I remember thinking, I can't wait to own a home

...So the great Bathroom Disaster of 2008 continues. I'm really hoping we can get things back to "normal" before I go to California in August, as we've been living with tarps holding up the shower wall and a rotten floor for weeks now. We've basically been waiting on an insurance claim to go through, and -- the good news -- it has and we're getting some cash to help fix the damage. The bad news, it's not enough to cover hiring builders who all seem to want precisely one gazillion dollars to repair our rotten bathroom floor. But it helps ease the pain I suppose.

Anyway, so Granddad and I are going to do the work ourselves (well, mostly Granddad who knows more about building than Bob the Builder himself) and began prospecting today as to what kind of wood we need to replace the joists, shore up a supporting beam, et cetera. Wonderfully, we found ANOTHER entirely different leak developing under the house today that seems to have sprung from the hot water cylinder, possibly created after the plumbing repairs in the bathroom because it sure wasn't there a few weeks ago. So yet another tradesman to call and get to come in and fix something dripping under the house. It's not as bad as the original leak as it hasn't been going so long, but needs to be dealt with really quick.

All in all, it's all being chalked up to "learning experience" (as in I done learned to inspect every single inch under any future house I survive to purchase). The main difference between owning a home and renting as we did for so many years is degrees of security – you feel more secure knowing you own your house and can do anything to it. But you also feel LESS secure knowing that if something breaks it's all up to you to deal with it. Hopefully in a week or so we can actually get down to the business of yanking up this rotten floor and making it all better, and then the easier job of retiling around the bath and making this whole cursed bathroom watertight for the duration. Yee-ha. Ain't home ownership fun?

Why I feel like Tom Hanks in 'The Money Pit'

So we were feeling so very good about the house we bought six months ago. All the first-time homeowner jitters, but so far, it had been smooth sailing and everything's groovy. Until last weekend, when we discovered our entire bathroom floor is rotting out beneath us due to a very slow leak inside the wall behind the shower. This is what it looks like under the house:

Argh, argh I say. I won't get too much into it here, but basically, we had a home inspection done and this got missed, mostly due to our own stupidity. The leak is totally undetectable from inside the house and you have to crawl under the house for 30 feet or so to see the damage. Our inspector couldn't get under the crawlspace because of all the junk left there by previous owners and we waved it off. We made the fatal mistake: We assumed it was OK. Now, we get to renovate our entire bathroom!

We made a classic first home-buyer error, it seems. The leak has been going on for YEARS apparently unbeknownst to anyone as the rot is extensive, taking out much of the floor and joists underneath. I was actually stunned speechless when I discovered the damage.

Anyway, we're moving past the kicking ourselves in the head business and on to fixing it. After a plumber replaces the entire shower plumbing arrangement tomorrow, my father-in-law and I will pull up the tub and replace much of the floor, which will occupy much of my free time in the next week or two. I've been looking for an excuse to flex my non-existent handyman skills, anyway, so here we go. Without Granddad's very much appreciated help we would be far more up a creek than we are, as hopefully we can avoid using expensive contractors and the like to fix this mess. Either way, though, it's gonna take a bite. That's what you get for thinking you got a fine deal, I guess.

But ... it could've been worse:

30 Days of Bloggery: I, Handyman

Let me present a shelf. Not much of a shelf, a mere garage shelf to hold a few tools and things, but here is evidence in my ongoing quest to actually become a rather handy man in our fine new house. We didn't buy a "fixer-upper," exactly, but there are a handful of small improvements both cosmetic and functional that we're making, as I attempt to overcome my utter lack of manly skills. (Both my father and father-in-law are immensely good blokes who can build just about anything, while I have trouble assembling a sandwich.)

So far I've refitted cabinet knobs, put up shelves, painted doors and installed coat hooks, reglued weak cabinets and the like. It's all a bit hard (I have a rather frustrating habit of doing something then realizing about halfway through I'm doing it wrong and starting over) but I felt a surge of manly pride yesterday when I decided I'd put up a storage shelf or two in our semi-finished garage and actually did it without anything breaking or much cussing on my part. Now on to somewhat larger projects like cleaning and refitting the gutters, finishing the half-sheetrocked garage and installing a brick patio. Estimated completion time: 2011.

Behold -- a shelf! Many years from now when the next people buy our house and move in they will just see a shelf, but little will they know it's actually a testament to my mad fixing skillz.