D-I-Y

Hello dear readers.

I thought I'd update on the apartment saga. We were told we could live above Porter's but then the plumbing had a lot of problems and it looked like they had given up on it. They got the plumbing all fixed so it didn't leak everywhere, and we were told, again, that we could live over there. So I went over last weekend and cleaned the kitchen. Nobody had lived in the apartment for ... 5 or 6 years. I found Ramen in the cabinet that expired in 2003. Everything had a nice coating of dust and there was some pretty ugly contact paper that I ripped out. I'd rather have painted drawer bottoms than ugly contact paper, but maybe that's just me. I washed everything down with bleach so I knew it was clean. There is a TON of storage over there. I don't know what we're going to do with all the cabinets. As of now ALL of our food fits in one cabinet. We don't buy very much. Maybe with the cheaper rent we'll be able to afford filling our cabinets!

So I cleaned up the kitchen which has two flour bins, as mom calls them. I don't know what we're going to put in them. Anyways, so there's a window above the kitchen sink, which I love, because it reminds me of home and makes doing the dishes a little less boring, even if it only looks out over the Porter's roof. We don't have a refrigerator, and we could take one from any of the other apartments, as long as it works. We will probably do that for a little while, but we're thinking about buying ourselves an inexpensive fridge anyway - since we're not even sure that any of the other fridges work (and most of them are pretty nasty-looking anyway). Other than that, we have a range, which is dirty inside, but works. We've wiped down all of the woodwork to remove 6 years worth of dust - which was actually not as bad as you might think. We are so excited to move - even if we do have to leave our ward and live up there by ourselves. There is so much space and storage and it's so much cheaper that it's completely worth it.

So yesterday Chad had the day off and I only had one class (2 of my classes - ensemble classes - have had their concerts and so are no longer meeting) so we went over there and cleaned some more. He tried to fix the bathroom while I washed things. The bathroom sink was running even though the knob was turned all the way off, the cold water knob was busted off in the shower, the piping under the bathroom sink was leaking and the toilet had brown water stains all over it from not being used. I told him that if we moved over there, he had to clean and fix up the bathroom. So we took about 4 or 5 trips to a local hardware store. I convinced Chad to go to the "local guys" because they were more likely to have guys there who knew what they were talking about, as opposed to the new Ace Hardware by WalMart that hires college kids who don't know anything. He went in there looking for the magnetic stud finders that are like $2 or whatever, and the kid was like "Yeah, I don't even know what that is."

So anyways, we went over to Mickelson's where we met a fairly old Mr. Fix-It who reminded me a lot of Dad. He knew pretty much everything about everything. He was able to look at the parts we brought in and listen to our problems and tell us how to successfully fix them. Chad didn't like being talked to like he didn't know anything, but Mr. Fix-It was right, so he listened. We ended up buying a new faucet because the parts Mr. Fix-It told us we needed to replace to fix the running sink water were nowhere to be found inside the cheap old faucet they had surely bought from walmart for 5 bucks. So we bought a new faucet, a new pipe for underneath the sink, a new toilet seat, a new screen for the kitchen sink, and new knobs for the bathtub. And Chad has successfully installed everything but the cold water knob for the bathtub. It's a long story, but he has to make something to replace the stem that's broken off, and then glue the nob to it so we can turn on the water. It's not the most professional solution, but we don't want to pay to have all of that plumbing replaced, and we can't exactly ask the Porter's to do it since they're kind of doing us a really big favor by letting us live there.

Other than the cold water in the bathtub, and Chad having to fix the linoleum in the bathroom, we are ready to move in! Chad is excited that he won't have to open the bedroom door and stand in the doorway to have enough room to bowl on the Wii. That WILL be an excitement. The extra room also means that we can move out of our storage unit and stop paying for that. Yay! And we got a parking permit to park overnight in the Porter's lot so we don't have to park a block away by the movie theaters. We were excited about that too. And there are at least 8 windows in the new apartment. EIGHT! We only have 2 right now! And we can have people over it we want, and not have to sit elbow to elbow just to fit everyone in the door.

Anyways, we're excited. I wish we had taken some before pictures, but we didn't. We'll post some "after" pictures soon.