We got a new tub!

You can see how much higher the new shower stall is!

So, after spending $234.47 on a bathroom shower rod, curtains, and tub fixtures.... and $500 to resurface the tub... we realized we could no longer salvage our bathroom tub/shower. It got us through a year and then we saw the peeling start... and the fixtures actually break.

While at one point the Hot water actually came out as hot after we did some improvements, but shortly after our hard work, the fixtures we installed broke due to the horrible valves they were attached to.

Hot water was cold.... cold water was hot. When showering you'd go from glacier to boiling because you couldn't move from one water temp to the other easily... or really at all.

Bye bye crappy shower unit.

After looking into options and making a few phone calls we found out that paying $5500 for a new fiberglass tub was not an option. With only a single shower for three people, putting in fiberglass was NOT recommended. We needed something more durable to keep us with the heavy use.

So we paid $150 to have the water shut off in our building and turned back off....

We paid $170.50 for useless permits with our city... (they literally walked in, said, oh that looks nice, and left)...

Our new tub! we did a tub and three walls
that went up to the ceiling!

and we spent $7,740.00 for a new ceramic tub and shower including the following:

• We raised the shower head high so hubs wouldn't have to bend over and duck to wash his hair. The height in his own words is "miraculous." Even his dad loves it.
• We picked a wider and deeper tub for actual relaxing baths... and we didn't have to "move" any of the drains to get a larger tub in there thankfully!
• Took the shower all the way to the ceiling so we didn't have to worry about water hitting drywall.
• Had them re-pipe the tub area so hot was hot and cold was cold -- so an actual permanent fix!
• They fixed and replaced the valves that wouldn't move to allow us to adjust anything... so now we can control hot and cold water with a single finger
• They installed more storage shelves in the shower so we could get rid of the ugly shower caddies.
• And they properly installed a rounded shower rod (apparently hubs didn't tell me ours kept falling down...) 

And its amazing.

It's the best money we ever spent.

I know I say that after every home improvement project, but that's because we aren't spending money all at once. When you live with a problem for a while and learn to work around it and find out what you WANT it to do when it's done, you APPRECIATE it even more when the repairs take palce.

We use this room every day.... and by paying for nice materials, it will last us the duration of our time here, plus the next people who live here after us... which is why we bit the bullet and did this project first, even though it wasn't on our original project list.... and yes, we used Home Depot again.

Since our building has a lot of water issues, we wanted to know if something was done wrong, that it would be made right again... and it was competitive pricing.

Now, every morning, I love my bathroom.

Final look!

Slab Leak...

The tiles "affected" are the 6 right
next to the washing machine (in
front and to the left of the machine)

Yup. Title says in all for this post.

I had just come home from the HOA board meeting where I was following up on the fact that the deck above my unit STILL hadn't been replaced... and I also suggested the HOA quote out and think about installing dog poop bags because renters are NOT cleaning up after their pets.

So I get back, kick off my boots and start walking down the hall to switch out of my work clothes for my beloved mickey mouse pj's when I noticed the tile underneath my bare feet was warm... I paused and did my version of the bare foot boogie as I slid my feet around to see how much of the tile was warm. Our condo is on a boiler system so warm tiles don't always mean slab leak because sometime older pipes aren't well insulated but it seemed to only be affecting about 6 tiles in the middle of the hall and the rest were their normal chilled temperature.

Super glad hubs and I bought
casters for all our storage racks.
Made it easy for me to roll
everything out of the way for
the plumbers to get in and work.

I got on my hands and knees trying to get more info on the heat and found one tile that was really too warm to stand on for very long. After some inventive skills on Hubs' part (he swapped the dead battery out on our forehead scanner thermometer and then ran it along the various tiles since we don't have one of those fancy point and shoot temperature gauges)... we determined the warm tiles were 104 degrees and the super warm ones were over 110 because all the thermometer would do would flash HIGH Temp warnings at us.

I typed out a quick email to our HOA company, letting them know I was suspecting a slab leak in my unit. Thankfully I was adjusting hours the following day and had a planned day off, so early in the morning the plumber came by to check everything out.

The hottest tile was running 118 degrees... and he was also concerned not only about the tile temp, but the fact that the temperature dropped off so quickly with the other tiles... Since our HOA doesn't fix floor leaks by ripping out the floor... and since we had no visual water damage because i'm a vigilant homeowner...

It meant they were going to cut into my new and freshly painted and textured hallway and laundry room walls....

They started with just 2 cuts.... and then needed to turn off the water in the three buildings that are attached to the boiler.... and then that turned into 7 holes as they found the leaky pipe.

Then the fun began... they couldn't get a hold of the HOA to authorize them to actually re-route the pipe the same day.... so to stop the leak, they capped off my hot water pipe... which, since we are on a boiler system, means that everyone down the line from me also can't get hot water.... and it was a Friday, which meant if they didn't re-route the pipe that day, no hot water for me, and some of my neighbors until MONDAY....

But i'm magic. All morning long the plumbers couldn't get a hold of the HOA... but I could... and it shocked them. I called at 9 am when they went to cut into my walls to make sure the HOA would pay to repair them leak or not, and the HOA took my call to the surprise of the plumber...

and when I called again that morning for authorization for emergency water shut off, they also picked up...

so after the plumber made 5 attempts and sent 2 emails and was about to leave for the day without giving me hot water till Monday, I called the HOA and they took my call and within 2 minutes I had a verbal authorization to his supervisor and he and his extra guy started to re-route the pipe through the walls...

