Rest of the week

On Thursday Grace had school and we were supposed to have bible study that night with my Dad but it turned out that he was sick so we didn't do that. On Friday Grace had school again and then we had dinner at Julie's parents house. Saturday Julie and Grace went shopping at Kohl's while I worked on the house. Then we went to a friends house for dinner and were there too late as Grace completely lost it when it was time to come home. Then Julie packed for her business trip before we went to sleep. She left this morning and will be learning all week.

So for Grace and I we're on our own for a few days. So far things are going well. She listened pretty good today. It was Palm Sunday so we started the day at church and brought our palms home. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but when Grace goes to children's mass, she calls it Children's Mask - very cute. She was so cute right after that because the boy sitting next to her was making crosses with his palm and she wanted to make one with hers. I said I didn't know how to do that but we could try when we got home or she could offer to trade her palm for the cross he had made. She was shy and didn't want to ask, but then a few minutes later she went to ask him and he offered her the cross before she could even ask. It was really cute. If my memory serves me correctly I believe he was the boy that did the very same thing a few years ago. It's kind of funny that we were sitting by him again. We also saw Grace's god-parents there today. They usually go earlier I think so we don't normally see them at church. Which reminds me I forgot to ask Sharon how her Mom was doing after her surgery...

Church went long today and we parked in a spot we don't normally so it took awhile to get out of the parking lot. When we got home Uncle Bill was already done installing the solid vent piping to replace the existing flexible piping for the lower level bathroom fan. And we now know why the fan wasn't moving much air; some birds had set up shop in there and had it packed quite full of just about anything they could fit in there. So while I want to replace the fan because it's useless and loud, it will work at least a little now.

We also started trying to get a 220 line out to the garage to place a sub-panel out there. We ended up not having enough materials, but at least we determined a route to get it out there and got it started. Now I have a set of tasks to complete before Uncle Bill comes back (hopefully Wednesday) so we can move forward with this part of the project.

After he left I started working on the railing in the kitchen by pulling it out and trying to determine the best way to install the half-wall there. The issue is that you need to extend a 2x4 down below the level of the floor to provide support for the wall so it doesn't wobble. The problem with that issue is that under where the half-wall will be is a double 2x10 support beam/joist and at the end of this support beam is another double 2x10 support beam/joist at a 90 degree angle. To determine this I had to trim out the underlayment so I could see the support beams under the floor. I think my only option is to extend the wall a few inches past where it originally ended so that I can extend a 2x4 down against that second set of support beams. You never want to make walls protrude further into a room; especially a room that is already small and that you want to be as big as possible, but I don't see any way around it. But it's only a few inches right?

So that's the current state of the family room project. Things are close to getting to the next phase and that's very exciting. Hopefully we can get things moving along on the family room and make some serious progress. We've got to get this room done so we can move on to other rooms -- kind of like double jeopardy where the scores can REALLY change.