The Heat is On

Apparently, Glenn Frey
is the love child of
Randy Travis and
Chris Isaak.

Who would have thought that , 20 months after buying this house, I'd be praising the lyrical genius of none other than Glenn Frey.  Yes, Glenn Frey, that guy from the '80s that can't even be classified as a one-hit wonder, but really just the guy that happens to sing that song that goes "the heat is on."  Because, really, do you know any of the other words?  Well, I looked it up, and they are uncannily appropriate:

The heat is on, the heat is on, the heat is on

Oh it's on the street, the heat is on

It's on the street

The heat is on, the heat is on, the heat is on

Yeah it's on the street

The heat is on

I mean, can you get any more spot-on to describe what's been going on with our house these last few days?  First off, I should mention, the heat is on!  Yes, we managed to get Washington Gas out finally to install the gas meter.  That was important because none of the woodwork stuff can happen without at least some semblance of a controlled temperature.  Now, for instance, Mark can go tomorrow to pick up our wood floors; they need to be acclimated to the house for three days before installation, which basically means they'll be going in around the weekend.  And upstairs, the floors have also begun to change.  No need to show you what they looked like before, other than to remind you they are the original 1890s floors that have been on the ground in a house that's been pretty much derelict since the 1980s.  But this morning when we pulled up, we found Miguel and his three floor-doing machines (that's the technical term), each of which, we are told, cost more than $2500.  (Having been robbed back in 2008, and having most of what was taken be contractors' machinery, we told him not to store them in our house overnight.)  And Miguel (with his lovely and cold wife watching) did this to the floors on our upper level:

Yeah, I didn't recognize the floors either.

The schedule for the floors as we move through the week includes fixing any boards that need to be fixed (tomorrow), stripping the stairs (Wednesday), and then applying various ointments and salves as necessary.  Once the stairs are being touched, we won't be able to down them for a few days, so we've been getting as much use out of them as possible, having spent about 27 man-hours painting the lower level over the three-day weekend.  (Is "man-hours" a sexist term?  Well, Abby  painted for more than half of them, so deal with it.)  And, more than Miguel and his lovely and cold wife, we felt the brunt of this weekend's drop in temperatures.  Sure, Glenn Frey says the heat is on, and every once in a while we hear the heat going on, and if you're standing directly beneath a vent you can feel the heat being on, but overall we are very worried about the efficacy of our heating system.  Granted, the heat is currently set to about 55, just so we can have that semblance of environmental control necessary for flooring operations, but there is what Bostonians might call a wicked temperature gradient between the upper and lower floors going on, and it can't all be the fault of the fact that none of the doors or windows have an actual tight seal to them.  (Remember, as Glenn Frey said, "the heat is on, it's on the street."  He wasn't kidding.  We are, as every suburban dad likes to remind his kids, heating the neighborhood.  I happened to get a flyer from a home-efficiency company in the mail the other day, and I will be contacting them shortly to see if there's anything they can do about our windows.  Because we all know that ain't gonna get done with our contractor.

Our contractor.  Yep, the one who pulled all the radiators out of the house, then claims not to have realized there were so many holes in the floor so as to warrant a higher cost of replacing wood during the flooring process.  The one who seems to have alienated all of his subcontractors along the way, many of whom are quite candid in letting Abby know just how they feel about him.  One thing we have learned, however, is that however unsavory the contractor is, apparently everyone's smitten with the workmanship.  So hey, it may take two years to get this thing done, and we may have to send our kids to work in Kathie Lee Gifford's sweatshop, but by golly the work's great!

While talking to Abby about the house while driving to my parents' out in crazy-far Virginia on Friday (they have a "540" area code! "540!" Have you ever heard of that?) I was mentioning that while I really like a lot of what's happening with the house, I don't feel as personally invested in it as I did our DC house, because we did so much of the work ourselves last time.  I mean, I can remember my bloody fingers after applying muriatic acid on the brick, and I can still see the mummified pigeon fall on my coworker Billy's head as he stood on the ladder in Isaac's bedroom.  Yet prior to this weekend, the only things I actually did to this house, besides that very first day of knocking down drywall back on Christmas Day 2011 (2011? 2011!) was pick stuff out and pay for it.  And a lot of that stuff that I picked out never even came to fruition.  However, three days later, I can safely say that those 27 man-hours of painting have taken a big bite out of my worries.  (I can also verify that we listened to DC101 the whole time on the radio, and heard exactly one song featuring a female singer.)  We did some painting, and some more painting, and some more painting.  And now, that downstairs is painted like a mofo, and Abby and I had everything to do with that.

