Plumber's Crack is Wack

It's been a productive week. Monday night, we realized that we had a 10% Lowes coupon (courtesy of Erica) that would be expiring, so we decided to meet after work Tuesday for a romantic evening in the plumbing section. For those of you who so graciously sent us Lowes gift cards as house warming presents, look at the fanciness you bought us!

A new water heater (our current one is 21 years old), some copper piping, and a garbage disposal. Now that's a house warming gift! Nothing makes a house feel more like a home than a garbage disposal. While there, we ran into Mike, who shared his sympathy for poor Derek's adventures in the attic, and who apparently thought Derek was planning on putting in the water heater in the wee hours of a weekday night, because later on we had this text message conversation...

 The rest of the week was spent mainly fighting off the massive grasshoppers that have taken over our lawn. They're so huge, I'm afraid they'll eat Lucy...

The most productive part of the week though is the weekend. Poor Derek. Long gone are the days when he gets to sleep in on a weekend morning, or enjoy a leisurely day of DVR clearing and putzing around. Now he must wake up early and stay up late plumbing, plumbing, plumbing. He tried to get Charlie to do it for him...

but his lack of imposable thumbs really put him at a disadvantage when using the drill. So, Derek got to work. First thing, he closed up our hole of communication. Apparently he had had enough of all this openness....

and in the process of closing up our hole of communication he moved the dryer and made a discovery...

water damage. Every renovation is said to have some unexpected discoveries, but when you're doing as much renovating as we are and are already dealing with so much, can't Murphy and his stupid law cut us some slack?!? Apparently the damage was caused by this...

which, if you haven't guessed already, is supposed to be attached. Now the mystery of the water damage in the garage and shower has been muddied up. We thought we solved it and promptly blamed it on the crummy DIY skills used on the master shower remodel completed by the previous owners. Now it could be this instead. I'm going to go ahead and continue believing it's our shower though, because that means I get a new and prettier shower. :-)

But Derek wasn't in the AC long, he spent most of the weekend in the scariest place in the house...the attic. The attic is dark, hot, has the potential to leave your legs dangling through your ceiling, and is full of itchy insulation. I mean really, this isn't very inviting.

But he braved it well. He even managed to find his plumbers crack in there...

It's not a true plumbers crack because it's his underwear you see not his tush, but it's getting the job done none-the-less. The most challenging part of the attic is the space above the guest bathroom. Because of the slant in the roof, there is only a small space through which Derek needed to fit...

At first I didn't think it would be possible, but he managed...

In fact, he even looks comfortable in there...

Perhaps this should be his man cave, and I can use the shed for my arts and crafts. I'm sure his friends will love to hang out with him up there, after all Mike offered multiple times to get up there and help out.It's decided then! The shed will no longer look like this...

It will contain lots more of this...

On second thought. I'll let him have both spaces. Now that's Wife of the Year material right there!