A new twist on "the dog ate my homework"

It is renovation-mania over here right now, and I have some words of wisdom for those thinking of doing a large-scale remodel on your home while living in it: Just.don't.do.it.



Well, not really, but it has been a bit of an inconvienence. It all started on Wednesday, with the delivering of the new range. The appliance folks hauled away the old one, thus leaving us range-less since they aren't licensced to hook up a gas range and because we wanted the floors to go in first anyway. The flooring guys came on Thursday and started the massive tear-out. The dumpster was delivered, and it looks so lovely sitting in the driveway. So on Thursday night we were left with no floors and a giant dumpster. I felt a bit like Tom Hanks in "The Money Pit." Things got a bit better on Friday when they started laying the floors but they only made it to the dining room. So they came back on Saturday and nearly got done with the 1st floor, but the last few cases of flooring were damaged. So now we have to wait til new flooring is shipped. "Sorry about that!" the crew chief said. "We'll be back on Tuesday!" Niiiiiice. We were at least able to get the stove back in on Saturday and Tommy, plumber extraordinare, hooked her up. So we're cookin' with gas now, as they say. But keep in mind that NONE of the carpeting has been installed yet, and it's going in the entire 2nd floor. Lord knows how long that will take.

So today (Monday) the ceramic tile guy is supposed to show up. I wait. I wait. I wait some more. Then, the contractor stops by. "Hey there! I came to take some measurements for your trim!" "Well that's nice," I say, "but isn't the ceramic tile guy supposed to be here today?" "Oh yeah," Contractor replies. "He called this morning and left a message. His dog had a heart attack this morning, so he's dealing with that. He'll be here tomorrow morning."

Now we're approximately 2 days behind schedule, and the painters were supposed to come on Wednesday to start painting all the walls and trim. I imagined having 3 crews of workers in the house (carpet crew, tile crew, paint crew) at the same time and nearly had a heart attack of my own. So I called the painting contractor and backed that job up to Oct. 1.

So that, my friends, is our life right now. Damaged wood, Rover's heart troubles, and whatever else awaits us tomorrow.

And for those of you who are just dying to know what color our kitchen cabinets are, the stain is "Classic Winter." The contractor was like, "Um, what color quarter-round do you want to do here? 'Cause I don't think we've got that color." You could tell he was trying to be nice about it, when he really wanted to say, "I don't think we've got anything that matches those ugly-ass cabinets you've got there, lady." The final decision: quarter-round the color of the floor.