The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

The Good
Did I ever mention how much I LOVE Ken. He has been home a little more lately (he has actually been home about one day a week!). He has been a tremendous help. He has painted the stairwell ceiling, helped with some major projects in the bathrooms (see the bad and the ugly), hung blinds around the house (the house had basically NO window coverings when we moved in, we have been using pieces of fabric to cover them...not so glamorous), changed Caden's diaper, and he even made dinner :)

Now that's how you change a diaper!

Dinner. Mmmm good. I think Ken needs to cook more.

This week the weather has been absolutely beautiful. We have moved walking group back outside. Hurray! After walking group on Tuesday we celebrated Emilee's birthday.

Jordan, Caden and Sarah eating the sprinkles out of the bottom of the container. Yum!

Kailyn, Jordan and their friends at the park.
L to R: Rachel, Mimi (behind), Olivia, Kailyn, Ella, Jordan

We also seem to finally be getting over a nasty cold. Caden was sick for so long. He is finally starting to act like his cute little self, not some grumpy, weepy, unconsolable child. With kids feeling better they are back to helping and playing together. Also a good thing.

Helping make lunch.

The Bad
Our upstairs bathroom was a mess when we moved in. Wallpaper half down, weird paint on the wall, and no window coverings. We have spent a lot of time ripping off the wallpaper. Ken spent a day removing the nasty paint from one of the walls, it had sand in it and took a lot of fabric softener and elbow grease to take down. So we are not really sure what to do at this point (thus the bad cause really it is a good thing that we actually were able to get some work done on it). The walls aren't texturized and that pink stuff is paint that is partially coming off (making it so we can't just paint over it) and behind the toleit is really weird walling. We're thinking that we will do a white wood panel on the bottom half and paint the top half. I think this will be the easiest way to fix a lot of the problems. I think it will look really nice, its just more than we had wanted to spend on the bathroom.

Upstairs bathroom before. The brown stuff is this awful paint that has sand in it. The wallpaper is already removed from the bottom half and the other walls.

After.

The Ugly
Earlier this week we discovered something in our downstairs bathroom. We have some water leaking into our downstairs bathroom (not going to go into a lot of detail cause it really makes my blood boil, but basically we were lied to by many involved). Can you tell what it is (the bubbly stuff was there before and is not what I am talking about)?

Black mold! We have quarantined the bathroom off and are now down to 1 bathroom...not so fun (both of our girls can be so slow, thus the reason we got a house with 2 bathrooms). Ken decked himself out in protective gear and has been knocking down the walls. The mold of course went into the insulation in the ceiling and into the walls. This bathroom was always freezing cold all winter, now we know why. There was no insulation in the walls (which are outside walls)! We have also tarred the roof in an attempt to stop further problems but it looks like we are just going to have to replace it. Oh, joy. It is really hard to put so much money into this house when we know we will be moving in 2 years. If we were going to live here for awhile then it would feel more worth it and its not like we are adding value to the house by fixing it (adding value based on how much we paid for it and how much we will be able to sell it for once the repairs are done).

Some more nasty pictures, to show the damage in the ceiling and wall.