Friday Night Photos

The punches just keep coming at me. I really hope that after this bout of things just not going according to plan, I can take it easy for a while without extra stress.

Today's problem was entirely my fault for starting a project this big. For the record, though, I thought it would be a finish-in-a-day thing. I didn't think it was going to turn into the mess it did, but now I have a HUGE problem on my hands.

Jerry is visiting a friend in Wisconsin for the weekend, so I had plans of redecorating the bedroom while he is gone, including installing luxury vinyl planking (we had almost enough left over from the rest of the house to do my bedroom, so I ordered a couple of boxes of the same planking and now we can do the bedroom). That was the plan, anyway.

I noticed that our floor had started creaking a bit and that I felt some high/low spots in the floor. I really hoped there was nothing wrong with the floor under the carpet. If all was good, then the installation of the floor should've been really easy.

Well, since nothing goes as planned, this was far from easy. And right now, my bedroom looks like this:

First of all, I was right about the floor being kind of wavy. That concerned me and I knew I'd have to fix it, but it wasn't until I got to the far side of the room that I completely panicked. The shower is just on the other side of the wall. When I pulled up the carpet there, I found this lovely scene:

Clearly, there is water damage from the shower. We've needed a new shower for a while, but as far as I knew, there weren't any leaks or anything. However, there is a soft spot on the floor in front of the shower, so I know that we need to fix the damage there, too. 

I'm just ready to tear my hair out. The kittens, though, LOVED this whole process.

Needless to say, I won't be surprising Jerry with an awesome bedroom makeover. I'll be lucky if we have any flooring at all.

This next photo is even grosser than the water damage. I had some holes in my walls that I had to patch up with some drywall compound (just from hanging things there). I went in the garage to get the compound, which I'd just used last fall. When I opened it, I couldn't believe what I saw:

I guess I didn't close it tight enough--it was all mold! So that was awesome.

On a more positive note, Noah's birthday party went off very well! I didn't stay for his actual party (which was in the garage), because the kids are 18 years old and what 18 year old wants their mom at their birthday party?

But I did spend a lot of time cleaning the garage and decorating. I love how it turned out!

The green screen in the corner was for them to use to take fun pictures or videos. We set up two Christmas trees (a little one and a larger one). For each of the kids young adults coming, I set up a stocking in front of the "fire place"--inside, I included a few silly toys, some goofy Christmas glasses and headbands to wear. (Now I wish I'd at least have gotten a picture of them with their stuff on.)

Here is a pic of the skeletons and me wearing some:

I bought all of these Christmas mugs at the thrift store--I thought it would be fun to serve drinks in those! I also made Christmas cookies for them to decorate and came up with a couple of things for them to do.

Noah and his friends had fun, and while he has no idea the time or effort I put into it, I'm glad that it went well.

Jerry and I went to Lowe's for a couple of things and we were looking at tool chests. I opened the drawer to this one and saw balloons spelling BYE. Haha! Just thought it was funny. Clearly we weren't meant to get a tool chest ;) 

At the thrift store, I saw this jacket and noticed the price was crazy high for a thrift item--$29. I googled it because I thought maybe it would be worth buying and reselling if it was a good brand. It looked brand new, too. I looked it up and they retail for about $150, so $30 was definitely a bargain. Too bad I'm not a cyclist.

I saw these shoes at the thrift store and just HAD to buy them for Riley! Are they so adorable?!

As I was flipping through jeans, I came across this pair that I thought was funny--the previous owner had written "skinny" twice across the back. I have no idea what that was about!

This was another impulse buy yesterday when Jerry and I were out doing some errands. It's a cactus scratching pad. It looks different than other scratching posts I've bought, so I thought it would be fun to give it a try.

Chick totally went to town on it right away. He was a blur of fur attacking that thing.

Duck was a little more chill. And Chick was watching him like, "C'mon, you're supposed to attack it!" Phoebe and Estelle showed a little interest at first, but then went back to being their old lady selves.

When we were looking at cat toys, I saw this one and nearly had a heart attack. It's literally a ball of yarn for cats! If you haven't read about what happened to Duck after swallowing some yarn, definitely read that before giving your cat yarn to play with. There are a million more toys to give them; I'd skip the yarn or string. It's just not worth the risk! (Or the $3,000 vet bill.)

And finally, we got around to power washing the deck. I still have some screws to replace (and even a few boards to replace) but it'll be ready for stain or paint very soon. We planned on stain, but now we're leaning toward paint. It doesn't make any difference to me, but Jerry seems to want to paint it. Still, though, look how satisfying it looks with the power washer!

Okay, I'm going to try to figure out a solution to this whole mess with my floor. It's sounding like I'm going to have to replace the shower (which we needed to do anyway), replace some of the underlayment/subfloor, and then finally install the planking. This was supposed to be a weekend project! My brother may be able to come over tomorrow to help me. If not, I'm going to have to hire someone because I don't want to cause even more problems.

And I'm out. Have a great weekend! xo