Holiday and Remodeling Update!

we have been busy! for Xmas, we traveled north to "Donkey-town" to see Brooke's parents. we had a great time there. we racked up with some Lowe's gift cards! woohoo! we both had to work Friday and Saturday, so we had to come home late Thursday night.

our remodeling is coming along, too. it's hard to get alot of stuff done just in the evenings, but we're doing well. we FINALLY got all the wallpaper off in the dining room. we bought an electric sander to smooth out the rough patches, and it worked great. as i type, brooke is peeling wallpaper in the foyer near the front door. i enlisted my buddy Ryan from church to help me do some demolition in the master bathroom. we have completely removed the shower pan now. so it's just subflooring exposed now. we've still got some to remove from the old tiled walls, but it's coming along!

we'll head to "Monkey-town" for New Year's with my parents. we hope to post pictures soon of our holidays and the remodeling.

hope everyone has a great new year!

Merry Xmas 2008

Adios Avocado!

so this was our master bathroom. a couple of things to note here:

1. this photo was taken from an adjoining doorway to a spare bedroom. ergo, this isn't truly a "master" bathroom....more like a "jack and jill" setup. we will eventually wall off that doorway, making it a true master bathroom.

2. the large shower stall to the left is now gone. years of lime and calcium deposits almost prevented me from unscrewing it, but a little C-L-R loosened it right up. before buying the house, our home inspector told us about a leak in this shower pan. he estimated it would cost about $3,000 to repair it. sooooo.....we decided not to pursue that. we will instead install a shower head in the current tub to make that a shower/tub combo. where the shower is now will be where the toilet will soon be. which leads to note #3....

3. just below view to the right in this picture is our current toilet. it quite literally is the "stinkpot"....you know, when one person is just stuck in the middle of a big group. that's what it feels like where it is. it's kinda like they got so excited to have a full shower and a separate tub in one room that they forgot to plan for a place to put the toilet. so they said, "we'll just stick it here in the middle of the floor....". crazy.

4. please note the colors. avocado green tiles with avocado green countertops with avocado green striped wallpaper. somebody REALLY liked avocado green. i guess that was a sign of the times. anyhoo, any and every thing avocado will be removed.

5. how do you like the hanging light? i'm not judging, but if it was me, i would have picked a light that didn't hang in front of that cabinet door....you know.....so you don't bang into it every time you open that door. just a thought....

to date, in this bathroom, we have:

*striped the wallpaper
*scraped off the popcorn ceiling
*dismantled the shower
*broken off all the tile (shower and tub) - very time consuming

and that has taken the better parts of 5-6 days. we haven't taken pictures really since then, so we'll try to take a "demolished" picture soon. we'll be working quickly to get started on building it back up the way we want.

As of 3 pm today....

...Brooke will be finished with this semester!!! woohoo!!! she has done awesome so far. one of her habits is to figure out what she needs to make on her final to either pass the class or get a certain letter grade. since she's done so well this semester, she only had to make like a 12 in some of her classes to pass. i think she needed a 46 today to pass. anyhoo, she's done great, and i'm so proud of her! i know she's ready to have a break from studying and working on projects for school. now, she'll have some time to work on some house projects!

check back soon for bathroom remodel updates. we're bustin' up some tile!!!

Remodeling update (with photos!)

we have been tearing up our bathrooms in our house, but in a good way. we had started pulling down the wallpaper in our master bathroom. that came down MUCH easier than we thought. so today, i finally disassembled the old shower stall. that's where i'm standing on the ladder in the first picture. we have decided to remove that shower b/c there is a leak in the shower pan. it would cost an estimated $3,000 to get that repaired. we don't like the layout of the bathroom as it is right now, so we'll move stuff around. we'll put a shower head with the current tub, and move the toilet to where the shower is now. it already looks much better with those glass doors down. then, we started scraping off the popcorn ceiling in the master bathroom. that, again, is alot easier than i thought it would be. so we got that done.

then, we pulled off the wallpaper in the half bath downstairs and the full bath upstairs (the old cherry wallpaper). again, that came off REALLY easy. we were pumped. we wanted to keep working, so we started to pull the wallpaper off in the foyer at the front door.

big mistake.

that stuff is stuck on firm. as easy as the rest of the wallpaper has been, this wallpaper is that stuck on. so, we halted for the night. we'll have to score it, and soak it with wet newspaper to get it off. that will be a chore. but we got really lucky not having to do that for all our bathrooms.

so we've made progress. we can't wait to get all the popcorn off and the paint on the walls!

Happy Birthday Baby!

the love of my life turned 26 today! i'm so proud to be her husband. i tell her this all the time, but it's weird to think back when i was a kid about how i tried to dream of what my wife would be like. the funny thing is: in my wildest dreams, i never thought i could be this happy. i didn't think it was possible to love someone so much. i'm so thankful for her.

i hope you're birthday was great! i love you!

