Handywork Around The House

Finally, the stump has come out in the front yard, which means we can finish the landscaping project we started about a month  ago. They were out two days earlier than expected to remove the stump, which is perfect timing.  I have tomorrow off work, so I will be spending the day landscaping.  Here is a shot of the machine they brought in to take out the stump.  Yes, the picture was taken through the curtain, but considering the window is right by where they were working, I didn't want to look like a creeper hanging out the window with my camera!

I realized when logging in to update the blog that it has been almost three weeks since I last posted here; total slacker.  I have to be honest, I really don't know where the month of May went.  Seriously guys, how is it summer already?  

We have been pretty busy these last couple of weeks.  Andrew has been working on a table for our deck.  We couldn't justify the cost to buy one from the store, so our solution was to make one!  Here he is working on the table top.

Last night, we finished up with the table leg.  I say we because he built it, I tested it and broke it and then he fixed it!  I had the important job of breaking/testing.

Today, Andrew has been working on getting the benches for the table constructed.  The plan is for the benches to be done tomorrow so they can be sanded down.  By Friday, we hope to have everything constructed and sanded so we can get a couple coats of stain on everything before Saturday.

Our plan was going fine until we came home tonight to find a puddle of water on the floor in the kitchen.  Random standing water anywhere in the house is never a good thing.  After tearing a hole in the ceiling (in a location that was previously patched due to water damage), we discovered that it was the toilet in the guest bathroom that was causing the problem.  Two hours later, we have a hole in the ceiling, the toilet missing from the guest bathroom, and a shopping list for tomorrow morning.  Thank God for YouTube!  Through watching several videos and having my Step-dad on speaker phone, we figured out that the prior owners, who remodeled the guest bathroom, didn't raise the flange on the toilet up when they tiled the floor.  Consequently, the toilet has started to leak due to the seal not being completed properly.  Here is the lesson learned from this, if you are going to DIY a project, have a pretty good idea of what you are doing.  And, if you have problems once, don't just make a quick fix.  ALWAYS, I repeat, always find the root of the probelm.  If you make a temporary fix, you could be causing larger problems down the line.

Off to the store we go tomorrow morning to buy a new seal and a riser to put on the flange so we have a better seal and can try to avoid the problem in the future.  Of course, all this happened after I cleaned the bathroom tonight; go figure.     

So, there is a little glimpse of what we have been up to. The joys of home ownership!  Thank God for a handy husband who isn't useless with power tools.