Adventures In Remodeling: "Miss" Meadowlawn Dr.: A Little Bit of Everything

Guys hard at work!

I don't know how long it's been since I last wrote. A long time I think. All the days are running together in a blur. Everyday is pretty much the same thing. I wake up achy, have coffee, make breakfast, make lunches, go to the house and sand or paint all day. Take a break or two to go to Home Depot or wherever to pick up whatever, leave the house by 7:00, with a nose full of drywall buggers and covered in paint, get to the coffeehouse and start dinner, eat around 8:30-9:00, watch a little TV and peace out.

Everyday except today that is! We actually left the house around 6:00, made it to the coffeehouse by 6:30, warmed up leftovers for dinner, and I even had time to take a shower before sitting down to write! What a glorious evening hu? And I'm not drop dead tired, AND it's only 7:30! (Yes, my expectations have lowered considerably.) I'm all clean, and already in bed! I have a nice hot cup of decaf, and I smell good (Eduardo seemed surprised by it when I sat by him on the couch...LOL), and I pulled the window shade up so I can enjoy the gloomy rainy evening while being snuggly warm in bed...sigh, so heavenly!

But anyway, despite the monotony of the past few days (I still can't believe it's only Wednesday), I'm going to try to recollect a few of the details. You know, for posterity.

So what has happened since I last wrote? Hmmm...well, I personally haven't been doing anything besides sanding and priming walls. I have been doing that for...over a week now. Every day we are at the house. I think that is why everything is running together for me. But Eduardo and Dad have done tons of other stuff!

Last Thursday they started building the walls for the walk in closet. It's going to be super sweet! It was pretty amazing to me that Dad knows how to everything. I remember him being pretty handy when I was a kid, but this is beyond that. He can build walls and run electrical, and fix plumbing...but I'm getting ahead of myself. So he and Eduardo framed in the walls and cut all the holes to run the electrical and put a light in the new walk in closet. Friday they continued working on the it. Menards delivered our other cabinets (minus one) and the additional door, but for some reason they did not include our 15 sheets of cement board which was a bummer. I spent the day priming most of the rest of the trim. Before we left for the night Dad and Eduardo set the cabinets in their places only to realize we were still missing one! So out of 11 cabinets, two were ordered wrong, two were never ordered, and one more was ordered correctly but they shipped the wrong one. Needless to say I am not super pleased with Menards. But the cabinets themselves are pretty. Dad says they are not well reinforced, and so we will have to be careful installing them. Once they are all together they will be fine, but while it's still in pieces we need to be careful.

Saturday we were supposed to have a day off and went into town for breakfast, but we ended up going to the Home Depot to pick up drywall to finish up the closet. We took it back to the house, and then Eduardo and I unloaded it all and took it upstairs so it would be ready to go.

We decided to work on Sunday because Dad and Eduardo were supposed to be working on a tile job all week, so we wanted to squeeze in as much as we could before then. We also decided that when Dad can come down to help us we will skip the gym since he likes to get started early. But he had something in the morning so we went to the gym and then met him at the house later. I spent the day priming the pink bedroom and half of the brown one. Dad and Eduardo put the drywall up in the closet, and...I can't remember if they got to anything else or not.

Happy at work

Monday was St. Patrick's Day. We went to work. Dad and Eduardo finally got to tackle the plumbing...and what a mess! Every pipe it seemed had a split in it. I started collecting the broken pieces and decided to make some kind of art sculpture out of them. It was really something to see though. They had to open up all the walls where the pipes were and sure enough, they were broken. They even went down into the crawlspace and were working down there. When they came back up they were all wet and covered in sand, and had heads and sweatshirts full of cobwebs and dust. I was suddenly grateful that my whole task for the day had been to continue priming the brown room. I eventually made my way into the hallway and dining room too. Uncle Jack stopped by in the afternoon and brought us some Seagrams wine coolers, and convinced us to take a break and have a drink. We sat in the living room in our patio chairs and chatted. He said he is going to come help when we get to the tiling part.

My St. Patty's Day flair

We worked until at least 7:00. I was so tired I could barely stand it. I tried to keep busy while the guys were finishing up, by straightening up the house and throwing away all the garbage and putting the tools away. Everything there is all over the place all the time, and we are constantly tripping over power cords or doors, or looking for tools.

On our way home we stopped at Meijer and got some Guinness and Bass, so at least I could make a Black and Tan when we got home (since we weren't doing anything fun for St. Patty's Day).

Yesterday I did more of the same until I ran out of primer. Eduardo and Dad planned to install the sliding glass door upstairs, but couldn't figure out how to get the door up there. It was so heavy and bulky! Eventually the three of us managed to get it up the stairs, but boy oh boy, was it a pain. Dad had to take off in the afternoon so Eduardo and I went to Menards to get more primer and pick up our cement board. They were out of the 5 gallon buckets of primer, so we got four smaller ones, only to realize after we got back to the house that it was "sealer" not primer. I was SUPER annoyed because the lady who worked there said it was the same thing! Anyway we also bought the granite tiles for the kitchen counter and a ceiling fan for the living room. Our bill was like $600. Yikes!

