Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Getting High In My Hidey Hole

There's a Dalek in my kitchen!
That's what I'm feeling like, stranded upstairs on my perch. And even up here, I feel like a hoarder in a "clean space" carved out in the junk. And the fumes! Must. Keep. Air. Moving.

Since the TV from the living room is now in the kitchen, along with the attendant AV equipment, the only real sources of entertainment are streaming services on the computer. I could watch a DVD, but they're all buried in the guest room behind the sectional. So, I tried connecting to Spectrum's (my cable server) online streaming, but there's some bug preventing me from hooking up, so I'm kind of limited to Netflix (which is plenty, believe me). But rather than lounging on the couch, I'm relegated to my desk chair.

Two cabinets, two rugs, the
dining room table, etc.
It's a good thing that the powder room walls got finished last week, as there are no lavatory fixtures installed, which makes room for some of the stuff removed to do the floors. The photo taken doesn't really reflect the depth of the stash nor the content in there.

The old bathroom fixtures are still in the kitchen, along with the buffing and varnishing equipment Ron left. There is just enough room between the fridge, the microwave and the sink so that I can do reheating. I shopped this week with that in mind, so I have several dinners from the store's deli and enough sandwich makings to keep me fed without cooking for the next three days.

Guest room and Patty's hidey hole.
You see, Ron finished sanding the floors today and put down the first of three coats of oil-based polyurethane varnish, and it is so making me high I can't believe it. All the windows on the main floor are closed (no dust or dirt can get on the floor) and he has the heat at 69º with the furnace fan going constantly. As the intake for the system is in the dining room, this means the fumes are getting sucked up and redistributed throughout the house.

So, I've closed all the registers upstairs, opened all the windows (save the guest room, which I can't get to) and turned on the ceiling fans, which has helped substantially. But since it's dropping to 41º tonight, and with the next two days topping out in the low 60s to upper 50s, I'll need a sweater. And, wouldn't you know it, they're all in the closet in the guest room, so I can't get to them.

The path to my hidey hole through boxed knick knacks.
On Tuesday morning, Ron arrived right at 7:30, just like he said. I had gotten up at 6:45 and moved the cat's stuff upstairs, then moved four of the five dining room chairs out into the garage. I left one in case he wanted something to sit on. I made a point of letting him know that he is rather legend in town, and it pleased him to no end, though he played it down.

And the grinding started. A huge sanding machine with an even bigger vacuum to suck up the wood dust. I'd say he got the lion's share of the sanding done that first day, switching to a smaller sander to clean up the edges of the floor. It was very strange, because as he worked, I could smell the fresh oak breathing for the first time in decades. It sounds weird, but I think this is making the house happy.

Living room before and after sanding.
He left around 4:30, saying he would return at 7:30 again Wednesday to finish the touch ups and buff the floor before putting down the first coat of varnish. I told him that I would probably not get up early to greet him. "The first day, it's just good manners to be awake when you arrive; but once things are underway, I don't feel quite so beholden." He thought that was quite funny.

And I was true to my word, not getting up until 8:30. He was busy at work when I went down to the kitchen to get some coffee and breakfast, and I didn't see him until he got back from the lunch break. We talked some about the coming winter and the realities of snow removal. "If we get a lot of snow, the ploughs will throw it right up on your yard. If you don't clear it within 24 hours, the city comes and does it and charges you an arm and a leg."

Switching gears, he explained that he buffs the floor once before putting down the varnish. "Most folks don't do that, but I think it helps blend where you used the different sanding tools." Made sense to me.

The dining room, before and after sanding and with the first coat of varnish applied. Shiny!
About an hour later, I smelled the unmistakable stench of oil-based varnish. I opened the windows in the office and turned on the ceiling fan. Before he started the first coat, he moved his equipment into the kitchen, so there is little more room than to move from the fridge to the microwave and the sink. If I move the trash can, I can use the stove, and I'm thinking about making some rice for my dinner tonight, just so not everything on the plate is from the deli.

I do have to admit that this process is much more disruptive than any of the plumbing fixes I've been through. It's almost as disruptive as the remodel in Pasadena, but not quite. However, I can say that I will be very, very happy when Saturday arrives and I can start reassembling the downstairs. And one plus is these two rooms won't have any unhung artwork or boxes and non-assigned tchotchkes hanging around. I'm leaving all that upstairs. So the downstairs will be, finally, guest worthy.

