New Carpet!

It's finally started, the thing I said I was going to have done immediately when I moved in ... 8 1/2 years ago. My new carpet is being installed! Very cool.

I managed to get everything moved off the carpeted areas of my house except my sofa/sleeper, my TV and my bed. Literally the contents of my whole house are in my garage and kitchen. If you compare this pic with the one in the last post, you can see I've added a bunch more to stuff to the garage. A lot of that stuff I wasn't sure I could move until I tried. It certainly would have been easier with help, but I'm really bad about admitting I can't do something myself.


The two installers had those last three items moved about 5 minutes after they arrived, removed the old carpet and pad and swept the slab in about 20 - 30 minutes, and are now laying down the new pad. They also had me come out and verify that they had they right carpet with them before they started anything this morning. I'd be willing to bet they've run into that problem before where they don't have the right carpet, or people say it's not what they ordered once they start installing. They have my carpet though so all's proceeding.

It's interesting because when I first looked at the carpet I thought that the color was too light. I'm so used to thinking that this new carpet is darker than the old, that I was sort of expecting a dark carpet. It's not dark. It's a nice light tan. It's just darker than my old carpet.

We had a little trauma this morning when the installers got here because the cats had no where in the house to hide. I had hoped they'd run for the garage or under their favorite chair which is in the kitchen, but Zoe freaked out BIG time and just kept scurrying back and forth looking for somewhere to go. Poor baby. I tried to get her to the garage, but she wasn't exactly behaving rationally. Trying to lift and carry 22 pounds of fighting, razor-clawed, freaked out cat is not something I'd recommend. I think I pulled all the muscles in my back and neck. She got away from me and I believe she's somewhere hidden amongst my household items in the garage. I didn't see where she went since I was trying to pick myself up, but she's not in the house, so the garage is probably a safe assumption. I'll look for her once we've both had time to recover our equilibriums. Damn, she's fast for a big cat. Hopefully she'll forget and forgive me for traumatizing her. I'm very glad that it's cool enough that I'm wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt though. No lacerations.

My floor is currently blue. The new carpet pad I'm having installed has a 'moisture-proof' side, so it's a nice bright blue. It doesn't quite match my red walls, as you can see from this pic, but it's a lot cleaner than my old carpet was. I have to say that this whole process of new tile and new carpet is interesting. I had no idea how they go about doing this stuff, so it's been interesting to watch it happen. They're currently pasting down the seams in the pad, or anyway that's what it looks like they're doing.

I looked for the cats but they're hiding, and given the vast number of hiding places there are in all my stuff in the garage, they won't be found until either they're ready to come out or I empty all the stuff out of the garage. Hopefully they'll be ready to come out long before I get around to moving all that stuff back into the house.

The carpet's going in now. These two guys are hard workers. They're just moving right along.

Tsukareta!!

Which translates as: I'm TIRED! I've spent almost the whole weekend moving my house into my garage.

To back up a bit: They finished my tile, and it did take them three days. Partly because of all of the mess-ups the first day and partly because they were not very consistent in who was working. The first day there were three of them. The second day there was only one guy for the first 3-ish hours and then two others came and worked on it. And partly the delay was my fault as I had to give that lecture on Wednesday morning. They didn't start working until about noon on Wednesday. I shouldn't complain though. The good news is that I have new tile and I'm happy with it.

The other good news is that my carpet has arrived at the flooring place (so in this case I can safely assume they'll bring it with them). They called me on the last day the tilers were here to tell me the carpet is in, and we scheduled the install for this coming Wednesday. Which means I've had this weekend to get all my stuff into my garage or my kitchen. Which is why I'm seriously tired right now. But everything's in the garage except things I can't move myself (couch, beds, TV) and my electronics which I'll disassemble and move on Tuesday evening. This pic is some of my stuff in my garage. I have FIVE of those 6' tall bookshelves, thank you. I'm betting I'll be finding some new bruises after this weekend, but I haven't broken anything yet (myself OR my stuff), and only have one fairly decent ding in a wall from a curio cabinet that tried to get away from me.

In the process of all this packing and moving I discovered that 'dust bunny' doesn't come close to describing the monster creatures living under some of my furniture after 8+ years. Yeow! Nasty! I've probably spent as much time cleaning as moving, especially since I'm still de-dusting everything from the tile install. This picture is my kitchen area with curio cabinets and other stuff finding a temporary home there (Yes, that is new tile on the floor). The cabinet on the right is the one that tried to escape me.

I'm sort of considering just leaving everything in the kitchen and garage after the carpet goes in. It's too much trouble to move it all back. At least I won't have any time constraints about getting things back where they belong. I don't need for the house to be in order for Christmas guests since I'm heading to my parents for Christmas. I can take my time and unpack slowly and finish cleaning as I go. Sounds perfect. Actually, anything that doesn't involve me getting up for awhile sound perfect right now.

