Holiday Trips Not As Planned and a New Year

Note: This blog was written in January, but we're just now getting around to editing and posting it.

Here it is the end of January in the new year of 2013 and we are back at our house up north. I am sure you are asking why we have not had any other posts of all the work we planned for the end of last year?  Well the past couple of months did not work out as we had hoped and here are the details from the end of 2012.

Our vacation week for Thanksgiving did not happen for multiple reasons. The first was that our tile guy, Joe, called to say he had come down with that awful flu that was affecting so many people at the end of the year and would not be able to do our tile work.  We still planned to come up and enjoy our vacation week, but then Laurie hurt herself and was not feeling 100% and we thought it would be better to stay home.  Mike actually ended up going into work for a couple of days to save his vacation time. Matt did come to Gilbert to spend the Holiday with us and he and Mike took a day trip up to Payson to check on the place, deliver some items and get the mail.  We bought a new 3D Blu-Ray player to go with our new 3D TV and had bought some movies to play on it, which we had shipped directly to Payson since we were planning on being there.  Matt has been needing tools for some projects he is working on, so we also took the opportunity to sort through the tools we got from my Mom looking for duplicates that he could have.  We were able to find most of his wish list.

Since the Thanksgiving trip was a bust, we considered spending the Christmas break in Payson. However, we had a time share week that was going to expire near the beginning of the year, and we found a week in Sedona during Christmas, so we opted to stay there instead of in Payson.  At the end of that week, we drove back to Gilbert through Payson and checked on the house.  There had been snow, both in Sedona and Payson, just a few days before, but the roads were clear and it was a nice day for the trip home.

We finally had a free weekend away from the holidays and other activities and made it up to the house for a full weekend at the end of January.  Due to the colder weather and the house being winterized, we have not yet scheduled Joe to do the tile work we planned for last year.  But we were hoping to have some fun in Payson, see some friends and maybe do a little bit of work around the yard.  Those plans did not work out as it rained all weekend and our friends had other plans out of town.  So it was a mostly quite weekend in the house, but we did have our first water leak.

When we woke up Saturday morning, Laurie noticed a small puddle on the floor in the master bathroom. Since we were not sure if this was due to the rain or water pipe for the sink, we cut away the drywall around the sink pipes.  We found that the leak was coming from the shark bite connection for the cold water valve and there was no leaking in the wall - good news.  After turning off the water to the house and pulling off the connection, we found that the water pipe (which was not new) was very rough on the end.  We are guessing that the shark bite did not make a great seal because of this.  We re-attached the connection and turned the water back on.  It seems to be holding for now, but we plan to either replace these pipes back to the source or at least splice in new ones at a later date when it isn't rainy and muddy under the house.

New hole in the wall to access pipes.  The leaky one was on the right.

As we were packing up to return to the Valley on Monday, the rain stopped and out came the sun.  Perfect timing!

Stats: 0 Home Depot trips; 1 Walmart trip
Remodeling expense 11/6/12-1/28/13: $261
Remodeling expense (including furnishings) to date: $45,645