Right so it's like this, a week ago it was decided by Mr. Wolford, that we were going to tear up the entire house, set it on fire and turn into savages in the backyard - man eat man, or dog, or any horrific combination. That is what I hear when anyone tells me my house is about to change.
Well now...
What Mr. Wolford 1. MOSTLY said, on J ears, was "Love,
I would like to remove the miserable linoleum that matches nothing in
your glorious kitchen, is cracked, and so very angry that it hassles you
when mopping."
Day One
What Mr. Wolford 2. ACTUALLY said was "I'm putting tile in the kitchen next week."
First day was beyond glee, the dogs were involved and chocolate lab
Kylee Theodore was too on board to help tear up the floors. How
quickly that novelty wore off on every last Wolford. The small one was
first out the door, no apology, nor a goodbye. Simply " this is bullshit" Dust.
Day Two
Second day, I'd gone to bed
with the house normal, and woke up with the fridge..... nay, EVERYTHING in
the living room like a convenient eat-in game room, and to the brown one... it surely was as she was instantly couchside, ready to grab anything we asked for - with a finders fee of course.
Also new in
attendance were an army of 50 billion angry nails, standing straight up
and hoping to snag a naked toe where my kitchen floor once was.
I said
to myself I want to go home, clicked my heels three times, blinked and ....nope...still
here.....trying to figure out what incredible athletics I was going
have to master to get my normal morning routine - water, a green tea bag, and the microwave without being clothes-lined.
Now, I'm not opposed to a good obstacle course but before breakfast? No warning?
The tool given to us to pull these Spikes of Hate is
comical and straight out of Shawshank Remdemption. Tell me someone is NOT playing a joke or getting even for some bullshit Mr. Wolford pulled in the past.
That is a fucking rock-hammer cousin, if I ever saw a rock-hammer cousin.
I was tasked with nail snagging, and really.... If I can ever equate
the sea of impossible nails to anything -it is exactly like picking nits
after a lice treatment. If you've never had the pleasure of either of
these things, simply call that -lucky.
Close of day two, I am bleeding in ten places because
while well intended, I am clumsy with cripple paws. Taken completely off nail duty for having
embarrassed self.
Day Three,
Party board! Ok sure it's called hardy-boarder and it weighs about one me per board. Meaning I was out of the running for moving these. I looked a fool grappling it, veins surfacing in my forehead of defeat..although swearing "No I got it, just... wait for me." Snails. Quickly pitied and relieved of duty.
Simon on day three has had enough and I don't blame
him. He's like a wreckless pinball bouncing off landmines for all that little soldier thinks.The irony is that we have said for the last three or four years, that we cannot go on vacation because it's doom to board an 18 year old blind and deaf dog, and unfair to take him to an unfamiliar territory. So what do we do? Uproot the entire fucking house and expect him to know it's still home. Retrospect is a bitch.
Day Four
Nothing new is
in the fridge, tile placing seems a real possibility, but it's tense
and everyone is answering how they think the other one wants them to
because we are all exhausted and not wanting to be mean but all are
bitey. The attempt is transparent.
Day Five
I anticipated gremlins. Furious,
tornado boiling and fuming gremlins....and I got one. Not captured,
it's completely free and running the house bitching worse than a
Springer show.
Party board finished this morning, (fine fine Hardybacker
finished this morning... Tomato, tomAto /ahem). I am even remotely
going to say Gremlin was a surprise, we three (Kylee Theodore, and Simon
Aka the Russian Pickle) and I saw it starting yesterday, he was turning
on himself.
I married a banker, not a carpenter and when the
gas stove had been moved out but not disconnected I swear I made the
sign of the cross that he had the common sense to not blow up the
neighborhood and took precautions. This didn't surprise me, but all the same.
My banker-carpenter on Day Five, HATES, the floor. I
wouldn't be surprised, nor correcting, if I saw him spit on it.
That said, today tile has begun! We have borrowed
most tools from kindreds for this project -and we borrowed tools not made for our nightmare. At 9am Mister not only jammed/broke the borrowed tile saw, we needed
a far more substantial saw. Now I doubled over about 11am, and I
thought I was just hungry or crampy, nay...that was the remote pang of
him buying a new tile saw.
