Whoosh!
Hi there, everyone. It’s been a whirlwind of a week here in renovation central. Things are flying by, and I am struggling to keep up.
Oh, and for the record, this is week 22, day 151. (And just to be clear, for a couple of my more pedantic readers, that’s 151 calendar days since the contractors first started demolition.)
I’ll start with the reno and then move on to other things.
The week began with the tile folks finishing their work in the new bathroom:
I know it’s another terrible photo, but trust me. The tile on the floor (under the floor protector) is beautiful, and the walls of the shower look great too. But just as soon as it was done, it had to be covered up because the flooring folks started to level the floors:
The house has seen a LOT of settling over the years, and it was very low by the front door and in the southeast corner of the living room. I think he used 34 bags of levelling compound (now called “goop”) to improve things. In addition to that, he spent two or three hours grinding down certain high spots.
He tried to do it all on Wednesday — staying until 9pm — but ran out of goop and couldn’t pull it off. The job finished on Thursday evening after another two hours or so.
What you see in the photos above is several layers of thick liquid stuff (the “goop”) poured and feathered out in the low spots. I think the darker areas are still drying. But note that you can’t see any drywall mud on the floor most anywhere. That’s because it was either covered with goop or ground off.
The other amusing thing is that I’d spent several hours vacuuming down there to get the dust and gunk out of the way, and the flooring contractor was thrilled. He would have had to do that, and I had saved him all that time.
Today (Friday) we have no contractors at the house. We get the entire day (and the weekend) to let the goop continue to dry/cure before the next step. The plan seems to be:
- Prime and paint walls & ceilings
- Install cabinets
- Install flooring
- Cover finished floor immediately (as in the bathroom photo above) to protect it
- Do the rest of the work (doors, trim, finish electrical, finish plumbing, and the remaining exterior stuff)
Why install cabinets before the flooring? Well, it turns out that’s another issue related to floating floors. Cabinets are heavy, and they are screwed to the walls. Floating floors have to be able to move, and if the cabinets are set on them, the floor below can’t do so. That can lead to buckling, cupping, and even the joints pulling apart. If we want a warranty on the floor, the cabinets cannot sit on top of it. And that’s ok. Everyone says it happens, and they know how to deal with it.
Our general contractors have a lot of painting experience, so they are going to do the priming and painting, which is great. And we’re assured they will be here on Monday, ready to get rolling.
In other news…
Tinkerbelle remains just fine, as far as we can tell. Her next checkup is on May second.
Here’s a photo I took the other day while we were out walking the dog:
At a glance that might not look like much, but if you zoom way in…
I heard honking and saw this wildly asymmetric flight of geese. It’s not much of a photo, but it was an impressive sight at the time.
Let’s see. Oh, yeah. This wandered through my feed the other day and felt all too relevant:
Yes, I pretty much wake up like that every morning. It’s fun to be me.
And finally, a story. This was supposed to be in last week’s post, but I forgot.
I woke up one morning to hear a noise that sounded a bit like something dripping downstairs. It was irregularly timed but sounded a bit like water falling onto something that gave it an echo. I got up (in the state pictured above) and wandered around. I found nothing. There were no leaks, the plumbing was all fine, and nothing was disturbed. And the noise stopped when I went downstairs. I was confused, which wasn’t all that surprising in my usual morning state.
The next morning, it happened again. Same scenario. But this time I went downstairs using the staircase inside the house instead of going outside. Despite my presence, this time the noise continued and came from the bedrooms somewhere on the east side. I walked down the hallway and immediately saw a bird fly away from a window in the library.
Aha! We have a bird pecking at his reflection. I stepped outside and saw a robin fly off. So now I know the culprit: a sex-starved, male, dimwitted bird is attacking “that other bird” seen in a window in a desperate bid to keep it from getting access to any passing lady bird. This will not do.
It turns out he was sitting on the temporary railing on the ramp we use to get up into the house. From there he could fly to the window, smack his beak into the glass, and fly back to the railing. Then, after sitting for a moment to regroup, he could do it again. And again. And again.
To thwart him, I got one of the pieces of shade cloth we cover the skylights with to keep the house cooler in the summer and hung it in front of the window. Surely that will solve the issue, I thought, severely underestimating either the smarts of or the degree of sex-induced determination in my foe.
Next moring, the noise was back and it sounded the same. I investigated and discovered he had moved one windowpane to the west. There was just enough railing left to sit on and use as a base to attack that other bird in the next window over.
So I put up a second piece of shade cloth and double-checked my work. This time for sure, I thought, continuing to be entirely too certain of my cranial superiority.
And you know what happened the next morning? He was back, but the noise was slightly different, as if coming from a bit farther away.
I walked down the ramp, and as I got to the bottom I saw the bloody bird sitting on the string of LEDs we put up to let us get the dog into the backyard when she needs to go out in the middle of the night. The string hung in front of a window into the guest bedroom, and while it wasn’t nearly as stable as the front railing (and was, in fact, swinging rather wildly with the idiotic avian perched upon it), it still enabled regular, repeated attacks upon his imagined but very persistent competitor.
I chased off the robin yet again. Then I got out the staple gun and moved the wire up so it could not be used as a perch.
By now I am beginning to appreciate the depth of this feathered lunatic’s depravity, and I am coming to accept the fact that he will probably just find yet another window to work with on the morrow, but what can I do?
And sure enough, I heard his pecking yet again the following morning. On investigation, he was now sitting on our fence and flying up to the same window that he had previously attacked from the LED string. And as I cannot readily remove or modify the fence, I gave in and admitted defeat. Though I chased him off one more time, I assumed he would be back again, trying to knock that orange imposter senseless.
But happily, that has not actually come to pass. I don’t know what happened. Maybe he found another robin to face in actual combat. Or perhaps he got lucky and found the female of his birdy dreams and is off building a nest and doing all that is needed to produce another generation of feathered menace.
In any case, I have not been awakened by his antics since that day. Fingers crossed that remains the case.
May all your birds be well-behaved!
