Project Update

You deserve an update on the New Floor Blog. Sunday we went back to Lowes and purchased paint but the crutches did not work very well for my Wife so she used one of the motorized carts that are available. I went to the paint counter, with my paint chip in hand, while she elected to peruse the rest of Lowes with her electric cart. Later I found her coming down the main concourse with three new stools in her basket, the crutches in the basket and her purse between her feet. What a sight! I tried to pretend that I didn't know her but it didn't work. We loaded the paint and headed for the checkout line. She explained to me that since we had given two of our stools to daughter and family we needed backup stools at our house and these were only $17 each. I have provided you a photo of our new stool and one of our existing stools. It seems that the new stools are the wrong color and a little bit high so that they need a color change and the legs cut off. The project grows.

Monday we started painting. Daughter Ellen arrived, Lou, who I work with, and I all started prepping, painting, repairing sheet rock and cleaning. We made good headway as by 4 everything had one coat on it. Everyone helped, even Dale but the pain was so bad in her knee that she frequently had to lie down and rest. She has a Dr's appointment for Tuesday that she had made several weeks ago so may be they can do something for her. Bridget even did her part as she picked up everything that fell on the floor, took it into the living room and promptly tore it apart. I noticed a partial roll of blue painters tape seemed to get her attention the most. She likes paper towels and the remains of one or two lie in the debris pile. UPDATE: We are headed for Lowes to exchange the stools and get more ceiling paint however they will still need to be painted. ANOTHER UPDATE: We just received a $10 gift card from Lowes just to shop there. Think we'll use it tonight. Lowes just happens to be next door to a great Italian eatery.

Just a new floor

We have decided to replace our kitchen floor and the job is going to be way tougher than it looks. I have 40 years experience to back up that statement, so we shall see. As a bit of a primer you will remember that my wife is the Superintendent of the Cemetery and I work for her as the Maintenance Superintendent and the cemetery, as part of the job, supplies us with a house. This is not any house but is one that was built around 1830 or you could say circa 1830. The house is actually 3 houses moved together as occurred a lot back in those early days. Talk about recycling! To move into this house I had to remodel it and bring it up to code, which I did. That was 11 years ago and now a lot of things are failing or just plain wearing out. The budget was woefully short, so cheap was in and you get what you pay for, don't you? The kitchen was no exception so a Home Depot "Peel and Stick" floor was installed and the area of highest use has just plain wore out so a new floor is ordered. We chose to go to a flooring contractor and have them install the floor as the new interlocking floors are beyond my area of expertise. The system is guaranteed to be maintenance free and should be good for 50 years.

Simple enough, don't you think? Well, we are required to remove the existing floor tiles and the last sub-floor that was laid. Lou and I dispatched all of that in about 1/2 day and neither of us were seriously hurt in the process. So far, so good. Well: the paint is a little worn and dated [white] so perhaps we might want to change it; the cabinets were donated and I repainted them when we installed and that color doesn't really go with the new floor now does it; the same goes for the trim; by the way we don't get much use out of that Jenn-Air that is on the counter top and if we removed it we could gain some valuable food preparation space and that will require about 4x8 of new Formica; and while we will be set up for Formica how about a new top for the coffee table. This project went from sitting back and watching the flooring contractor deal with the uneven floor and then enjoying it, to a light speed expansion of a full grown kitchen remodel complete with deadlines. She is even talking about the sink.

Paint selection was the first order of business and I suggest we go down to our local ACE hardware store and make selections. My wife and I came back with a half dozen paint samples and chose our color combinations and here entered our daughter to approve of our choices. In the photograph the background is the existing Formica, the square sample is the new interlocking floor and the long sample with the orange colors are what my wife and I chose and the second from the bottom orange is my choice for the wall paint. Our daughter did not approve of orange colors and suggested we go to Lowes that evening because they do a better job of color co-ordination over there. Its a bit of a haul over to Lowes but we wrapped it around supper out and it took a bit of the sting out. We hit the store in mass [5 of us] and drove off all of the other people that were there selecting colors. Here I have to digress a bit [this is always my favorite part] and tell you about what happened next. My wife made friends with a kind of "rustic looking" lady. My wife is nursing a torn cartilage on her knee coupled with arthritis and so I had provided her with a shopping cart, out in the parking lot, which was making walking bearable. This "rustic looking" lady, who was helping her daughter pick out paint colors picked up on my wife's crippled looking state and asked her some questions about her maladies. When I looked over I just saw my wife holding hands with this "Rustic looking" lady. I summed it all up and decided that the rustic look was due to the fact that she was probably a "Gypsy" and was after my wife's money in her purse so I stationed myself so that I could observe her and the purse at all times and close enough to spring into action should the need arise, as I was sure it would. I watched as my daughter spied her mother holding hands with the "Gypsy" lady and do a double take but then return to her color swatches on the wall. The "Gypsy" lady's daughter was close to my daughter and I pegged her as being the person that was positioned to block me while her mother fled with the purse. I noticed her look and my wife and her mom holding hands, shake her head and go back to looking at color swatches. I was confused. I noticed that the "Gypsy" lady was now holding her hand on the back of my wife's neck and I noticed my wife's eyes were now closed. Probably a secret knockout hold as it looked like something was going to happen and it did. The daughter abruptly turned around, walked over to her mom and said "lets go mom I can't find anything I like" and they left!!!! Meanwhile my daughter was showing us the colors she had selected, which was the smaller sample with the brown which was to be the cabinet color and the stripe below the white stripe is a pale green and that will be the wall color. We said we liked it and we left. My wife announced that the pain in her hand was gone and her entire body was relaxed and feeling better. She was really glad she met that lady because she was a massage therapist and took pity on her? How did I manage to misread that one?

Today is Saturday and we were going to start painting the cabinets and the wall but my wife hurt her knee even worse than it was and is now on crutches. She isn't going to be much help and neither am I as I spent the day waiting on my wife. Tomorrow doesn't look any better. Daughter is free Monday because it is a holiday and she said she would help. Oh ya, we have a floor to ceiling bookcase that holds my wife's cookbooks that is white so that won't work now will it? Problem is, the bookcase is made out of white melamine and that doesn't repaint so guess who is building a new bookcase.

Come back because I am sure there is more to come on this story. All true, I swear!