Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's been a while

Been working my butt off on this place and finally got some progress to show for it. Problem is, once I work all day, the last thing I want to do is mess around with the stupid computer. So I got behind in the blog.

I got on a roll (get it, roll?, paint-roll? oh never mind...) and got all the painting in the living/dining rooms done. Actually, once I got started I decided to simply just continue until I ran out of paint. Well, I ran out only after going down the hall and around the top 3 or 4 feet of the family room walls. So now all the up high cut-in work is completely finished. No more aerial acrobatics!

Something is different between the next two pictures. See if you can pick it out.

That’s right! The lighting and camera angles are different! No getting anything past you all that’s for sure!

Yes, my back, knees, hands, shoulders all hurt. Who knew laying all that flooring was going to hurt like that? I must have knelt down and stood up probably 10,000 times. It got to the point where kneeling down was little more than a barely controlled fall. But except for a very small piece of fill-in in the hallway, the wood flooring is totally complete.

I also need to put in the wood/tile transition pieces. These aren’t terribly difficult, but they are very time consuming. Fit/trim/fit/trim/fit/trim/fit……  When I did the hallway bathroom piece, I actually ended up just bringing in all my hand tools and sitting on the floor for quite a while working that one piece. Of course the instant I put it all the way in (it’s almost impossible to get it back out without destroying it), I instantly noticed a tiny spot that wasn’t quite right. Naturally, right?

So when I’m installing all this flooring, my mind is wandering all over the place and I start to get distracted. I’m throwing all the empty boxes over by the garage door and I need to move the pile as it’s now in the way.  Woohoo! A break from flooring and this just sort of ‘happened’. I call it ‘The arc of the cardament’. Yes, double humor within a play on words. Hmmm, maybe I do have an artistic side lurking in there somewhere.

Next up is baseboards and door casings. Since the existing tile job was so crappy, I’ll have to do my best to match the grout just so I can have something to butt the baseboards up to. The guy who did the tile job didn’t want to spend the time taking out the baseboards before tiling, so he just grouted right up to (and in some cases up) the baseboards. Bastard. If I’d known at the time I would have demanded that they be removed.

So out of about 850 square feet of wood flooring, I ended up with five pieces leftover. I felt pretty good about that. I was concerned it was going to end with a bunch leftover, or worse, being two pieces shy and having to order another box (20 square feet) just to get one or two pieces.

Was it expensive? Well, yeah, but not as bad as I had feared. I originally thought that it was going to run in the neighborhood of 5-6 thousand dollars but in the end it was a little less than half of what I planned. Now, if I had had it installed professionally, then absolutely it would have been obscenely expensive.

I’m finding that is true throughout this process. If I spend some time learning how to do something (flooring, tiling, drywall, plumbing, etc.) then I can save myself a ton of money.

I think it will be most pronounced when it comes to the kitchen. Since I’ll be doing everything (except counter-tops) myself, I should be able to save several thousand (if not $10k) dollars. I constantly hear horror stories from other people about how they spent $20-25-30k on their kitchens and I’ll bet they are unbelievable pieces of artwork with only the very finest commercial grade appliances.

That’s lovely but I don’t have that kind of time or money. So I’ll put in a nice decent kitchen that has nice appliances and leave it at that.

I still would like to get the house on the market by maybe early springtime.

So in other news, work has announced a round of layoffs coming up. They also offered what we call a 'blue light special' (a K-Mart reference for a very special deal) to the people that are very close to retirement. This was the first one they've offered in a very long time. Well, of course I'm just a little too young to be able to take them up on it. Lovely.

My boss and several of the people that I've worked with for many years are all taking it. Guess where that leaves me. Right in the cross-hairs. Very soon I'll probably be the resident guru on all things aviation navigation. Great, I can hardly wait (said in a very dead-pan voice).

Can you feel the excitement?