Images of Demolition

Demo has been coming along and allegedly recontruction but that seems to be more intangible progress at this point. I have a few images here for you.

This is the original for sale sign from the man who built and lived in our house until his death. His name was Ray Seger. We have pictures from when he was building the house and the final one has the for sale sign so we know this exact one was not from our house (at least not at that point). We do know he built the house across the street so maybe this was from that house. It is very similar to the one that is in the pics of our house. I love the phone number! Our builder found it nailed face down in the attic for makeshift flooring. It is very thick and in pretty good condition so we will likley hang it on our wall somewhere when construction is done.
This is kind of hard to see but Ray loved to sign and date all of his home improvement work. (I LOVE THAT!) The cabinets in our basement have also been dated. We found this name, date and age underneath the vanity on the sub floor. At age 73 Ray felt it necessary to add a second bathroom onto his house. He also signed the shower base. The vanity was 2-20-78 and the shower base was 12-13-77. Guess the bathroom was a few month long project! Hopefully the remodel will not be the same.
This is a shot of the exhaust fan/light/heater in the ceiling. Wow! 30 years of dust and crap really don't look that great. Let that be a lesson to ya'll...clean out your exhaust fan housings every decade or so! Chris always said he was worried it would catch fire if we used the heater. The thing worked great, though! This also shows the tile was indeed on the ceiling, too! I wouldn't lie about this stuff :)

The builder is threatening a 12 hour day tomorrow (I am not holding my breath) so maybe there will be actual construction photos soon!

We are now a one bathroom family

Okay, here is attempt number 2 at the bathroom post!

We have started our next big project...the upstairs bathroom remodel. It is a complete gut and then redo project but the room is small so not as huge a project as it could be. The saddest part of this post is that these pictures are BEFORE DEMO! I am embarrassed to post these and was even more embarrassed to have guests in this bathroom. This is the state of the bathroom Husband #1 and I used daily...before demo began.

This is the bottom corner of the shower. The black stuff you see WILL NOT come off not matter what product I used or what I scrubbed it with. I guess at some point there was some kind of leak behind the wall so they took the tile out along the bottom and then just stuck it back in there with a lousy caulk job along the seam. Or maybe the tile was just falling off the wall. The whole bathroom is tile...everything...walls, shower and even ceiling in the same tile. It is blue nd white but at some point someone painted over it with white latex paint. The paint on the shower tiles was starting to peel off and the blue and white design was showing through. Even better was that in some random placement there were tiles that had fish, swans and seahorses in shiny gold. The "chair rail" tile trim was also a swirly design in shiny gold. I am sure it was lovely. Hmmmm.
This shows our lovely vanity. Take note of the places where the white with metallic sparkly flecks laminate peeled off. Harder to see is the top was lifting up but held down by the sink so just one edge did not lie flat. We did replace the knobs after we moved in because one broke off in my hand with the water running. We did have a period of using the pliers to turn the water on and off. The blue sink was chipped and would not stay clean. The odd khaki border you see along the wall used to be a wallpaper border that has long since peeled off and just left behind the wallpaper backing. Yes, that is the only outlet and it is not GFCI and only works if the light is on.
This was our tile floor...again, before demo began. The two brown spots are holes were a few tiles would pop up every couple of days and we would just throw them away. When we moved in the floor was a big sheet of rolled out vinyl which was gross and in bad repair. It was not glued down with any adehesive and under that was peel and stick vinyl squares that were not stuck. My mother in law helped me remove it within 2 days of moving in and this floor was better! Actually we did not see the hole by the door until we had damaged the vinyl but really, it was too gross to put back down. The toliet also had white paint overspray around the base which we think was from someone trying to spray paint a previous toliet white. I can only ssume it was blue, like the rest of the bathroom.

Demo is finished at this point and I have a few pictures of that I will include in the next post. Construction is moving along but there are not really any good things to take pictures of...mostly electrical and plumbing stuff.

I will post now before I lose this again!

AAARRRGGGHHHH

Okay, just posted a draft which I wrote yesterday complete with details of our bathroom project and photos and everything. For some reason when it posted it was only the three pictures and one sentence. The rest of the post was missing. SO FRUSTRATED!! So you will just have to wait until I feel the mood to rewrite it all.

Independence Day

We went on another trip over the week of July 4th. We spent a few days in Mississippi at Husband #1's parents and then stopped to see his grandparents on our way to Florida. We spent the second half of the week in Destin and spent the enitre Fourth on my parent's boat in the bay. We stayed out to watch the wonderful Destin fireworks from the bow of the boat. The kids loved it. Bumblebee did not like the noise so he put my hands over his ears and held them there but loved to watch the fireworks.
This photo shows Bumblebee's first "catch". We got the kids rods and reels and let them fish off the pier in the back of the house. Double A was actually quite good at casting. Bumblebee didn't cast as well but he did get the only catch of the trip...an oyster! We all agreed it was much harder to catch an oyster than a fish! :)
This is July Fourth and the "big" fireworks had not started yet but some individuals were setting off thier own. Bumblebee did not want me to miss a single one so he grabbed my neck and kept pointing me in the right direction.
This photo turned out surprisingly well considering I took it in the pitch dark and I couldn't even see that Tammi wasn't there! Sorry Tammi! Thank goodness for the red eye pre flash thing which got everyone to look and allowed me a split second to line it up.

