Thursday, April 2, 2009

Last Update for Awhile.

I’m writing this from Logan International Airport, waiting to board a flight to Rich Port (Puerto Rico). I’m leaving for two weeks to get a bad sunburn, eat a lot of fish and speak Spanglish. Also, to marry another person (who is, despite Dan’s best predicitons years ago, a girl).

That aside, here’s the latest:

Friday – I was still kind of sick, but I had a lot to do before my trip, so I went to the house and sanded some walls. Once sufficiently smooth and ready for primer, I called it a day to rest up for the weekend. Lame.

During my sanding fun, another inspector came, this time for the plumbing, and he made sure to give me another stupid list of arbitrary things to do. Thank goodness.

Saturday – Up early to meet my brother in law, Eryk (pronounced, Eh-rick), for breakfast at Amanda’s restaurant. After some eggs, sausage home fries and chocolate milk, we headed to the house to get busy. The previously demoed first floor bathroom needed to start to take shape. We took out the old tub and dropped a new one in. After much hemming and hawing, we finally got the stupid tub somewhat level and headed to Home Depot in the ghetto.

Not so fast! The Home Depot, sensing that we were on our way, gave me a call. Not to tell me that they looked forward to our visit, but to tell me to go back to the house and sign for the drywall delivery. We did so and again headed to the store.

When we got back from the Depot (cement board, tile, mortar and assorted other things richer), we started to drag some of the 60 sheets of drywall to the second floor, with many breaks and complaints. After we did about half of them, we decided to get to work in the bathroom, again. We threw up some cement board and tried our best to make them the same depth as the remaining wall above. When sufficiently flush, but not perfectly so, we got to the tiling.

Flash forward a few hours and half a bucket of thin-set later, and we had a beautifully tiled shower stall:

About halfway through the tiling, we said, “Oh, we should probably bring the rest of that drywall in.” Big mistake. That S is heavy. We only brought it into the kitchen this time. Turns out it was a good idea, as 10 minutes or so after we had finished, it started to rain. Rain and drywall don’t mix so well, so I’m glad it was inside.

The last thing on the agenda was dropping the toilet in. Normally a pretty easy job, we expected to be out of there in a few minutes. Our expectations were not met.

The old drain pipe was super corroded and the toilet didn’t sit correctly. The wax ring under the toilet fit nicely, and made a tight seal, but it doesn’t matter much, as we could just lift the toilet off of the drain pipe. That is bad. We called it quits after this major setback and I noted that the plumber will have to fix even more stuff and I will have to pay for it.

Amanda spent the day helping out with some priming in rooms that were ready, Eryk headed back to NH after some dinner and I went to bed exhausted.

Sunday – Up early yet again, rented a U-Haul cargo van (which handled like a BMW) and headed to the house. I was going to pick up a fridge (from Sears) and hopefully pick up a dishwasher and range (from Attorney Hunter). I did some sanding of more walls (there are a lot of them) and headed to Sears covered in primer and thin-set.

I picked up the awesome (inexpensive) fridge, loaded it into the van and went back to the house. I lugged the fridge out of the van and wheeled it into the garage to sit, hopefully un-stolen, until we come back from vacation.

Fridge finished, time to get priming. I painted for pretty much the rest of the stupid day, ceilings included, and tried not to cry. I don’t know if you’ve ever painted a ceiling with a roller, but there are few things in life less pleasurable. Trust me.

Amanda came by in the late afternoon (after shopping all day with her friend) and helped me with some more priming. We called it quits around 7pm and headed home.

Monday – After work, I went to the house to take some pictures and drop off to-do lists for the various people who still have crap to do. Basically, the plumber needs to finish, the electrician needs to finish and my general contractor needs to finish. Also, the floors are going to be refinished while we’re gone.

The house is starting to shape up, which is nice.

For the last post in awhile, which is posted from my hotel room, here's a picture of a view from the balcony of our suite, taken minutes ago:

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