I love construction . . . NOT!

You know that scary "what if the tile is not right feeling" I was talking about yesterday? I should sooooo listen to my intuition. They got the right tile patterns, but the store gave them two dye lots of my kitchen tile. That's the same tile, but two different batches. They don't match. Of course. So they have to take out some and go switch lot numbers at the store. This job will be taking longer than expected.

I wonder why construction in general is such an error prone field? It's a sad fact that no one expects a construction job to come in on time, or within budget, but why is that? I can understand someone like me, or any do-it-yourself-er, would need multiple trips to the store and lots of tries because we don't know what tools or supplies we're going to need until we start doing it. But people who do construction for a living? Why wouldn't the store or the tilers confirm how the tile was going to make it to my house? Why wouldn't someone confirm either that different batches of tile matched or that an order contained all one batch? Why does it seem all construction jobs are "get there and see if we have anything we need"?

My place of work is having construction done and it works exactly the same. "We're here to put the walls up so we can put in the UPS." Uhm, no one told us, we need to move the stuff from that area. "Not our problem. We need to do it today." Then they put up a temporary wall that blocked half of the major entry into the lab. When you opened the door into the lab, half the entry was a wall. Which of course couldn't stay that way, so they had to take it down and put it up again differently so people could get in. Probably construction time over-runs occur because so often they have to do things multiple times to get it right. But why is that?

My sister acted as general contractor for a shop she and her husband had built, and discovered that there are two constants in the construction industry. One, you will never have the material you need when the people are ready for it. Two, no one in construction, and no construction job, is ever on time. Being somewhat anal retentive like I am, my poor sister was a nearly a total, hairless (from pulling it out), basket case by the time the shop was built. I will keep her travails firmly in my mind while this house stuff is being done, so I can see how smoothly it's really going. They were dreaming when they told me two days, though. And maybe that's part of the problem. Two days in an ideal perfect world where things work like you would want them to, three to five days in the real world. I'm hoping for somewhere in between perfection and real. I have some things going on at work that I have to be there for. Like a lecture at 8:00 am tomorrow morning. I guess we'll see what kind of creative scheduling the tilers and I can do.

Thanks to lot numbers of tile, and having to take out non-matching tiles, the tilers didn't get very far laying the new tile yesterday. I'm hoping they get farther today. Here's a picture of the piles of old tile fragments before they carted it away and then a picture of the start of the new tile. This is as far as they got, what with having to replace pieces that they had put in. I think I'll be living with my refrigerator in my living room for a few days more.

Yes, this new tile is a very similar color to the tile I had taken out. I didn't change to kitchen tile color much. I changed the color of the carpet quite a bit from my current carpet, and the bathroom tiles will no longer be blue. I liked the color of the tile I had in the kitchen, but I wanted to extend it to the back door and re-grout the whole kitchen. It was easier to replace it all then find a matching tile to extend it. Hmmmmm. Sounds like a rationalization doesn't it? Maybe I just wanted to replace the flooring in my whole house. That reminds me. I need to remind the tilers to extend the tile to the back door. They'll have to take out some carpet there.

The cat-kids spent the day yesterday under my bed, but came out to investigate almost as soon as the door closed behind the tilers yesterday. They seemed mostly fine and very curious about all the goings on once it was just them and me again. I imagine today will be like that too, although they should be less freaked because the noise level will be less. The sound of cutting tiles will be most of the loud noises and the tilers are doing that outside. They will have to break out the old tiles around the toilet in the master bathroom. They left that yesterday so we'd have a working toilet until they replace the tiles and the toilet in the guest bathroom.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted on the progress today.

And so it begins!

Today's the day. New flooring in my house begins today. Maybe I'll do a running commentary, depending on how it goes.

I'm tired! I've been working harder around my house lately than I have since I moved in. Considering that I'm having the flooring replaced in my entire house, I'm essentially moving everything out and then back in, so I suppose it makes sense that I would be working harder than just moving in. The battle is progressing. They're supposed to be here today to begin the areas that are getting re-tiled. I spent the weekend preparing (pulling,hauling, packing, moving), so everything should be ready (famous last words).

My poor cats are truly freaked out, with everything in the house displaced and in a transitory state of flux. They really don't do well with changes in their world-view, so this is all kind of hard on them. I imagine they'll be fairly shell-shocked after the tilers spend time today breaking up and removing the old ceramic tile so they can replace it.

The good news is that I got all of my Christmas shopping done and everything is wrapped. Things that need to be shipped out of state are packaged up and ready to go. And all the wrapping paper, etc is put back away. That's a few less random items to worry about when the big carpet move comes along. Of course that also means I probably won't do any Christmas decorations this year. I know, I know. I really did start looking at carpet in October. I was just not very decisive. And then I picked a carpet that had to be ordered. I suspect my house will be in this state of flux through the Holidays and they won't lay the carpet until after the New Year. Maa. Shikatanai <-- can't be helped.

