I feel like this past week was our first real week of the new year. Last week (which feels like SO LONG AGO) was full of wedding festivities, etc. so it felt like an extension of the holidays. It is nice to be back to a routine. Nothing particularly monumental happened this week except one project we have been discussing for … the whole time we’ve lived in our house.

When we moved into the house neither of the bathtubs were fit to bathe a child in. We actually bathed Fay and Carter in the kitchen sink for about two months because I didn’t dare put them in either of the tubs. We put a shower mat down in the one downstairs that Josh and I used while we scraped old paint off the upstairs tub and walls, and then repainted the tub because we were in no position to replace it. If you are ever considering painting your tub just for aesthetics, my recommendation is do. not. do. it. It doesn’t last very long and when it stops lasting it is quite terrible. Anyway, we’ve been using the upstairs tub, painted, for the past 3.5 years and it is starting to “stop lasting” so we knew we needed to do something soon. We promised ourselves when we stripped it and painted it the first time that we would never do it again, and we still feel that way. But we don’t want to be without a bathtub–especially since we have twice the number of children now–so we decided to do the downstairs tub first and then use that one while working on the upstairs one.

Josh wanted to do it himself in the interest of conserving resources, and I have been really impressed by how thorough he is being. I was nervous about DIYing something that had potential to leak without us realizing and Josh has allayed my fears significantly by doing lots of research and refusing to cut any corners. I truly believe he has done a superior job to the original work.

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Now the old tub is out, the new tub is in, the old tub surround (which is newer and we really like) is back in along with a new faucet, shower head, and drain system. And, as far as we have been able to observe, there is no leaking! (We saw that there had been leaking before. Good thing we didn’t use it much.)

Other than that (and I do admit that remodeling bathrooms is significant) we have been enjoying doing normal-type stuff like school, reading stories, and even doing some dishes.

Here are some pictures.

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Also on Saturday, Josh helped the kids build a house out of cardboard boxes (the one the tub came in was particularly exciting!) Here is a video tour!

Next week’s project is supposed to be potty-training Portia. Wish me luck!