We got back to the house and Eduardo and Dad got back to work on the sliding door. Since I still didn't have my primer I carried in all the cement board and boxes or granite from the truck, sanded some walls, filled in a couple holes, and peeled tape off the wall in the laundry room, and cleaned. Once again I was super exhausted. We got home around 7:45, and didn't finish grilling dinner until 9:00.

That pretty much brings us to today!

I got up at 6:30 with the intention of writing for a while before we had to head down to the house, but Dad was already up, and then Eduardo got up, and before I knew it we were discussing stuff for the house.

I am enjoying the house, and the remodel, and all the help Dad is giving us, but I am realizing (after a month now) that I need a regular break from it in a way that Eduardo and Dad just don't seem to. We get back to the coffeehouse at night and the two of them can talk about the house all through dinner, and then again in the morning over coffee, and I find it...frustrating. It's not that I'm not interested in what they are talking about, but...I just need a mental break from the house once in a while to think about other things. I can't enjoy this whole process as much when I don't have time to rest and sort of decompress, and step back and enjoy the big picture. It's hard for me to feel really excited about the house and the progress we are making when I am constantly caught up in the details of working on it. And I haven't been stepping back or taking a break, because I feel like nobody else is, and I don't want to be the weak link, the slacker who is not doing their share of the work. But I'll tell you something, it's really starting to get to me. I can feel it. I felt it this morning when I got up, and I would have stayed back today, but we had a bunch of errands to run and stuff to pick up. I haven't told Eduardo or Dad yet, but I am thinking I'll do it tomorrow, and just take the day off. I honestly feel giddy at the thought of a whole day to myself to just sit on my ass and not worry about sanding or painting anything.

But anyway, today we bought the tile we are going to use in the bathroom upstairs. It was about $350. Dad had some tile that he said we could have for free but it wasn't nearly as cool as the stuff we got. Still in the back of my mind I am wondering if we should return it and go with free over cool. Eduardo doesn't think so, and after the chore of moving those super heavy boxes of tile, I don't blame him.

We had to go to Menards again today to return that sealer and pick up our last kitchen cabinet. I have decided that I don't care for Menards for several reasons:

1.) It's really hard to find someone to help you when you are in the store.

2.) Both orders we placed within different departments were submitted incorrectly (and entered into the computer multiple times because something or other didn't work).

3.) When they run out of things it takes FOREVER for them to get more. Like 3-4 weeks for some things! It's ridiculous.

4.) Their whole rebate system is super annoying. Why can't they just give you a discount or a store credit and be done with it? I'll tell you, it's so they can advertise things at a certain price, all the while banking on the fact that most of the people buying stuff will be too lazy to send in the rebate forms...I don't know why, but the whole thing just seems kind of shady and manipulative.

5.) I feel like the people who work there really don't understand the products they are selling. The woman who told me to get the "sealer" instead of primer yesterday suggested to me to buy the more expensive primer that was in stock. When I asked her why the other person I'd asked had recommended the one I'd originally purchased she shrugged and said they were pretty much the same except it "doesn't work as well and the new synthetic mix". Excuse me? Why would I pay more for an inferior product, and how are they the same thing when one works better than the other?

Anyway, I decided today that I am over Menards. I have much better luck at the Home Depot or Lowes.

The whole renovation so far has been really interesting, even if I am completely exhausted all the time and never get a chance to think about it. Even my never ending sanding and painting. I never thought I'd have an opinion on what brand of spackling to use, but I certainly do now. And I was unaware that the muscles in my fingers could get just as sore as my back or quads can. I've never had a strategy for painting before either, but now I have discovered several superior methods depending on if it's trim, or walls or a ceiling. I also know what I would look like if I went grey prematurely since I've had drywall dust in my hair for a week. I've discovered just how weak my arms really are, and I have more sympathy for people with back problems now. I have a very strong dislike for people who tape walls to paint and then leave the tape up there for 10 years for someone (such as myself) to have to peel off millimeter by millimeter. Grrr...

Little by little things are coming together. The guys are doing such an amazing job, and Dad is being so great teaching Eduardo how to do everything, and Eduardo is soaking everything up and it's just amazing all the stuff he is able to do now and it's only been a month! We are still in the repair phase, especially with the plumbing. Today the township came out and turned the water on and water started pouring out of the wall from upstairs, and at the kitchen sink, and in the laundry room. They found like....6 or 7 more busted pipes, and spent all afternoon putting holes in the walls and repairing them. They even had to pull out the whole water heater because one of the pipes to it had a split in it. It seems to me that the plumbing is not very expensive to fix, but it is very destructive really time consuming. And it's dangerous because you have to use a blow torch and solder. Eduardo got burned today and Dad accidentally lit some insulation on fire.

Well, that about does it for me. My fingers are tired and my wrists are pretty sore too, and it's almost 9:00 which means I've got a good half hour left in me to read for a few minutes, brush my teeth, and get ready for bed.