Pounding, sanding, scraping, hammering, banging……it sounds like I’m hungover.
I wish.
The floor surgery has been going on now for 2 days. For 2 days I have sat trapped in my upstairs office surrounded by house plants, chairs, tables, lamps, pictures along with the other furniture from downstairs that we stored in the upstairs leaving me to have to scale a capsized ottoman to actually get through the door.
This is the room where I am hiding. What is missing is – the freakin’ kitchen sink! Could we cram anything more in this room? Correction: could I cram anything more into this room since I am the one who hauled everything in here (HUSBAND?). It feels like my college dorm!
It’s funny how quickly you can get used to existing in a 4 x 4 space or approximately how much space is available to me once you cram a room filled with an entire floor’s worth of furniture. That’s big enough for me, a chair, a desk and a computer. Need I anything else? If I could squeeze my treadmill in here I’d have everything I need right in this room. I know, I know – where would you go potty? Problem solved, the rubber tree is actually in this room with me. Hey, good enough for Boss, even better for me.
Only thing missing (important): food. Food is sort of a problem right now because the refrigerator is in the garage. Wondering how to stop eating? Put your refrigerator in the garage. Better yet, invite strangers over so you have to walk past them to get to that food and face the look of “eating again?” in their eyes.
Yesterday the wood installers arrived early at 7:30 am to start installing the wood boards with their brand new nail gun prototype – not yet released. This was very exciting stuff – I could sense it in their eyes that having a powerful yet efficient nail gun is like having a rear wheel light, fast, aerodynamic that powers you effortlessly down the road.
I get it guys, I get it.
Still you would think in all of the things that have been invented in the world they would have invented a silencer for the nail gun. Know what I mean?
A nonstop caravan of strange men paraded through my home all day – intsallers, managers, sanders carpenters, shoe layers? Shoe layers? I learned what a shoe is and where it goes.
Not on your foot actually.
In all of this deconstructing of my house, I am reconstructing it in a much cleaner, prettier way. Of course that means we need new everything. EVERY – THING must go. Except the couch. I like that. We actually got new televisions and already discarded the new ones. Here’s a good one: when the wood installers show up at your house tell them if they move the television they can keep it. And as an added bonus they can take the one downstairs. Problem solved = two televisions gone, 400 less pounds we need to haul ourselves. Husband – thrilled. Contractors – thinking if they stick around long enough I might just give the entire house away.
So, to list: we need rugs, painted walls and and and….a new refrigerator.
Have you been refrigerator shopping? Not easy. Many ways to arrange two doors and shelves. Next to each other, on top, ice maker, water fountain, child lock, door alarm.
Wait a minute – door alarm? Is this something your husband can set on to the freezer to keep your paws off his ice cream? Is there a programmable voice recorder where you can have it shout your 2009 season goals every time you reach for something bad or have it shout JUMBO in a husky voice when you reach inside after 9 pm?
After opening the doors of every refrigerator in Best Buy and finding one I liked best, I noticed the price tag of $2500 and realized a new refrigerator might be a few years away. The one refrigerator in our budget right now is big enough for a dorm room but hey – if I keep up my life in my office I bet it could fit nicely in there and solve the food problem.
Right now this is where my refrigerator resides – in the garage. If you look closely enough you’ll realize that not only can you eat in the garage, but you can also take a crap on the toilet which is also in the garage and then have yourself a nap on the living room couch or chair both of which are also in the garage. In fact, you could actually live in the garage because all of your needs would be met – unlike in my office on the second floor. I’ll even throw in the rubber tree.
Today the sanders arrived. Along with them they brought the one piece of machinery that is quite possibly even louder than the automatic nail gun:
The sander itself. It also does not have a silencer.
Holy crap I think I might have 50% of my hearing left when this is all gone. Imagine two of those things going at once. On top of that, imagine one of the sanders singing even louder in Spanish. Ay dios mio. Me duele en la cabeza.
Much louder than it looks – TRUST ME. In this picture you can also get a good look at the new floor – unfinished for now of course. I figure that you, the reader, will enjoy the before and after pictures much more than I, the homeowner/trapped resident, am enjoying the before and after process.
I may not have much of my sense of hearing left, but I still have my sense of humor. For proof: here’s a fun game you can play when you get a new floor. Allow contractor to remove drawer from under your stove that holds all of the big pans. You get to guess the contents of what was underneath that drawer in hiding for the past 14 years since your house was built.
Any guesses?
Careful archaeological survey of that pile reveals about 2/3 of the problem around my house: Boss and Chris. Little did I know that under the stove was Boss’ secret stash of rawhide bones and Chris’ secret stash of frozen blueberries that he eats for breakfast every morning. The other 1/3 is a bunch of fur and hair. I cannot claim responsibility for that because the hair is blonde. So either the previous owners had a large blonde dog or Chris secretly parties with a blonde that likes to cook.
Jen Harrison?
I am willing to send the pile to anyone that can correctly identify all of its contents. Heck, I’ll even throw in a free tv AND a dinner cooked by Jen Harrison.
I’ve been told this project will be complete by Monday. At that point I told my husband he is taking a day off from work to clean the entire house with me. Because it is a mess. There is a film of yellow sand all over everything. Including me. Tomorrow they do the staining and Saturday they do even more. I guess floor installation takes no weekends so I’ll be living in the office and eating out of the garage for a few more days.
Eating. I am hungry again. It’s after 9 pm so thank goodness I don’t have the self-scolding fridge. But I do still have to scale the ottoman to actually leave the room. It’s settled then. I’m snacking on houseplants.
JUMBO
(all right, who said that?)
