Rednecks Can Live Anywhere...

This is a picture of my porch. Yes, that is correct. I currently have a toilet and a whirlpool tub on my porch. The toilet was taken out of our house and my father in law is going to use it in one of his rental houses, so it is sitting waiting for him to pick up. The whirlpool tub my SIL Gwen found for us for FREE from someone who didn't want it and never used it...I don't know the whole story, but anyway, they delivered it to my house but since it is for the upstairs bathroom and we are not anywhere near renovating that, it is currently sitting on my porch, too. I just posted this picture to show you that rednecks can live anywhere! Lol. I know we typically think of it as a Southern thing, but I think this picture disproves that. :o)

In other news, Lloyd got to come home for the weekend. Yay! He didn't get home until almost 10pm on Friday night, so he was pretty tired and we didn't do a whole lot. Saturday, after looking at the updates on the house, we drove to Harrisburg (about an hour away) and got the kitchen island that I had been looking at. I really wanted to get it when Lloyd was home because a) it was way too heavy for me to lift b) it would not fit in the convertible I am borrowing from Gwen while LL has the van on externship and c)--most importantly-- some assembly was required. I assumed "some" meant "most," while LL assumed "some" meant "minimal." After getting the boxes home and into the house (each box weighed nearly 100lbs!) we discovered my interpretation of "some" was far more accurate. The island top was already assembled, everything else was in pieces. So, a good portion of our day went to assembling the island:

Lloyd beginning the assembly process:


Lloyd looking thrilled with the upside-down island in process:


And finally, SUCCESS!


Here is the island in the kitchen:

The island is much bigger in our kitchen than it looked in the showroom. Imagine that? :o) We didn't actually measure it because we do have a lot of room in our kitchen, but I was surprised at the size of it. Here's what I love about the new island--first, counter space! My counter space is somewhat limited in the kitchen (compared to my last kitchen with TONS of counter and a big kitchen bar I had a love/hate relationship with-loved the bar, hated the fact that it was IMPOSSIBLE to keep junk off it), so this island greatly helps with counter space. Second, storage! Loving the fact that it has a big pull-out drawer and two shelves. And third, the breakfast bar! This island has a breakfast bar on 3 sides, so we could conceivably put up to 5 stools at it and eat in the kitchen. This is a nice option, since we want to use our dining room as a dining room, and keep our table with the leaves in there. Oh, and it also has a very cute tile top. So there you have it. Reasons I love the new island. And my husband who spent is only day off driving to and from Harrisburg and putting it together.

And last but not least, bathroom update. They did not get to finish the bathroom, but they did get the sink (a nice stainless steel laundry sink) and cabinet put it and hooked up:

Also, the shower is now all hooked up!

Tomorrow we should get the door on the shower, the toilet it, and maybe the trim around the windows and the floor. They also optimistically talked about starting the kitchen this week if we can finish the bathroom. I guess time will tell.

Lloyd left tonight for his next two-week externship, this one is about 4.5 hours away, outside Pittsburgh. It is a small-animal practice, so that will be a change for him, since the last two have had a good deal of large animal (primarily food animal) work. And that's about it for updates! Hopefully I will be able to report that I have a finished and functional bathroom very soon!