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At The Home Store

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We were at Home Despot earlier mulling ways to make interior storm windows. As I originally thought it might be a variation of the magnetic kit thingy I found, we were at the Plexiglas section. There was an upper shelf that was empty, except for a long cardboard box that had been repurposed by the store with the message “Please place nothing on displays,” which was written in black marker. As you can see, it looks oh so slick and professional and workmanlike.

Immediately below, someone got as philosophical as it gets in a suburban hardware store: “what about this box?”

This image was sent from Flickr as a blog entry, email or cameraphone image.

Via: Flickr
Title: 11-20-05_1711.jpg

By: GinnyRED57
What about this box?

Originally uploaded: 20 Nov ’05, 11.14pm PST

Floor Project From Hell IV: Welcome To Purgatory

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Here’s a quick update on the Floor Project From Hell:

We’re almost done! Except we’ve had scope creep! We started laying out the floor after it acclimated on Friday. It’s now Monday; yes, we’re slow, but we hit a minor snag and we’re now setting up for a big finish. Which involves totally repainting the room in a slightly darker color. I’d gone through hell patching about a zillion screw-anchor holes in that room 5 years ago – but there were a couple of dings and places I hadn’t done a very good job.

First of all, we knew we needed some “approved glue product” for one board we had had to rip in half in the doorway, and for the eventual gluing of the last row of ripped boards. This was not carried by Lowe’s but they offered to order it for us. We went across the street to Home Despot to see if they carried the glue. Nope, but a very helpful woman named Chris called Bruce Flooring to find out exactly what the “approved glue product” was (actually, it’s “Bruce Everseal Adhesive“) and determined that they could get it for us… in a week. Or, we could take our chances with another brand, but our warranty might be voided if something went wrong and it ruined the floor along the one edge.

AUGH!!

So while on our way to Menard’s to check to see if they had the glue (and also buy something else unrelated to the project), I called iFloors up in Palatine. Remember the weird storefront? I’d seen some glue in bottles near the door and wondered, since they carried the Bruce Foldamp;Lock, if they also carried the glue. I spoke to a very helpful guy named Larry, who regretfully informed me that they didn’t have any Bruce Everseal Adhesive in stock, and wouldn’t be able to get it delivered until Monday. However, if I could get to his wholesaler in Elk Grove Village within an hour, we could order it from Larry over the phone, and pick it up ourselves with a reference number.

HUZZAH!! WIN!

So I gave Larry a credit card number, and he emailed me back the reference number, which I got on my iPhone will sitting in the parking lot of Menard’s… where David was picking up something or other for the project.

As it turned out, I ended up driving to Elk Grove to get the glue while David went home to get more done. I found my way to a huge, huge warehouse with a little tiny “Customer Pickup” lobby, gave the reference number, and presently a teenage guy in a black Goth T-Shirt brought me my one 16 oz. bottle of glue. I drove away exulting. After farting around for a while, we got the one short, ripped board in place; all that was necessary was to shave down part of the locking edge, run a bead of glue, and slip it into place with the 1/2″ of clearance from the wall that it required. It’ll be much the same when we get the very last row ripped, shaved, and glued.

So we continued, off and on, laying floor Saturday and Sunday. It went into place pretty well and didn’t take that much effort to install; “tapping” really was just tapping with the block and rubber mallet. I didn’t go to church in the morning, feeling 1) tired and 2) like I didn’t want to burn half the day. So since I wasn’t going, David and I went to Walker Brothers for a really solid breakfast before starting in again.

There was one bit where I thought I’d put in boards fairly tightly, but there was a huge gap at the ends of two boards. No problem, though! The floor came back up easily, I kept the rows in order, and I relaid the 4 rows or so back to the place where the gap was. It was somewhere around Saturday afternoon that we realized that the final row of boards was “short.” In more ways than one.

