Day 40 - Monday (Window and a Door)

I know I mentioned it before, but it's just so cool!! Today, Shane made our kitchen window sit a little bit further out in the opening. This is important because where I didn't really have room for a decent windowsill before, now I do! It needs to be finished off now, of course, but look at the space:

Before

After

Also today, Brad came over to get all the materials ready for tiling! He wanted to know that pattern we wanted, and I couldn't remember what it was called. I had to run back to Dorothy's house and get my "drawer" full of remodeling stuff as well as my computer. In the end, I went through Firefox's history, looked at sites I visited the day we ordered tile, and finally found the one that had a really good tile calculator. On that site, I had selected a pattern, and here I found it again: hopscotch. I felt kind of dumb not remembering, but at least Brad was patient with me! You can see the beginnings of what the pattern will look like:

Exciting!

So as I mentioned Saturday, we have decided to replace the back door. We are also hoping that Ashley Furniture can get or new couch downstairs while this doorway has both its door and jam off. So Pieter and I bought a new door at Home Depot during our marathon shopping trip on Saturday. Shane wisely had us bring him measurements, and not surprisingly, when he looked at our existing door today, he realized that a standard door will not fit in that space! Our options at this point are to order a custom door, which isn't much more expensive, but would not be done by Tuesday (thus, no couch!) or else have Shane replace the header above the door. Guess which option won? 

Sigh. More work for Shane. More money from us.

While Shane was telling me about the door, Pieter called. Today is President's Day, and since he's home from school, he thought he'd try to replace Dorothy's garbage disposal. So he tried to get the pipes loose, and one of them broke. Thankfully Shane was standing right there when Pieter called to ask me for some additional supplies. I explained the problem to Shane, and he said, let me just go down there and give him some advice. "Some advice" turned out to be telling Pieter what to go buy at the plumbing supply store, and then returning a half hour later to install the disposal. Pieter asked Shane to just add this to our bill, but Shane declined. He said this was a favor for Dorothy. (Shane is Dorothy's neighbor) What a great guy. What would we ever do without Shane??