Monday, October 19, 2015

Mark, Mark and 50-Cent Sidetables

It's only 10:30 and I'm dead tired. But I did want to put in a little update here, since a few things have happened. First of all, the walls are finished in the powder room. No new toilet or sink (these have been put on hold), but, save replacement baseboards, the room looks amazing. I'm mulling over colors in my head.

Jason, the mud guy, made an extra final pass on the walls because he wasn't quite happy with his work. It looked fine to me on Wednesday when he finished, but he said he wanted one more pass before doing the final sanding, so he came back on Thursday to do that, which meant he was here on Friday sanding and cleaning up the floor.

His added day on Friday meant I was unable to attend Pizza Night in Ettrick, but Steve and Pam and I had planned to meet Saturday morning for the auction of office and school furniture that was being held for Western Technical College, where Pam teaches.

So I was down on the south side of town at 9 a.m. Saturday. Most of the stuff was of no interest to me, but I was hoping to find some substantial shelving that I could put into the office, as a good number of files and such are still in packing boxes. Pam wanted to find a large cabinet for their back porch (sort of an exterior pantry which is the entry to the kitchen).

We registered and got our numbers. Natalie had accompanied them, and after 10 minutes or so of checking out the offerings, she announced she was going back to the car. I think Steve was more than happy to go along with her.

The auctioneer finally showed up in a little cab on a truck, reminiscent of a glassed-in food truck from a carnival. It had loudspeakers. He had a microphone. A driver drove him up and down the numerous rows of stuff — mostly groups of chairs, desks, tables and such. I was mildly surprised to see about a half a dozen Amish there.

It seemed that most of the people had little interest in the stuff, except for a handful of buyers who were known to the auctioneer by name. They would wait around for a dozen tables to go from $5 a piece for the lot to $3 to $2 to $1, then $10 for the lot, then perhaps $5 for the lot and one of them would snap them up.

Most of the stuff was steel construction, but there were a lot of tables that were solid oak, and I'm sure that the wood alone was worth 10 times more than what they got for it (I kept waiting for the Amish guys to bid on them but they didn't seem interested; they had their eyes on the folding meeting room tables).

Once the lot of tables was sold for next to nothing, two oak side tables were offered: $10 a piece, $5 a piece, $1 a piece, then $1 for the pair. All of a sudden, it flashed in my head that I had been looking for nightstands for my bedroom, and there would be perfect. I held up my number and bought them for 50¢ each.

Pam did get a cabinet and also picked up a set of shelves for Emily's new house. (Emily is buying a house. She's deep in the passing of paperwork between buyer, seller and bank.) They had brought Glenn's truck, but couldn't fit everything into it, so my tables went into the back of their van, the cabinet went into the truck bed and we headed back to my house, where they dropped off the cabinet in the garage and went back to pick up the shelves.

Afterward, we went to Culver's for lunch and they headed back to Ettrick. I returned home and puttered a little, getting ready for Ron and floor finishing on Tuesday. Sunday was similar, but I did a good deal of measuring and planning about what could fit where, attempting to avoid having to drag everything upstairs or, worse, out into the garage.

Today at 9 a.m., Mark from Eagle Eye Property Solutions came by and started pulling staples out of the floor. He had a special tool he was using, but the going was slow, as whoever had put in the staples had used inch-long monstrosities that did not want to come out of the floor. It took him about two and a half hours to pull the remaining staples. We broke for lunch, then tackled the two-man moving jobs (the sectional and the larger furniture), lugging them up the stairs.

Naked living room ready for facelift.
My planning had worked out well, and we only had to put four large pieces upstairs, with everything else either in the kitchen (the big TV and the entertainment center) or the presently empty powder room (including the dining room table, which we disassembled). Mark left around 3:30, and only a final sweep of the rooms was left to do. All that's left are the five dining room chairs, which I will take out to the garage before Ron starts on the floors tomorrow — at 7:30 in the morning.

