Back to normal - FINALLY!

After several weeks of craziness, we finally have our house (mostly) back to normal. It's taken a lot of patience and a lot of work. Here are some final pictures of the process.

With everything tore up, we took the opportunity to repaint. And we did a LOT of painting. The biggest hassle was the kitchen - we ended up painting it THREE times. Unfortunately, we ended up with some bad paint from Sherwin Williams and it didn't go on very smoothly. After putting on two coats of the bad stuff, we realized we needed another type of paint. It was nice of Sherwin Williams to give us a free gallon of something else, but it still didn't make up for the countless hours we spent going around all of the nooks and crannies in our kitchen. It's still not perfect, but after three coats, it will just have to do!

Once the painting was done, it was finally time to get the floors in. Our contractor started in the kitchen, so everything had to go into the living room. We had all of our furniture put in a P.O.D., but we left the appliances in the house.

So, here's our stove and washer/dryer hanging out in the living room (along with everything from our pantry).

The refrigerator was moved into the living room too. I'm impressed he moved all of the appliances by himself!

Here's the tile as it's going into the kitchen.

And, here's the process of the wood flooring going in.

And, here's the finished tile - hooray! I think the porcelain tile makes a big difference in the kitchen. I'm glad we were able to upgrade!

Here's what it looks like in our kitchen.

Here's a closeup of our new wood flooring. It's hickory and I think it turned out beautifully!

Here's what it looks like in the living room. We also got a new floor lamp. We've had some money left over from insurance, so we've been able to get some other new things.

Another view of the living room. Now we just need to get a coffee table and area rug and we'll be all set!

We also got a lamp for the top of the piano. I love having lots of light, so I'm thrilled about my new lamps!

So, there you have it - our house is finally put back together again! We're so thrilled. Thanks to everyone who helped out along the way - Garth's parents, Blair, Kyle, Jason, Jan and Dan. We appreciate your help with painting and moving furniture around. We're blessed to have friends and family like you!

Reliving old times

A few weeks ago, we got the wild idea revisit an old Haunt of ours - Silverado's. Garth and I used to go to this place with his group of friends even before we were dating, which was almost seven years ago!

This place is a TRUE honky tonk. It's off the beaten path and has very serious group of line dancers who come on a regular basis. The reason we went (and used to go) was for the wonderful beer special. So, after watching Mizzou get beat by UConn, we decided to take our group on this wonderful adventure.

Here's Garth and I cheesing once we get there - we really can't believe we went along with the idea to go!

Here are the guys trying to act tough or re-enact a college frat boy look. I think they did well, don't you think?

Me and the girls. And yes, that's a boxing game behind us. It was really classy. It was a game where a boxing glove drops down and you hit it as hard as you can. We watched MANY macho guys try and prove how strong they are by punching this thing. We were very impressed. ;)

Blair and Jan take a turn on the dance floor. They were actually brave enough to two step. The rest of us just watched. Did you check out that cowboy hat? There were plenty of those...and big belt buckles to go along with it. I think this is the only place in Nashville where the people wearing cowboy hats and such are NOT tourists.

At the end of the night, we stopped at Waffle House for a late night snack. It's been a LONG time since we have done anything like that. It made for a very college-like evening, but it was a fun time!

Climb Every Mountain...ok, maybe just one

A few days after the great flood, we went to Gatlinburg with some friends of ours. Dan, our good friend, was turning 30, so we went to a cabin in East Tennessee to celebrate. The main event was hiking in the Smokey Mountains. We hiked up Chimney Top, which was about a 3 hour hike. This was my first mountain hike! Since Garth was a boy scout, he'd done it several time before.

Here's our group heading up the trail.


Jan and Dan pose on the bridge.

Bridget, Chris and Baby Tennyson. Tennyson was only 8 weeks old during the trip! I was impressed that Chris hiked the whole way with her in tow.

Here's a better picture of her. Isn't she cute in her hat?

And here's another picture of Tennyson in the car. What a sweet girl!

Garth showing his serious thinker and rock star poses on the bridge.

The babbling brook below.

So pretty!

Once we got to the top of the mountain, we saw this cute little squirrel. It was really friendly!

Dan makes it to the top!

After some encouraging, we decide to climb up the rock face to make it to the top. We're glad we did! What a view!

Here's one of the pictures from the top. Those streaks in the photo is the road down at the bottom of the mountain.

