The Money Pit

The renovations on the house continue full-tilt. On Thursday much of the existing bathroom was removed. Unfortunately, it left a whole in the floor that our cat Lou managed to squeeze into. Roger and I spent an hour late on Thursday night trying to figure out where Lou had gone to -- we could hear the frantic meowing in the wall. It turns out he crawled into the floor joists and then went up into a wall and out into a crawlspace that is closed off from the rest of the house. Roger used a hammer to break through the drywall and rescue a very dirty Lou. When we broke through into the crawlspace it revealed that when the house was renovated by the previous owners they did not replace what minimal insulation was there and did not add insulation to the walls that had none. So now, in addition to the work we had already signed up for, we are pulling down drywall and adding insulation. It will be good to get the crawlspace cleaned out (the carpenter also found the remains of several poisonous brown recluse spiders), but it adds time and expense to our project. Yesterday they removed the rest of the bathroom and most of the walls. You can see how big the new baby's room will be and can start to visualize our new bathroom -- so that's exciting!

This morning we awoke expecting to be snowed in (at least for Tennessee - the forecasters predicted 3-5"). We were disappointed to see only a dusting. We bundled Mary Clare up and took her out around 8:30 and she seemed to have fun watching her feet make prints in the snow. By 12:30 it was all gone!