Okay, now we're really back!

We put in a couple of good days of work last week, and then took off for a few days of camping before I start work again tomorrow.

Michael and I attempted to make some progress on the electrical work this weekend, and were not very successful. It's quite difficult to run the new wires through the walls when you can't see what's inside them blocking the path of the wire. I had my arm inside the wall almost up to my elbow! Michael had the harder job as usual though, he was up in the attic in the lowest part trying not to get a nail in the back.

Oh, and Michael found a newspaper from 1964 in the wall! It features a Barren County family as Kentucky's Safest Farm Family...and some pretty sweet shoes.





We've had a request for our review of the vintagetub.com clawfoot tub supplies. Hopefully we can start putting the bathroom back together soon, and then we can let everyone know how we like them - they look and feel really nice, very high quality. So we're happy with them so far, let's hope the installation goes smoothly & quickly.

Michael's little brother and sister will be visiting this weekend, so it probably won't be a big working weekend, but we'll have a few evenings this week and things should settle down soon (I hope!) It would be nice to be able to actually move in to our house!

And for those of you who know us and might want to see them, here are a few shots from our camping trip to Laurel River Lake. We had a really nice time, and were crazy enough to go canoeing with Charley & Rosie! We also stopped by Cumberland Falls on our way back, which was nice but rather muddy looking. And Michael rediscovered his love for fruit rollups :)

Let the Plumbing Begin!

I haven't been much help to Michael lately because of my studying, but he seems to be doing pretty well on his own. We have been brainstorming and figuring out things together, so at least I'm still some help.

We are developing our plan for plumbing and electricity. We have managed to completely disconnect the bathroom from the old wiring, so it will be all new when we are done. It was somewhat more complicated than you might expect since one breaker in the panel went to 3 other rooms and the attic on top of supplying the bathroom! I'm just glad we're doing as much new wiring as possible!

But for now, Michael has decided to attack the plumbing first. We will have all new pipes from where the main enters the house, new hot water supplies, but will leave the waste pipes and vent alone. At least the waste pipes have been redone somewhat recently as they are pvc. We managed to add a lot of extra work to our plate by planning out where the bathroom would be upstairs if or when we get around to finishing the attic. We wanted to run all the supply and wastes up to the attic while we have everything open in the bathroom. So it's a lot more now, but hopefully we really pay off down the road.

A little explanation of the photo of Michael. We had a bit of an adventure at the local plumbing store today, which was way better than going to a big box store by the way. Anyway, Michael has invented a device for testing his copper soldering with air, it's pretty cool. I think he should patent it :)

I've also posted a pic of our new combo bathroom ceiling light/exhaust fan. It should go with whatever type of fixtures we end up putting in - we're leaning towards matte nickel, but it's a lot more expensive than chrome, so we'll see. And the faux marble isn't nearly as yellow as it looks in this picture, it's pretty much white.



I also had a question about the shower enclosure in my last post - I'm pretty sure we're going with vintagetub.com. Their site seems really good, and I've seen some good comments about them - but we're still looking around if anyone has some input. And I saw that someone was checking out our blog looking for info about insulating old bathroom walls. Having the walls torn out is obviously going to make it pretty easy for us, but in the rest of the house where we're not gutting it we're going to try to do the blown in insulation from the outside.

Well, I guess that's enough rambling for now!