10:13 a.m. - January 30, 2007
We've Got Flooring!
One thing around our house, one will never, ever be �bored.�
There�s always dishes, laundry and the �zamboni� cleaning of the kitchen floor to do, thanks to Kristin, the food-flinging machine.
We have two litter boxes for our two cats, and in an effort to prevent accidents and what not, those are cleaned out regularly.
Plus, there�s Kristin�s diaper genie and Katie�s pull-up disposal (oh, please make that stop one day) we have a lot o� shinola to dispose of in our domicile.
Then there�s Kristin, the object hiding machine, and Katie, the wanting-to-make-sure-everyone-know-it�s-HER-animal-so-I-hide-it-from-my-sister �bot, so toys and other things are usually strewn over our living room and library.
And then there�s the schedule. You know, Liz and I live a life of luxury and we have nothing to do. Right.
Katie has Montessori school in the morning, so Liz has to be out the door by 8:25 AM. I also fly out the door about that time to do my phony baloney job.
Here is our week this week:
5:00 Monday � Katie Dance Class
7:00 Monday � Smed attends �Main Street� meeting, joins Economic Development Committee in and effort to help revitalize downtown Crawfordsville.
6:30 Tuesday � Smed covers high school girls� basketball game.
8:00 Tuesday � Liz hosts League of Women Voters committee meeting at our house.
6:00 Wednesday � Liz attends a LWV Obsever�s Meeting.
7:00 Thursday � Liz, the treasurer of the local LWV chapter, attends the board meeting.
9:00 Friday morning � Liz attends another meeting.
5:30 Friday evening � Smed travels to Western Boone to cover two high school games.
9:00 Saturday morning � Liz goes to Costco in Indianapolis. Smed makes chili for the Super Bowl party.
2:30 Saturday � Smed does stats at the Wabash basketball game.
3:30 Sunday � Super Bowl Party!!! (GO COLTS!!!)
Coupled that with some upcoming travel (Lansing, Chicago, DC) we�ve decided to take a Smed / Liz getaway late this month back in Chicago (and we�ll hit the art museum and see the fishies or maybe go to another museum) and then Liz has an ever popular Liz day coming up in early March.
However, one stressor has been relieved.
WE HAVE OUR FLOORING!
Finally, the long national nightmare is over.
Last Friday, they came in and installed our new laminate kitchen flooring.
What an ordeal. Let�s recap from the beginning.
At first, about 13.7 billion years ago, the universe was very dense and intensely hot, and then all of a sudden it expanded from that�..oh�.wait�..
It started with sibling rivalry, of course. But this rivalry wasn�t between Katie and Kristin. No, this was rivalry between Butch and Sundance, littermates and cats-about-house.
Butch, definitely the alpha male, was concerned about the cleanliness of the one litter box we had at the time, and basically to protect his turf, ejected Sundance from said facility. Poor Sundance, with no place else to go, was forced to find other places to do his business.
And that was on the carpeted floor of the storage room and our formal dining room.
Liz worked and worked to steam clean the carpet, and put pet repellant on it, but to no avail. So faced with a carpet that was going to have a perennial stink to it, she suggested, and we decided to change the flooring.
We had put vinyl flooring in our kitchen, and we realized that instead of carpet, the same vinyl would work in our utility room and our storage room. So we went to the local home center (good advice at at good price, peeps) and got it installed without a hitch. Ok, there was a hitch in that we needed to have some sub-flooring repaired, but the same carpenter also found that we needed to level off the formal dining room and installed a jack in the basement to jack up our floor there so it was level-ish, and that same carpenter also removed the carpet, revealing that oh-so-lovely forest green sub-flooring.
The formal dining room was another kettle of fish. Vinyl would look tacky. Restoring the hardwood would be a challenge, because Lord knows how many layers of mistakes are in between that carpet and the original floor. Tile would be an option, but expensive, so we went with laminate, as that gives a hardwood floor look and ease of cleanup, for the most part.
So to do this, we went to the National Behemoth Homecenter, and there were quite the differences between dealing with the Behemoth in orange and our nice, local place.
The Behemoth wanted you to put down a huge deposit, plus locks of hair from your first-born. The local place only had a small deposit before ordering the material.
The Behemoth wanted you to pay for everything before installation. The local place billed you afterwards. (OK, the bill isn�t right, STILL, but at least the work was done).
The Behemoth�s installers work independently, and communication between the flooring department and the installers is seemingly done by carrier pigeon. The local place�s installers were at our house EARLY on the day they were supposed to arrive.
Needless to say, it took a while to get everything together just to have someone come OUT and take a look at our dining room to see what needed to be done. It was determined that even though the floor was jacked up, it was still uneven enough that they needed to put concrete down to level it off. And when that was done, they�d come out and inspect it and then set a date for installation. This was all said to us BEFORE Christmas � in fact � BEFORE Katie�s birthday party.
But the sub-contracted installation company ran into issues with illness and a loss of key workers, so, we waited�and waited�and waited. Liz kept trying to call for updates, but someone shot the carrier pigeon, I guess.
FINALLY, the concrete was arranged and poured. We had to keep everyone off of it for two days, including cats. We could seal off two of the doors, but the door on the stairs leading from the guest room doesn�t shut properly, so Liz devised a simple fix. She used some of her panty hose and tied the door shut.
So, we had a level floor. Now, during this time, the installers called and asked Liz when they wanted the material delivered, since it had to sit in the house 72 hours before installation. They asked if last Tuesday was OK, but somehow Liz lost the number to call back the contractors, so she called the Behemoth, and well, they said their carrier pigeon was broken but they�d �put a note on the account.� Yeep.
But, last Tuesday we had flooring, and last Friday, we had installed flooring. Woot!
Remember the lovely subflooring?
Well, here�s it all covered by concrete:
And Frank Viola�.here it is, the finished product.
And just think, soon that table will be covered again by all kinds of stuff, but for now, I�m going to just enjoy the beauty of an empty table. That�s a rarity, as you know.
