House Progress/Labor Day

Here’s what’s new in our household these days.

We’ve been in our house for 12 days now and have spent the vast majority of our waking hours doing work on or around the house. For the first 10 days or so, the tag line for our progress seemed to be ‘one step forward and two steps back’. Every project either didn’t work out like we thought it was going to, or cost way more than should be allowed by law.

Botched project number one was repainting the doors. We removed all of our interior doors to sand them, paint them, and replace the old brass hardware on them with nice new oil-rubbed bronze ones. During the sanding of three of the doors, one of the MANY previous layers of paint started peeling off like crazy and the damage was irreversible. So, Kolby had to manufacture three new doors out of large pieces of wood. Then, when we went to re-install all of the doors we discovered that although the doors measured to be the same size as one another, 50+ years of shifting and warping had caused each door frame to only fit one specific door. Of course we didn’t think to label any of them, and the screw holes for the hinges were way too stripped to risk playing merry-go-round with each door. Other compounding problems were that the new hinges are the slightest bit thicker than the old ones, and Kolby mismeasured the doorknob holes on the new doors. Long story short, we now have all of the doors hung but only two of them can actually close all the way. Plans to fix this problem have been postponed indefinitely. Live and learn, I guess!

Next on the list was getting the dryer fixed and the outlet in the living room grounded so that we could get our cable hooked up. After three visits from various Sears repairmen, we dropped $400 on fixing an old stackable washer/dryer that the previous owners had left for us. It started out at $160 but then other things kept happening and once you spend any money to fix something you feel obligated to finish fixing it so you don’t just lose the initial money you spent. Oh well. Then, can you believe that electricians charge $300 to ground an outlet? Sheesh. We found someone who could do it for cheaper but it turns out he didn’t actually do what we paid him to do and ended up becoming this battle between us and the electrician company that I don’t think anyone ended up winning.

There was also a huge issue with the water line to the refrigerator and also the news that we have tree roots infringing upon all of our plumbing, but those aren’t worth delving into. I ultimately reached my breaking point when we went to install a gate for our driveway and it just flat out failed. It is a massive, heavy wooden gate with a metal frame that we found laying behind our garage and it was way too much for the fence post that we were attaching it to to hold. We should have foreseen that the post wouldn't be strong enough, but we didn't.

BUT, we made it through the series of unfortunate events and things are looking up. We now have cable and Internet and we even sprung for DVR and are loving it! We installed our pantry and although the doors aren't on it yet, it looks great and is providing some great kitchen storage space for us. On Thursday, Kolby's dad came over and we constructed a shorter, picket fence-type gate for the driveway that the pole was strong enough to hold. So Maya finally got an enclosed yard and was able to roam around off-leash. She enjoyed tasting all of the various leaves and plants---enough so that she threw up afterwards. She said it was totally worth it.

We have a friend coming in town to visit us on September 16th, so that's the date we've set to have the house finished. It may be a lofty goal, but I think we can do it. It'll be so nice have everything done and to just enjoy it all!

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In non-house news, we had a delightful Labor Day weekend at my parents' ranch. My dad's side of the family all got together for the whole weekend and it was so nice to finally have a place that can fit all of us! My dad only has 2 sisters and they each have three kids, but since a lot of us cousins have gotten married, we are now 22 in number. It's quite a brood, but we're all really close and we have so much fun when we're together. We played a ton of games (in typical Webb fashion), ate a TON of food, tooled around on the dirt bike and 4-wheeler (with three mild injuries... also typical Webb fashion), and chatted the nights away out on the back patio. It was a great getaway for us and I just love, love, love spending time with family. My brothers and I each have our own bedroom at the ranch but we all slept in Brad & Remy's room this weekend to make room for everyone else. It was fun to feel like kids again-- sleeping on bunk beds and laughing until we fell asleep.

As usual, I wasn't great at taking pictures. Here are a few, and I'll post a big group shot once I get that photo off my parents' camera.

Part of the gang playing dominoes.

A family game of whiffleball.

My cousin Kyle is by far the biggest, strongest person I've ever known. Russell should have taken this fact into better consideration before following through on Kolby's/Brad's/Tim's thought that "wouldn't it be funny if someone snuck up behind Kyle and hit him in the back of the knees with the whiffleball bat?"

A similar event happened a few years ago when Russell was dared to give Kyle a wet willy. Some kids never learn.