Under construction!

So you may remember a while back I got a fabulous new red washing machine. I love that washer, people -- which shows either that anything red really does rock my world, or that I need to get out more.

Well, the down side to getting the fabulous red washer is that I immediately began to covet the fabuous red dryer to go with it -- and to yearn for a laundry room that could live up to the fabulosity of the red glamour machines.

Well, dig this: my Contractor has been working her tail off the past two weeks, to give me the laundry room of my dreams!

My lovely red washer currently resides in my dining room, along with a whole lot of tools and construction schmutz, but when she's done -- have mercy!

First she tore out all of the ugly cabinet frames and wire shelving and battered baseboards and tacky linoleum. I felt better immediately!

And my Contractor loves "demo" -- she says it feels great to rip stuff off of walls and cut through nails with a Saws-All.

Then she patched and sanded and smoothed and prepped the walls; my Contractor is thorough, y'all!

Meanwhile I got a couple of paint samples and slapped them on a wall. That's the only painting I'm allowed to do; my Contractor has very strong feelings about proper painting technique -- and I don't have it. She told me, "just plop the samples up on the wall, because I'm going to put primer over them anyway -- you can't hurt anything." And then she promptly "fixed" the place where I had painted over some spackle.

After using her mad painting skillz to transform my boring white walls into pure gold, my Contractor hung a new door to the carport. Think about that, y'all. Her husband was her minion for the day (though I would have offered up the tall boy), because door-hanging is a four-hands operation. How swell is this new door?! And how cool is my Contractor?!

The next task was to tile the floor, which involves a whole lot of tools I don't know the name of, and some sweaty math moments, trying to make sure that the tiles in inches + grout/caulk = the square root of baseboards(x/threshold). Luckily in a former life my Contractor was an engineer.

When the floor was done, we took a break to play a game of checkers.

And my Contractor took a solemn vow never to work with black grout again unless a manicure is written into the contract.

Today, after she finishes hanging the moulding around the door, she will move the washer and (old, ugly) dryer back so my family can get a little laundry done without spending $40.00 at a time at the Spin Cycle laudrymat or hijacking the fabulous neighbor's machines. Then, while she hangs bright new cabinets, a nice man from the gas company will come and set us up to get a new dryer. Fabulous!

And my Contractor is doing all this while leading three Girl Scout troops, wrangling the copy machines at the elementary school for her daughter's fifth grade teacher, swirling her urchins to hockey practice and art lessons and orchestra rehearsal, walking dogs, making dinner, wrestling her house into submission -- and writing a novel. I shit you not.

No hurry . . . .

I've always thought that one should never plunge into home renovations without a lot of planning and research. That's why my husband and I have waited a little while before we rush into repairing this:




See, my son was up in the attic above our carport gathering camping equipment when he misplaced his footing and fell through the flimsy drywall ceiling and onto the cement floor below. As you can imagine, this caused quite the hullabaloo: My husband and I said to each other, "Huh. I wonder what that sound was?" We're both very bright, so it wasn't too long before we realized that it might be the sound of a child in imminent danger, and put down our coffee mugs.


Thank goodness our boy
didn't end up looking like the ceiling!

Well, I know you feel as I do that the sight of this gaping hole in the ceiling of our carport should be repaired quickly, for lots of reasons. First, it's obviously an unsightly eyesore. Second, there are serious safety issues any time anyone needs to go up there. Third, the potential for critters to find their way into the attic has gone way up. Fourth, doesn't that big old hole just invite thievery and burglars? And finally -- it gives me the heebiejeebies every time I look at it, thinking about my poor boy, who could have died, for Pete's sake!

So -- my husband and I have every intention of making repairs -- but we must research and collect data, and weight our options; it's very important to both of us that the repairs be done well. It also exhausts me to think about what an utter pain in the neck it will be. So I need to rest up before we start. And now that I think of it, the hole actually provides an escape route for a poor trapped kitty or confused duck. So that's good.

Hmmm? Did you ask when exactly my boy fell through the attic? Let's see . . . . He was in sixth grade, so that would make it September 2003. Like I said, there's no hurry.

tangent:
I need a quirky yet whimsical, loving yet witty, blogname for each of my three children. I've thought of "Adored One" -- and then I would make my kids compete for the title on a regular basis. Kind of like Survivor, only the losers get to go on Oprah or Dr. Phil. There are flaws with this plan. Any ideas?