The tile guys are here ... breaking up tile. It's so weird to watch them break up all the old ceramic tile. In fact it's so weird that I'm not watching them. I did take a bunch of "before" pictures this morning though, so I can show off what it all looked like before I started with what it will look like afterward. And of course I'll be doing the 'in process' pictures. The first one is here. This is what my kitchen area currently looks like.

The cats are under my bed, probably for the duration. This part of the process is NOISY. And DUSTY.

I also called the store this morning and asked them to check on my carpet order. They said it shows as shipping today! At least I won't have to go back a choose the color over, even if I do have to wait until after the Holidays to get it installed. When I chose that style and color, the store salesman told me there was a slight chance that the manufacturer wouldn't have it in stock when they ordered it and I would have to start from scratch with the color and style selection. Of course it wouldn't have been entirely from scratch. I would have had to match it to the three colors of ceramic tile I've chosen for the kitchen, entry and the two bathrooms. So I'm really glad to know that the carpet I chose is on it's way.

First snag (this is construction after all): The flooring guys expected the new tile to be delivered and already be here. The store expected it to be picked up. So it's at the store. Looks like they decided the flooring guys will have to come and get it. One went and two are still destructing my house. Weird. I expected trouble with the carpet, not the tile.

These guys are hard-working though. They've been here about 2 hours and have all the tile broken up and mostly removed from the kitchen, the entry and one bathroom. I wish guy number three would come back with my new tile, so I wouldn't have the scary feeling of 'what if they don't have the right tile'.

He's back. I'm gonna go confirm tile.

Did it!

Done! I actually managed to get my garage completely cleaned out. Now I just have to put the remaining bags of trash out on the curb tomorrow for the trash collectors and I'll be officially done. I'm still amazed by all the junk I had in there.

I've started letting the cats come and go in there. I've always kept them out because of all the chemicals, like fertilizer, fire ant killers, rose sprays, etc, etc, etc. Now I've got those all cleaned up and the ones I'm keeping are put away on high shelves. Addy and Zoe have both checked out everything that's easily investigated. I want them to get used to the garage before I have to leave them in there while work is done on the house.

The house stuff is also progressing, so I should probably be starting to pack my life away in preparation for moving it all into the garage. The house has been measured and on Tuesday I meet with the folks at the store to confirm the specific carpet and tile and mortgage my soul.. ahem.. I mean find out how much and for how long this is going to put me in debt. And hopefully also find out some dates that it's going to occur. In the mean time I will start packing everything and moving smaller pieces of furniture into the garage. That should keep me out of trouble for the foreseeable future.

It's gorgeous and sunny this morning and cool, but everything is very wet from the rain for the last couple of days. Probably I won't be able to mow today so I'll do it next weekend over the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Also next weekend I'm going to do something I haven't done before. I have an appointment at Glamour Shots. I've been needing professional pictures for some time now. I could go to a professional photographer I suppose, but these guys should be able to not only get the photos for me, but also make me look fairly good. They asked me when the last time was that I had pictures made, and the answer to that is probably that I've never had professional photos made. I guess it's time. I need the photos because I plan to run for an office in my professional association and need a current picture to go with the bio. Also, I need one because I was selected as a Mentor of the Month by a group. Plus I'll be doing a professional blog starting in January and will need one for that. So my wanting to have a professional picture that looks decent has gone from just my own desire to a pretty serious need in the near future. I decided to go for it.

That will be on Saturday. Thursday and Friday I'll be in east Texas eating myself sick at my folks place. I love Thanksgiving dinner with the family. Luckily for me, my parents are willing to cook every year, so I'm seriously looking forward to spending some fat and happy time with them. I imagine this year it will just be me and the folks and my sister and brother-in-law who live out there near them. At Christmas time we may all be out there except maybe the Colorado gang. I have a married brother and he and his wife have four grown kids (one married). I also have three sisters, one in this area with a grown son, the one in east Texas with her husband, and the one in Colorado with her husband. Her son, his wife and their daughter are my relatives in Denver whose pictures you've seen in this blog.

Now that I've listed the family, you can see how long my Christmas shopping list is. I'm almost half way through it though. On-line shopping is great.

Guess I'd better get to my Sunday housework and turn robo vac loose.

Home again

My last post was pretty short, but I got side-tracked and then busy with some short trips.

