Hard work has its rewards!

After a long week of repairs, we were fortunate enough to have our dear friend Megan come to town since her boyfriend's soccer team was playing in the MLS Cup in Frisco! It was so good to see her and spend some time with her since she lives on the East coast and we don't get to see her too often.

We have to take a break from housework at some point, so I thought I would share some of our non-house stuff with y'all too! Enjoy!

Tim the Plumber Photos

For some reason I wasn't able to add photos to my last entry (probably because it was horrendously long) so here are the pics! Enjoy!

Do I look flushed????

That is the question I probably should have asked my husband when he told me sewage had overflowed onto our front yard. I can only imagine what my face looked like when he told me. But before I go into detail about all that, let me start from the beginning....

ONE WEEK BEFORE THE MESS (Friday)....
I was going about my business cleaning the guest bathroom toilet and flushed it several times to flush away the cleaning solution. Well imagine my surprise when I look down and see a pool of water on the floor that appears to be coming from the base of the toilet. Uh oh! This does not seem like a good thing....Well, I will try not to worry about it too much and will wait until Tim gets home in a few days and let him figure it out.

TWO DAYS LATER (Sunday)....
Over the course of the next few days, the master bath toilet decides it doesn't want to flush anymore. Despite fierce plunging (I think I burned 300 calories plunging that thing) it would flush a little and then gurgle back at me. Gross. Thanks goodness Tim will be home tomorrow...

MONDAY BEFORE....
Tim comes home! Yay! Poor guy can barely get in the door before I bombard him with information about how our house is falling to pieces. Guest bath is officially out of commission and master bath is "sort of" working, but still gurgling and requires plunging several times a day. We make it work....for now.

TUESDAY....
Tim is so proud of the fence he fixed that he decides to become Plumber Tim and attempt to fix the guest bath toilet. I would prefer to call a plumber but he is persistent, so I will let him have at it. After disassembling the toilet, he replaces the wax ring (who knew that was under a toilet?) and puts everything back together. Unfortunately, the toilet is still leaking...

WEDNESDAY-FRIDAY....
Over the next few days we make a million trips to Home Depot (they should know us by name by now). Our purchases include:
*an accordion plunger
*a toilet auger
*a thicker wax ring
*some plumbing contraption Tim rented (SOOOO glad we didn't have to buy that thing)

None of these things fixed our problem. I'm really thinking its time to call a plumber at this point.

FRIDAY NIGHT....
Tim heads out to the front yard with a head lamp (he looks like a coal miner) and a fishing pole. Last time I checked we didn't have a lake in our front yard, so I ask him what he is up to now. He is going to check the pipe that is capped in our front yard. He pulls out a soda bottle and some other trash, but still not sure what the problem is.

Tim decides to enlist the help of our neighbors, Mark and Casey. Lucky for us, Mark is awesome and knows exactly what the problem is. Mark and Tim put a hose in one pipe to figure out where the clog is. This is where the fun begins! Tim comes in and tells me that sewage is everywhere in our front yard. SAY WHAT????? Ew, ew, ick, ewwwwww!!! I am scared and vow not to go into the front yard until its cleaned up. Unfortunately, Mark tells us that we have a broken pipe and will have to dig a monster hole in our front yard to replace it. Since they can't do that at 10pm on a Friday night, the project will have to resume in the morning.

SATURDAY....
The digging begins and after a few hours we have a nice deep 4 ft. hole in our front yard. From there it is smooth sailing (or at least it seemed that way from my view from the house!) and Mark helps Tim replace the pipe and Tim fills up the hole so well that nobody can tell it was ever even there!!!

So, long story short, my husband can now add plumber to his resume because he did such a good job fixing this big problem (with a lot of help and support from our incredible neighbor, Mark!) and saved us a TON of money by not calling a plumber when I originally wanted to. If anyone ever needs any plumbing supplies, come and see us because we now have a bunch of toilet de-clogging products that we didn't even need to begin with! Also, I'm sorry I missed the photo of the big hole in the yard. They filled it in before I could grab the camera :o( I'll be more prepared next time!

Happy flushing!

The Handyman

So, who knew Tim was a handyman? I didn't!

A portion of the fencing in our backyard was falling due to some rotted wood, and Tim went straight at it and tore it down. Talk about a go-getter! After a trip to Lowe's for lumber and Home Depot for a handy-dandy nail gun (Yes, we like to make things as complicated as possible) we had everything we needed to put up a beautiful fence (nevermind the fact that neither of us had ever done anything even remotely close to this!).

Well, I must say, we are fence masters! It took us just over an hour to complete the project and it looks terrific! I will post a picture of the finished project as soon as I take it.

~The Mrs. Handyman

P.S. Please stay tuned because a very disturbing plumbing story is coming soon. I want to wait until it is resolved before I tell you all about it, but be assured, it will make you laugh, feel sorry for us, and make gross faces all at the same time! And yes, my husband is still the handyman....

Almost a month of home ownership!

Hello everyone! We are so excited to use this site to share our new home with you!

Let me give you a little back ground of how we ended up in McKinney...

Tim and I had been looking for the perfect place to live. That "perfect place" had to have affordable living, access to a major airport, warm weather, fishing and hunting for Tim, and shopping and a small town feel for Steph.

After spending the first part of the summer in Oklahoma City (and considering making OKC our permanent home), we talked to some people who lived in the Dallas area, so we began doing our research. Tim discovered McKinney and was able to make a trip down here while I was back home. He loved it, so we decided to take a trip to McKinney together when I got back into town.

Well, as luck would have it, as soon as I got back to OKC, Tim was traded and we had to pack up and move to New Hampshire. Luckily, several of his teammates were from Texas and they sold us on moving to the Lone Star State. The beginning of September we made our way to McKinney (sight unseen to me!) and began our house search. It didn't take long - we took the first house our realtor showed us and we closed on Friday, October 13th (it's a good thing we aren't superstitious!).

So here we are and we couldn't be happier about our choice to make McKinney our home. It's a beautiful, little community filled with warm, friendly people. Our home will be a work in progress for some time, so we will be posting before and after pictures as we go and sharing all of our adventures with you along the way! We hope you enjoy this site - I know we are going to have a blast creating it!

Lots of love,
Stephanie & Tim