Friday, November 14, 2008

Days of our lives....

























Just a quick look into our lives over the last few months besides Ike.

David's **th b-day was September 5th. His favortire plac eto eat is PF Changs so I called a couple of his buddies and we surprised him on the Friday evening of his b-day. A few quick looks into that night....the car belonged to a player from the Texan's who parked in the NO parking.....hmmmm I wonder if we could have gotten away with that...Oh yeah our car is only worth a few thousand.....Anyway....here are a few fun pictures......................

IKE the TERRIBLE Part 4...I think

I promise not to be long winded.....but I only have so much time to blog during the day and I wanted to be done with this story....I needed to get it all in.
Now for the FINALE................
With our master bathroom, Tate's room, we also re-painted the entire back of the house in the same khaki color, to keep everything neutral. The hall bath/shower tile was still original so they retiled and re-finished the tub which was really disgusting. Old percelain had completly gone, if your feet were even slightly dirty there were foot prints in teh bathtub until it was scrubbed with CLR...and intense elbow grease. I will post pics of those areas when the living area and hall bath are remodeled. They haven't even begun yet.
They also have not figured out a way to rig up our shower curtain yet....we have something for them to try but it has not been done yet!
























I will begin very soon on our cruise, and I promise it is more pics than story...but I couldn't leave out so many funny and crazy details about Ike!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

IKE the terrible, Part 3



This is what I came home to........ and this is our house after beginning demo work, it got WAY worse! Oh and by the way, David filled over 50 HUGE construction bags with pine needles.... can you say WHOA



The boys working with my Dad in Tate's room

The floor covered with the insulation.........
This is our master bathroom, you can get an idea of the old orginal tile....
Here is the view from our master bedroom...LOVELY! It was easier to throw all the debris out the window than carry to the door. You should have seent he pile when it was completed...HUGE!!!




These are pics from our storage units.....our other rooms in the house!


All 4 boys in one room






Breakfast in the park






This is our entryway closet. It is connected to Tate's room so it was completely ruined as well.


Casey on demo duty in master bathroom!

So I left you with.... our house was a disaster, we had no power and the boys and myself were in SA with 8 kids 8 and under......YIKES!!!
All through the week I kept looking for information about our cruise so we would know what our plan was. Up to this point we did not know whether we were going, not going or leaving froma new location.... I posted about our cruise awhile ago, David began planning a cruise for our anniversary last year. But since Ike hit our port, in Galveston, we wondered whether we would be cancelled or the port would be changed to another location. We did not want to drive to New Orleans but we would if it meant not getting a refund...It took until Wednesday for them to tell us they opened a brand new port in Pasadena, a Houston port, and that would be our location. So FINALLY we knew our plan....it was crazy not knowing our plan for a week.....would we go home to no power, would it come back on, should we stay in SA or plan on going on the cruise.....AGHHHH So now we know and it was really nice not to be left hanging any longer. But our plans are still changed...originally the boys were supposed to stay at our house with David's mom, but now without power we decided they should stay with his parents in Austin. So that meant me driving to Austin on FRiday morning and then straight to Houston. What a raod day trip....our ship was leaving Saturday morning, so I needed to be home and ready to pack.
I am not sure what I have mentioned about my Dad in previous posts, but he headed to Houston to help David out in our house while I was gone. He patched the roof to keep it from leaking, and ripped out the rotting carpet in Tate's room, along with the walls. While working on it he was in the attic and managed to step through the ceiling, twice, leaving giant holes.....well it needed to be ripped out anyway! By Friday our house smelled so bad...it was built in '64 so it is OLD, and with numerous holes leading to the attic.... with no electricity... the humidity had really brought out the rotten smell.......Not to mention there was old, rotten disinigreating insulation EVERYWHERE! It started in the rooms we were repairing but it ended up all over the house.
I will come back to to post about our cruise another time....I want to finish telling you about our house. So all you get for now is we left for our cruise on Saturday for 5 days and my Dad stayed at our house so someone would be there when the insurance inspector came by...let me remind you we still have NO power! My Dad deserves a standing "O" for that and everything else he does! ...... By Tuesday....I think.. the adjustor made a trip to our home and gave an estimate, it covered our ENTIRE roof!!!!! not to mention, Tate's room, and a few other little areas. We come home Thursday, David immediately goes to work and I head to Austin to pick up the boys....and back home to sleep another night without power....thankfully as God saw fit He sent with Ike a natural AC unit that has the lowest prices anywhere....unbeatable really.,...I HOPE Y'ALL GOT THAT ONE
Because we could not plug in the refrigderator we bought a small thing of milk for the ice chest, disposable bowls and spoons, we picked up some donuts and cereal and ate breakfast at the park.....that was fun! Who doesn't like having donuts for breakfast...well okay y'all please don't email me if you hate them the point is made...LOL
We were all geared up(...can you tell I'm from TEXAS) for another week without power and I was loving the opportunity to have this time to actually slow down and see how life is without all of that. I wanted to go to sleep with the sun and wake up with it....have food less convenient as well as everything else just to get a taste...but by that evening we were outside and watched the men working on the power lines and they had it up and running again.....So not bad, one night w/out....I must admit I was disappointed I really wanted to see how we would manage! But now we still have one less bedroom for a family of 6 and my Dad, and I must mention we also demoed our master bath to have it all re-modeled at the same time...so we are also down to one bath . It smells terrible and stuff is everywhere! OMG......you should have seen my house, it is pretty small and packed already. We have a 3 bedroom, and already filled, now down to 2 bedrooms and one less bathroom it was insane...e.verything from those two rooms was throughout the house. Every spot that was semi open had about 3 or 4 new things, on top of other things....crib, mattresses,set of bunk beds, chest of drawers, clothes, fridge parts on my table, a ladder in my living room, ....and on and on it goes........
Enough whining and dramam for one day, actually it wasn't so bad, except it was impossible to have a clean, or even remotely clean, house....Now is the moment when I speak of the amazing hand of Providence! For about 6 months we had put off remodeling our master bathroom, our insurance covered the damage due to us not having a shower pan so we had the money....we just did not know who we should hire and did not have time to really invest in the best person. We wanted to get the most for our money, not just custom but quality. With my Dad living in SA it is too hard for him to do so much it would take too long so we knew we would need to hire it out. But we were VERY grateful that he helped us demo all the areas... that saved time and money. And what was really AWESOME the boys helped EVERY step of the way!!! Man are they getting good training for their house one day!


