Weekend Warriors

Last Monday I was walking with Erin on my back, enjoying the last of the summer-like days before the weather turned Massena-Arctic-Circle-like.  And I was thinking about the weekend, when John was going to be in Las Vegas.  And I was thinking "Wonder what I can do while John is gone?"  And I texted my sister to see if she wanted to come down to do something cool, like tear wallpaper off the kitchen wall or something.  Because coming to our house is nothing but a good time.

Surprisingly, she turned me down.  But Mom and Dad are suckers, so THEY came down.  And we ended up not tearing wallpaper off the kitchen, but rather re-doing the powder room.  Which meant we tore wallpaper off the walls, replaced the light fixture, painted, cut some bead board for one wall, replaced outlets and switches and toilet parts and other random things.  And John got home at 6:30 or so on Sunday.  And we knew he was going to be home then.  And you know how those Home Makeover shows always have a huge flurry of activity at the end, and they call in all the neighbors to help because they still have all this stuff to get done, and very little time to do it?  Yeah.  That was TOTALLY not us.  We looked at what we had done, looked at what we still wanted to do, and said "Meh.  It's not gonna be done.  SURPRISE!"

As an aside, one should not tell a four-year-old that something is a surprise and that he should not tell Daddy about it.  Because that is EXACTLY the very first thing he will tell Daddy when Daddy calls from Las Vegas.

Powder room before.  A friend once described it as "peeing while sitting inside a basket."

My Friday helper.  He loved using the Tiger tooth thing.  We called it a "Toother."  So he'd be toothering, and rolling water on the wall and he'd look over to me and cheer me on as I was scraping wallpaper off the wall, "Good wallpapering, Mama!"

Un-wallpapered bathroom, with Grandpa working on some spackle.  Un-wallpapering is a terrible terrible job.  An email to my sister went something like this: "Who's the $*!%&#! who invented wallpaper?  I'm gonna shoot him dead."

Bathroom as of today.  Still needs some spackling and another coat of paint.  And then the bead board will go up on the bottom of this wall.  So it'll be the TG weekend project.  But we needed something to do anyway - the wind yesterday blew away all our leaves, and that's what we were going to do this weekend.

New light fixture above the sink.  Have a new towel rack and tp holder, as well, to go up when the paint is done.

Thanks for helping, Grandma and Grandpa!  Without you John would have simply come home to an unwallpapered bathroom, with nothing else done.