The last two rows were from a box that had mostly shorter pieces and only 1 long piece; the product comes in “random lengths” which means you don’t have to make as many cuts and can break up the “line” a little so the joints don’t line up too closely. It was with some gnashing of teeth and not a little wailing that we found that not only was the very last row all short, choppy boards and requiring a rip-cut to fit in the space, the last row was short by just TWO LONGISH BOARDS. The waste material from the ripped boards would have fit in the space remaining… we just estimated it a little too closely. It turns out that if we’d chosen the 3″ width instead of the 5″ width, we might not have had to rip the last row, and wouldn’t have needed the 6th box.

Oooooo, burn!

So it was back to Lowe’s we went on Sunday afternoon for one more box of Bruce Fold;ampLock Gunstock flooring. While there, we also bought matching quarter-round (reasoning that at this point, we don’t want to mess with staining pine to match) and also some MDF shoe moulding with a nice detailed edge, because some of the 1/2″ expansion gaps we had to leave around the edges of the floating floor were more like 3/4″ gaps. The shoe moulding was pre-primed; we also bought white trim paint in a satin finish, and two gallons of a kind of deep salmony color for the walls. Yes, I had previously painted in there with a friend. But the shade was a little bit too pink, and there were some places where the walls had gotten gouged in the ensuing years, and in the course of laying the floor there were a couple of places around the closet door that got messed up, so we decided to paint again.

So last night I set up the shoe moulding on a couple of sawhorses that we bought, and put the first coat of paint on it.

Hurrah for scope creep!

Today being Monday, we farted around for a while. I put a second coat of white paint on the shoe moulding, and a first coat on the one piece that was somehow still up in the room (I thought David had brought it all down, he thought I brought all of it down). Then it was two trips to Menard’s to get painting supplies that we either knew we had on hand, or in the case of the second trip, thought we had on hand. We also got a countersink and previously bought finishing nails the other day at Lowe’s.

Yes, we’re a little… disorganized… in the way we approach home repair.

There has been a little snarling while setting up to do the paint job; we’d considered painting first so we don’t have to worry about getting stuff on the new floor and finick around with tape-down drop sheets and cloths to keep the step ladder from denting the floor. David’s dealing with some issues in the closet, which had never been painted and needed a lot of Kilz and spackle to bring it up to paintable. I’m recovering from a hissy I was about to have over putting the self-taping plastic drop cloth stuff on the walls where I’m going to start cutting in and painting. I’m hoping to be able to reuse the short bits of pre-tape stuff, about 18″ wide, as I go along the walls. I found pretty quickly that ripping off an arms’-length strip of the stuff resulted in a twisted, stuck-together mess.

Afternoon is not a good time for either of us to be frustrated – this at least we both recognize and sometimes we just have to down tools and walk away for a bit. However, once the fiddly prep stage is over with, the “color going on the walls” stage will go well enough.

Tomorrow after a second coat, we can finally lay the final two rows of boards (which need 48 hours in the room to acclimate), install the moulding, re-install the closet doors, and call it done.

Then I’ll find an inexpensive Persian-style rug, get Mom’s recliner up there, and David will install some shelves (or we’ll find some bookcases). I’ve got some lamps (a floor lamp plus a matching table lamp) and it’ll become a little library/reading room. But whatever goes in there, it’ll finally be a room again.

In the course of this project, we’ve made numerous trips to home improvement centers. We’ve bought and returned and re-bought an entire flooring system and a compound mitre saw. The first flooring system was the bamboo stuff, already described as undocumented and dicey. The first compound mitre saw was a Craftsman 10″ but David decided he could make do with a kind of complicated clamp setup so he could use a circular saw he borrowed from his dad. It was workable, but time-consuming and the cuts weren’t that good, so he went back and got a Craftsman 10″ sliding compound mitre saw. He was originally going to get a 7″, but it wasn’t in stock and he texted me that he was getting the bigger saw after all. “Oh well, ruh ruh ruh!” I texted back, and it really has made the latter part of the floor cuts go like a dream, and of course he worked out the mitred cuts for the shoe moulding and got it dry-fitted. The saw is in the garage, so he worked out several cuts at a time, carefully. It’s overkill, of course, but we’ve talked about redoing the floors in the other two bedrooms, and there are other projects we’ve talked about, too.