So Patty and I will be relegated to the office tomorrow (the guest room is full of stuff and there's not much space left in my bedroom). I think it will be good, since it will force me to organize and sort through the remaining office boxes (I think there are four). I'm also toying with bringing Patty's food, water and litter box upstairs because she never goes downstairs if anyone else is in the house. The only possible place to stow her stuff would be a small closet in my bedroom. I'm thinking of leaving the box there, since it will be out of the kitchen, and I will be more apt to clean it regularly if it's in my personal space.

Only dining room chairs left to deal with.
At 5, there was an open house at the Center which I attended. I ran into a couple of people I'd met before, a few new folks, and had a good time. There were crackers and dips and dill pickle spears rolled in ham and cream cheese, then sliced into pinwheels. I turned to one of the women in the room and asked, "Is this Midwest sushi?" Everyone thought that was terribly clever.

I was telling people about getting my floors redone, and they asked who was doing them. I told them Ron Miller, and a good half dozen people said, "Oh, he did our floors. What a fabulous job! You're lucky to get him." I told them that his voicemail box was full, and one person said, "Yes, it's been that way for at least a year that I know of." I feel honored to have a local legend working on my floors.

I stopped by the grocery on the way home and got a couple pre-made dinner items, since there is no room in the kitchen to prepare food beyond sticking it in the microwave. I do believe there will be space to brew coffee in the morning. I sure hope so, if I'm having to get up at 7:30.

When Ron last stopped by last week, he said, in his thick, Minnesota drawl, "If you wanna leave the the back door open, I can let myself in and you can just keep sleeping." I told him I would be up when he arrived, but that I would probably go up and nap for a couple hours more once I know he's squared away.

"Oh, yeah," he replied. "Retired people like doin' that, ya know."

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

A Well-Paced Eternity

The trees around my neighborhood are starting to change colors. Like so much else about the Midwest environment, this triggers off something primal in me from childhood. Fall was always such a colorful, happy time, and the perfect lead-in to the holidays and winter.

Most of the trees on my lot are evergreen, so very few leaves to rake.
And while I appreciate the pace that seasons give to life, it certainly does seem like an eternity since these guys started working on the pipes in the powder room. Brother-in-law David first identified the leak back in late August, when he and Kittie were visiting. Before that, with just one shower a day upstairs, I never noticed the leak, beyond a tiny pooling of water on a main stack coupling.

If you'll recall, I even had a plumber in to try and find the leak, and we couldn't. So, yeah.

After the plumbers (who are really good guys and very competent and reliable) ripped open the wall to expose the huge, cracked 80-year-old wrought iron pipe and replace it, I decided to pull out the entire wall, as it was only about 6' x 8' and most of the plaster was water damaged.

So the drywall guy came by — last week, was it? — and pulled down the wall. It took them a few days to get back (a weekend was in there somewhere) and, just before starting to cover the opening with drywall, they found (you guessed it) another pipe. This one was galvanized, so it was probably only 50 or 60 years old. The problem was, it was the vent pipe for the plumbing, and there was about a two-inch gap between where the powder room sink drained into it and the pipe that led to the roof.

Not even close! Who did this?
I'm glad he noticed it. I'm not a fan of methane seeping into the walls, especially one so close to the stove in the kitchen. So they held off on patching the wall, and I called the plumbers back in. And, of course, it took them a couple days to get back here, which meant another weekend, and finally they showed up last Friday and repaired the pipe.

And another weekend. The drywall guys were supposed to call on Monday around noon to make sure the plumbers had fixed the pipe, but they never called. So I called them. Joel said they could come first thing Wednesday morning (today), and they did. They had the drywall up in no time, and said the guy to tape and mud the wall would be here in the afternoon.

I went in to check their work, and it was acceptable. And then I noticed: where the plumber had opened a small section of ceiling to access the first pipe, they hadn't bother to patch the hole. So I called Joel back and told him to hold off on the mud guy since the drywall guys hadn't done all the work. He said he'd have someone here this afternoon.

Around noon, Ron, the floor refinisher guy, was at the back door. He came in and there was a hint of disappointment in his eyes, as though he expected to start the floors tomorrow. I pointed out the powder room job and said it wouldn't be done for a day or two. I also pointed out that I had to get someone in to help me move the furniture and pull the rest of the staples that were still in the floor around the edges of the room. I told him it would probably be next Monday before I could get someone here (and I was right).

