Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Remodeling Update
Guppyman: Mom, how come you aren't posting pictures every day of the remodeling progress?
Mitey Mite: Because I'm too busy coping with all the crises to even take a picture, much less post one.
Saturday before last, they poured concrete for the front and back porches. The following Monday, they informed me that they needed to start turning the master bedroom into the kitchen. They obviously didn't realize that I live with Professor Pack Rat, and clearing out anything of his is a Herculean task. In fact, I think Hercules would have been defeated.
Fortunately, the sun came out and they could work outside building the roofs for the porches. Oh, did the sun come out. It was hot. It was muggy. On Tuesday, the workers kept blowing a circuit with all their saws. On Wednesday morning -- Thursday? I've lost track -- anyway, I woke up at 2:00 AM because it was getting hot in the house. I had electricity in the bedroom hall, the back entry hall, the master bathroom (but the outlets didn't work) and the refrigerator. That was it. Because I had to get the electric company to remove a lock band on the meter before the electricians could do anything, it took almost 24 hours to restore power. But I did discover how delightful my new front porch is. It was so cool and breezy out there that I was tempted to sleep there. We will never know for sure, because no one is going to dig up the old power line, but there's a pretty good probability that they nicked the line while they were pouring the concrete. The guy from the power company says it takes a few days to fail when it's nicked.
Fast forward to Saturday. I have a lovely new porch, not completely roofed because the loft design got changed and we are waiting for engineering drawings, but it is covered with plastic to protect it from the rain. I am packing up boxes (and boxes and boxes) from the master bedroom. I go to the kitchen and almost break my neck as I encounter a big puddle of water. I look up and see water running through the ceiling fan. WTF!!!
I never thought to mention to the framers that the wind hits the front of the house so hard that it frequently takes down my Christmas lights. A few nails were not going to hold the plastic down. Part of it blew back, the plastic got slack and started filling up with water -- so much water that it knocked a short piece of plywood in. It looked like this.
You can see the dirt in the bottom of the "bag" and from there you can tell how much water had accumulated. Every twenty minutes or so I had to mop up huge puddles. Our builder is one of those southern gentleman who won't let a woman do anything difficult or scary, so I really hated to call him, but I just didn't know if the wet wires might short out all the other wires and start a fire. I reached him on his boat, he assured me that as long as I didn't have the fan or the light on it was safe, and said he would send someone out, even though I kept telling him I could live with a leak, just as long as it wasn't dangerous. The builder himself came out Sunday morning, squeezed through the studs in the attic and lifted up the plastic enough to drain the water. Well, of course, most, if not all, of it drained down through the ceiling fan. I had to go to ten minute mopping intervals. On Monday the framer came over, got up on the roof in a pouring rain, and tried one thing after another. Finally he went to get a heavy tarp, a blue one, or "FEMA roof" as we've called it ever since Katrina and Rita. Of course, as soon as he drove the final nail (this time through boards) the rain stopped.
So after all this, it wasn't a big surprise when the framer told me that I had to get everything out of the kitchen, too, so he could start demolishing it today. I was doing pretty well, but I had to stop because the builder sent two guys and a trailer over and I had to take them over to the storage place and help stuff ten pounds of stuff into a five pound bag. But Guppy and my incredible, fantastic DIL Stormii came over and packed up everything that was left. Stormii said she does this for a living and she just "exceeded expectations" on her review, and I believe it. I never would have been able to do all that by myself.
I have moved two tall, skinny bookcases into the former-hall-bath-soon-to-be-master-bath to serve as medicine cabinets/dressers. I also put the coffee pot, iced tea maker and microwave (which is probably a stretch) in there. It is now the "kitchroom". I cleared out some space in my office closet for my clothes; the Professor will just have to make do with whatever he took on his trip. Hey, he could have been here!
I have been totally neglecting my job, which makes me feel terrible, so look what I'm doing -- I'm blogging. Guppy just called me and said his car is completely dead; it would cost more to fix than it's worth. Stress? What stress?
I'm actually holding up pretty well, but poor Guppy, who just paid off his car with the money he was saving for a second car, to save the interest. Now he has no car, no equity, and no down payment. Go over and tell him at least he has friends out in the bloggy world.
1 Comments:
Oh gosh, it does look like you are having an *interesting* time at the moment! Hope it goes as smoothly as possible ...
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