Update!

I know I posted that I would update this blog more now that I quit my job, but working on my house has really taken a lot of my time in the past few weeks. I had a few jobs that I really wanted to finish before school began since now I have time to start and project and commit the time it would require to finish. I wanted to remove all the damn mirrors that were left hanging on the walls when I moved into my house. I also had to fix the shower faucet that I broke a couple months ago, I broke the cold water stem so no leaking, but just only hot showers since I broke it. I also wanted to remove the wallpaper in the downstairs and paint the walls. My dad, who is retired, stayed with me for a week to help me work on these projects.

All these projects seemed as if they should take time to fix, but fixing the tub/shower faucet was a nightmare. After we took apart the faucet to figure out what the problem was, we spent the better part of a day driving around the city looking for the part to fix the broken valve stem. Eventually, I had to go online and order parts to fix it because no store, even specialty stores carried what I was looking for. I ordered several parts, but twice got something I had not asked for. And of course, they say if you open the item it cannot be returned, but you can't test anything without opening it first...and they charged me $10 each to ship the wrong item! In the end, my dad came back today to help me install a new tub and shower faucet. It took the better part of a day, but we did it.

Everything else just took time, it wasn't too frustrating, but just required labor. The mirrors came off the walls easily, but to my surprise, one wall of mirrors was hiding 3 layers of old wallpaper and a steel casement window that had almost rusted out. The wallpaper took a little effort, but came off pretty easily and the coats of paint on top is a huge upgrade over the wallpaper and floral borders. The window, though, will need to comeout and I'm having a contractor come over soon to look at it and give me an estimate on what it'll cost to replace.

Even after a week, it doesn't seem like that much it done, everything is just back to what it should be. But the window, though broken, doesn't leak and provides a lot of light into my once dreary house. As a reward for the work I did this week, I did finally buy the TV I've wanted for the past year, a 40" Sony LCD.