A panoramic view from the top of the mountain. It was so peaceful up there!

Our group at the top (minus Bridget and Tennyson).

After taking in the view for a while, we had to climb back down.

It was a great trip. Thank you for having us, Jan and Dan!

Flood Report

It's been almost a month since my last post, so I thought it was high time I gave an update on how things are coming along with our flood recovery. You know me, so I've taken pictures along the way so you can see what we've been dealing with.


A couple of days after the flood, ServiceMaster (not my favorite, but that's another story) brought industrial fans to dry out the floors. I learned that concrete floors take FOR-EV-ER to dry, which is why we had SEVEN industrial fans in our house (along with a dehumidifier and air purifier) in the house for a week.

Here's a photo of one of my "little friends". Don't let this little thing fool you - it's awfully powerful. It felt like a wind tunnel in our house!

The Friday after the flood, ServiceMaster came to pull up the floors. I learned our hardwoods were glued down, which turned out to be a pain for them to remove. Glue = sticky mess. They had to come another day to use chemicals to get the glue up. Quite a process!


Here is the vinyl flooring coming up. This was exciting for us as we were glad to see it go! We've replaced it with porcelain tile, so I'm excited to show those pics once it is finished.

If you've been following me on Facebook or Twitter (yes, I signed up for Twitter and you can follow me at www.twitter.com/lauraclick), you know that I've mentioned the toilet in the living room. Isn't this a nice touch? It made a great coffee table for several days.

I have more pictures to share, but this is start. I promise there will be more to come. I know I've complained a bit about our house being torn up for more than a month, but I am very thankful that I even have a house at all. In the scheme of things, this is small stuff to do deal with compared to those without jobs, homes, etc. I'm thankful for all of our blessings - even this big mess!

ADDITION: I forgot to mention that Garth is on Twitter too! You can follow him at www.twitter.com/garthclick

Water, water everywhere...

On Tuesday night, I came home to Casa del Agua. That's right, our home had become a lake. It turns out that our neighbor had a pipe break and it flooded his place AND ours. It was lovely. Our entire first floor was soaked. Thankfully, Bailey was at daycare, so she discovered the disaster with me. I can only imagine what she would have done with water flooding in. Then again, she might have just slept through the whole thing!

I was supposed to be meeting my friend, Katie, to celebrate St. Patty's Day. Instead, she rushed over to help me survey the damage and start moving things. Garth's parents arrived with shop vac in tow and thanks to them, we got all of the water up. There was so much water that it filled the shop vac three times.

The water is gone, but there is some serious damage to our floors. Below are a few pictures of the damage, though it's a bit hard to see.

The water in our living room.

The water standing in our dining room.

Here's what's left of our area rug. It was so saturated and it took quite an effort for Katie and I to drag the rug out of the house.

For the best sense of the damage, here's a video I took. The adjuster came today and it looks like we will be able to get some new flooring out of the ordeal! I'll be sure to take pictures of the process. More to come!

Birthday Bash

On Saturday, we had a bunch of friends over to celebrate Garth's birthday. We had a bunch of food and I wanted to make a fantastic cake for Garth. I normally like baking and think my stuff turns out pretty good, but let's just say the cake was a bit of a disaster. I did a three-layer chocolate cake and wanted to decorate it really nicely. But, to no avail....


For some reason, the icing was so heavy, the cake started to totally fall apart. Garth claimed this look fine, but the longer the cake sat there, the more it started to fall apart. It was like a cake avalanche!

At this point, Garth started laughing and I so did I (though I felt like an utter failure in the cake making department). I certainly didn't want to let the cake go to waste. It still tasted great, after all. What to do? We got creative...

Let me introduce you to the "Birthday bowl!" I dumped all of the cake and icing into a huge mixing bowl and stirred it up. I attempted to decorate the top. Since it was a bit lumpy, it looks like a three-year-old wrote it, but oh well.

Here's Garth with his Birthday Bowl! Happy Birthday, Garth!

Our friends, Jan and Dan came for the festivities.

Here's me with my gal pals, Jan and Cara.

Blair and Jason joined the fun.

Here's the Springfield Lawyers Group - Rosemary, Garth and Jared.

And, last but not least, here's Garth and I. We had a great time (despite the cake disaster) and hope everyone else did too. Thanks for helping make Garth's birthday so fun!