Abby had been going to paint for a week or so beforehand, and I had posted a pic last time with her in Isaac's room, but this is serious stuff.  Since that last posting, she ripped down the carefully placed painter's tape she had put up in his room, re-sanded the wall because she was unhappy with the alignment of the stripes, borrowed a laser-level from Lee, and painstakingly created a masterpiece of stripe-itude that can be marveled at from hundreds of feet away, since it faces out the window.  Seriously, it's impeccable-- judge for yourselves:

Abby's creation on Isaac's wall.
Notice the perfect alignment with the window panes.

Besides Abby's magnum opus in Isaac's room, which eventually will be a Buffalo Bills room, with red accents, she also managed to paint Lola's walls a lovely shade of what we're calling "Cinderella's Dress" blue, based on the sheets and pillows she bought for Lola in what could have been 2011, and have been sitting in storage now since Thanksgiving.  I thought this was going to be more teal than it is, but it's so bright and happy that who cares?

My job on Saturday and Sunday was white.  Abby had done a whole bunch of white prior to this weekend, so anything colorful was her bailiwick.  So I managed to get one coat on every white surface (walls and ceilings) in the family room, the laundry room, the storage room, the guest room, and the guest-room closet.  Abby was at once excited by my progress, appalled by the lack of attention I had while making several only-noticeable-to-her drips, and confused at how I could get so much more square footage done than her during the same timeframe.  Well, one of my wise commenters noted last time that while you want painting done fast, cheap, and well, you can only get two of those at a time, so there's that...  No, just kidding, I think I did a stand-up job.  (And for that, both Abby and I will be completely stiff for the first half of this week.)  

Isaac next to the newly-painted wall in his bedroom.
We let them draw on the floors, since they're just sub-flooring
and will be covered over within the week.

Can you see the white I painted in the family room?
Just nod your head and be nice, will ya?

While Isaac's striped wall may be the most technically difficult paint job we completed this weekend, definitely the boldest, and possibly the most likely to provoke ire, is in the family room.  The picture I posted directly above this one is purposely taken from this angle so as not to show you the wall to your right-- the one that you see when you come down the stairs.  It was Abby's opinion that this needed to be a "statement wall," because otherwise the room was apt to become a boring giant box.  Therefore, I give you Behr "Poppy Seed."  If you think Abby was proud when the stripes were done, you should have heard her giggling like a little girl when this color was going up.  And as for me?  I'm Mr. Color when it comes to walls, so it makes me very happy as well.

"Poppy Seed" going up on the family room "statement wall"

The completed "statement wall"

The wall's actually a smidge lighter than the black on the windows.
Lola's "Cinderella's Dress" Blue is in the doorway.

The downstairs shower, with the
floor tiles doubling on the ledges

I mentioned earlier that we were en route to my parents', because they were awesome and took the kids for the weekend so we could get all of this done.  We drove out to Sterling last night to have dinner and grab the kids from them, since they didn't have the day off today like I did.  That meant we couldn't tag team the paint job today, so I took the kids to Jump Zone in Columbia while Abby painted from 10-5.  On the way, we ran two errands: one was just a normal Target run; the other was a drop-in at Home Depot to buy our second five-gallon white eggshell container, but also to return three boxes of tile we had over-ordered.  And how did we know we had over-ordered, you ask?  Why, because the tiling in the bathrooms not only has begun, but is almost complete!  So besides our paint-stravaganza this weekend, there was a tile-fest going on in the bathrooms.  The first-floor bathroom is complete, with three different kinds of tile up and done.  Abby decided a couple weeks ago to use the flooring tiles on two different ledges in the shower, and that turned out to be a great decision.  (See for yourself below.)  Unfortunately, the tiles that went up on the vanity wall, while all coming from the same boxes, had a slight color variation that wasn't caught right away.  It won't matter once the vanity is up, because it'll block those either in shadow or altogether, but I mention it here because when you look at it below, you might think "ugh."  Yeah, we know, but it's okay, unless you plan on laying on the floor in our guest bathroom.  So just don't do that.  The floor tiles in the upstairs bathroom have also been laid, but I don't have a good picture to show, since the lighting was really poor when I took it.

