scratches & bruises

sometimes old-house renovation is hard. sometimes it results in scratches & bruises. sometimes these happen to your vehicle. so while trying to do some good to the house, some damage happened to chad's truck. this all happened a few months back, around thanksgiving actually.

basically chad was transporting 3/4" plywood sheets for our attic project in the back of his ford ranger. okay, okay - the sheets were larger than the bed of the truck and so...they came tumbling out at an intersection despite us doing similar stunts in the past and getting away with it. luckily some nice passers-by stopped to help him reload but there was some considerable damage done to the tailgate - as shown in the pictures above.

after months of searching craigslist, chad finally found a similar replacement for about $30.

another post about bathroom tile

i know i've posted about the bathroom tile sometime last year. we're basically at the same point in our bathroom remodel now as we were then. what's the hold up, you ask? money. same ole' answer. but if this bathroom remodel isn't completed by christmas, santa will be delivering divorce papers.

we went back to the tile place last weekend to revisit our quote and to check out the tiles again. because not only are we poor, we are terribly unorganized and lost our quote. the above pictures are the two contenders, which are the same as in the post from last year. i really love the color on the left but i love the crackle style and the "un-rounded" square shape on the right. mind you the tile will be subway, not 4x4 as shown in the samples. they are actually both glossy as opposed to a true matte tile but the picture doesn't really reflect that. anyways, we are working on the renovation budget to see when we can order. if the cost of all of our tile wasn't so damn expensive we'd be finished with this by now. why can't we just be comfortable buying white subway tile from the chain big box stores like everyone else??? (there's my house snob coming out. sorry.)

a funny thing happened ...

... on the way back from admiring the new additions on the fence.

we noticed one of the posts on our side entrance/porch leaning against the house. it is NOT supposed to do that. so now it is temporarily gone until we can fix it. both the posts are rotted at the bottom because the POs decided to put wood against concrete. SMART.

this effing house. i swear it is like we take one step forward (nice fence!) and eighteen steps backwards (uhhh...nice rotting posts). argh!