Friday, March 30, 2012

DIY Spectating is Painful.

I'm getting close to the end of pregnancy, and instincts are setting in. I want to bake and cook and freeze and clean and eat a lot of chocolate. But I don't have time (except for the chocolate-eating, which I make time for), so I bought about 4000 muffins and 2 kg of cheese from the Muffin Shop, and froze all of it instead. A couple of weeks ago I started scheduling a bunch of blog posts to post, so if the blog has a bit of a rote feel at the moment, that's why (I know it may not be working too well).

Work, light though it is, and PhD has turned out to be a bad idea for right now, 8 months pregnant. And I don't mean that in a look-at-me-I'm-doing-so-much kind of way. I mean it as Advice to Anyone Who is Listening: Don't do it. The consequences are being grumpy and tired, which are stupid consequences to take on, unless you really have to. I'm just really bad at giving up, so I'll press on until April 11, the day I hope to submit my ethics application and my midwife comes over to check out our not-very-zen home birthing environment. After April 11, I'm not sure what I'll do. Probably a lot, but hopefully not.

I just re-read this paragraph and it sounded like I'm busier than I am. Life is still very good, there's just not the space for reading or thinking or dreaming or knitting or trying new things. Which I have in common with many pregnant moms, work or PhD or not, I suspect.

Eug is working on the bathroom and I've decided DIY-spectating is really painful. If you ask Eug, I think he'd say DIY-doing is also pretty painful. Right now I'm useful only as a babysitter - wait, I guess that's called mother. We haven't showered in two weeks, so I'm really grateful that I don't wash my hair (or my body much), because despite growing up washing my hair in tubs, I look back on those days of bathtub hair washing with horror.

Here are cool pictures to reward you for making it this far:

Before

Also Before. Our wall has a major problem with damp, but the house is over 100 years old and the bricks are 4-deep, so we're not worrying about the structural integrity of the house: it's built to last, if not to be changed. [also, the plans from the house were burned in a city fire in the 60s, so we're not bound by the usual Heritage Laws when purely hypothetically thinking about one day breaking down walls or trying to have a bath inside our bedroom]

Also Before
Lastly, the shower before

And now. The brick on the damp wall has been exposed for about 2 weeks, which is a good amount of time to allow it to dry out before starting anew. The piping is all new, though Eug reused what he could. Eug knows so much about plumbing and copper piping after this project. The washer now drains directly into the drain (rather than into the shower, which was gross when we were washing poopy diapers)
And Now- the new toilet is connected, so we can use it (yippee!), but the sink is just a placeholder as Eug will take it off and tile the wall before putting it back- unfortunately the pipes didn't have an off switch or valve, so the tap needs to be connected or we'd be flooded.

And Now. The washing machine has since been hooked up.
And Noah: Not washing diapers anymore (for the past 4 weeks, and for the next 4 weeks before Tiny blob arrives) is heaven. Elimination Communication keeps looking better.

Soon, there will be AFTER pictures! Exciting times- please stay tuned.

3 comments:

Vanessa said...

Wow...huge props to you and Eug for taking on such huge DIY projects! I'm not sure I could handle that much...I tend to get very panicky when the projects get too big and my DIY skills are stretched to the max. But I'm glad your outlook remains positive, and the before and after shots truely can make it all worth the effort!!! :) I can't wait to see your afters! Wishing you much patience and endurance...Vanessa

Concrete Gardener said...

Vanessa, it's so good to hear from you. I'd love to see how your house is doing. Another winter wintered =).

Thank you so much for the encouragement- we need it!

Linda said...

Wow, looks like a big job. Well done to Eug for doing this, I'm sure it's going to look awesome when done!