Sorry for rambling, back to story.....We have a friend who owns his own construction company, and he used to live down the street, so after the hurricane he came to our subdivision right away to check on us knowing we were surrounded by MANY pine trees....we have almost 20 just in our yard...(Note to self, next house, make sure there are NO pine trees..) When he came by to check on us he found out our situation and told us he would get us taken care of. He came by right after we got home from our cruise and we walked through the house so he could see what we wanted done....Tate's room completely re-done, paint, carpet, new walls...., Master bathroom completly re-done as well.....and a new roof. His men were at my house the next 2 1/2 weeks working very hard to get our home more comfortable for us. It is AMAZING!!!!
Our bathroom had the original tile, yellow ceramic, yes you can envision it...UGLY!!!! It was on the floor, shower and cabinetry. The cabinets were so old they smelled horrible and I could not really use them because they made everything smell bad. So I only put cleaning supplies and things that would not take on the odor in the cabinets. Now, those of you who live in an old house built before the '80's you know there is already limited storage.....I am talking you put things in the washer and dryer just to keep it off the floor...LOL, just kidding, but almost! Every part of our house is jammed packed with STUFF...and we do not own that much! So not having usable storage in the bathroom made it even more difficult. And the shower was itty bitty...it used to have a glass door but we took it off because it was so small it was annoying to get inside....So needless to say we were ecstatic to get it remodeled!
Now we have beautiful travertine on the floor and shower. The shower is larger and has glass up one side to allow more light. We have 5 can lights...before we had one light over the sink and it was very dark. The sink also stopped up all the time because the plumbing was old, and the sink ceramic was stained and peeling. Our new sink is from MEXICO...a very cool momento we picked up while we were in Progresso..so there is something in Progresso.....not much though! We were walking through a little shop looking for things to bring back to the boys and we saw this beautiful sink. At this time we did not know we would be remodeling the bathroom right away....but we knew we had to have it done sometime in the near future so we figured it would be a good investment....we paid $80. We wondered if we got a good deal? I mean we have no idea what it should cost but we really liked it and it was really neat to bring something like that back with us (which I packed in our suitcase)....we found out it would sell in the US for over $400...UH... I think we got a good deal! Our cabinet for the sink is an awesome Sante fe/Old world style, the sink sits on top and we found the coolest faucet, that has the feel of an old fashioned pump, it is in blackened bronze which is how we finished everything.
Tate's room was great before but it is AWESOME now...they wainscoated the bottom half and WOW, it is SO beautiful! We repainted the same color as before...only we did the ceiling the same color YEAH no more stars
Enough for now, I would love to keep going but I want you to have time to read this and it is already a book.....


PS ~ I am so sorry about typos, it is a lot to write and I am very tired. So I hope you can wade through it all and get the idea! I will be back to get the rest later!
























TO BE CONTINUED ...... AGAIN........