From a new bath to the swimming baths....Its not the length its how deep it goes......

If you don't want to know how baths work....miss out the first few paragraphs of this entry....

 In my last blog post, I hinted about an improvement we are making tat I would be able to ' fit my whole body' into. Unfortunately, this was not a coffin - but a bathtub. The plan was to move a wall in our bathroom to fit in a longer tub, 66 inches instead of the standard 60. I do love a good soak in the bath and we thought that a longer one would give me a much nicer and wetter experience.

However, instead of paying out to do this Buffy was offered a chance to do some website work for a plumber in exchange for his services. It was not all as it seemed.

First, when Buffy quoted him on the website, he came around to take a look at the job and then came back with a ridiculous quote for the cost of replacing the bath and moving the wall - quite literally in the thousands of dollars.  But as the services would be swapped he said he would still do the job in exchange for the website at not actual cost - so thousands of dollars saved!

We then ordered ourselves a new bath and looked at the possibilities of making it look really nice - we decided on tiles instead of a surround and found ourselves a tiler and tiles we liked as well as a nice niche for an in wall shelf! It was going to be great. All this extra stuff had cost us around $3500, but still to get this all done would be great. But then the shit sandwich started....

Just a couple of weeks before the job was due to start, we asked the plumber about the drywall he would be using - the tiler wanted to know whether he would need to apply a waterproof membrane or if the wall would use waterproof drywall. The plumber said 'what wall?'. Remember, this is after he had visited, told us moving the wall was easy and given us a high quote that included moving the wall. 

We reminded him about all this and he then said we would have to supply all the materials for moving the wall AND then pay him around $1200 cash to do so. He also started to tell us that he was  doing paid work for other clients and that we were now his lowest priority, so it might not get done for 'a few weeks'. Just what you want to hear. We have 2 kids - we can't go a few weeks without a bath! So now this was getting silly, a few hundred more dollars for the materials for the wall, plus over $1200 to do the work, that had already been quoted on previously. If he wasn't including the wall in the original quote, just what was the really high thousands of dollars quote actually for?   

We had a good think and then Buff sent him the nicest 'fuck off' 🐧email you have ever seen. We decided not to do his website and not to do the bathroom. We also cancelled the bath, the tiler and all our plans. What we thought was going to be a great new bath, for around $3000 total, had turned into a clusterfuck costing almost twice as much, with no guarantee of the end date!

We also realized that length isn't the most important thing in a bath - It's actually soak depth and reclining angles! Some baths are really shallow, with the top drain under the taps being really low. Ours is actually 9.5 inches, which is the maximum soak depth and is crap. Our bath also goes straight up at the end, so when you try to lie back to get comfy it's like sitting in an actual coffin, minus the comfy red velvet lining! 

Since the debacle with the longer (and much more expensive) bath, we have tested out a couple of short but more reclining baths with deeper soak depth and realized that they would work just great for us. 

So we are probably now going to go with a better short bath, it means not having to move a wall and the short bath is less than half the price of a long one. Buffy knows another plumber too, who gave us a quick quote about a quarter of the cost of the lunatic who we told to get bent! We aren't going to do it soon, but it will get done sometime. Here's a super comparison photo, not drawn by me obviously, of what the old and new bath would look like side by side

A quick overview of less important but probably more interesting stuff..

Cabins...

We had friends over to the cabin a few weeks back and then we went out to their cabin for the weekend too. These friends are the parents of Hannah's best friend at school 'Bowie' and they live just a couple of streets away. It was really nice to get out to the cabin with someone new and shared a lovely weekend there. Its not often now that there is anyone else there apart from us and Buff's mum and dad, so it made for nice change. We also found out that another of Hannah's friends parents, go out to their family cabin just near Kenora, so we also went down there and the 3 families go together while the kids all played in the splash pad - a lovely afternoon followed by a huge family dinner in a local restaurant - we will definitely want to do this again.  

 Just this past weekend we accepted the invitation to go out to Bowies cabin, which is really remote and about 20 minutes by boat from the nearest town. Its a lovely cabin on a private island with a beach! 

We had a another lovely weekend with a huge storm in the middle of the night. There were actually tornado warnings and although we didnt see any twisters, we woke up the next day to one of the chimneys on the ground and a few tree tops destroyed - so it did get pretty wild! 

Anyway, we spent most of the daytime playing in the water and on the beach! 

I was also lucky enough to sit and watch the sunset with Hannah..

We had a few days out in the past month too - the two best trips were to Tinkertown and to see monster trucks. 

Tinkertown is an old-fashioned kids theme park just outside of Winnipeg. Its quaint and sweet and actually really nicely maintained - Kind of what Skegness was 30 or 40 years ago. 

The kids loved all the rides and it was made even better when Pat and Austin, came along for the day too. 

Hannah loved all the crazy big rides like the pirate ship and every spinning thing - while Ollie and Austin really really REALLY liked the little cars that you 'DRIVE' around a little track. It was so sweet watching him and Austin drive these little cars and really sad when Ollie burst into tears when we had to leave. Don't worry Ollie, we are going back for your birthday in a few weeks!

The monster trucks were at the MTS centre or whatever its called nowadays - the Hockey arena downtown. It was a crazy 2 1/2 hours of crushed cars and motorcycle jumps - the kids loved every minute. Except when they argued over chairs - But what the hell ''''MONSTER TRUCKS!'''

Another cool thing we found this month is a new park to play at. I saw it while driving out with the kids a while ago, and we went a few weeks back - It's a cool little park with a zip line for the kids, but it's right at the end of the airport runway, so the planes fly in over your heads. The kids love it, and we spent the morning playing while checking the real time flights app to catch planes coming in overhead!

 

We did have one weird thing happen a couple of weeks ago. We had some people scoping out our yard while we were out of town. It isn't that unusual to get the odd person wandering in and out of the yard, but this couple were dodgy and when they saw the security cameras they bloody well ripped them down. Then they walked off with them. They must have thought that by taking the cameras they would have any evidence! Idiots.

Luckily, they dumped them close enough that one of them was still connected to my wifi. So when I got home I scoped out the back lanes and bins and found the two missing cameras under a bush! I have remounted them now - and I have moved the kid's picnic table that was used to climb up to gran te cameras. 

My new camera views are great and the police have two new suspects to look for! Bloody wankers!

  

Well, thats me nearly back up to date. The last tow things I want to mention are water related - swimming and first , a new game called Trampoline splashpad. 

So Hannah and Ollie had watched a Bluey episode with a trampoline in it- you don't need to watch the whole thing, but the first 30 seconds of this video, will give you a good idea of what our two kids did...

Yep, they got the hosepipe and trampoline together to invent 'Trampoline Splashpad'. This game consists of me or Buffy spraying up over the trampoline or under and through it, while the kids get wet! It was perfect for last week when the weather was atrociously hot and the kids loved it!

The last thing is swimming -  We put the kids in for a 1 week intensive swimming lesson package - every morning for 5 days, doing 45 minutes a day instead of half an hour a week for 10 weeks. Hannah has struggled in previous lessons to get her head in the water and jump in, and for Ollie it was his first swimming lessons. 

Well, they both did amazing - Ollie cried on his first day but after a few minutes he recovered well and after  3 days was beaming ear to ear and loving it - he was so proud of himself and left the pool saying 'I had so much fun today' every day!

Hannah actually had a friend from daycare who helped her stay relaxed and on the 4th day she jumped into the pool from the side! She then did it again and again - which made her so proud of herself and meant we had to give them both some treats! They did brilliantly and we intend to do more of the intensive lessons in the future.

Thats it.... seeya.