The vanity wall.  (Don't) notice the four mismatched squares of tile.

So what we have here is a very, very positive week, workwise.  I apologize for not getting more information up during the week, since some of these pictures were taken on Wednesday when we came by for the draw inspection, but we've just been so busy lately.  You know, with the house.  I mention the draw inspection, and some of you may be wondering what's up with the loan and our "drop-dead date" of February 15.  Well, we had the draw inspection on Wednesday, and the paperwork went through, but I have a feeling there may be a bit of consternation upcoming between us and the bank.  Because our idea is that, since we have spent the amount of money the loan had designated, they should give us the remaining balance and close it all out.  But I have more than a sneaking suspicion that they're not happy we decided to go above and beyond the amount of the loan on our own-- which was our only recourse, given the state of the house, and was the plan from the start.  So I don't know that we'll ever see the money from that last draw-- which'd be fine, because it'd just get deducted from the total on which we're paying our mortgage.  But we'll see.  However, what is definite is that we no longer have a mythical "drop-dead date" for a loan, and we're looking at a matter of weeks for the finish.  Yeah, I know I said that before, and no, we're definitely not going to be living in the house come March 1, but it's coming, and it's coming soon.  The floors will all be done by the end of next week, the cabinets will be completed by February 28, my closet can go in once the floors are done, and the plumbing fixtures can probably go in next week as well.  I'm going on another short business trip next week, and I am 100% certain that the house will look livable, even if it may not be 100% livable, by the time I get back.  At dinner last night, my parents asked me where I wanted to go for my birthday, which is the Saturday after next.  I would really love to have it at my house, but I know that's not going to happen.  But you can bet your ass that we'll be eating dinner at  Anyu's dining-room table, in our house, on Abby's birthday, 20 days later.  And those aren't famous last words.  Glenn Frey?  You'd better start writing a song about it.

What Happens (When I'm) In London...

I was in London for four weeks-- about 675 hours-- this summer.  And you all know what happened on my house during that time: pretty much nothing.  Sure, we purchased our appliances and had them delivered, and "finalized" (ha!) our cabinet order, but that month was basically the first of several months that can be viewed as a complete waste in this process.  So you can imagine my surprise when this week, during my 34-hour stint in London, major headway was made Stateside.

First off, I got a voicemail upon my arrival at Heathrow Airport from Estes Express, a private shipping company, that I had what sounded like "600 pounds of stone" ready to deliver to my house.  Now, I had no idea what the guy was talking about, but I was game; after all, someone wants to deliver something!  Turns out it was our bathroom floor tile, 600 pounds of it, and it was coming a week earlier than we were told it would.  You may remember it had been on back-order, and we were given a date of February 10 for delivery.  And here they were, trying to deliver early.  I put them in touch with Mark, and he arranged for a Wednesday delivery, "between 12 and 6."  (Why do all deliveries have to have such huge windows?  Do they really not have a smaller window they can work with?)  Now, I'm considering this a success because, even though it is now Thursday and the tiles have not been delivered yet, the process worked... almost.  You see, even though Mark told Estes that there was a low clearance to get to the house-- due to the two little tunnels you have to go through to get by the main NPS building, Estes didn't seem to understand, and they sent a 13-foot truck for the delivery.  The clearance on the higher of the tunnels is apparently 10.5 feet.  So they called me-- at this point I'm in Belgium and it's after midnight, but I'm happy to oblige, since it may mean the delivery of the very thing the whole project needs to start-- and act as a conduit between them and Mark (again) until I just tell Mark to do the calling.  Turns out they can't even put the tile on a pallet, because technically the house is on a hill, and 600 pounds of tile on a pallet is not easily pushed, pulled, or otherwise coerced to move uphill.  (I say "technically" because even though I realize the house is on an incline, I don't think I had ever really considered that it truly was uphill, both ways, to get to the place.  Think of the stories my kids can tell their grandkids!)  So as far as I know, Mark is going to get his pick-up truck or van, park it probably 100 steps from the house, transfer all 600 pounds of tile from the delivery truck to his own, then drive his truck for maybe 15 seconds, park, and do a second complete move.  I don't envy him.  Except, well, it's gotta be done, and it's his job.  But in the end, I'm hoping by the time I get back to DC this weekend I'll be able to see some progress on the bathroom flooring.

