out. This meant that I was in charge of retrieving the tools and materials that he needed to get the job done. I must say that this was an incredibly boring job. (Well, maybe not as boring as standing in the closet upstairs under the attic hole for a couple of hours while Nick installed insulation in case he accidentally hurt himself and started screaming.)

Anyway, my job of finding the correct tools was not as easy as I thought. He would call out the name of some saw I never heard of, and I was supposed to go find it! Easier said that done. Being so technologically savvy, I decided to google whatever he said and then I would know what I was looking for. Well, it seemed like a good idea until I got downstairs and realized that all of the tools were in the exact same black cases. Why on earth do they not put pictures on the cases of tools, or at least label them with what is inside? I had to go through each one to find what I was looking for. I only found the correct item about 50% of the time. Eventually I just brought up a bunch of tools and hoped that one of them was the correct one. In the end, the pipes were fixed, and we could shower. It's not a pretty fix, but one I can deal with until the project upstairs is done.

Here is a sneak peak into the shower where the knobs had to be moved to the adjacent wall. You can also still see remnants of the orange water from days gone by....awww memories... =)

"All of life is a journey; which paths we take, what we look back on, and what we look forward to is up to us. We determine our destination, what kind of road we will take to get there, and how happy we are when we get there." From A Little Book of Happiness

First Entry

Well- Nick has his own blog about the transformation of our house. His blog speaks of how inspiring it is to restore an old house. And while I do believe that this entire process is very rewarding, my blog will take on a different twist by focusing on how this restoration affects our day-to-day life. My blog will tell the true stories of very cold nights, frozen pipes, no water, black water, gray water, orange water, orange hair, leaky ceilings, holes in ceilings, holes in walls, mice in walls, birds in walls, treasures in walls (just to name a few). Hopefully this will provide one with the whole picture of how we are transforming this old farm homestead into a palace!

Enjoy =)