Cool switch plates

I love these switch plates!!! I am thinking that once the kitchen is completed they might go, right now they'd just look weird! We are forming our completion plan for the kitchen now, it'll be a while before we can do it all, but at least we'll have a plan. My island is onsale for $299 this week, granite top, big enough to fit 4 stools at... can't wait!

It rained in my Bedroom

So these are the before pics... All this work because our flaky former tenant left water supply lines for her washer on the floor, still running...
We only caught about 2 gallons of the gross water, the insulation was soaked & so much of it ran right through our floor into the basement there must have been tons of it.

Of course this happened at 8:20 PM with me home alone with the kiddos, cuz dh was at a meeting... I am running around trying to find the key to the apartment, buckets & the phone number for where the meeting is all while trying to get the Prince to finish his reading homework & get to bed. Why does it always seem to happen like that...

We had to take down half of the ceiling because the insulation was soaked from wall to wall. Just to the right of the most damage is MY CLOSET! I am now living with my clothes on a couch outside our bedroom, because I can't put them away until we have finished the ceiling including paint. It was a week ago yesterday that this happened & I don't see us finishing this job before the end of the weekend. I'll just say that it didn't make for a romantic Valentine's Day...

So we have been busy trying to repair this mess. We are using dry wall instead of ceiling tiles. It was the cheaper option (replacing the damaged tiles = $144 + staples for half of ceiling, dry wall = $79.76 + screws, tape & mud for whole ceiling). The real deciding factor was that the store only had 2 boxes of the right tile & we needed 4. Choosing to drywall was certainly not the easiest choice. We are cutting the sheets in half so I can help. I don't think I'd be able to lift an 8 foot sheet of drywall over my head & hold it until it is screwed in enough to let go while standing on a ladder hoping the 3 year old is distracted by the DVD she is watching...

The bright side to this (I am reaching here, give me a break!) is that we used the undamaged tiles to replace the disgusting tiles in the bathroom. I still need to paint them to seal them so the new ones don't mold like the old ones did, but it looks 100% better.

Insulating Adventures

I posted about our insulating adventures over at The Frugal Momma.

We have had quite a time of it with our weather being below 10 degree F temps with -10 degree wind chills.

Older home living is always an adventure but the past few days have found us with sheets over the doors, blankets rolled up at the bottom of doors, both back up electric space heaters running & me wanting to roast things in the oven and doing laundry just to run the dryer!!!