We had a nice time but had to leave Saturday July 5th to begin our long trek home. We stayed somewhere in Mississippi that night and finished the trip on Sunday. The sad part about it is that Saturday the 5th was our 11th anniversary and we spent it driving, stopping every 30 minutes to let Bumblebee pee (once on the side of the road) and spending about 9 hours in some random, but very nice, hotel in the middle of nowhere Mississippi. We did treat ourselves (and the kids) to dinner at Crescent City Grill in Hattiesburg on our way through town. And note to ourselves...don't stop at Lambert's "Home of the Throwed Roll" on Sunday around lunchtime. The wait was almost 2 hours and when we decided not to wait the kids were distraught over the fact we could not eat in a restaurant where they actually throw food at you. There's always next trip...or pretty much any meal at home!

So proud of our guy

** I really tried to post this yesterday but life did not cooperate so imagine as you read that it is Monday July 7th. I figured my three readers would be forgiving.**

Husband #1 started his FIRST REAL JOB today!!!! That is kind of our joke but it is true that he FINALLY FINISHED his training. We are so excited!! He has his own office complete with nice, real office furniture, new paint, new carpet and a brand new computer with two huge monitors. We have gotten all of his diplomas, certificates and awards framed and are ready to hang. I really wanted to take a picture of him as he left for work after loading his car with his framed items and some books and such. He refused. I was going to take one anyway but he would not stand still long enough.

I know he is excited to embark on this newest chapter of his hard earned career; and we are excited for him. I like to see him finally feel some freedom and try to adjust to this new way of life for him. Especially hard since he is basically staying in the same job, the title and salary are just changing. He has worked so hard and so long for this and it is very nice to see it come to fruition.

For those of you in the know about his schedule...I am not expecting huge changes. So far he has not had to go in as early as he used to but that will be dependent on his scedule for that day. He has the July call schedule and he has off EVERY weekend in July. This has NEVER happened...EVER!! We'll see if it pans out :)

Anyway, it has been 13 years since college and we are all so proud of our guy getting his first real job :) hee hee!! I have already cautioned him about trading me in for a trophy wife now that he has finished his training!!

Bahamian Vacation

Okay, I finally have charged my camera battery and downloaded the photos to my computer and have now gotten to the blog updating portion of our program.

We flew from St. Louis to Nassau. We had to wake up at 3:15 am to get to the airport for our 6am flight. Husband #1 was returning from Canada the day before and he was very delayed and ended up getting home at 1:30am. He almost just had to meet us in Miami! We met up with my parents that day and then the next morning we left on the boat for a more remote island in the Bahamas, Staniel Cay. It was beautiful and non-touristy. We stayed there five days or so and then left for Nassau/Atlantis for a couple days. Then off to Bimini for two days and then back to Miami for a day or so. Then we flew home. Of course we were delayed and did not get home till about midnight Sunday with Husband #1 going to work the next morning.




In Atlantis we did the resort waterpark and the kids had great time playing in the waterslides, lazy river and such all day. Bumblebee got tons of water dumped on him unexpectedly but eventually worked up the nerve to try again and went down the "big kid" slides by himself...saying "wheeee!" the whole way down. Double A loved the slides, also.





Staniel Cay was populated by roughly 30 families year round. We had golf carts to use on the island. We toured by golf cart and by dinghy. The water was clear and beautiful like an aquraium. We saw these pigs on the neighboring island that would swim out to your boat and eat the food you threw to them! Crazy. We also went to Club Thunderball a few times. This was named after the James Bond movie, Thnderball that was filmed on the island in 1964. We had to order our dinner by 5 pm every day and then they rang the dinner bell at the one restaurant at 7:30. Nurse sharks lived in the marina and was constant amusement for the kids to see the "sharks." Husband #1 was pretty set on eating conch at least once per day. I think he came pretty close to his goal. The whole thing was very nice and relaxing.





Bimini was a bit diappointing as the beaches were not that pretty and they had lot of biting bugs, like deer flies.



Overall it was a fantastic trip and we all had a great time. Plus, no one got seasick!

I'm Baaaacckk!!

Well, here I am again. I know most of you out there have checking the blog religiously hoping and dreaming for my immediate return and lamenting my absence. This is for you! (who am I kidding?? A whole ONE of my faithful readers (about half of the whole list) emailed to ask how we were - Thanks Grandpa! No flooding here yet.)

The four of us were gone on a Bahamaian vacation with my parents. It was fabulous...as one would expect from 10 days in the Bahamas. We have been back a whole four days and pretty much jumped back into life with both feet. Laundry is mostly done and suitcases are mostly unapcked. More on the vacation details later. I have not uploaded my 150 pictures from my camera just yet so will hopefully tackle that in the next millenium and get those posted.

For those who are so anxious they are about to burst here is a small teaser...there are photos of a swimming pig! Who knew they could swim!? and for you 007 fans...we were at Club Thunderball - where the movie, Thunderball was filmed. Never heard of it myself but it WAS 9 years before I was born!

Rest easy dear readers, we are alive and well...you will be hearing more from me later, whether you like it or not!