Quick Post Then On the Road Again

I'm back at the ghetto apartment for less than 48 hours and then it's off again to Michigan for the Vargason Reunion. In some ways, the renovations at the new place are going well. In others, not so great. Anything that we're doing ourselves is fine. The one thing I hired done is, of course, a complete screw-up that has left us with no source of hot water, no oven or stove, no hook-up for the washer,  a scratched-up kitchen floor, and two open gas lines under the kitchen counter. It's the house in Alden all over again: incompetent "friends" who just wanna "help." Not this time. Their last chance to make things right was Tuesday before Debbie showed up to bring me back here. I was left sitting around with my thumb up my ass all day while they played the no-call-no-show game. Well, when you do that as an employee of Burger King, you are fired on the spot. So guess what, Steve and your little Merry Band of Men; You're Fired!

(I gotta get a picture of me in a bad toupee if I'm going to start using that line.)

So as soon as we're back in Florida, we have to get to work fixing the damage left behind. Working with gas lines isn't one of my favorite tasks, but I'll manage it much better than the last bunch of fools, it won't cost me hundreds of dollars, and when I'm finished, the job will be done. Unfortunately, because of the wasted time, we won't get all the renovations complete that we wanted out of the way before we started living there, but we can make do and piece-meal it once we're moved in.

Enough of that. Done and done. Lesson relearned: If Debbie and I can't do it ourselves, it just won't get done.

Here is what we did get accomplished:

Florida room: Lots of water damage out here, plus a wall with a non-functioning pocket door that led to a completely dysfunctional laundry/storage area. Getting the old vinyl flooring in the laundry room up turned out to be pretty easy. The underlayment was molded due to water leaking in under the back door, so rather than try to separate the vinyl floor from it, we tore it all up as one piece and tossed it on the scrap pile, then put down all-new felt and underlayment. We will eventually put down some kind of permanent flooring, but in the meantime, we went with some blue enamel porch-and-floor paint. One distressing discovery: The florescent fixture you can see in the laundry room in the first photo? Some bright boy thought the best way to attach it to the ceiling was by running screws from the outside through the roof. And not just a few screws; over a dozen screws were driven through the roof. The best part is that they were too short and were doing nothing to hold up the light. They're just making holes in the roof. We've been finding this sort of thing, or worse, everywhere we look.

Storage room: Originally, all that was in the storage area were two clothes rods that had been positioned too close to the wall for a hanger to fit, and a shelf over the rod. None of it felt very secure, and when I took everything down I found that it wasn't just a feeling. Any significant weight on either the shelf or the rod would have resulted in a loud crash, most likely late at night. The shelving attached to the door seemed secure, so we left it. Everything else went into the dump pile and was replaced by Closetmaid rod and shelf on one side, and pantry shelving on the other.

Bedroom: There was a narrow wall at the foot of the bed that was only there to provide a place for the 1970's-style folding closet door to attach when closed. We never closed it, and the wall was in the perfect spot that whenever I got out of bed at night, I would come around the end of the bed and smash my right foot and the right side of my face into it. Every. Single. Time. So it's gone. And no, I didn't leave the 2x2 stumps sticking into the room. I was taking intermediate pictures while I was working, then forgot to take one when it was complete. Living around old people must be rubbing off.

Well, off to do last minute packing (to move), packing (for the trip) and cleaning things up.