Hardest 30 days, living as a hoarder, red eye, fresh air, Tebow

So on Friday the tile installers finished up.  The woman was not very happy with Cindy.  I had called in to the installer office saying that we thought the grout joints were not filled enough.  Cindy reiterated this when they showed up.  Cindy had already aggravated the mother by not agreeing to sign off on the install on Thursday before the work was actually completed.  The woman was not very receptive to our latest complaint.

I had talked to a supervisor and explained what our issue was.  He said with straight edge tile it is normal to feel the edge somewhat when you are walking on it barefoot.  I told him that my girlfriend took a picture of the tile they have on display at the store including grout.  The grout joints were significantly higher.  So anyway the mother said once they were done Cindy could go around and let them know if she saw problem spots.

So I loosely monitored the work as it went on.  I did not see them doing anything to the areas that were already grouted during the day.  Cindy did say the new areas they worked on seemed better however she didn’t press them to redo the stuff they already did.  The mother was complaining about how her neck hurt and just being a pain in the ass.  Cindy asked them to leave the grout they already had mixed up so she could touch up any low joints she saw.  Cindy would do a better job anyway.

So after the installers left Cindy spent probably a couple hours going around filling low joints, especially in areas that see the majority of foot traffic.  It’s pretty lame that the only way we could get it the way it felt right was to do it ourselves. When I got home I inspected the final outcome of the installer and Cindy’s work.  The visual impact of the tile is pretty dramatic, the house looks so different.

We went about a psuedo normal Friday evening eating pizza and watching some dvr’d show back in the bedroom.  Afterward Cindy said she had to do some clean up work on the tile.  She was working for awhile when I came over to take a closer look.  A lot of the tiles had gray streaks in the grain of the faux wood.  The streaks were dried grout.  When Cindy was doing her touch up she was applying grout and then wiping with a damp sponge but she didn’t follow up with a towel to get the residue off.  That residue had now dried and because of the grooves in the simulated wood grain they would no longer clean up with a quick swipe of a towel.

Well this was the start of a two hour on your knees scrubbing session where Cindy and I went around the 750 square feet of tile and did the best we could to get grooves clean.  Of course I wasn’t happy to be working on this until 11:30 at night but it was hard to get mad at Cindy for busting her ass to try to make things right.  We worked mostly in silence as we used a combo of towels, rags, sponges, and brushes to clean the tiles.  At the end of the night things looked significantly better.

I awoke Saturday and emerged into our freshly tiled living area.  I inspected our scrubbing from the night before.  For the most part we were successful, I quickly scrubbed down a few spots we missed.  As I did I paused several times to admire the visual the new tile created.  It looks awesome, despite the angina we had to deal with to get there.

Saturday morning I loaded up the left over material from the job into the back of the Tacoma. There was quite a bit of it, seven bags of thin set, two bags of grout, two jugs of stain blocker and four boxes of tile.  I kept two boxes of tile just in case something happens down the road. After a rather long and drawn out return process (Cindy experienced this all week), I got around $300 credited back, something that will help offset the unexpected $1100 tile membrane hit.

When we got home the majority of the rest of the day was consumed by starting the arduous process of emptying the office and three bedrooms into the tiled area in preparation for the carpet installation that is supposed to start tomorrow.  By the end of the afternoon we had the office cleaned out with the carpet and padding stripped.  I temporarily put my computer set up on a fold up table for easy rip down on Tuesday.  The server and associated network equipment was the only other thing still in the office.

Pulling up the carpet revealed some nasty mildew looking carpet tack strips in the office.  They are the result of some water leakage problems we had with the walls before they were sealed with Rhinoshield.  At first I thought we were going to leave the tack strips in place to be reused.  Seeing this made Cindy eager to just pop them all out so we could get new strips.  Before we quit for the day we also got all of the furniture and considerable other junk moved out of hobby room as well.  The great room and dining room areas of the house suddenly looked like a scene out of Hoarders, with each room filled with stuff.  It was a pretty shocking visual and I immediately felt unsettled having all of this shit piled up.

On Saturday night I took Cindy to one of her favorite Mexican restaurants, Iguana Mia.  She busted her ass all week with the flooring project and chicken coop work, she certainly deserved a  a nice meal out.  Both of us went a bit crazy with the food.  Cindy also had a “Pink Cadillac” margarita that threw her for a loop.  It felt good to just get away from what seems like the non-stop work the last 3-4 weeks have felt like.

Sunday it was back to the grind.  We finished up pulling furniture out of the remaining bedrooms, adding to the already hugely cluttered mess in the tiled areas of the house.  We then had to pull the carpet, padding and tack strips from the rooms, something we are pretty adept at by now.  Pulling up the carpet revealed another myriad of foundation cracks, some of which were pretty big.  After posting pics of the cracks Randall asked how I was going to fill them.  I originally had no intentions to fill them since the floor was going to be covered with high grade, 1/2″ thick, 3M pad with vapor barrier.

After Randall mentioned filling them I had an internal discussion where I decided to go grab my caulk gun and fill them.  There would be no better time to do it and the effort required to fill the cracks was not massive.  I used 25 and 50 year silicone caulk for most of it.

Pulling the carpet in the master bedroom revealed another oddity, a cut off, uncapped pvc pipe.  Within 8 inches was another pipe that was filled.  My theory is it was another one of the “oops” that occurred when the house was built.  In the lightning fast ground breaking to completion 3 month build period there were a number of things that were screwed up.  This looked like they mislaid the underground pipes at some point.  What I didn’t understand was why they would be too lazy to just fill the fcking pipe.  When Cindy first saw the pipe a few small ants were milling around it.  I did what the home builder should have done 14 years ago and plugged the pipe. We got all of the rooms stripped, swept, vacuumed and caulked by mid-afternoon.

We are getting to the point where the chicken coop/run is almost ready to open for business.  One of the things I wanted to try to do was convert the two front windows from stationary to hinged to allow for additional airflow in the coop on hot summer days.  The shed only has one window in the back and two small vents near the roof eave.  Earlier in the week I grabbed a continuous hinge and some hardware to implement the mental blueprint of how I was going to make this happen.  I was not sure how successful I would be so I only bought stuff to do one window in case it was an epic fail.

I was somewhat surprised that what I came up with worked pretty well.  The window can now swing wide open during the day and be secured at night with the insertion of a couple screws.  Now I need to rinse and repeat on the other side.  I also did some work trying to stiffen up an indoor perching structure Cindy made for the chickens.  Hopefully sometime this week Lucy and Lola can get migrated to the new coop.  It may be a challenge since both of them now firmly identify the chicken tractor as home base.

Over the weekend I developed the mysterious red eye syndrome that I have had a handful of times over the last 6-7 years.  My right eye is very red and is painful to the touch.  When it happened the first couple times I went to medical professionals and an eye doctor but nothing was firmly identified.  The last couple times I just ride it out and lay on the Visine until it goes away.  That is my intention with this latest episode as well.

So the Eagles signed Tim Tebow for some odd reason over the weekend.  It just adds to the biggest head scratching off season I have ever experienced as an Eagles fan.  I have no idea what Chip Kelly’s master plan is but I do know if the Birds suck this year he is going to look like an utter dolt as a player personnel guy.

So the carpet installation is scheduled to start tomorrow.  Hopefully by this time next week all will be right with the world again.  This past month has been filled with more at home labor in a concentrated time period than I want to deal with at this point in my life.  It’s amazing what two people can accomplish with some hard work.