Plot Twist!

Along with all the fun things in life, we, of course, have chores and improvements and repairs that make the fun stuff seem like way more fun!  

Emily cleaned out her closet, and that means that I needed to clean out the twins' clothes, so that the clothes we moved down from Emily had somewhere to go!  This is the finished product, i do wish I had taken a before picture, but it looks much better, trust me!

Toward the end of school, a rather large rock found my windshield, right in front of the driver's side seat!!!  It was so terribly distracting that I was able to get it repaired that same week!  I had to call my mechanic for a reference, but was super happy with his recommendation!  The repair guy came to us!

They repaired sections of the sidewalk here in town, which made everything look really ugly for a short while, but now looks much better!  The grass still hasn't filled in, despite the seed they spread, because we just haven't had the rain!

The next job was the road, which was far less convenient, particularly in the mornings when we would have down time between dropping off the big girls and dropping off the little ones.  Usually, we came home and gathered missing items, went to the bathroom, or made breakfast, but during this time it was very inconvenient.  One time, we practically ran to the school, because it was easier than trying to drive it (but we left kind of late!)

Our washer's warranty is out, and it was making sad washing machine noises, so we called out a tech to see what the problem was.  For $90 he told us that we had a broken piece that stabilized the load.  

The washer was still in operation, but I didn't want it to fail completely, so Billy ordered a new part, and we set out to replace the broken piece. First, we had to 'break' out the old piece.  Then we were supposed to use a very specific tool, with a wide top and short handle.  We didn't have this particular tool, but we tried to make do with several other pieces, to no avail.  (top picture shows the broken bit, bottom picture shows how it is supposed to look)

As I was crawling out from behind the washer, my jeans caught on the side of the wall, and ripped out a huge chunk of the drywall.  Lovely.

Anyhow, we both fought the washer for about and hour, and finally threw in the towel (not literally.)

I used some hot glue to put back up the larger pieces, but of course it looked terrible and we had failed at repairing the washer to boot! 

I messaged my friend Tabitha, who lives just a few blocks away, to see if her very handy husband might be interested in taking a side job to repair the wall.  Not only did he get the wall back to rights, but also had the proper tool to repair the washer!!!

Alls well that ends well I suppose, but it is nice to have everything in order.  The paint he used was something I found at a thrift store.  The room is dark enough that you really can't tell, except for from one side, in the daylight (but I'm totally not even worried about it, since the orange color isn't really my thing.)

At an estate sale I found some upholstery cleaner, and my poor sad dining chairs were in desperate need of cleaning, so I thought "well it can't make it any worse..."

And it actually worked sooooooo well!  The seats don't look like new, but they look like someone actually cares!

Scotch Gard, should you want to try it on some of your furniture.

It feels nice to share the resolved issues of the past few months!  Hope you enjoyed these riveting tales. ; )

later days