I called the guys at Eagle Eye Property Services, who are members of the Center's business directory, and Mark answered. I told him my need and, sure enough, it was Monday he could come. Which leaves me the weekend to wrap knick-knacks and clear out as much as I can on my own. I tried to get ahold of Ron, but I got his voicemail, and it has been full ever since I first tried to call him, lo these many weeks ago.

So I worked on my Halloween costume (I finally got a great idea, but it's a secret) and expanded the newsletter template that I'm working on for the Center. I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night, so around 3:45, I figured no one was arriving to deal with the wall, and I had a lie down. Just as my eyes were closing and my body relaxing, I hear somebody talking on a phone in the kitchen. The mud guy had arrived.

Add caption
He was talking to Joel, since he had seen the hole in the ceiling quite readily and wanted to let Joel know the work wasn't completed. Then a set about mixing his mud and finishing off the 98% of the job that was done. Jason (the mud guy) did a really nice job. When he finished, he said the drywall guys will return tomorrow at some point to finish off their work. Then Jason will return to finish off the ceiling tomorrow afternoon, and return on Friday to sand and finish. So the powder room walls should be complete by the weekend.

My new driver's license came in the mail at last. The license plates for the car were handed to me as soon as I got all the necessary paperwork collected, but the driver's license — a new-fangled type with some sort of chip in it that the TSA will be using to streamline domestic travel — meant that it took longer to process. As friend Deeann (who grew up in Viroqua, just south of here) said, "Now you're a cheesehead." You betcha.

Another milestone I felt creeping up: yesterday was the second anniversary of my husband Steve's death. This year it felt positive, like a scab healing, an injury improving. I'm still wearing my wedding ring. I took it off at the first anniversary of his death, but I still felt so naked and incomplete without it. I wondered if this was the year to take it off and, almost as if he was speaking, Steve's little voice in my head said, "Find the ring box it came in; when you have that, you can safely put the ring away without losing it." Sometimes voices in your head are a good thing.

Last night we had our first meeting of the Center's communications committee, of which I am a member. The big discussion is the newsletter, which at this point is pretty nonfunctional. I was planning on suggesting a redesign, but I didn't want to step on any toes. "Don't worry about it," Jackson said. "If any feelings are hurt, I'll just ask them why they weren't stepping up and taking care of it themselves." Good point.

Celebrating the SCOTUS decision.
I had already been working on a template for the redesign, so I spent today finishing up a rough version of it while trying not to think about the powder room. (I still have to purchase the sink and toilet; the vanity light fixture and the mirror for over the sink and the floating shelves for over the toilet have all been purchased for some time now; I just didn't want to have two toilets sitting in my kitchen, even though one of them would be factory fresh and in a box.)

This weekend one of the colleges in the area (the one Pam works at) is having an auction to get rid of excess old office furniture. She and Steve are going, so I told them I'd join in on Saturday morning, hoping to find shelving for the office and a solid, comfortable desk chair. After that is a chili cook-off of some kind. I may try and get them back to the house to join in the tchotchke packing, but that is a very conditional if.

Either way, I'm going to try and get as much done before Mark comes to pull the old carpet staples. Next move: figure out a way to keep Patty off the downstairs floors while they're being refinished. From what I see, it's going to take two or three days to get them sanded down and get three coats of sealer on them. So, with luck, I will have finalized plumbing, new powder room, freshly done floors by the time Halloween arrives. It will be so nice to be able to tell if you've swept the floors or not (at this point they look just as horrible clean as they do dirty).

Perhaps I'll get to have a housewarming party before the end of the year after all!

Monday, October 5, 2015

Continuum

Continuum sounds so much better than never-ending. In this usage, it is the bonding of myself and my checking account with the house. Luckily, my latest interaction was not too expensive.

And I don't need to wear glasses while driving anymore!
On Friday, I went to the DMV and got myself officially anointed as a Wisconsinite. The line was long. The computer system (take a ticket and wait for service) was down, so they had folks going here and there, finding out who needed what, and getting them taken care of. No one in line was grumbling; they were talking and joking with one another.

I got to the service window and was given proper paperwork and apologies for the back up. I filled out the forms, came back and got my photo taken and my signature digitized lickity-split. Then back into the main line to get my driver's license and transfer my car's title to Wisconsin and get plates.

