On and on we go...

February 16, 2008
I arrived home after a week in Alexandria, Va to find that hubby had built the foundation for the platform and filled the hole in the area below the pedestal sink with concrete. Things are a movin’ and a groovin’!

February 17, 2008
After church hubby and Pauly got to work. This was probably the messiest and loudest part of the construction so far as they had to cut concrete for the bathtub plumbing (after all, it’s all about the tub!). Aside from some minor injuries (Pauly banged his hand and a significant asthma attack on hubby’s part) all seemed to go well. However, the dust factor was something of a problem. Never have I ever seen a cloud of dust so thick and so suffocating! This job took over an hour but when the dust finally settled (which took several hours) the plumbing for the tub was complete. Pauly made the statement that we were in the home stretch of completion now. I reminded him that I was a bit skeptical on this subject. I went on to say that I was amazed that on HGTV they finish projects like this in two days to which he responded that not only that but they have commercial breaks as well. (Now mind you, I haven’t been behind the wheel of the bus for over a week). My response was that hubby is always on a commercial break. Hubby responded with a very simple yet profound, ‘beep, beep, beep’.

February 25, 2008
It was something of a slow weekend for the bathroom work. Hubby was out of town and Pauly had another job on Saturday. Despite its sitting in the middle of the living room floor the tub is actually being utilized as a toy box, or should I say ‘tub box’, for the cat and dog toys. It works very well for this as the dogs won’t jump into the tub to get the cat toys (show me a dog that willingly jumps into a bathtub!) or the dog toys that are in need of some repair before being played with again. Of course, Kramer has no problem jumping into the tub and pulling out his cat toys. He’s pretty good at it. He jumps onto the edge of the tub and surveys all of the toys below before swooping down, grabbing one, and taking it outside of the tub for play. He can actually walk around on the edge of the tub while he spies the toys within.
Last night I decided to sit in the tub and read. I stuffed a few pillows and a blanket in there, curled up with a glass of wine, and began reading. Kramer seemed quite interested in this. Obviously I had removed all of the toys from the tub before I climbed in. It’s really a very comfortable place to read-even without the water. Anyway, I noticed Kramer’s fascination with my being in the tub so I grabbed his fishing pole toy and began to whirl it around the outside base of the tub. He thought this was great fun and began to run around the tub at full speed chasing the fish at the end of the pole. So if you can picture it, I am in the tub with a glass of wine, a book, and a fish-on-the-pole cat toy while the cat is running in circles full speed around the tub chasing it. Now you’ve got the idea! Other than that there is not much else to report. The shingles and siding are still not here (so much for the ‘it only takes a day to get it’). One would think that white vinyl siding would be pretty straightforward but apparently not. There are different grades of white and different fake wood textures. Nothing is simple, not even white vinyl siding. And so I suppose the hold-up in the siding delivery is that they are trying to match the siding exactly.

February 29, 2008
Well there is no sign of the siding or shingles that were ordered and there are more excuses for this delay than there are bubbles in a bathtub so hubby has started shopping at a home improvement store for these things. In addition, we are looking for a quiet fan vent for the bathroom. Hubby had to special order the new dryer vent to fit under the eaves of the addition which arrived a couple of days ago.
On a lighter note, Joan’s daughter is selling things for a fundraiser at school. I paged through the catalogs looking for something inexpensive and found a darling ceramic claw foot tub that held bath oils and such. I figured it would look cute sitting in the bathroom. Then I decided that perhaps we should start a poll to see which would happen first, the completion of the bathroom or the arrival of the ceramic bathtub. Hmmm. I bet I know the answer…beep, beep, beep goes the bus.