Sweat Equity. Literally.

A lot has happened at Red House Nine since the last time we spoke and there is progress!  I've been a really bad blogger and haven't been around much, but there is a LOT going on (seriously, it's not an excuse, I still love you all and don't think any of you smell, promise).  Ed's little red GTI died last week - the day of the Rapture. It was a causality of the rapture, and when I say died, I mean it - D.E.D., dead.  We are faced with having to purchase another car on top of everything else that is going on.  Wonderful, right?  Who needs cabinets and a stove when we could have another car.  Ah-boo.  Anyway, I digress and didn't mean to turn this into a bitch session .... but really? REALLY?!  ugh. 

This long weekend has held a lot of surprises for us in terms of discoveries (including the 85 degree + heat).  We found that the sub-floor in the bathroom around the tub and toilet was made of marshmallows.  Ok, well not literally, but the amount of water damage around those two areas made the sub floor mush. So much so that if we (read Dad and Ed) hadn't taken the time (an entire day of aggravating work) to replace it, the next person to use the toilet would have ended up in the basement.  Yay Dad and Ed!  So, you may be asking what I was doing while Dad and Ed were fixing the marshmallow floor.  Well, you may have guessed I was slacking off working on my tan or frolicking in the sand under the broken pool, but no! I was not!  I was wrecking the kitchen and disassembling the cabinets, psychedelic tile, and dance party USA ceiling.  There were a LOT of surprises in the ghetto-kinda-fixed-but-not-really kitchen. Wanna see a couple?  

Yes, what you're looking at are ancient hornets/bees nests that are directly built on the insulation and wall boards.  I bet you're wondering how they got in there.  Well, see that rectangular "window"?  That was a vent that was at one time hooked up to a vent that went to a range hood which then vented outside.  That was hidden behind the cabinets not sealed off and stuffed with insulation.  So, we took out the vent and fixed up the non-window window the correct way from the inside and the out and moved on.  Next, we found the tiles came off with ease...pop, pop, pop... and that's not a good thing.  We wanted a challenge and if it were tiled right in the first place, it would have.  What? I love using a wrecking bar!  The plumbers have so far found 28 (!) breaks in the heating/domestic system.  This is a far cry from the 7 we were originally told by the sellers.  Some souvenirs and a 85% gut kitchen:

So, those are a few of the surprises we have found so far.  Yea, that's right, I said so far.  This house has all of us saying multiple times a day "this place never ceases to amaze us" and that isn't being said in the optimistic butterflies and rainbows way. No, it's being in said in a "are you even freakin' kiddin' me?!" skulls and crossbones kinda way.  We are diligently working on putting the bathroom back together and we hope it will be as awesome in real life as it looks in our visions.  Stay tuned, kiddies.  The good stuff is ahead!