Later: David did the cutting-in in the closet, and then felt the need to escape to the health club. So I took over and finished painting in there, not without some angsty moments and strangled howls. The doors have been sitting in the garage for years… I originally took them out so it was easier to paint the first time. It was rather horrible painting in the closet, because of the angles and having a lot of corners and sides to paint, and my hand kept cramping up. I just painted the walls with one coat, and I may not go in and put in a second coat. I don’t care, I kept saying, because it’s in the closet.

The ceiling? I don’t care if my dearest love cut in onto the ceiling. I’m not painting the ceiling.

It’s In. The. Closet.

And I don’t care if you can see brushstrokes and patchiness and the occasional fibre from my big paintbrush, because It’s. In. The. Closet.

It looks like we finish painting tomorrow – once we get over the wittering period when we lay out the tape-on drop cloths and then the larger canvas drop cloth and cut in, the rolling part actually goes pretty fast. Once the moulding and closet doors are back in place, it’ll be a room again.

We’ll be heading out to see about dinner; I had put some chicken David was defrosting in a marinade with wine and honey mustard, but David now says he has a taste for Italian food. What the hey! We’re on staycation! Chicken can marinate overnight, it’ll be yummy tomorrow.

I may marinate myself a little, too. Mmmm, wiiiiiine.

Up A Blind Alley

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You know, it’s a little bit funny, as the family joke has it. David and Ginny should never attempt an “easy home installation” without having a backup plan that doesn’t include having to find obsure little details on home-repair troubleshooting websites. Or needing a time out.

Still, we eventually succeeded – at least, David figured it out while I lent immoral support.

David attempted to install some double-wide blinds in the bedroom while I was away this morning. I returned to find him stumped, because one bracket was too tight, causing all the other brackets to fail to engage. Thus, the miniblinds we’d bought weren’t much use.

At first, we struggled. Then, we seemed to succeed, but the blind on the side with the too-tight bracket wouldn’t come down. This was when David decided a trip away from the house was a good idea, while I talked to someone at Home Despot, who correctly diagnosed the bracket problem, which was that we had the bracket too close to a mechanism. This was also the cause of the not-coming-down problem.

However, we couldn’t get the headrail OFF to unscrew the bracket and reposition it.

I checked the www.levolor.com website while he went off to Menards to cool off and to find a very,very flat wrench of the right size. The one he came back with was just a smitch too wide, but David got it to work eventuually. After a lengthy removal process, David sent me downstairs.

“Call me when you’re ready to reinstall the headrail,” I said.

He called me back fairly quickly. Aha! the blinds were up and could be raised or lowered. Also aha! The twister-wand thing twirled uselessly, so they couldn’t be closed or opened.

Rats. BUT, I’d seen something of this nature in the levolor.com website FAQ.

However, the fix on the Levolor.com site wasn’t the correct one; I had to go to a third-party retailer’s site to get the right “fix.” Which was “the blinds have internal rods which engage interior gear-joints, and sometimes the rods shift in transit and must be re-inserted back into the joints.”

Levolor Riviera and Mark I Repairs and Adjustments

Now, WHY couldn’t Levolor.com have

1. Cautioned against installing brackets too close to the inner works of the blinds, and

2. Shipped the blinds with little styrofoam spacers to prevent the rods from shifting OR mentioned this problem in their FAQ?

Durrrrrrrr. Seems like a no-brainer now, but at the time, this series of problems was mighty, mighty frustrating. Now the only people who are frustrated are the neighborhood pervs (not that we have any, they are purely imaginary).

Nearly Kitty Time Again

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The other day, we went to the cluster of big-box stores over on Barrington Road where many of our simple needs may be met: Home Despot, Staples, and up until 2 years ago when Stuey died, pet supplies at PetSmart.

David had some errands to run at the other stores, and I decided to loiter with intent at the PetSmart, where I knew there would be some cats in their Adoption Center. Last weekend’s visit to a similar pet place near our hotel in Salt Lake started up a powerful hankering; it had been nearly two years since I’d even petted a cat or kitten, let alone merely holding one.