The woman who helped me at the final window also apologized about the computer outage. She got my temporary license fairly quickly (but the system took forever to print it out). But, after checking with several sources, told me she could not process the car title without a death certificate, since Steve's name was also on the title.

It was a tedious experience, but everyone was so pleasant and the fees were so reasonable, I came out feeling the California DMV could take some lessons on making its offices more tolerable places, for workers as well as customers.

On the way back, I hopped over to Menard's and purchased a vanity light, a couple floating shelves, an electrical junction box, a new doorbell, a couple CO/smoke detectors and a new kitchen faucet. I didn't get the sink or toilet, since I hadn't measured the powder room thoroughly enough to be sure that they would fit into the tiny space.

Michael Palin's sister?
That evening was, as most Fridays, Pizza Night in Ettrick. We watched "Brazil" by Terry Gilliam (the director's cut, which is about 40 minutes longer than the theatrical release). It was fun to watch the film after so many years, and it was still very funny and, if anything, even more relevant to the concept for governance and terrorism. One thing I had forgotten was the transcriber, who types out the transcripts of torture sessions in the Ministry of Information ( " N O  …  P L E A S E  G O D   N O  …  A H H  …  N O  M O R E  …  O H   G O D  …  N O  …  N O T  T H A T  …  A H H H H  "). Such a sweet lady!

When I got home, I turned on the furnace, which heats the home in mere minutes. Since I don't have a toilet on the main floor just now, I went downstairs to take a leak and noticed the little box at the base of the furnace (the condensation pump) was growling and churning. It was extremely hot but was not pumping any water. Luckily, the home inspector had shown me the main "off" switch for the whole system. I used it.

Saturday I went online and made a service request with American Home Service, from which I purchased a one-year home insurance policy. It didn't cover the plumbing problems, since they were pre-existing, but I'm pretty sure it will cover the pump, since it was working fine during the summer.


With the furnace unusable, the fireplace was the major heat source for the weekend, a job it did quite well (there's even a internal fan to circulate the heat). Patty is slowly getting indifferent to it as I'm getting more attached to it. When I first moved in, it was on the list for replacement, as it is brass (like all the cheapie lighting fixtures). Now, with the lighting replaced and the burgundy print carpeting pulled up, the brass front has its own charm, and I don't mind looking at it at all.

Now we move to discussing my sleeping patterns, which have been all over the place in the last few months. Starting last week, I've been getting to bed between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., which means I've been getting up between 7 and 9 in the morning. This is a good thing.

This morning I woke up on my own at about 7:30. This was also a good thing, because at 8 a.m. on the dot I got a call from the furnace guy (who had been notified by AHS). He said he wanted to come over right away and I said sure, if you don't mind me being in my bathrobe.

Little pump that caused big problems.
He showed up, checked out the pump and announced it was so gunked up it couldn't clear the water out of its own reservoir. He didn't have a replacement on the truck, so he popped back to the office and returned with a brand new model, installed it, tested it and I had a functioning furnace by 9:30 a.m.

One of the best things about being on a sleeping schedule that matches the rest of society is that I get up, get stuff done, take a break, and it isn't even noon. It's almost like doubling what you can get done in a day. Being retired, I think I wallowed in the I-can-sleep-whenever-I-want a little too long. I like what I'm doing now, which is getting up in the morning and taking an afternoon nap if I'm feeling tired. And when I nod off in front of the TV in the evening, I take it as a sign that I should be up in bed, getting good rest. Works for me.

There's nothing much happening on the social front. The newsletter's gang of three (Aleysha, Cindy and myself) hasn't met yet, but then Jackson (executive director of the Center) has been on vacation for the last week or so, and we've all promised not to bother him while he's away on R&R.

The only thing that sticks in my head is coming up with a really great and extremely simple costume idea for Halloween. It can't conceal me, since I want people to recognize me at the bash and afterwards. The last simple costume I had was a Hawaiian shirt and a bottle of tranquilizers, going as a tropical depression. I don't know how familiar this term would be to folks in these northern climes, so I won't repeat it.

Again, any suggestions would be most welcome.

Now, off to get the car title transferred (I found a copy of the death certificate after some digging). I'm not sure whether they hand you the plates right there, or whether they get mailed to you, as with my new driver's license (it will have a chip in it that will make it compatible with the new TSA system being initiated at airports across the country).

