The Great Flood

Oh, where to begin... Over the summer I had high hopes for doing crafts and DIY projects, and then blogging about them. I managed to do a lot of crafts and DIY projects, but I kept missing that blogging step.

I was just finishing up some curtains that I was going to use to segue myself back into the blogosphere...

These curtains, to be exact:

And then this happened:

"What caused it?" you ask... This. This stupid pipe right here:

That pipe connects to our A/C drain pans and routes the water into a drain line. In Houston, as we now know, it is illegal to have your A/C drain line run directly to the exterior of your house. It has to drain internally. Why? Well an A/C unit apparently produces over one gallon of water per day. We have two units, so that's over two gallons per day. If every house had two gallons of water consistently pooling outside, it would cause a large mosquito problem.

So this was the solution. An interior drain. However, our home was built in 1994 and they no longer use this kind of design anymore. Why? Because they can get algae built up inside and overflow. Surprise, surprise.

Anyway, my first clue that something was wrong was when I noticed water all over the dryer in the laundry room. There is a bathroom directly above, which we don't use, so I thought that maybe a seal dried out and broke and it dumped water onto the floor. Upon further investigation upstairs, we realized the leak was coming from the attic, and there was far more damage than just the laundry room.

Here is what we're dealing with... We had minor damage to our dining room, that was the good news. It meant that our wood floor, which runs through the entire downstairs, was unharmed. We had major damage to our laundry room, my studio, and a bathroom. Those three rooms need extensive drywall repair, the laundry room needs a new ceiling, and the bathroom and studio need new floors as well.

We've had Servpro in to dry everything (did I mention that our A/C broke the same day as the leak? Yeah, that was awesome), dealt with our homeowner's insurance, and now we've started renovations. We're doing it all ourselves, so it's going to be a long-ish process. The good news, is that I don't have to deal with a contractor, and I know everything will be done right and exactly how we want it.

So that's where we stand. It's been a real treat...

Hope y'all like house-related posts

I have so many things to update about, but no time to sit down and write.

 

I did some awesome crafty things over the summer, and definitely need to post about them, buuuuttttt... We also had a big leak in our house and have been unwillingly thrown head first into home renovations!

 

Lucky us!

 

Thanks to a plumbing issue, and the subsequent homeowners claim, we are now renovating our dining room, our laundry room, my craft studio, and one of the upstairs bathrooms.

 

Yup! Good times.

 

I really, really, REALLY want to start blogging more so I suppose this is as good of a reason as any, right?

 

Quick Project: Burlap Valance

So, we finally worked on our staircase. You know, the staircase that I pulled the carpeting off of back in September? Yeah, that staircase. And it is turning out AMAZING! I have to do some touch up work, and paint our railings, but then it'll be all ready for its own little blog post.

 

While painting I realized that I have a whole other house to take care of (oops). We also have friends coming to visit next weekend, so I've been doing some small projects in addition to the staircase. Today I was cleaning and realized that our kitchen window really needed a valance.

 

I'm in yoga pants, a tank top, and covered in a fine layer of cleaning supplies and dust so running to the store wasn't an option. Solution? Leftover burlap + my sewing machine + 15 minutes = ...

 

I think that turned out well! Okay, break time is over... back to getting our house all ready for guests.

 

Updates

I just noticed that it's been well over a month since my last post. To be quite honest, I feel like I've lacked motivation recently. I have my fleeting moments here and there, but once we got the yard done and finally had some free weekends to relax, I did just that... relaxed. I have lists of unfinished projects, a studio that is mid-reorganization, and a little more dust in our house than I generally prefer.

 

The one thing I have managed to do is get an Etsy store set up. I have a whopping 2 patterns available for digital download right now. That being said, I have about 30 that need to be converted from my pencil scribbles on graph paper. It honestly doesn't take long, but it gets a bit tedious. My shop is called Questionable Threads, and (for now) it is going to feature many of my cross stitch patterns. Eventually I'd like to also have full cross stitch kits, and the ability to take custom orders for finished pieces (for those who prefer to not stitch something themselves, but still want something awesome).

 

I have a whole bunch of DIY projects swimming around in my head, and some I even have all of the supplies for, but I really need to get my studio organized first. While on our usual weekend trip to Lowe's (yes, we'll go just to walk around and look at stuff), I found a 6-piece set of fabric closet organizers for $15. It had an over-door shoe holder, those hanging shelf thingies, and an under-bed box. AND it came in pink. I have a nicer set like this for our closet, but these cheapie ones seemed perfect for my studio, so they came home with us. J also got a set (in black) which now holds rifle magazines, gun cases, and other accessories in his man-closet.

 

I've had my studio set up for at least a year now, but I've been sewing and doing most other projects in our dining room. Why? I couldn't find the proper height (or priced) stool for the craft table we built, rendering it virtually unusable. Target came to the rescue on that one recently, and we finally found the perfect wooden stool for all of $20. So now that I can use my table, I can start crafting upstairs, and out of Jeremy's direct line of sight from the couch... which will finally stop the comments like, "Can't you use your sewing machine when I'm not watching tv?" and "When are you going to put this crap away?"

 

So, as you can see, it's been a rather uneventful month. No cool projects to report. I did manage to get into a car accident, so that's always exciting. I was stopped at a red light in a left turn lane (waiting for an ambulance to pass through the intersection) and the woman behind me thought it would be cool to just not use her brakes and plow into my car, while doing about 40mph, in order to stop. Don't text and drive, people! She had her baby in the car too, which pretty much sets her up for the Best Parent Ever Award.

 

The end result was a trip to the hospital for me, a few days of surprisingly bad pain from whiplash, and a car that is still in the body shop a month later. She hit me so hard that the back of my car crushed in far enough to squish the groceries I had just purchased at HEB. Did I mention that I drive a MINI and she was in an SUV? Yeah...

 

 

It doesn't look nearly as bad in pictures as it actually did in real life. Silly me got out of the car expecting to find a bumper that needed replacing and not much else. The whole back of my car is pretty much being rebuilt now. I really hope that the text she was reading/sending was worth slamming into me and risking everyone's lives. I'm just thankful that everyone at the intersection was stopped and saw what happened because she pushed me right out into the middle of it.

 

Okay, so now THAT is it for recent excitement. I'm heading upstairs to finish up my studio today, and it's now too hot for outdoor projects, so hopefully I'll have some blog-worthy things going on in the very near future!