The delivery truck couldn't fit through this tunnel.
Looking at it now, I don't understand how.
This looks a lot higher than 10 1/2 feet to me.
FYI, our house is immediately to the right of this shot,
and we see this stuff out our bedroom and kitchen windows.

I probably won't see progress on the wood flooring in terms of it being laid, but I very well may actually see it in the house.  That's because the order has been finalized, Mark talked to Floor Center and arranged to pick up the materials as early as 24 hours after the heat went on in the house.  And with Washington Gas coming by on Wednesday to set the meter and start the service, that could be as early as, well, today!  The part of this all that happened while I was in London, since that's the theme of this post, is the actual finalization of the order.  I went to see a show in the West End, and had about 20 minutes between the time I picked up my tickets at will-call and curtain-up.  So I called Floor Center to finalize the order-- 12,000 square feet, plus three long pieces of matching end-step material and five matching thresholds-- and spoke with Rory about arranging for pick-up.  Come to think of it, since the wood floors could be in the house by today, and the tiles could take until tomorrow to come (and hopefully not much later), I guess the wood flooring work could start first.  Either way, flooring!

And speaking of flooring, there's actually something completed in the house!  The tile Abby bought last week at Home Depot has been laid in the laundry room and the storage room.  Abby said she saw it on Wednesday, before they finished grouting, and she loves it.  I promise I'll get a picture as soon as I get there, and hopefully by then the washer and dryer will have been set in place as well.  Cool thing about this all is that once those two rooms are painted, we can actually start putting stuff in them!  Stuff like storage systems and STUFF-- as in OUR STUFF.  Granted, we just paid the bill to ZippyShell for February's storage, but I'll be pretty eager to get stuff into that area, since it'll be progress we can actually effectuate, as opposed to waiting for someone else.  I asked Mark for a quote on painting, since that wasn't included in our original estimate (to make it come in below the maximum loan amount), and we'll likely end up doing at least a bit more painting ourselves; I can't imagine that we wouldn't be painting the laundry and storage rooms ourselves, for instance.  I wouldn't mind doing some other stuff, and Abby has already been doing the kids' rooms, but there's no way I'm getting up on a scaffold or some crazy-tall ladder to do the great room.



Was I on this bus talking to Patty?
I'll never tell, although I can verify
I did see this building that day.



One last thing that happened while I was in London was finalizing the draw.  I had submitted the paperwork on the way to the airport on Sunday (and got sucked into two hours of work along the way, helping my coworker dig out from a mountain of Embassy Ankara bombing-related stuff, since my flight was delayed anyway) and thought everything was fine.  But on Tuesday afternoon as I left the Embassy in London I got an email from Patty saying I had to submit a lien-waiver request.  Argh.  So I talked to her while riding a double-decker bus in the rain back to my hotel (no lie, she got a kick out of that), and used the business center there to print out, scan, and email the form back to her.  I got an email late Wednesday noting the draw was approved, and expect to have that gigantic check in my hands this weekend.  (Remember, it's just money I've already been paying interest on, so it's not like it's a windfall, but it'll still be much appreciated!)  There's only a few thousand dollars left in the loan, which should be good to go before the end of next week when the loan officially is closed off, so all of that anxiety we were feeling about that issue a few weeks ago is all but gone now.  Now?  It's a sprint to the end-- I really do feel that.