How long before they just put the chip in your head, I'm not sure. Hopefully I'll be dead before that happens.


Thursday, October 1, 2015

Powder Room Blues and Fall

Fall is here. Cool days and chilly nights. Patty is not at all pleased, since I keep the windows closed in the evenings, and she loves sitting in the sill and smelling the world outside. The house keeps its warmth at night, and having a fire in the fireplace is adequate to keep the place comfortable. ("Having a fire" consists of pushing the "on" button on the fireplace remote).

A toilet in the kitchen, a trend-setter?
Patty isn't quite sure what to make of the fire, either. It's safely behind glass, and I know she likes the warmth, but she jumps when it goes on and gives it a wide berth when coming and going from the room. She is also still confounded by the toilet, sink and vanity sitting in the kitchen. I dare not let her into the powder room, as there are holes open to the wall interiors, and she's the kind of cat to crawl in with curiosity and get herself stuck.

As for the powder room, progress continues. The drywall guy came by on Monday after the plumbers finished replacing the drain stack. He pulled down the remaining lath and plaster. And, as I suspected, whoever installed the medicine cabinet (which has the vanity lights included in it) had not bothered with a junction box in the wall, just wired directly into the wooden cabinet.

So a junction box has to be installed before the wall is replaced. Joel (the drywall guy), of course, does not touch electrical, so I told him I would go out and get a junction box and install it before I called him back to put up the new drywall and finish the job.

Another happening on Monday, I finally got someone out to check on the floor refinishing. Instead of relying on Internet reviews and dubious websites, I have been calling around to places that install wood floors but don't refinish them, and asked for referrals for good floor finishers. Attic Restorations Floorings (Ron Miller) came up almost half of the time, so I called him.

He dropped by around 6 p.m. and quoted a very reasonable price for the work (much cheaper than having the rooms recarpeted), so I told him to schedule me in. Now I just have to find someone to help me pull up the rest of the staples in the floor and move the furniture out into the garage before he shows up to do the work.

Homemade meal: Pork Tenderloin, stuffing and peas.
One other thing I'm dealing with is the baseboard moulding, which is consistent throughout the home. I think I'll have to find someone to actually produce it if I can't find an adequate replacement at Menard's or one of the other DIY stores.

Tuesday was a lazy day for me. It was the first really cool day, and I was lucky to get the garbage out to the curb for pickup. I actually cooked dinner (a lot of evenings, I've been making a sandwich or heating up a can of soup, as the stove really heats up the kitchen). About 3 a.m., I woke up with a migraine. I took ibuprofen and went back to bed but got very little sleep. I woke up Wednesday morning with a slight subsidence, but I didn't get any real relief until early afternoon. Sleep was peaceful Wednesday night, and this morning I woke up refreshed.

So today is shopping day: A junction box, a new toilet, sink and light fixture for the powder room, new doorbell, new CO/smoke detectors, new faucet for the new sink, and a replacement faucet for the kitchen sink (which has a Moen faucet from the 1960s). Then I can get the drywall guy back on Monday to finish the job after I've installed the junction box over the weekend.

News from the office: I think I'm finally in synch with all my bills: what's monthly, what's quarterly, what's annually. Now I just have to come up with my new filing system for all this. It will take some time.

Meanwhile, on the social front, Facebook has finally caught up with me, and is starting to suggest potential friends here in the La Crosse area. So now I have about a half-dozen new "friends" that I've met at the social gatherings so far. Now the big question is: what am I going to go as for Halloween? Suggestions for easy, clever costumes are being accepted.

Ricka-racka Fiah-crackah Ziss Boom Bah: band members and flag girls march down the street.
I have mentioned the bells from the church across the street. I have another aural stimulant in the neighborhood. With fall comes the return to school, and every day the marching band for Aquinas High School (across the street) revs up and the music wafts over the building to my house. At the end of practice (around 11 a.m.) they march out onto the sidewalk and march around the block. It's a weird reminder of the Rose Parade, but it does help with my late-morning slump.

So, this afternoon I'm headed to Menard's for shopping. Part of me is feeling panicky about spending the kind of money I'm going to drop. I have to keep reminding myself that the money was held out so that it would be there to spend on stuff like this. I've never been one to really enjoy the shopping experience. I suppose I should work on that.