Long day yesterday. The pictures are dark because it was dark by the time I left. I am so, SO close to being done with the floors. All I have left is about 20 boards at the top of the staircase. I removed everything from the kitchen and entryway. That fridge has GOT to go at some point, it's always in the way. I need to figure out when the contractor plans to bring a dumpster over, my pile of floorboards is knee high.
I probably could have finished the job yesterday but I spent too much time chatting with the guys who came to troubleshoot the boiler. I was hammering away and pulling up floorboards when they drove up, they took forever getting their stuff together so I kept working away until they walked up to the porch. I came out to greet them - looking crazy I'm sure since I now spend most of my days clad in 3-4 layers, wearing safety glasses, working gloves and carrying a crowbar- and sure enough they looked shocked. They were no picnic themselves mind you, one was huge, smoking and wearing a head flashlight and the other was in head to toe camo with a zz top beard and chaw in his mouth. The one with chaw in his mouth said, "I coulda sworn by the swing of that hammer there was a big ol' man in here!" (Feminists of the universe rejoice!)
Anyway, nice guys but they could NOT get it working and it's 100% the bank's fault. The bank sent a guy out there months ago to put 25gallons of oil (hardly anything) in the boiler to see if it worked, it did and would have kept working IF that guy had remembered to turn the boiler off when he left. Instead it burned all the oil and kept running until the gears got stripped. Thanks bank, just when we thought you couldn't make our lives hard ever again. The boiler guys are coming back this afternoon with new parts for the engine to try again. At almost $200/hour they'd better fix it today or I'm recycling the metal and getting propane.
So, I got a lot done yesterday but no cigar. I spent my morning meeting with our contractor and the people he uses for window/doors, kitchens/bathrooms (we'll see what their estimate is, I'm really tired of people telling me that cabinets cost more than my college education) and a flooring guy named Javier who I absolutely love because he's going to take over the floors once I'm done pulling up this last part! Javier will rethread the wood planks and make it seem like nothing was ever pulled up, then he'll sand them and stain them a dark brown. I had thought about tackling all that myself but as much as I'd like to have ripped arms I don't know that I want to run a sander over 2,000 square feet, I may end up with scary, veiny Madonna arms. Take it away Javier!
I'll finish my part of the floors today and then our contractor is stopping by to design a new bathroom layout. Once we settle on a design they'll start ordering materials and we can start demoing. That plus the boiler guys plus a chimney repair person coming out means another busy day. There's a ton more to say but I have to get back in the car to head out there now. Driving 40 minutes to an hour to get there from where we're renting a place now is getting tiresome. If we can get the boiler working we can turn the water on, heat plus water = staying the night there!
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