So I would say that's a lot of progress, especially for less than a day and a half.  Not to mention, we had some progress the day before I left as well.  Although we drove up to a closed Acme Stove on Wednesday, we tried again on Saturday, successfully.  It was a breeze to order our fireplace insert-- which is not an insert, so I should stop calling it one.  We walked in, a salesman asked us what he could do for us, and we told him exactly what we had: the dimensions of our fireplace, a gas connection, the height of our mantel, our desire for actual heat, our preference for a traditional look.  He took us to the far corner, said "there you go," and showed us one model among several.  He said there were three sizes, there were three looks, and there was a choice of manual or remote starting.  I love easy choices!  A) the biggest one they had; B) the one that looked like the wood had been burned; and C) I didn't care, but since the remote system cost $350 more and Abby had no issues with turning the manual one on when she attempted it, we went for the cost savings.  There was one system that was prettier, in that the flame danced and flickered more, but the salesman explained to us that that system was not for sale, and was only an example of what people had in their heads, but was a terrible system to have.  Apparently when there's more flickering and more yellow flame, it's a much less efficient system and actually causes moisture in the room due to incomplete combustion-- hence, flickering.  The one we bought has a lot more blue flame (the hottest kind) at the bottom, and has a lot less flickering (denoting efficiency) at the top, and as a result is much better.  He did warn us that we are not allowed to burn it for more than 2-3 hours at a time and, like someone selling a purebred dog, said he wouldn't sell it to us if we didn't understand that.  Sounds good to me.  We put in the order, paid $1200, and should have it ready to install by about next weekend.



Come on over, in a few weeks, and warm yourself by our
RH Peterson RealFyre G-18 Evening Fyre Split Logs in "Charred."
If you remember the whole name, we'll let you make some S'mores.



There are still a few more projects that need a kick in the butt.  I don't know what's going on with the cabinets, and have to check that out.  (Note to self, send email before bedtime tonight.)  It also seems as if the four missing window frames, which were supposedly being manufactured by a company in Wisconsin, are not; Lee, the contractor from the Windmill, Pagoda, and Chalet, recommended a company in Baltimore, and Mark's going to get in touch with them to see if they can help us.  The floors on the second story are going to be finished, but only once the downstairs floors are delivered and laid.  The bathrooms can be finished, but only once the bathroom floors are delivered and laid.  And then there are doors.  Abby found a bunch of doors at Community Forklift, a place that deals in used housing materials in Hyattsville, and we've gotta see about getting them-- up to 15 of them!-- this week.  And a few other things as well, like doorbells and a kitchen sink.  But we're getting close, and now my inability to sit still is being caused less by complete nervousness and more by complete fidgetiness brought on by the light at the end of the tunnel growing considerably bigger and brighter over the last ten days. 

If only I spent a day and a half in London a long time ago.

Deliveries Begin

After an entirely defeating Monday, Tuesday turned out to be much better-- although, true to form, there was a major setback once again.  (I think the one word that describes this process more than any other is "Argh.")

I know many of you are going to say
"this is the chandelier of a crazy person!"
Well, I am married to Abby, right?

First, let's start with the good stuff.  Abby went this morning to meet with James, the local artisan (yeah, we have more than just G-Men in Washington) who's going to make our dining room chandelier.  The meeting went great, and all we have to do is measure the height of the ceiling and he can get started.  Abby really wants something that has an industrial look, and she's completely set on having Edison bulbs-- the same ones I griped half-heartedly about in yesterday's post.  After looking around everywhere with not much luck, Abby was surfing on Anthropologie.com a while back and came upon a light fixture she really loved.  And it was affordable, too-- just about $300.  The problem came when she looked at the size: 19 inches... not exactly appropriate for a dining room with cathedral ceilings.  So one day she was on her own on the one cool block of our neighborhood when she walked into this store called Corehaus.  (Not to be confused with Storehouse, the furniture store we were crazy for before it closed a few years ago... plus, they gave you free candy for browsing.)  Anyhow, Corehaus stocks a mishmash of cool, weird, artisanal, altogether kooky stuff, and they'll make you something if you give them an idea.  Abby asked if they could take the Anthropologie chandelier and make it big.  After a back-and-forth with them that included Abby telling them I did not want anything that looked like it came from a farm, we had a plan.  And in a few weeks, with a little luck, we'll have a chandelier.

