The rest of my week...

I seem to recall promising to relate the tale of woe of the last week or so.  It all began when the Monkeys decided to wash the foster dog outside on the pool deck.  After hooking up the hose, and the sprayer nozzle, they turned on the water.  It apparently did not dismay them to see water pouring out the side of the house, around the spigot...thus they continued to bathe Gunner.  Every time they released the spray handle, the pressure increased in the line on the discharge side of the spigot valve...causing even more water to flow, (nay spray with great force!) inside the wall from the ruptured spigot pipe.  When they were done, they went inside, to discover the library, breakfast nook and master bedroom hallway somewhat water logged.  

I give them credit--they rapidly grabbed nearly every towel we own, and stgarted damage control procedures.  Then they told us... DH & I came in, saw the impending damage, as laminate flooring is NOT waterproof, and grabbed what few remaining towels we had hidden away, and began trying to dry things out.  The laminate still warped, though perhaps not as badly as we first feared.

My hero, fixing the pipe!

Still we had planned on replacing it anyway, just not quite so soon.  Now it was time for the Great Discount Tile Hunt!  Our first stops were the local HD big box, and another local small box flooring store.  The best we could get, on wood-look ceramic/porcelain tile was $1.79/sqft.  We need a lot of square footage.  So off to Sherman/Denison and McKinney, with a plan for last Saturday, to go to the Mega-Big Box store, Nebraska Furniture Mart.  Now McKinney is a 3hr roundtrip, with NFM adding about 40min total to that.  So we decided to hit the McKinney Habitat for Humanity ReStore first, which just so happens to generally have a nice selection of tile flooring.  

My truck, under a heavy load.

Lucky for me, we were able to find a wood-look tile we liked, at a much better price!  So we bought a bunch of it.  And I got to skip going to NFM!  Now, how to haul 76 boxes of tile home, each weighing #60?  I have a truck.  But it's only a half-ton V-6, and a midsized bed (not 8' long).  The folks at ReStore attempted to forklift a 44-box pallet into the bed.  I thought the truck was gonna blow a shock, or have a spring fail, it squatted so low!  I swapped that for a 27 box pallet, and though not thrilled, the truck was able to haul it home after DH's Squat Camp finished.  

Wrapped against the rain.

Tuesday, I had to rent a trailer, to go fetch the remaining #2940 of tile (aka 49 boxes).  I had them split the load between trailer and truck, since the trailer wasn't rated for that much weight by itself either.  Add to it, rain, and the impending threat that day, of freezing rain, and it made for an interesting if slow (top speed was 65mph) trip home!

Once home, the Monkeys helped unload the truck and trailer, and stash most of it in the garage, out of the way of the gym equipment.  The rest is underneath the breakfast nook table, out of the way.

Some of our stash of tile.

 We certainly have our work cut out for us now.  With the cost of installation well outside our acceptable price range, we are going to do it ourselves.  It won't be our first time installing tile, but it will be the largest area installed we've ever done.  Wish us luck!