A River Ran Through It

By now I should have a post filled with beautiful pictures from our fabulous Glacier/Canadian Rockies (amazing, stunning, jaw-droppingly gorgeous place by the way) trip.  Unfortunately, our time has been a more than a little consumed with some unexpected home renovations. 

The day after we got back from our trip I noticed some warping of the laminate flooring in our hallway.  We poked around a bit, saw a little bit of water near the warping and then heard the floor actually make a squishing sound when we stepped on certain sections.  Turns out our radiant heater in the hallway sprung a leak and let loose a lot of water that got under about a third of our downstairs flooring.  Luckily we think we caught it fairly early before it ruined cabinets or more walls.  Because they don't make our old laminate anymore and it would be too hard to color match we ended up having to rip up all of the downstairs flooring:  the hallway, Kevin's office, the bathroom, the understairs closet, the living room, dining room and the kitchen. 

So for the last week and a half we have been dealing with plumbers, insurance adjusters, water mitigation people and a whole slew of other fun stuff.  Even though it is mostly covered by insurance we have decided to do most of the work ourselves to a) save some money and b) because Kevin is really excited about putting down the new flooring himself.  Since we were going to paint the living room, dining room and kitchen anyway this fall we just pushed up our schedule and are going to do all the painting before the new flooring goes in.  It will be so much easier to paint without a floor or baseboards or furniture to worry about.  And since Kevin has everything out of his almost-an-episode-of-Hoarders-but-without-the-dead-cats-or-feces office we figure it is a good time to paint that and install a new light.  And since we were going to paint the downstairs bathroom at some point anyway we are going to just go ahead and do that now too.  You know, 'cause there wasn't enough on our to-do list. 

So instead of blogging about vacations and enjoying our pretty fall weather we have been moving everything out of the downstairs, which included boxing up all nine of Kevin's floor to ceiling bookshelves (why didn't I marry an illiterate man again?) and putting it in the garage.  We have been tearing up the remaining laminate flooring (which is actually really fun and satisfying) and have picked out new laminate and some tile for the bathroom.  The next few days are about removing all of the crap on the walls and prepping them for a marathon paint session this weekend. Hopefully, the new floor will be ordered and ready in the next two weekends.  We ordered the tile last night so Kevin will be quickly learning how to tile a bathroom floor.

While it kind of sucks to have had the "water event" it is kind of fun to get to completely redo the downstairs.  We are both excited about the way we hope it will look in the end.  

Just wish us luck and some strong backs for the work that awaits us. 

I'm Still Here

Good gravy, these have been a busy two weeks.  I haven't had time to do laundry, let alone turn my computer on at home.  Good thing that I have a few moments here at the old jobey-job today to catch-up on my crazy last two weeks.

I fully intended on some blog posts about some of this fun stuff but instead you get a list and maybe some pictures later.

In the past two weeks I have:  been to a Brandi Carlile concert at the zoo, ate Minnesota style pizza and drank bad beer before the Dave Alvin show at the Tractor, went to the Slow Food Roots Music Festival in Stanwood for tasty chow and more Dave Alvin, had a picnic at Chateau St. Michelle with friends, went to a baseball game, had two dance lessons, had a podiatry appointment (news flash:  my left foot is wonky), met with our new cat sitter, had to go down to Mom's place after work to help her after she threw her back out, hosted dinner and vertical wine tasting at our place for a couple of friends, back to Mom's place for a day of deck cleaning and power washing, hike up to Spray Park at Mt. Rainier, back to Mom's again after work on Labor Day (not a holiday at my job) for the rest of the power washing project to prepare the deck for staining.  Whew!  No wonder I am feeling a bit tired right now. 

Anyway, we are leaving for a camping/road trip to Glacier National Park and the Canadian Rockies this weekend so I won't have time for a proper blog post until we get back.  Hopefully I will come back with some beautiful pictures and tales of (safe) bear sightings and maybe mountain goats too!  Then we can commence with a slightly less busy life and get down to painting, decorating, running, yoga-ing and other healthy pursuits.

I hope everyone enjoys these beautiful September days!