Last week it was easier to be detached and just enjoy petting the hopeing-to-be-adopted kitties, because we were out-of-towners and an adoption would be impossible. This week, not so easy.

Oh, I tore myself away in the end, but it was close. One big, solid black cat kept meowing for someone to pay it some mind, but I was more interested in the younger cats. Finally, I asked the volunteers from the no-kill Humane Society shelter in Downer’s Grove to open the cage for the meowy one, who wasn’t “in residence” at that Pet Smart, but one of the transient ones from the shelter. I was handed a vast sable purring lump, that immediately curled up in my arms, wrapped one (declawed) paw around my neck, and gave me a mighty head-bump.

Well. It had been that long since I’d had a head-bump, too. I got all choked up and tried not to let the volunteer coordinator see what an easy mark I was. I petted and loved and stroked and the more I did that, the more the black cat nestled into my shoulder. I started wishing for a chair, preferably a good, solid one with back support, because this was one solidly built cat.

In the end, it decided it had been held long enough, so back in the cage it went. I half-heartedly discussed the possibility of fostering cats and mentioned that I could deal with diabetic cats if it wasn’t too long-term. The coordinator became very excited and handed me flyers, brochures, and a business card. David came up and started to walk me out… I toook his arm and said in an undertone, “Get me out of here before I turn around and do something stupid.”

We talked some more on the way back, about how much harder it would be for us to commit to taking care of a dog (permanently). All I could think of was the feel of soft sable fur, and grey fur, and orange fur, and tortie fur – of the shining coats of the various cats I’d petted, cajoled, and held. We both agreed that we’d like a younger cat (not necessarily a kitten) and that it maybe could be soon.

So we’ll see. We’ll see.

Not That Interesting Unless You Are Fascinated By Mulch

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It’s the end of another weekend, and in spite of my usual practice, it was actually a productive one, and I’m pretty happy about that. I’m just not that motivated (or organized) a person as a general rule, but now and then even I can actually get something done around here.

Yesterday was one of the exceptions to the Rule of Saturday; normally, I spend the first few hours of the first morning of the weekend in bed, listening to NPR’s Saturday Edition, and then to Car Talk, and then to WWDTM. Possibly also to “Whaddya Know.” By then, it’s almost noon or after, and I might wander downstairs to grab a bowl of cereal, then wander even further downstairs to the shadowy Lair of Computers. Where, truth be told, I often end up spending all or most of the day, emerging only for food and a decent rerun of CSI or What Not To Wear or The Vicar of Dibley.

Sundays: less sleeping in. Sunday Edition for the Mensa quiz, then choir pracice at 9:30, followed by churrrch, and then either an interminable meeting OR chatting with people over coffee, followed by either more lurking in the Lair or rushing off to make it to a family gathering. More lair-lurking in the evening. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Exciting, yes? No.

Yesterday, though, I actually got a hell of a lot of stuff done. By 12:30. Together, we disposed of hazardous waste and pruned a lot of branches and suckers off of the one crab-apple tree and bagged the result (the suckers, not the hazmat waste). And then I got a hell of a lot more stuff done, with breaks for watching TV and grabbing a drink. And then David put a very small turkey in the oven using the new roasting pan and following the directions that came with our cute little Butterball (he called it “Following the FAQ,” and the results were delicious).

The end result: 11 bags of mulch put down in the front, with one more to go right alont the front edge of the yew bushes. New plants bought, placed where they’ll probably go, and watered well. Ran out of daylight, energy, and the ability to bend over before I could actually get the plants in.

If you really want to know more about mulch than anyone should bother with, you may read on.
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More Weekend, Please

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Weekend? What weekend? This one went by faster than most, and next weekend promises to go by even faster.

