Ohhhhh homeownership

Here are some pictures of some things going on around our house lately. The two photos below are of our garden. Chad recently had a new irrigation system installed that is hooked up to our sprinkler system but has its own timer. Then he ran irrigation hoses throughout the bed and since it's a raised bed, now he's in the process of filling it with dirt. We borrowed a truck & trailer from our friends Talin & Amanda, and they brought us a trailer full of dirt from Talin's mom's farm. That got us a little way, and Chad brought two more yards of dirt to fill the rest of the garden. He'll finish filling it up using potting soil, fertilizer, and all that stuff to prep the soil for planting.
Our next little "project" has not been quite as fun. About a week ago I was turning on the hot water faucet in the guest bath and the handle just came right off in my hand. So today was the first day Chad has been able to look at it, and when he started looking at it to see what kind of replacement faucet we'd need to buy, the water came on, and even with using the pliers he wasn't able to turn the water back off--it just kept coming out of the faucet. So the first priority was to turn off the water coming in to the house, which has now been off since about 8:30 this morning (it is now 4:30). We also noticed that the job wouldn't be as simple as going to Home Depot and buying a faucet to repair it, because as you can see the pipes for the faucet itself are behind the tile in the wall (the fixtures are so old that we couldn't just buy handles to screw in to the existing pipes). I had some stuff to take care of to finish up at school and at the district office, so Chad and I left the house for a while to get that done. We picked up a new faucet and handles on the way home, and soon realized when we got home that this was a job for a plumber, mostly because Chad has to work tonight and he needed to rest up instead of spending a frustrating afternoon with our plumbing. So the plumber finally got here about a half hour ago, and as you can see he quickly went to work getting in the cabinet that is behind the shower to check it out. Luckily to get to the fixture pipes, we didn't have to bust through the tile. Apparently a previous owner needed to access the plumbing as well, so there was already a piece of drywall cut out behind the plumbing and duct taped into place in the cabinet. So I emptied out the cabinet, and the plumber got to work. By the way, I took the picture below while the plumber was out in his truck getting tools. Even I'm not desperate enough to get a picture for the blog to ask a plumber to move for a second so I can take a picture. So 45 minutes and $180 later, we have a brand-spankin' new shower faucet and handles. It couldn't have happened much later either--we're expecting multiple guests this next weekend, so we needed the guest shower to be available! (Not to mention I needed the water to the house to be turned back on STAT). Speaking of homeownership, from what I hear our cabin is ready for occupancy. The well pump is working and the pipes are running to the house. The electricity is up and running. Our builder said he turned on the water to make sure everything is working and that the water pressure is GOOD. Can you believe it? We actually have a cabin at Blue Haven!!!! It makes me so happy that just thinking about it right now almost makes me cry.

And so begins the great furniture migration of 2009. This weekend Shawn, Paul and Chad are making a trek up to the cabin to move in most of the major furniture that we will need. Shawn is bringing a refrigerator from Georgetown. Paul is bringing multiple pieces of furniture from Tyler. They're picking up pretty much a UHaul's worth of furniture from mom's house in Weatherford, and then they'll stop off in Lubbock to get a sleeper sofa, twin trundle bed, queen mattress & box springs, etc etc. It's going to be a long weekend of driving and loading and unloading furniture. Have I mentioned how glad I am that I'm over 7 months pregnant and literally CAN'T help? Selfish, I know, but I'm pretty sure the guys would just as soon have me out of the way to get this done faster. Then, hopefully in a couple weeks, Chad and I can take another trip up to the cabin after the guys have so graciously gotten it ready, and we can spend a couple days getting it MORE ready for people to stay there, and also just to be able to enjoy it after spending most of last year getting this place built. I am excited that we now have this little place to go to and enjoy anytime we want to get away. More pictures to come, I'm sure! Although I'm not going to ask Chad to take pictures this weekend...I think they'll have their hands full with all the manual labor, probably won't be much in the mood to be the historian. Anyway, I'm excited, and we will let everyone know when it's ready for habitation (we are still lacking flooring and painted walls, so it's really dependent on how much you want to "rough it.")

And that's about it. Did I mention I'm done with school? I know I posted after the last day of school on Thursday, but I still had a work day and had to empty out my classroom and do all of that other end-of-the-year checkout stuff. Well, I finished that today. I turned in my keys to the office and officially gave up my rights to the classroom. On to a new, very different, chapter in my life. And on that note, I will be 33 weeks pregnant on Thursday. 7 weeks sounds like not very much time. It also sounds like a short amount of time when I say that it is now June and the baby is due in July. I am excited and can't wait to meet our baby boy.

**EDIT: Much more excitement has happened since I posted this afternoon! After the plumber left, the hot water would not come back on. Also, there was the issue of the natural gas smell in our house. I thought I had smelled it earlier in the day but Chad didn't smell anything, so I thought I was just being paranoid or smelling the some excess gas from the stove not lighting right away earlier in the day. But after a few hours, the smell really began permeating the house, mostly when the A/C would kick on. Wonderful. I walked out to the garage, where our water heater and furnace are, and I could smell the gas the strongest in our laundry room (which is connected by a wall to the closet with the water heater and furnace). So I called the gas company and they came out around 6:30, and the source of the gas was the furnace in the garage closet, and the pilot light on the furnace had gone out, but the gas was still turned on. So the guy turned that off and the gas smell has gone away. The water heater was a separate problem. The pilot light had gone out on that too (the gas company guy was kind enough to check it and re-light it for me since Chad is at work).

So, it has been quite a day filled with numerous, all unrelated, house maintenance issues. I had plans to continue checking other things off my list like cleaning, de-junking the house, and grocery shopping, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Which is okay, because I don't have anything else going on. :)