Plaster Dust and Shower Heads

I left off last week with things in a bit of disarray at our new home.  Friday night, I opened the basement cupboard door to reach for a plate, and I noticed that we had sprung yet another leak.  This time, it was coming from the 1/2 bath off the main entrance from the garage.  I love this feature because it is near the laundry area and it makes for a great place to wash up after working outside.  However, that loving relationship soon turned to despise as it was Friday night, I was tired, it was late, and we had nowhere to go to get parts to fix the leak.  I was beginning to think that we should have bought a boat to float us down the Elkhorn River on the stream of water that seemed to be coming from every orifice in our house besides the ones it needed to go into or out of.  Nonetheless, Tim was able to loosen the shut off and tighten a nut underneath the sink and stop the leak enough to allow us to get some parts on Saturday. 

My little brother and I worked on taking the remainder of the plaster out of the kitchen on Saturday afternoon.  We can't do anything without a power tool, so we had plenty of dust flying throughout the main floor by the time Tim got home from work.  Of course, he was ready to go to Menards before I had a chance to clean up, so we left for Norfolk in a hurry with me looking like Casper the ghost due to the plaster dust.  Wouldn't you know it, we ran into three other couples we knew while we were shopping.  You can about imagine that every conversation started out, "So, uh, did you have a fight with a flour sack?"  If I would have been dressed to the hilt, we wouldn't have run into anybody we knew.  The Law of Personal Encounters always works that way.

After getting home from Norfolk, the first plan of attack was to install a new shower head to replace the one that sprayed an enormous amount of water pressure on everything except the person showering.  Tim grumbled a little bit because it was late, but it was a 2-minute project that made his wife very happy.  No more sopping wet bathroom floor, no more moving the head all around to rinse the shampoo out of my hair, and no skin indentations from where the three or four working water spouts hit me.  It's like a totally new shower!

On Sunday, we made a second trip to Menards to get everything that we forgot on Saturday night.  We had purchased several doorknobs the week of closing only to realize that apparently door knob sizes have changed a bit since 1968.  The one doorknob we bought on Saturday was the right size, and we found that it fit perfectly in the basement walk-out door.  Thinking we had scored a victory, we decided that we should purchase more knobs to put on the main floor doors so we at least had more than one working lock to get into the house.  We started installing the new doorknobs only to find that the main floor doors were fitted slightly different than the basement.  Who would have guessed that 1/16 of an inch could make so much difference?  And, again, the hubby was grumbling.  We got all five knobs changed with a little help from a reciprocating saw and a few less-than-desirable words being said.  At least nobody lost a finger to the saw and a door knob covered one little "whoopsie" we had.

All in all, we accomplished everything we set out to do this weekend, and my socks didn't even get soggy walking into the bathroom this morning.  Life is good.  Welcome Home!