Building, Toilet, and Garden, Oh My!

Let me start by saying that I had a great weekend...we got so much done, which is my favorite. Buuuttttt, I'm soooooo tired 😩. We spent two full days tackling our storage building. We took EVERYTHING out (seriously, everything. We even took all the random nails that have been on the walls for 10+ years out), built shelves, and put it all back in. That all happened yesterday and today we did the fun part: organizing it! (Yes, I think organizing things is fun, and also yes, I'm super fun at parties 😉). We went and got peg boards and my heart started racing from all the excitement. . Or it could've been the heat. It's pretty stuffy in there when you're climbing on a ladder and using the drill. If you don't know, there are so many different kinds of hooks you can use on peg board! It's a really good time, hanging them up and arranging them! I can't wait to organize some stuff in the basement. Philip made fun of me because I sorted the bungee cords by color but, seriously, what other way is there to do it? 🙄.

Okay, so I know you're dying to see it at this point so I'll stop rambling on. 

Before:

After cleaning it all out:

Shelves: 

Total organization (in my best Unreal Tournament voice):

I forgot to take a closeup pic of my gardening tool peg board. I was tempted to go take one...at 9:20 pm. But I'm too tired to move off the couch. You'll just have believe me when I say it looks awesome. 

We really enjoyed cleaning this all up and making it look nice. This has been one of my favorite projects so far because I've been wanting to get it done for like 5 years and also because we worked together very nicely (not that we usually don't, I just like being able to do most of what we're working on and not have to be the gopher 😐 (go-for? I know that's the implication but I don't know which way people spell it)).  So yeah, I can use a saw and drill with the best of them so this was right up my alley 🙃.  

I have photo proof of where everything goes now so if someone messes it up......Oh who am I kidding? I'll fix it. I'll be mad, but I'll fix it. Just like I do with the craft supply cabinet at work..right ladies? 🙄😏

Also this weekend, I managed to get the last coat of paint on the bathroom wall and the toilet upgrade is complete! 

Before: 🙁

After: 😃

It was a huge hassle (another reason the building project was so great: no major issues along the way. Except for having to go get more wood but that happens every time we build something. The guy at the lumber store knows us pretty well. We interrupt his lunch 75% of the time. We went around noon to get boards yesterday and he was eating and then Philip went back to get more 2x4's later and he was still trying to finish his lunch. Philip apologized for interrupting him again and he said he expected one of us to be back, but that it's usually me 🤣). Anyway, long story long, we took the old toilet out, tried to put the new toilet on, realized the shut off valve was in the way of the new toilet, put the old toilet back on, went to Lowes (because we picked our favorite time to start a project: when all the hardware stores in town are closed), got a new valve and hose hoping it would extend it over far enough out of the way: it didn't. We waited another weekend and tried again, this time starting early enough to go to a store in town, if needed. We knew then that the plumbing in the wall needed moved so Philip got to work cutting the wall out and moving the pipes. Unfortunately, that all got done too late and we needed a piece of drywall to patch the hole so off to Lowes we went..again. I have to say though, it is one of my favorite stores. It always gives me ideas 😁. We got the drywall and some quick set (which is, as mentioned last time, misnamed), and installed the new toilet again, and checked to make sure it worked. Everything seemed fine so we patched the wall, let it dry and sanded it, and then put on a second coat. That's about the time we heard the slow drip. It wasn't much but enough to worry about. So he tried tightening everything to no avail; still dripping. He was so close to tearing the wall apart again but instead decided to put a cup under it to see if the water was on this side or that one. Luckily it was running down the pipe and dripping at the shut off valve. He was super frustrated and out of time because we were leaving for vacation the following weekend. We decided to put a bowl under it to see how much water collected in a week's time and know if we needed to have someone tend to it while we were gone. The amount was very small so we left slightly disappointed that it still needed work and frustrated because we weren't sure we could fix it ourselves. Anyway, to finish this ridiculously long story, last weekend Philip got new hardware and started again, this time succeeding in fixing the leak. TKO in the 57th round! We've learned that replacing anything in this house is always going to be more work than we expect it to be. Oh well, now we have a water efficient toilet (yay for saving water!) and you get to press a button instead of a handle, which takes a few days to get used to. 

A quick garden update: 

We had some more uninvited guests in our cucumber bed: babies! They only stayed a few days though. They're gone now, probably terrorizing someone else's plants. Which is fine with me, so long as they're not eating mine 😂. I wish rabbits ate Mexican bean beetles instead of just plants. Those dumb things DESTROYED our zucchini crop. I'm not super sad because I had become a pathetic zucchini pusher, begging anyone and everyone to take some off my hands. It's not a good look. 

But I can't help but feel a little slighted just because they were so greedy. They could had one or two, they didn't have to eat them all. Zoom in if you can't see them. They look like lady bugs and there are tons of them! 

The tomato jungle is still growing so maybe next time I'll have some good canning stories to tell ya 😉. Good night!