Next, she headed to the house with three cans of paint.  While the contractors are going to paint 99% of the house, she wanted to paint the kids' rooms.  Mostly because she's doing a stripe in Isaac's room, which has a Buffalo Bills theme, and she didn't want to worry about the painters getting her vision wrong.  (Those of you who know Abby will have read this sentence without raising an eyebrow.)  Also partially because she kind of wanted to shame the contractors into realizing the homeowner's actually doing some work herself.  Whatever, she loves to paint, so hand the girl a brush!  For those of you who are interested, Isaac's room will be mostly white, but with a blue stripe and red accents; Lola's room will be a light, sea-foamy green to match this bedding Abby bought for her a while back that has a bit of a Moroccan feel to it.  That feel will go along with the built-in bed Abby imagines, that takes the idea of a four-poster and smooshes it right into a wall.  (The bed was bought last year on Craigslist, and was sitting, disassembled, in my bedroom for six months or so before being stuck in our storage container at Thanksgiving.)  Unfortunately, Abby didn't get much more than trim done today, because, Abby being Abby, a parade of people stopped by to talk with her.  But she's going again tomorrow, and I suggested she take her iPod with her to avoid having to talk, like I do on the Metro.  Fat chance, though!  (Remember: Abby has a neon sign blinking "TALK TO ME!" on her forehead.)

Last night before I went to bed, I checked my email and found two surprise delivery notices.  One was the West Elm lighting (recall the Edison bulbs?) that was supposed to be back-ordered until mid-March; it was apparently found, and is on its way to us-- awesome!  The other was the pair of vanities we ordered from DecorPlanet.com; they were due in the morning.  So at about 10:15 this morning I got a call at work from a guy with a thick accent and bad cell reception, telling me he'd be delivering something within the half-hour.  I told him no problem, and didn't think twice about it... which was stupid, because I had done the same thing yesterday with the kitchen cabinet delivery-that-wasn't.  At 11:15, I got out of a briefing on Azerbaijan and checked the tracking status of the delivery, only to find that the last entry read "Returning to NY."  Shit!  I called Abby, who was at the house: no vanities.  I called the customer service number and was put on hold for 20 minutes.  I could just picture the truck plowing its way back up the 95, because either nobody answered the door or, more likely, the driver had no idea where we lived.  Panicking.  Finally I get put through, and the operator assures me the truck's still in Maryland, and has not even attempted to deliver the vanities yet.  Not convinced, I'm nervous about the vanities for the rest of the day.  Only once I get home can I touch base with Abby to find out... yes!  We have two delivered vanities in the house.  Phew!

Also arriving today, the shower tile the UPS guy had failed to deliver Monday.  So I had an idea: if there wasn't enough of the bathroom floor tile in stock (see yesterday's entry if you don't follow), then we could take the smaller bathroom and finish it first, then wait the two weeks for the downstairs bathroom and mudroom.  Brilliant!  But when I mentioned this to Abby, she replied, stone-faced, that while we were deciding on what to do, someone bought the rest of the in-stock tile from the manufacturer.  Shit!  So now we'll have to wait until about February 10 for any of our bathroom flooring to show up.  My plan therefore is to keep buying everything we possibly can, just to ensure we can get reimbursement by the time the loan closes on February 15.  The stuff doesn't have to be installed to be reimbursable, just physically present in the house.  But we're definitely cutting it close, again.

And "Lintel," the other one.

"Danube," one of our flooring choices.

And speaking of floors, Abby managed to convince Floor Gallery in Rockville to lower their prices on the two floors she liked best there, although not to anywhere near Lumber Liquidator pricing.  Rather, we can get either one for about the same price as the AllEco flooring we liked but would have to wait for.  Tomorrow, we're gonna go up to the showroom and make a final decision, and theoretically we could have the flooring physically in the house by the weekend.  (Wood flooring has to sit in the house for a couple of days before it's installed, to acclimate to the temperature and humidity-- who knew flooring was the diva of the home-improvement materials world?-- so that also means our heating has to go on.  That in itself will be interesting, since we still have four windows missing.)  Once we pick the floors, we'll also venture up to Acme Stove, about a mile further up Rockville Pike, to set the fireplace work in motion.

Finally today, I attempted to buy the toilets online, but it seems they have to be picked up in the store.  Still $238 at Home Depot, but the only store in the area that has them in stock is in Falls Church-- the one across the street from the Sears where Abby bought our washer and dryer, and one of the places where the DC Sniper killed people in the parking lot way back when.  So we'll have to wait until at least Thursday to do that.