Instead of using another copper pipe, they installed pex piping... and I stayed out of their hair while they worked... But apparently when they were swapping out the pipe, they spilled a bunch of water in little dudes room and didn't say anything to me. Instead, we found damp floor rugs and clothes later in the day after they left...  they did a "rush" wipe up and didn't move things to get the furniture out of the way so we had to clean up after them....      :(

• We had just purchased a new memory foam mattress for little dude (a thin twin version of ours for $90 off Amazon)... and the bottom of the box was so soaked that we didn't really have a choice but to take it out of the box to make sure it was still sealed and okay... and at that point keeping it hidden from little man was no longer an option, so he's sleeping on his big boy twin sized bed now... a whole 1.5 months BEFORE his birthday... (But he's not getting his buzz light year and woody bed set until his birthday)... He's stuck with the spare blue sheets we bought him.
• AND I have to re-wash all the clothes in his "I out grew" this bag, since the bottom of the bag got all wet.... 

We may still have some warm tiles in the future without a slab leak since 4 more pipes run in that area, but it looks like we caught the leak before any water damage occurred to our property.

Apparently on Tuesday or Wednesday the Drywall guy will come by to patch the holes and texture the walls... and Thursday they will paint and touch everything up the plumbers had to cut through.

But, this is seriously having us re-consider carpet.

Knowing that all future water leaks mean pipes will go through the walls, and having the plumber talk about the moisture seepage our association has with the concrete foundation, our only flooring options since we are on the ground floor are carpet or tile.

We planned to do carpet in the bedrooms and tile everywhere else, but now we are strongly thinking tile everywhere is the best way to go... so we are going to re-quote out what it would cost to tile everything.... but that also means we would have to figure out how to move our closets if we don't carpet our master. (Our original plan was to do new carpet around the closets and leave them in place....) 

More car troubles...

I spoke at my first ever professional networking workshop, and I'm super excited to say I knocked it out the park and my room was definitely on the full side of things!!!

They even clapped and people were coming up to me afterwards telling me how much they enjoyed it, so i'm totally stoked and officially love public speaking (yup, i'm sick).

I spoke on how to sell yourself on paper to land in order to land an interview... and spent 40 minutes talking about effective resumes, cover letters, applications and letters of recommendation. 

But i'm not sure why my family is conference cursed when it comes to automobiles. Earlier this months hubs told his conference car woes, and as I was driving back from Corona to my work after I was flying high on good feel endorphins, the check engine light on my car went on...

Needless to say, for about 20 minutes I was crossing my fingers and praying I would make it to my mechanic in one piece and that my car wouldn't shut down on me on the freeway.

Thankfully, I got there safely and in one piece and they ran a quick diagnostic to read the engine light code. Apparently I had a small leak somewhere and it triggered the light to come on. The guys in the shop told me it was safe to drive for the rest of the day (so I could get back to work and pick up little dude that at daycare... but it wasn't something to "put off"). We made plans to bring it back the next day since Daycare was closed so I had the day off of work anyway.

Our mechanic has an overnight drop off option, so around 8:30 hubs and I remembered AFTER we put little man down for bed that we needed to drive the car over to the mechanic. *** Face Palm ***

Thankfully he was still driving us crazy wide awake so we took our footie dressed toddler and we took both our cars to the mechanic so we could drop mine off for the next day. On the way back home, Little dude found a new way to hold his "light saber.." 

Yup, he shoved it through the hole ring of his nighttime binky... 

It kind of made the whole forgetting to take the car before bedtime worth it. Hubs and I just cracked up laughing in the parking lot while we asked him to pause for a photo... 

Thankfully it only ended up costing us $300.76... It could have been $800, but apparently my car only broke the UNUSUAL part of the system... The EVAP VSV valve. Normally, there is a different part that normally goes bad if this part is broken (The carbon canister), but mine was fine and didn't trigger a warning light after all the checks they did. 

But so far for the month between this and hubs $388.25 Alternator repair, we are at $689 for February car repairs :( and it is very probable that my carbon canister will be a future repair since the VSV valve broke, which is a $500 job.

oh yes, and that's on top of $1,185 in dental co-pays we have paid this month to get "SOME" of the work on hubs' teeth done... He's still got some more work to do... This is why you don't put off dental work and repairs and take your hubby's word for it... just force him to go. 

Car Repairs

It wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. Thankfully not another repeat of last month, but we still needed more than an oil change.

We needed to get 4 brand new tires for Stitch (our blue Camry). They were really bad and almost to the point if not already basically being not street legal... (isn't that an awesome sentence?) which isn't great when your planning on putting a baby in the car in a few months/weeks...

So, between the oil change, the labor for the work and the 4 tires at $89 each, we gave $486.42 over to Neighborhood Car Care...

Which means we should be able to tuck away $500 to the emergency fund this month if we are on budget and trucking along, so I went ahead and line item-ed it in... as a wishful thinking cross my fingers and hope sort of way. :)

I also need to figure out when the church cannery is open so we can do that this month as well... I might just have to email a few people in the ward since when I call the number there isn't a recording for the hours and it isn't listed on the website... but if we are going to attempt to do that this month and start our baby prep classes, I need to get us a plan going.