Thanksgiving weekend update

we had a wild weekend. we both had to work on Wednesday, so we planned to head to Montgomery to stay with my parents that night. well, plans changed. i developed waht i can only describe as "a headache from the dark side" late Wednesday afternoon. it knocked me on my back where i had to miss church that night. i can't think of the last time i've been too sick for church. it was bad. anyhoo, i woke up for about 30 minutes after brooke got home from church, just enough to try to eat some crackers, then back to bed. i was fine by the morning, thank goodness. brooke took such good care of me. i'm a pitiful patient. :)

we spent all Thanksgiving day at my mom's parents' house in Fort Deposit, AL, which is just a bit below Montgomery. we had a great time there seeing my side of the family.

we did get some bad news while we were there, though. that morning, brooke's grandfather, Marvin Pressnell or "Gandy", passed away. he was 80 years old. it was somewhat sudden, but his health and mind had been frail for years. he was a faithful Christian his entire life, which gives us more peace than we can describe.

so, we came back to work on Friday. after work, we drove up to Decatur for the weekend with brooke's parents. we had a great time there, too. we had the funeral Sunday afternoon. brooke's dad and her brother Chris conducted the funeral. it was a very moving service. he was a great man that has influenced thousands of people, either directly or indirectly.

one of the best parts of the weekend was the "Beatdown in T-Town"!!! i felt like Bama would win, but i was afraid that it would be a slobber-knocker. i'm so proud for JPW and the other 8 seniors. those kids came to Bama b/c they love Bama, and Saban has said they've been the ones who really deserve the credit in turning things around. it's great to break the streak. it's great to shutout Auburn. it's great to feel the pendulum swinging back our way. now it's gets really interesting. if we beat Florida, we can beat whoever else we face. i'm scared to death of Florida, but if we can sneak past them somehow, we'll beat Oklahoma/USC/Texas/whoever. i'll pull a "nicky pressnell" and just go ahead and call that. i might be wrong, but that's my opinion after seeing how this college football season has gone.

brooke has about 2 weeks left before she's done with this semester. then, she'll only have one more semester of classwork left! her senior year will be strictly clinicals. she has worked so hard for this, and i'm so proud of her!

My dad is famous!

my dad, Tommy Williams, is the topic of the feature story of the Business section of the Montgomery Advertiser today. they did an article about his clock repair business. not only is it online, but it's on the front page of the Business section of today's (Sunday) paper. the online version has a good video of him explaining his business.

check out the story online, and visit his website. i'm so proud of you, daddyboy!

Freaky Eye Saturday

i was watching the Texas Tech/Oklahoma game, but that is a laugher right now (42-7 at the half). so here's a some information on Diabetic Eye Disease.

it is estimated that almost 8% (or over 23 million Americans) have diabetes. so almost one in every 12 people that you meet will be diabetic. this condition can cause devastating vision loss if left untreated.

if a patient's blood sugar levels are out of control, their prescription will fluctuate dramatically. usually, this causes patients to seem more nearsighted than they truly are.

here's a fundus photo of an eye with diabetic eye disease:



just to orient you, the yellow circle is the optic nerve. the red lines are the blood vessels. the large red splotches are termed "blot hemorrhages" or large blood leakages within the retinal nerve fiber layers. when the blood is leaking out into the retina and not reaching it's target tissues, the body can try to grow new blood vessels (called "neovascularization") to compensate. this is a valiant effort by the body, but it actually makes things worse.

here's the main point of this post: every diabetic needs an eye exam AT LEAST ONCE A YEAR!!! if i don't see any blood leakages in the retina, once a year is plenty to monitor their eye health. if i see just a few tiny blood leakages, i will follow them every 6 months. if i see an eye like the one above, i'll probably watch them every month until this resolves. if any blood approaches the macula (our most sensitive area of vision), the vision can drop very quickly, and surgery might be necessary.

do you know someone who is a diabetic? ask them when was the last time they had their eyes examined. make sure they know how important regular eye care is for them. we only get one set of eyes.

the other day, i got a wild hair...

well, we got our foundation fixed last week. so that means we can get started on remodeling. so one night this week, i went to our master bathroom to try to peel some loose wallpaper. much to my delight, the glue must have broken down over the years, and the wallpaper just peeled off completely. this was a major relief. we vividly remember how difficult it was to remove the old wallpaper at our house in Alabaster....scoring it and soaking it with DIF gel. it was a nightmare. so now, we've got bare sheetrock to work with. :)

stay tuned for updates on how we're planning to reconfigure our master bath.