I'm so glad to be home from my traveling. As much as I like to travel, it's always nice to be back. I've had two meeting trips in the last two weeks, the first to New Orleans and the second to Salt Lake City. Both meetings were really good, and the travel gods were looking out for me. No delays, cancellations, or other travel-related issues. In fact, I caught an earlier flight coming back from Salt Lake City on Friday night and got in earlier than I expected to. So all in all, routine travels with excellent, worthwhile meetings.

I'm glad not to be traveling for awhile for a couple of reasons, though. Besides just being glad to be home for awhile, I've been really pushing it to keep up with work and travel too, so it's nice to have only work facing me now. I have some deadlines to make, although I've managed to make a couple of them while traveling.

Besides work right now, I need to remember that Christmas is soon, and Christmas shopping shouldn't be put off. Especially because a lot of gifts will need to be shipped this year. I'll be going to east Texas rather than Colorado, so I need to get shopping done and stuff mailed to Colorado in time to arrive there during the holidays. Which makes the time between now and Christmas entirely too short.

Up-date on the house stuff: I chose a carpet color. Believe it or not. Someone is going to call me and arrange to come out and measure the house. And ever since I got home from the store, I've been looking at all my stuff that I will need to pack up and move. Can you say "despair"? It's going to take me months just to pack all this stuff and put it in the garage for the duration. I suppose I should start now, but I'm not going to start until I have a date that the work will start. Plus I didn't choose a counter top, and I'm told I should have those done before the floor. Plus I do need to finish cleaning out space in the garage. I worked on that yesterday again. Two more bags of trash. It really is getting close to being done, but I've got one serious area that I have to tackle. And I'll need to get used to parking outside so all my stuff and cats can have the garage. It's all becoming more real now that I've actually chosen a carpet color.

The color is darker than my current carpet, but not a dark color. My current carpet is some off-white shade, or was when the house was new. Now it's mostly 'stained and dingy', if I had to give it a color name. The new color is more of a light taupe. I did my best to see how it looks with a little carpet square in the house. Hopefully I'll like it when it's installed. *laughing* No. I WILL like it when it's installed. I would tell the name of the color but I've forgotten. They have too many colors with too many names.

I bought a robot vacuum cleaner about a month ago. A Roomba iRobot. It's the most amazing thing. The little thing just wanders around the house, and cleans like crazy. It seems to clean better than my big upright vacuum, plus it goes under the bed. Of course, my cats are less than thrilled, especially about the fact that it goes under the beds. Addy stalked it all over the house the first couple of times I used it, while Zoe ran from it hissing and spitting as it seemed to follow her around the house. Now days, Addy stays up on the furniture and ignores it, and Zoe sits in the kitchen until it's done. The cat-kids are not exactly good about making adjustments to their routine. I got them one of those fountains that's always running because Addy especially likes to drink from running water. It took them about a week to come into the master bath again (where I'd put it), and about three weeks for both of them to drink from it. They like it now though. They just don't deal with changes well.

So why'd I buy the robot vacuum? No reason. It seemed like fun, and besides laughing at the cats, it's been really nice to just turn it on and go do whatever I was doing. My house is staying a lot more vacuumed, I can tell you. Now if they'd just invent a robot duster, I'd be set.

Repairs and Fall cleaning

I wrote this almost two weeks ago, but forgot to post it, so it's a little out-dated. Maa. I'll post it anyway.

This has been a fairly productive week. After last week's leak repair, I did manage to call someone about my foundation this week. And to my delight, I have a "remarkably level house". I don't need any foundation work! I wanted to get that checked because I have some cracks in my interior walls, but he said just to watch them. They're not caused by foundation problems. So I dodged that bullet. Now I feel comfortable spending money on making the house better without worrying about whether I'll need that money for repairs.


Then Saturday I took my car in for basic maintenance, oil and filter change, and did not dodge a bullet there. Around $800.00 worth of un-dodged bullet. Besides the oil and filter and tire rotation, I needed two drive belts and front brakes as well as basic maintenance that was due around 40,000 miles. I don't mind spending money on my car actually. I depend heavily on it and need it to be running perfectly. It's been making a random whistling sound. Really random. So much so that I can't pin it down to any specific driving or outside conditions. So maybe all that work they did Saturday will have fixed whatever was making the noise. [Apparently it did. I haven't heard it since they worked on the car.]


I went back to Lowe's on Saturday also and spent more time looking at carpet and tile. I brought more carpet pieces home, but I think I found the ceramic tile I want, both for the kitchen and the bathrooms. And I started looking at counter tops for the kitchen. And I think I want to paint the master bathroom. Slowly but surely I'm getting ready to have this work done on this house. I also worked some more on cleaning out the garage again. Three more bags of trash and I'm getting there. It won't be too much longer and I'll have it looking good.


So all in all a fairly productive week and it's also been a beautiful weekend. So I'm in a pretty good mood. It's sunny! Finally! I thought it would never stop raining, but we've had a almost a week of sun.