Friday I didn’t get away from the office until after 6pm. My team leader was out again, and although I wasn’t schedule to stay until closing time, things were hairy enough in the afternoon that I decided to stick around for immoral support. Also, one agent had some sort of personal ticket he wanted issued, but it turned out we couldn’t issue it as an electronic ticket, and he couldn’t use paper tickets. They were for family members to come up from Mexico, and there wasn’t time to get the tickets to them via express services. Kind of not his fault that we I couldn’t issue the e-ticket, because it’s hard to tell sometimes. Kind of his fault for leaving it so incredibly late. This was brought to me in the middle of some hairiness to do with hotel groups, and so I was really short with him, but really, what could I do that late in the game? I advised him to go to O’Hare the next day and purchase pre-paid tickets; we used to do prepaids, but by the time this solution was the only one left to choose from, it was after 6pm. It could have been done if it hadn’t been dumped on me at the last minute. But first, I would have had to find the PTA documents, and the validator, and the airline plates. It’s been that long since we’ve done one, and frankly I don’t know if we still do them at all.

Anyway, I got home and was mooching about – David was off at Joe’s place doing some advanced geekery and was about half an hour to the north. The phone rang; it was David, the geekery was accomplished, and we decided to meet at Nobu’s, “our” sushi restaurant. Hey, there’s my hubby, sitting at our regular table! He had beaten me there, of course.

It was kind of like a quickie date.

We decided not to do as much damage sushi-wise and didn’t order as many different kinds as usual – wise choice. Then, dinner over, we drove home in our separate cars, and again with the being beaten. What is this, street racing? Sheesh.

Yesterday, David had another geeky outing planned; he was meeting Steve and Steve’s nephew Benjy and some other SF/tech acquaintances for a trip to Frye’s Electronics for the last day of the big grand opening sales. David bought some stuff, and Steve and Benjy played Dance, Dance Revolution apparently, so that today Steve was complaining he was sore. No word from Benjy; probably feeling fine. Ah, youth – it’s wasted on the young.
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It’s The Plumber!

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He’s here to fix the… faucet!

Yes, the one from last winter. And now to repair the even larger, but somewhat neater, hole in the drywall. Or maybe get some kind of access panel type-deal from Home Despot. The guy was from the same company that “fixed” the faucet the last time it froze (and that one took 2 trips). The work is being covered under warranty. This means a lot to us.

Also on the list of prospective plumbing jobs: replace ejector pit, possibly install a utility sink in the laundry room. We’d previously gotten an estimate (rather high, we thought) on getting the ejector pit redone from another plumber that replaced the pump in there. He worked for a competing plumbing company whose identifying stickers were all over the pipes down there (and frankly, the jobs all look sorta… jerry-rigged). We weren’t happy with some other work they did for us and didn’t call them back after that. So today’s plumbing dude said “Hey, those guys are out of business. They lost their license.”

Which totally wouldn’t surprise us based on our previous experiences with their contractors, or it may have merely been professional discourtesy.

We’ll get a couple more bids for the other jobs, but at least for now the garage faucet is fixed. And that better be permantent, because I don’t want a skating rink in there no matter how fun it sounds.

For Cat Lovers Only

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Neil Gaiman quotes from a reader’s email in his mailbag:

Sorry about your having to clean up after the cat. We have a cat here who doesn’t understand that having all four paws in the litter box is not sufficient, and so we often end up with urine under the litter box rather than in it. Sigh.

Well, I know all about a cat being such an enthusiastic and productive pisser that also thought that just the two front paws standing in litter constituted “in the litterbox.” Also there was some confusion in his mind over whether hanging one’s kitty butt over the edge was “close enough for jazz” or not.

If you’d like to read more about how I dealt with this indelicate and undelicious problem, read on.
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The Day After

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The party last night… what a good time was had by all! It turned out that most of my cousins (of mine and the next younger generation) were there in addition to a bunch of my niece Sydnee’s friends and in-laws. The food was fabulous – Syd’s husband Eric is fond of Indian food so there were a lot of interesting items to choose from.

