The renos in our house are still ongoing. J hit a point though where he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to get everything done that needed to be done before winter/the baby arrives, so we flew my dad out for a week to help. My dad used to be a house framer/contractor, and, now that he’s older, mostly just does reno work for people. He’s self-employed and had some time between jobs so he was happy to come out here to help.
He did lots of work on our bathroom/laundry room. He almost totally gutted it. The toilet is still in place, as is the bathtub (although we can’t use it as a stand-up shower at the moment), and the laundry sink is still in place, but the bathroom sink is gone. Other than that everything else was taken down. The plaster & lathe walls were demolished, the ceiling was pulled down, the window was taken out. He insulated, put in a door on the exterior wall (in the future we intend to build a garage onto that side of the house and turn the bathroom into a mudroom and move the bathroom elsewhere) and redid the ceiling.
He left yesterday and it’s not all back together yet, but J should be able to finish the rest. In the meantime it’s mostly useable. It’s too dusty and dirty in there to want to scrub the tub every time we want to bathe, so we have to kneel in the tub and use the hand-held shower head. I’m finding this a bit awkward with the belly so J has to help me. Not a big deal though. J put up the moisture board/drywall yesterday and is hoping to start tiling today so we should be able to use the tub as a real shower by next weekend. The rest of the bathroom will likely be finished the week or so after that, other than painting.
J and my dad also got a bit of work done on the outside of the house too. They pulled off old siding and put up rigid insulation. J will cover it in plastic house wrap over the next week and we’ll leave it like that for the winter and put up new siding next year.
We’ll still have a lot of interior painting in the house to do over the winter, but fortunately the baby doesn’t really care what the place looks like. It just needs to be warm and clean.
The geothermal heating system is working. But sadly, no, we probably won’t be able to have an outdoor hotspring tub. It’s a closed loop system, meaning that there are twelve loops of plastic tubing buried vertically 120 feet deep in our yard with water/antifreeze in them. The fluid picks up heat from the earth, takes it back to the mechanical part of the unit which concentrates the heat by removing the cold, kind of like a reverse air conditioner, then the fluid takes the cold back to the earth and leaves it there and warms back up again. The mechanical part of the unit transfers heat to the tubing that runs through the floors in our house, and everything gets warmed from the floors up. Although the system was expensive to install, for every unit of energy that we use to run it, we get three units of energy (heat) out, so it’s really efficient. We were previously relying on electric heat, so the system should completely pay for itself within 8-10 years at which point our heat will be more or less free. Plus I love radiant floor heating.
The baby and I are still doing fine. My ligaments are starting to loosen up causing some aching and discomfort in my pelvis and hips, but nothing really bad. If it’s the end of the day sometimes J has to help me with my shoes, because I can’t raise my leg at the hip in that particular direction, but I’m still able to walk fine.
Our cloth diapers have been ordered, but haven’t arrived yet. I talked to three different people I know who have cloth-diapered and got three different opinions. One friend only used Bum.Genius AIO (all-in-ones). One only used fitted cloth with a diaper cover. And the other one used about 5 different kinds. The one who tried various ones had opinions and recommendations for each of them so I decided to stick with her advice.
We’re going to use both prefolds, and AIO. The prefolds require a cover, but are quite versatile. The small size can be used to stuff larger ones for more absorbancy when the baby gets bigger. They also dry a lot faster than the AIO. I like this because, although we’ll be using the dryer through the winter, I would prefer to line dry them once spring comes. I am getting some Bum.Genius 3.0 AIO for days when we’re going out and I don’t want to have to deal with a prefold and a cover. I do think I’ll try some Hemp AIO when they’re available as I’ve heard that they’re softer and more absorbent. One of our friends sells cloth diapers online and is giving us a discount so we’re ordering through her. Her Hemp diapers haven’t arrived yet.
[side note: I don't know exactly what J is doing in the bathroom right now, probably more drywall, but it isn't going well and much cursing is occuring.]
We also picked up a baby monitor of sorts yesterday. Because there will be times that I’ll be in the barn or out in the garden while the baby is napping we needed a really long range one. The really long range monitors were expensive (>$300) and didn’t have good reviews. So I checked out 2-way radios. They have a monitor function, a range of at least several miles (although I will never be that far away), and are much more reasonable (<$80). I was so impressed with myself for coming up with that idea.
I’m 33 weeks now, and will be starting weekly OB appointments and ultrasounds as of this Wednesday, instead of every two weeks as it has been for the past couple of months. I’m still not bleeding and seem to be fine. The baby squirms a lot which I assume means she’s fine.
We went on a hospital tour a few weeks ago. We got a private tour because I asked if I could skip the whole labour & delivery portion of it. One of the things I was concerned about with a c-section was the amount of time I would be separated from the baby. Friends of mine (in different cities) weren’t able to be with their babies until they were out of recovery. I found out that at the hospital I will be delivery in, the baby will be taken to the nursery (and J will go with her) while I’m being stitched up, but the moment I get to the recovery room she will be brought to me. I don’t have to wait until I’m back in the mother/baby unit. The woman giving the tour told us to request a private room if we could get it, and to have ourselves checked out as soon as we were ready. The hospital is currently doing renos (eventally all rooms in the mother/baby unit will be private) and she said that it’s better to be at home. Plus there’s the whole aspect of hospitals being for sick people thing.
So. Renos are coming along, as is the pregnancy. I’m done work as of this Thursday (I will be so happy to get out of that place), although I’ll still have to go into the city with J for a few days because I can’t be left alone at the farm. My mom is arriving on Nov 4th so we’ll be able to hang out at home and hopefully get some cleaning and organizing done before baby’s arrival.