Extreme Home Makeover - The Parent Edition

I feel exhileratied today!

The sun is shining, the leaves are ablaze here in southern PA against the bluest sky I have ever seen!  Today is a perfect example of why I love love love Autumn!  I am actually feeling (cautiously) optomistic about life here in the Sminkey household today.  God is Good!

My sister (whom you will probably never see photographed here on the blog because she may kill me) and I have been shopping all day at a little store you all may know and love.  The Home Depot!   My Mom and Dad live in a very old 2 story twin home built, Oh, sometime in the year 1900, seriously.  It is in dire need of some major repair.   Since Mom has been home from her 3 1/2 week hospital stay in September, diagnosed with Atrial Fib, phneumonia, and a stroke, she is unable to take the steps up and down to use the only second floor bathroom.  That old house actually had no bathroom at all when it was built, just a lovely little outdoor out house.  Imagine that... ucky yucky!  So, the two of us have masterminded a plan to have a full bath built on the first floor for them and replacing the carpeting throughout that main floor!  They actually have beautiful original hardwood I hate like heck to cover up, but they insist it is too cold for them.

The two of us girls spent the day picking out everything from lumbar to bathtub, toilet to lighting, and oh one must not forget copper pipe, pre hung door, and screws.  It was an exhausting day, but we had a blast.  I know I sure did.   Our challenge was to keep the costs as low, low, low as possible!  We purchased and picked out every single thing one must need to build a bathroom from scratch.  We even purchased the paint and poly to seal the beautiful hard wood we will be utilizing for the bathroom floor.  Would you believe we were able to purchase everything for  the bath and preorder the new carpet and padding for under $2200?  Really!  Our saving grace is that both of our hubbies are pretty handy and a friend who is skilled with the plumbing and sewer work so labor costs are going to be pretty close to nill. 

I feel amazingly blessed to be able to help my parents with this.  I'm pretty excited to be able to share some of the progress with you all as well!  The men will be picking up our immense shopping order tonight and getting straight to work.  I'll be taking some photos to share with you on the progress, but I'm most excited about being able to get in there after contruction to paint and prettify the bathroom.

Austin's school is hosting a Monster Mash ball tomorrow night so we will be attending that, looking forward to some much needed fun with my kiddos.  He is going to be a demented clown!  That in itself scares me a bit, truth be told, but should be fun!