Which is more "redneck?"

My husband and I purchased a house some two and a half years ago (time flies) and from the start, there's been a small, rusty old shed in the back of our yard that we kind of want to get rid of. There's a problem though, and you better believe this problem is related to our "Stuff" issue.

Let me, briefly, start at the beginning. When we bought this house, we knew we'd have to redo the bathrooms. The master bath had a huge leak somewhere, somewhere being to the point that we had to strip the whole room to the studs and redo a lot of the plumbing. This was fine; we planned for it.

We also attempted to save money by seeing if we could scrounge up a tub and toilet for free, as Smiley has a lot of friends who are also maintenance type guys and property manager type guys and those type guys sometimes have extra tubs and toilets floating around.

So we spent one Saturday crawling to the top of a steep backyard hill to reach a rusty old shed at a friend's house to take and remove two bathtubs. It is not exactly easy to bring a tub down a steep hill that is overgrown with vines and what were once small trees. But free is free, we figured. Right until we realized that the tubs were oriented in the wrong direction for our bathroom. Our friend benefited from having two tubs gone from his collection of Stuff and we, well, we had two tubs that we couldn't use but didn't necessarily want to get rid of because they were tubs and could eventually someday be useful.

We spent another Saturday in similar fashion, though a different place and people, obtaining three toilets. Free toilets. Three free toilets that we did not end up using either when we decided the toilet already in the bathroom was actually not leaking. Well, now we had three free toilets that we could maybe someday use when we probably needed to replace the current toilets. Someday.

These items languished in our garage for a bit until our garage needed to be a place for different Stuff and then the tubs and toilets migrated to our shed. Then the shed got hit by a tree and now in addition to being old and rusty, it is also partially, mostly caved in. We really need to rip it down. There's actually a little foundation underneath it that I want to use as a small patio. Maybe put a firepit on it or something. Except then we get back to the problem of the tubs and toilets. They could still be useful.

Actually, I think Smiley said we could put the tubs out but he wanted to keep the toilets. Or something. But despite the partially caved-in, rusted shed being an eyesore on our property, he postulates that taking the toilets and temporarily storing them on our gazebo is too redneck. Moreso than having an old, falling apart shed. I'm sure you can tell I don't 100% agree with this.

Until we figure out what to do, I'm just going to go back to wishing that the tree branch that partially collapsed the shed was big enough to put it out of its misery. Maybe crushing a few toilets on the way. But I figure I'm not that lucky.

Moving all the furniture

Today we moved my favorite nursing chair into the bedroom. I'm not sure yet how this will work out. It's my most comfortable place to nurse, so logically if I need to nurse at night (as Silas will be in our room for the foreseeable future) and I want to sit in it, I can easily. At the same time, now I can't nurse in my favorite chair in the living room while watching reruns of Monk.

It's probably for the best; what would have happened when I ran out of episodes of Monk?

But more to the point, it gets the chair out of the living room and we're planning on remodeling in our living room... soon...ish. Basically we're going to take down the fireplace.

This might be one of those cases where "we're" means Smiley will take down the fireplace and I'll provide support.

This might also be one of those cases where "support" means I'll nag him to finish the project so I can go back to nursing in the living room in my favorite chair while watching reruns of Monk.

We'll see how it goes.

I am pretty excited though. A lot of times, Smiley and I have remodel ideas that differ slightly though not significantly, but enough that we need to compromise often. Getting rid of the fireplace is fine by the both of us. We've never used it, although I did shove some candles in it and burned them, once. Then the hearth area got stacked up with Stuff. Then Smiley moved his weights in front of it.

Once the fireplace is gone, we'll have extra space. I know that extra space = extra Stuff, but hopefully that will be kept to a minimum. Instead, we'll do some built in shelves for storage and for the TV and gaming systems. Of course, it'll be hilarious to see how much time goes by before I blog about the end of this project.

I'll be accepting bets for the timeline. See me for the odds.