So tomorrow is shaping up to be a busy one for the house: gas meter going in; HVAC turning on; cabinet re-delivery (I managed to salvage that one, and hopefully installation can still proceed on Thursday); more painting in the kids' rooms; floor finalization (hoping against hope); and fireplace stuff.  All that, and Lee, the contractor working on the Windmill, Pagoda, and Swiss Chalet, wants to have dinner with us.  If all goes according to plan, we're going to feel pretty good about ourselves once we tuck the kids in tomorrow night.  That said, when does it ever all go according to plan?

And the Floors Fall Through

I knew it wasn't a good idea to write such a positive entry yesterday.

Remember everything I said yesterday?  Scratch that.

We didn't fall through the floors; the floors just fell through.

So those are three different ways I could describe all the things that happened today with the house.  Shall I enumerate?

1. We're stuck in traffic on the Rock Creek Parkway this morning, making the poor decision of driving to work since we could come in late due to the "weather" in the area.  We get a call from Jim at iDesign.  The bathroom tile we ordered is partially out of stock.  We need about 200 square feet of it, but the manufacturer doesn't have that much left.  Jim called us to ask if it was okay that the tile wouldn't be delivered until February 12.  We should have all of the tile in the same area of the house from the same shipment, because since it's a natural material it could vary from one shipment to the next.  But if we wait until February 12, there's no way to have anything else go in until then, and the bathrooms really need to be nearing completion at that point, if not completed.  Executive decision: have them send us everything for the first floor, so we can get going on that, and then once the next shipment is in we do the second floor with it.  Then, at least, we can have two full rooms completed (the bathroom and the mudroom), and go with Mark's bottom-up approach.  We haven't heard back from Jim whether this is possible, because he needs to make sure they have enough for the whole downstairs portion, but I think it should work.
2. After dropping me off, Abby heads up towards the house.  Her plan is to run by AllEcoCenter to get the name of the floor she really likes, just to see if iDesign can match the price.  Turns out even AllEcoCenter can't do that; it's out of stock until at least March.  Unlike with the bathroom tile, this isn't something we can wait for.  Panic.  She had planned to head up to Home Depot afterwards and buy paint for the kids' bedrooms, since it's gonna be warm for the next couple of days and she could take advantage of painting weather without having to worry about drop-clothing the floor.  Instead, she needs me to look up flooring stores in the area so she can start from square one.  Luckily, there's this crazy block in Rockville, starting with iDesign on Nicholson, where apparently every flooring store there ever was is located.  (I remember wondering why Delaware Avenue in Buffalo had so many car dealerships; wouldn't one be worried about losing business to another next door?  Then I learned in Human Geography class that the set-up was purposeful, because if everyone knew you could buy cars on one street, they'd just head there and were be sure to buy from someone on the strip.)  Anyhow, she didn't have much time, and after two stores considered turning back.  She considered not going to a third, because only 15 minutes were left before she had to turn around to pick the kids up from school, but went in and loved the first two samples she saw.  "It was meant to be," she said, because that's what she says, and because Jimi Hendrix's Watchtower was on the PA.  Only problem was that these samples were $12/ft.  She proudly told me on the phone how she showed them the sample from AllEcoCenter, told them how much it cost, as asked them to beat the price, without letting them know the one she showed them was unattainable in our time frame.  Good girl!  (We'll hear from them tomorrow.)
3. I can't use my cell phone at work, because I work in a "SCIF," which means "sensitive compartmented information facility."  Basically, since we deal with Top Secret Compartmented information, they don't want people bringing electronics into the area to bar against potential compromise of data.  Those of you who may have been unfortunate enough ever to reach any of my voicemail messages will remember the long, detailed message about when I could be reached at what number, solely for this purpose.  (This is why email always works best for me, since I can get it everywhere.)  Well, apparently the cabinet delivery folks decided not to heed my message, because when I was walking out of the Metro at about 5:15 I noticed I had a voicemail on my cell from about 3:00 asking where we were.  Yep, nobody was at the house to sign for the cabinets, so they weren't delivered.  I was furious, and called Mark asking what went on.  He gave a few excuses, starting with "I'm at the hospital" (his wife is sick) and ending with "I didn't think they would come because of the weather."  But when it came down to brass tacks, I can't find one single email I sent him telling him the delivery would be made between 11am and 3pm, and that I needed someone there.  So it's my fault, and hopefully everything doesn't get screwed up because of it-- remember, we are scheduled for a Wednesday and/or Thursday cabinet install.  I bring up the voicemail issue because, although it's my fault no one was there, the delivery company left one message, on my cell, and called it a day.  They had $15,000 worth of merchandise that someone obviously needed, and didn't think maybe they should call another number?  I had my office phone, Abby had her cell, and I was on email; they had all that info, both from the voicemail message and from the order, but no further effort was made at communication.  Not happy.  Used the "F" word several times as I entered the basement.  Need to fix this first thing tomorrow morning because, conveniently, the delivery service closes early on Mondays.
4. The fact nobody was home also affected our shower-tile shipment.  The UPS guy didn't find anyone at home, so he left a sticky note and took the five boxes of tile from GlassTileOasis.com back to UPS-land.  Luckily, Mark assures me that people will be at the house all day tomorrow, so when the man in brown comes back, the boxes should hopefully leave the big van.
5. And to top it all off, when I did get home, Abby and the kids were upstairs talking to our renter, Jamie, who was telling them that the dishwasher is leaking.  It's never leaked before, so of course it's going to start now.  But you know what?  The basement bathroom faucet's all jacked up, and the basement kitchen faucet's pretty much controlled by a poltergeist, so we called Grayton Plumbing (at 544-4366, a number I still know by heart from when we originally finished this house) and they're coming out for all three on Thursday.