So tile goes on and the tool for this is equally
baffling as rock-hammer-cousin. When Mister Wolford said the below
photo of tool is what he needed to glue to tile to the floor. I was
halfway back with a fucking spatula, done and DONE. what is this
checker-board thing someone told him he needed? Things like that will be the defining moments of our life. He'll buy something proper, and I feel we already own something just as good.
Don't
consider the visual layout of the below tiles in the photo at all - it is
incidental, the simplistic beauty of his quote when I strolled in with
my notebook to take a pic was...."Please, please don't take a photo of
that, it's like. Well, it's like presenting a limp penis."
I nodded, and stole the photo anyhow, because there is nothing wrong with a limp penis. Especially in this expensive of a style, that is when it becomes art, no?
Day Six
We might win this battle. I am to begin grout detail in
the morning....."supervised." Mildly offended.
Seems to me, it is accomplished by "monkey-poo-ing" (ie like at the
zoo where a smart-ass monkey shits in its' hand then flings it for
entertainment) the grout, rubbing it in, and cleaning the excess.
Simon walked INTO the water bowl today and
I've not seen an animal that crazy incensed since Cujo. He tried to
maintain dignity with that over the shoulder look back as if to say
"Did you see THAT? Someone went and moved water.....right, under, my, feet!"
He remains convinced the house is booby trapped, that we are all
enemies, and is having war flashbacks. If you've never seen a Russian
yorkie scowl, it's really something.
Day Seven
We promptly tuned on each other this Saturday morning. We've lost all humor. We began the project with a sountrack we were gleefully singing together, and by today we blamed each other for how much each song sucked and how have we tolerated this shit so long? "Let's write angry letters to their managers!" type of nonsensical protest.
Tile is down. I AM GROUT-MASTER! If ever there was a job for me.... grout is it. Flinging paste and smearing it like a villain is for me all day, every day. I rocked everything grout but the giant remaining area remains. I'm not sure my photos do this justice, I believe the square footage is 400 feet of aggrevation.
After the longest of days, we brought home our kings feast of oily bagged food and as
we cleaned up a bit in the garage, the Labrador helped herself to the
entire supper and was belly up without so much as trying to hide the wrapping shrapnel. She's lucky I'm not making her wear the paper wrappings
in shame.
Here is tile down. We are not even close to finished but very impatient.
The small trap door in the photo is an oddity. I have never removed it or the dogs name on the door because it lives behind my china. It is from the former owners and where the Timmy Door leads..... Hm. By all means, offer a guess.....
Day 1,387,534
It's wild animals. We now communicate in grunts and dramatic gesturing.
When I came home today, what used to be Mr. Wolford was crouched over a
barrel of watery grout, his teeth out, and a with a strongly pointed
arm toward the kitchen rose a guttural roar of "DONE! WITH! THIS!!!!"
Reference potential monkey poo statement of yonder
mention...sure I may have had the countenance of someone who shouldn't
handle concrete, but I didn't put any in the sink.
Gesture understood, in the kitchen were my wonderful
stainless sinks marinating in stew.... roughly the color of our grout.
Now, that particular moment wasn't the time to mention that I was grout
detail yesterday, and I hadn't dumped anything in the sink.... because
frankly this is war, and in war everyone is a potential cheater at the
end of a relentless day fighting home improvement materials. But
between us...sink was fine yesterday. /ahem.
Without a word I dropped my gear, nodded at the
kitchen beast... (still quite coiled around that bucket of guilt)
....and grabbed the plunger. What I worked out of the slop was mortar,
and really!?!? I was taken off that task in five minutes on
Saturday because I was looking at it 'like I wasn't serious.'
End
of night.....we (team right? /cough) have iced our drains with mortar.
And the garbage disposal has a new sense of humor and hums. Nothing
good is coming of that. But we are done.
Details...floorboards... done.
Until next reno.....
- The Wolfords
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