Saving Money by DIY.

We have a bathroom in our home, the shower in which we haven’t been able to use in close to 4 years.  Reed had tiled it years ago, but over time we developed an issue and the tiles started to fall off.    Reed blamed the kids for not taking care of things, only to discover that when he originally finished off the bathroom he’d put the window in backwards, allowing shower water to get down in under the dry wall.

heh.

Because of the ‘surgeon made holes’ Parker sports in the form of a g-tube and a trach,  I reserve one of our bathtubs for Parker only.  It’s amazing what you can catch in a bathtub, even one that gets scrubbed out daily.

This has left us with one shower for the six of us living at home now.   Now I know in days gone by people had to walk up hill both ways in morning blizzards to make it to a shower.  I should be thankful for the one that we could all share.

Bottom line is that I simply got tired of the death threats my kids were leaving each other if one of them tried to sneak a shower during another offspring’s  allotted time.  I know that parents shouldn’t play referee between those they gave birth to, but quite honestly  I have better things to do that beat on bathroom doors screaming at a kid to get their butt out of the shower so their sister could get in.

We’d work on saving up the money to re-tile the downstairs bathroom….get close…and then have something come up that required we deal with first… taking our savings with it.

I’d go online and drool at all the bathroom make overs.  ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if’s‘ swirling around in my head. DIY posts sometimes give the feeling that big projects happen in the blink of an eye, leaving a certain reader (me) with a bit of an unrealistic hope or two.

Finally we decided that we just needed to get that shower usable again. Even if we had to buy a few tiles here and a bucket of mud there until we had enough.

Which is exactly what we wound up having to do.

Reed’s doing the job himself again.  He’s doing great work, thanks to the mini class he had a guy give him this go around.

We are going simple.  Plain white tile we got a killer deal on.  A ‘racing stripe’ that while usually is double the width in most showers is just enough to break up the white in ours.  All the fixtures will stay the same.  I’m even resurrecting  an ancient shower curtain I kept just in case.  I re-did it’s seam and addressed a ton of spots.  It (almost)  looks like new.

It’s amazing how much doing it yourself can save if you have the willingness to learn a new skill, roll up your sleeves and just try.

Reed’s proud because all of the grout lines match up so well.  I’m thrilled that it’s finally a work in process instead of just on the ‘one of these days’ list.

Simple is beautiful.

Having a husband as talented as mine is such a blessing.   He’s able to do so much around here himself.  From broken sprinkler heads to bathroom repairs.

Which is good, cause there’s a funky thing going on with the floor of our other shower that needs to be addressed before the water damage causes a poor naked soul to plummet through the basement ceiling.

Bet you wish your life was as exciting as ours, huh?