remodel

i feel like the past coupla weeks i've been busier than jenna jameson's beaver. between work (kindergarten madness), my own kids (enough said), grad school (i had to write a 12! page paper due today) and everything else going on...i don't know my elbow from my asshole. although jack frost and his wintery ways typically slow things down a little, we have still been busy. in spite of all this, this past week we decided to remodel our upstairs bathroom. now i have stated before in other posts that my husband isn't a very handy man. (i must say, though, he has gotten better over the years.) my father, on the other hand, is one of the handiest men i know. therefore, there is some disconnect between the two of them in regard to this. although butch doesn't mind manual labor or handy man things, he sometimes lacks common sense that comes with that territory. for instance, one time our pipes froze and he went over to check the electrical box to see if he could "turn it back on." my dad was on the other end of the phone with me when this happened and when i explained what was going on he had a near seizure on the other end of the line. when he stopped laughing, all he could say was..."step away from the electrical box, butch." (it was excellent.) so anyway, i went out on monday and i got some paint and we got crackalackin on the bathroom.

my husband has two speeds...zero and 80. in a lot of ways he is an all or nothing guy. we happened to have a snow day (for an inch of snow) on tuesday, so he started painting. at no point did i say that the bathroom had to be done in any sort of time frame. again, lets be clear that there was no rush to get it done, however i couldn't help but notice that he was getting really wound up about it. while working and walking around the house he would sigh loudly and want me to notice his exasperation. (i ignored it. at first.) that night, i was cooking dinner downstairs and he came running (running) down the steps and out the back sliding door. i didn't bat an eyelash until he came running (running) back in the house with a chisel and ran back up the steps. (what the...!?) i immediately grabbed my phone to text my father. the text read as follows: "we started redoing the upstairs bathroom. warren decided to spray paint the fixtures INSIDE. he just came down looking frantic and ran back upstairs with a chisel. stay tuned." my dad replied back that he was ready for a good story. (aren't we all.) about 7 minutes later (literally 7), butch ran back downstairs and said, "TEXT YOUR DAD AND ASK HIM HOW TO GET SPRAY PAINT OFF OF TILE FLOOR!!!" (oh boy.)

after suppressing some laughter, i told him to chill the hell out and take a deep breath. i had no idea why he was acting like he was filming an episode of extreme home makeover and i said, "ty pennington is NOT going to be standing outside yelling MOVE. THAT. BUS!!! in a coupla days...chill OUT!" he's like, "well i want to get this DONE and i feel so RUSHED and now i spray painted all over the tile floor and it won't come up." (holy hell.) then he said after a minute of thought, "i think i'm going to just rip up all the tiles. how hard can it be to lay tile? text your dad." i yelped, "you are absolutely NOT ripping up the tiles!!" so i texted my dad and asked about how to get paint off of the floor instead and his answer was "gas"...to be clear, he wanted warren to soak a rag in gasoline and use it in the house on our bathroom floor. my husband has already had a little go around with gasoline in two separate ridiculous past incidents. one included him washing his poison ivy arm off with it IN THE HOUSE an hour before the girls birthday party. the other one happened when in an effort to get rid of old gasoline, he poured it DOWN OUR PIPES in the kitchen. so when my dad said, "gas." i just wrote back, "no." i told my husband that my dad said to use gasoline, but i didn't want him to do it because our house would then smell like a garage...not to mention the fact that we would be washing our floors with a FLAMMABLE SUBSTANCE?! now i was starting to get hyper like him and i didn't like it.

i told him we would worry about it when all the painting was done and in the meantime i gave him all sorts of colorful hell about why he didn't lay down a drop cloth and shit. wednesday the kids wanted to help him and he said okay. even though i knew this was a bad idea, i let it happen. i put them both in old t-shirts and sent them in to help their father. naturally there was a disaster when butch opened the paint and put the lid face up, so a few minutes into "helping" the kids both stepped on the lid and had paint all over their feet. (they thought this was funny.) he was dangling from a ladder and didn't notice the fact they were getting paint everywhere. when he realized it, he WIGGED out. (gray footprints all over. i woulda snapped a picture, but i didn't want to send warren into a tailspin.) after i put our paint covered children to bed, i went in there to help him...so that he wouldn't have a heart attack. i kept yelling, "MOVE THAT BUSSSS!!!" and calling him ty pennington. i asked him why he felt rushed or whatever, he stated that first of all, he needs this bathroom to shave and do his hair in the morning. he went on to tell me that he did it blindly that morning and went into work looking like rod stewart. (haha!) he also said this in regard to his hair, "i looked in the mirror when i got to work and i looked like a goddamn MAD SCIENTIST!" (i lost it.) then he said, "you could've at least told me i looked like that before i left the house!?" i said, "there are 23 other mirrors in the house (including one in your CAR)...you couldn't look at them!?" he shook his head, and yelped "i looked like ROD STEWART!"

he said the other reason he felt rushed was because he knows that if he didn't get it done in a timely manner, i (his wife) would bitch that it wasn't getting done. after some thought, i realized that this was a real possibility. (touche.) so we did finish the bulk of the painting that night and my favorite part was when i lifted to the top of the toilet off to paint behind it and made a loud noise. he had been hanging from a ladder, the noise startled him...after a loud gasp he nearly toppled to the floor. when i started laughing, he wasn't amused. i also serenaded him with rod stewart songs. (sorrybutnotsorry!) so finally saturday morning i went to target and got all the final touches for the bathroom. he ended up getting down on the floor friday night with a chisel, vinegar, and a magic eraser...he had to do each individual tile to get up the spray paint. (it took forever, but no flammable substances were needed.) after all was said and done, i have to say it looks pretty nice. tim the tool man did excellent work and now we all have a newly remodeled bathroom to enjoy. sorry to say that warren no longer will be going to work looking like a cross between a mad scientist and rod stewart. however, i will probably always be as busy as jenna jameson's beaver. here are some before and after shots for your perusal, but before you look....MOVE. THAT. BUSSSSS!!!!

before and after

 

ella's artwork was the perfect final touch!