Nathan officially became a Brownsboro resident Tuesday last week and with his new job not starting until October 10th, I was chomping at the bit to make the most of his time off for him 😜. His mistake was asking me what I wanted to tackle first! It was a tough decision. I had gross carpet upstairs that was part of the reason we haven’t moved up there yet, and I had a gross, mildew-ey bathroom/utility room downstairs leaving the only available toilet upstairs and no washer/dryer yet. We both are very experienced in ripping up carpet and not much in ripping out bathrooms. So which one did I pick for our one day allotment of work?

The bathroom, of course! 😆

Somebody overhauled this space like in the 70s and never touched it again. There were obvious patch jobs in the shower/tub and that told us there was more than likely some funk back behind the thing. Nathan got to work on removing plumbing fixtures and sheetrock from the sides to access pipes for a shutoff. Ashlyn and I got to work demolishing the cabinet/countertop beside the door. We were kicking some ass on it and got to feeling pretty confident, so then starts the kicking of panels off. And then comes busted pipe number one… Fortunately I noticed the dripping from the copper pipe on the other side of the cabinet before it got kicked completely open and sheepishly alerted Nathan to the problem.

Honestly, things like this happen just to remind you every now and then what a great fella you’re married to. After a few head shakes and “maybe y’all should not kick things” comments, he was able to JB weld the crack. He later confessed that he kept the chewing-out in his head 😉.

Ashlyn got bored and was promptly replaced by Weston when he got wind we were going to punch holes in the walls.

Once all the sheetrock was pulled away, we were ready to remove the shower and bathtub. Nathan started cutting away at it with a sawzall and we quickly realized the source of all the funk. Piles of rat poop mixed with blackened insulation and mildew-ey boards was one nasty funk cocktail. 😵

We were all set to start cleaning that crap out and call it a day. All we needed to do was back the spicket pipe out of the tub and we could throw that last piece outside. And then comes busted pipe number 2…..the brittle PVC snapped in two and a power stream of water shoots straight up the ceiling. 😳 Immediately, Nathan tries to cap it only to have that piece blasted from his hand. He then yells at me to deflect the water from the ceiling and he runs out the door! I stick my hands over the blast and it shoots 50% back into the tub and 50% all over the floor. After about 2 minutes from when the water spout first started, Nathan got it shut off at the main. So at 6:30 in the evening, he makes the 30 minute run into Tyler because by that time our local hardware store is closed to get pieces to repair the pipe. By 9pm, all is repaired and water restored to the house. We set a fan in the room to move the drying process along and went to bed.

The following morning started our four day weekend down in Houston and we were happy leave that craziness for a few days. Besides, I had laundry to do 😜.

I’m going to end this rather stressful post with some cute pictures from having our first out of town visitors last Monday. 😍 We were so happy to see Kelli and Rebecca and thrilled they made the trip to see us so soon! I think I’ll make it a thing to take a photo on the porch of everyone that visits. 😄

-Lindsay