So that all sucks.  But there was a bit of-- if not progress-- at least follow-through as to other projects we're expecting to work out this week.

1. Things are getting closer to us.  Okay, so the cabinets and the shower tiles only stopped by for a visit before going somewhere else, the tracking for our vanities shows they've been shipped.  It's a private shipping company from Brooklyn making the trip down, so I'm expecting a call any day now to arrange for a drop-off.  
2. Mark called Abby this morning to say Washington Gas wouldn't come and set a meter until we opened an account.  Abby emailed me at work to ask whether I could do that today at some point.  I dropped everything I was doing, called Washington Gas to create an account, and arranged for someone to come out and set the meter on Wednesday, all before replying to Abby and Mark within minutes.  Granted, when I was talking to Mark about the cabinets after five this afternoon he hadn't read my email yet, it was done and someone will be there on Wednesday.  Unlucky for them, Washington Gas thinks it's a cable company, and gave me a rough window of 7am to 5pm for the install.  But once they leave, the heat will be on.
3. Speaking of gas service, I called Acme Stove today to see about getting our fireplace done.  I keep calling it an "insert" but what we really want are no-vent logs.  We went a long time ago (weeks? months?) to the Acme Stove near Tysons and got a good idea of what we wanted.  I feel bad because these guys work on commission, but I don't want to shlep to Tysons when they have a store in Rockville, just up the road from the street-o'-floors Abby went to today.  So Rockville it is, and we'll meet with them later this week to look at what we want our logs to look like.  Only one thing: the guy mentioned sometimes people "can't stand the smell" of the logs, and my wife gets migraines.  Whatever, she'll deal.

4. 

   Glass tile in "Arctic Blue" for the
   first-floor bathroom

   Tiles for the walls in the downstairs bathroom are ordered, courtesy of HomeDepot.com.  (And I even used my MyPoints link and got 8 points a dollar on them... which I would be more excited about were it not for the fact that I'm going to be getting approximately 12,000 points... for the downstairs bathroom walls... which means I spent $1500 on them.)  You guests better notice those damn walls when you're taking a leak!  They're actually twice the price we thought they were, because Abby thought they were priced by the square foot, but they were priced by the tile, and each tile is only 6"x12".  But this is something we've had set for months, and going  back to do further research would be entirely demoralizing.  So they're ordered, and I'll use my points for a nice dinner-and-movie date with my wife, after which we will come home and use the first-floor bathroom just to enjoy the tiles.

Sigh.  Hopefully, tomorrow I'll have more good news than not-good news.  But movement is really all I need at this point.  Movement, and floors.  Floors would be swell.