A White Christmas

We had a white Christmas. Thank goodness everyone made it here before the snow did.  Molly really enjoyed it (she lives in Florida) and helped shovel many times.  Maggie and Chase were more content in our cozy home with the new furnace.

We were able to go downtown to the Front Street Brewery the next day to have a beer and look at the river. While we were there, we saw many bald eagles flying over the Mississippi.  After our beer, we ran to the river and then back to the car.  It was freezing cold.

Christmas Eve was an evening of Church ( I played handbells not very well) and opening presents.

It was extremely late when we were finished. Someone fell asleep backwards on the chair.

We had pancakes Christmas morning.

Then we posed for a Christmas photo.

We then had to get ready for Mike's parents to come for Christmas lunch. I put Chase in charge of the cheese and cracker plate.  He did a fine job.

I made a last minute decision to unpack Mom's but now Maggie's china. Mom brought this out for very special occasions.  I still have it because Maggie doesn't have room for it in her Georgia condo.  

I am not sure if Maggie will get it back because I have found that tea parties are fun.  We had one the next morning.

It was great having everyone here for over a week! Since we were all together, I decided we should invite family over to celebrate Maggie graduating from Young Harris College.
We catered from Moe's and had wonderful tofu nacho bar.  I can't believe I didn't take pictures of all the food. It was amazing and good. I felt no stress preparing for this party because of the catering and could spend more time with guests.
We were excited that Matthew Sproston, a cousin of the girls, our nephew, was able to come. The girls hadn't seen Matthew in over 15 years.

After the guests left, except for cousin Brice, it was time for pool and dart tournaments. I will mention right away that Mike won both the pool and the dart tournaments.

Things started to get a little crazy so Mike and I decided to let the kids continue their fun while we went on to bed.    Mike had to get up at 3am to shush them!

The next day, Maggie and Binx checked on Chase while he slept most of the day.

This was New Year's Eve day and we had a day of doing nothing.   While we waited for midnight, Molly and I decided to make our faces pretty.

When midnight came, we did our traditional point at the clock photo and then went to bed.

It was really sad to have everyone head back south after this week of fun and freezing cold.
I was happy to get back to work so I could keep my mind off of how quiet and lonely the house was.

I want to end this blog with cat stories.  Maggie and Chase brought their new kitten up with them but had to leave it in their bedroom because of a skin condition we didn't want Pete and Binx to get.  Maude needed baths every other day to help her problem.

Here she is after her bath.

While everyone was here, I thought it would be a great idea to get a family photo done by our friend Kelly, who is an excellent photographer.

Kelly adopted Mom and Dad's cat, Buddy.  We were all excited to see Buddy again. He looked so happy when he came out to greet all of us.  I should have taken a photo then but I was too excited to see him and played with him instead.  When I went back into the house to find him and take a picture, he did want to leave the vent under the dresser.

We are so happy that Buddy found the right home!

As Promised, Before and After Pictures

Here they are!

I splurged on the vanity handles, I couldn't pass them up. I figured since I didn't buy a new vanity, I could spend a little more on the handles. Also, I only paid $5 for the mirror. I bought it in Georgia and it was a little cracked on the edge when it arrived in Iowa from the back seat of my car. Thanks to Gary, once again he came through and made the frame. Are you trying to figure out what is on the new toilet? Thanks to my creative sister Sherry, she took our soap holder from our Georgia shower and made a plant holder.
Did you notice there is no place to hang towels?  The girls and boyfriend got here before I could put them up. I figured the girls could help me decide where they should be placed, since they would be showering first. We ended up being too busy and I forgot to have them help me. I will have to figure it out myself.
Next blog will be about how busy we were.

Guest Bathroom, done in time!

Before I talk about the bathroom, I want to tell the story about putting our Athens, Georgia house on the market.  We decided that since it was so easy to sell our rental house next door, we would do the same with our home. I took many pictures after the estate sale and posted it  for sale by owner on Zillow December 14th, 2016 with a notice of an open house on December 18th.  Since Mike and Maggie would be out of town and Molly already moved to Florida,  I asked my good friend Kim to hang out with me during the open house. Good thing I did. I asked her to help me keep track of the number of people that came, but we lost count after 15 showed up within the first 1/2 hour.  The following are some photos I put on Zillow, in no particular order.

I am really missing that fire place right now and doesn't the kitchen look familiar?

We had the open house from 1-3pm and the phone rang at 2pm with a full price offer.  I couldn't believe it!  Of course I told him that I would need to wait because the open house wasn't even over yet, and I knew another  offer would be coming in.

Another offer did come in but it was a low ball. When I told them I had a full price offer, they came back with a higher offer.  The bidding war had begun.  Much to our surprise, by the end of the day, we had an offer of $7000 over asking price. We were elated.  Other offers had come in but none could beat this.

Since it was during the holidays, we made an agreement to wait until January to have the home inspection.
Long story short, inspections are brutal and the buyer backed out. The other people interested had already bought another home.  I called another broker who had a client who had made an offer and  they were still interested.  We sold the home for asking price. We now had to sit back and wait for her to sell her house.

Now, back to our bathroom remodel here in Davenport Iowa.
My sister Sherry came to help me out and I was so appreciative.  This would be my third time tiling a bathroom floor and I wasn't nervous about it at all. We decided to lay and cut the tile before we mortared it to the cement board.  We then mixed the powder mortar with water and started setting the tile. This is a photo of me using my new hand saw with a diamond blade just for cutting tiles.

We were so excited to have the first step done. We made sure every tile was straight and spaces were the same size between tiles. Above you will see Sherry inspecting our work.

We woke the next morning ready to start grouting when Sherry noticed some tiles were moving up and down when she jumped on them. What????

We were disappointed to find some tiles did not mortar to the cement board correctly.  When I bought the powder mortar mix, the tile guy at Lowes told me to make it like pancake mix. My pancake mix must be very dry and thick because it was too dry for the tiles to stick.  We thought we were going to have to pull all the tiles up but some were attached extremely tight.  Sherry got to work scraping the floor while I scraped the back of the tiles.  There would be no grouting today.
Sherry kept saying it was her fault but I decided it was the supervisor's fault, pictured below.

Below shows how many tiles we had to reattach.

I waited another day before grouting, and that went perfectly fine.

The girls would be here Saturday for the holidays so we were cutting it close. Mike and I were able to install the toilet Friday night, but not without some hiccups.  We lost a bolt down the hole and looked on line what to do about that.  A magnet wouldn't work because the bolts are brass.  Another idea was to use a shop vac to pull it out. I tried our vacuum but that made the whole house smell like sh**t.

We decided just to flush many times to move it along.

Saturday came and we flushed some more. I then noticed the puddle of water in the basement coming from the bathroom upstairs. Are you kidding me?  This is my third bathroom I have redone and have never had so many problems.  The girls would be her in a couple of hours and we had a leaking toilet. Mike and I decided to call the emergency plumber once again. He ended up being the same guy who put the toilet in downstairs.

Finally, the bathroom was done, just in time for the girls and boyfriend who would stay for over a week.
Lessons learned.... always use already mixed mortar, even though it is more expensive, and leave the plumbing to the experts.  I will have more before and after photos in the next blog.