The house was amazing – stuck up on the mountainside with a creek roaring down a little gully alongside, with several decks and great views of the valley through tall pine trees (kind of a rarity in that part of the valley, they must have been planted in the 60’s to be so big). It was great hanging out with so many family members; the memories were coming thick and fast in my head, since in my childhood (especially before my dad and my mom’s brother Charlie died) there were a lot more times we got together, and all the cousins and I were kids, so we’d play together while the adults partied. This party was decidedly upscale and “done right,” and there were snacks and beverages available in every major room and on the decks, too. It was a cold night with occasional rain or hail coming down so we couldn’t spend much time outside, but for a while it was very nice to stand on the covered deck on the lower level, drink a beer, and watch the hail “ping!” off of an abstract metal hanging sculpture. It was a nice place to hang out and escape all the crowds.
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Belling the Fish

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Oh boy! We’re drilling holes in the house!

Things are done slowly, and sometimes not in logical order around here, but eventually they do get done. Although they might get done in strange ways — tonight, for instance, we tried belling the fish, and now our ceiling jingles, but we have successfully achieved a goal we’ve been working towards for several months now… very soon, there will not be electronic spaghetti dangling all over the back of the wet bar, and as of about 90 minutes ago, there is no dusty speakerwire trailing along the floor and threatening to trip the unwary (not to mention throttle the vacuum cleaner). Soon, very soon now, we will have a normal family room at last.

Tonight, for example, we did something we’ve been trying to figure out how to do for months – David drilled two holes in the ceiling and we ran speaker wire from one side of the room to the other. Not a big deal? We’ve been mulling this one over for months. Run it along the corners and install crown molding? Run it behind the mantlepiece and paint the wire the same color as the grout? Bend it around all kinds of odd corners and bricks and paint it the same color as the ceiling? We couldn’t run it under the floor – slab. We thought we couldn’t run it through the ceiling… until today.

David realized that if the ceiling joists ran perpendicular to the room, we might be able to run a fish across. And then he had a brainstorm and figured “Shortest path, straight line, no corners. Drilled the first hole where he wanted it, and then I listened for progress overhead while he tried to fish it over to see if there was an obstruction or not. We tried tying a jingle bell on the tip of the fish tape to see if it would make it easier to hear it, especially as it got closer to the target area.

I thought I could hear it thudding up against the far wall, and then I fished for a bit and thought I felt it actually fall down between the studs on the far side.

Okay, time to drill the second hole. Rather than eyeballing it, like we normally would … we measured. Drilled. And pulled out a chunk of pink insulation. Oooh, maybe this wasn’t going to work. Maybe the fish won’t be able to punch through that.

So more fishing around, no success. Then we tried fishing from the other direction – that didn’t seem to be getting all the way across. Lost the jingle bell in the ceiling when it wouldn’t come back through the hole, so now our house is permanently festive. Tried again fishing from the wet bar side. I thought maybe if David got close, I’d see debris falling from the hole.

Fishing, fishing, fishing.

Finally, it seemed like I was hearing noise coming from the hole in the ceiling rather than through it… maybe? Maybe? Yes – drywall dust fell out! More fiddling around trying to make the “fish tape” flail around in there and maybe be able to see it. At last, I spotted it as it moved across the opening. We had a dental mirror and were prepared to make the hole bigger, but we never needed it. Then it seemed I was right before – several feet of tape had gone down into the wall beyond the opening, so I kept it centered over the hole with a screwdriver while David pulled it back. At last, the end of the tape came into view, and I grabbed the tip with the needlenose pliers and did battle with it mightily. There was no way we were going to have to cut a larger opening, it was just a question of “holding my mouth right” and getting the right angle on it.

At last, out it came. Success!! There was much joy and rejoicing, also extremely passionate kissing. Hey – we’re geeks, this stuff really gets us going.

Very quickly, the speaker wire was pulled through, the speakers were hooked up and placed approximately where they’ll be installed, and at last, at last, NO visible speaker wire!!!

We are just… so… weird about this home improvement stuff.

We’ve approached all the projects with vague ideas and gradually refined them, and then noticed on completion that some of our choices mysteriously “worked out” seemingly by chance.

Subconsciously, we seem to have very good taste. Our projects would probably go better if we’d just stop thinking about them and do them already…
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