Saturday, April 4, 2009

Bathroom Diaries Day: Irritation

This isn't funny anymore and I'm tired of it.
The UPenn book I wanted to tackle this weekend has another hiccup. The text won't print. My partner in crime on this project is in LA, he can't get me the correct font until Thursday. So I get to do what I really wanted to do this weekend, work on my bathroom - except that I wasn't mentally ready for that so I didn't plan very well. . . and, I just want this bathroom done already!
Before we get into that though, the sum up from Friday is: I now need major electric work done. PECO - our electric company is going to have to dig up my underground line to my house and repair it. Great.
I came home on Friday to find that I only had electricity on part of the first floor and the third floor. Called PECO - 60 people in my area had been affected and my power would be back on by 5pm. By 5pm, no electricity and mucho frustration in trying to print out the UPenn project - I gave up and went outside and yanked up known weeds. We'd had rain, thunder all day and the ground was nice and damp. I did some good clean up - disturbed about 40 earthworms, and generally made a new mess of a pile of twigs. A tiny dent in the HUGE project which will be my garden some day. It was a lovely evening though. There was a brief downpour at about 6 which left two brilliant rainbows in it's wake. And at 6:30 as I walked out the back door I just about had a heart attack when the PECO man walked up in my yard.
We went to the basement, he discovered the issue, made a quick fix and said that someone would be by to fix everything in the next two weeks, but that I'm fine until then. He said this sort of thing happens all the time in big down pours. Lovely. Now I'm dreading what will happen next. Are they going to go under the porch? Are they going to dig up my brickwork? How does this work? Oh woe to me - I don't even want to think about it.
This morning I had a few false starts, laundry, yard, and then resignation - I've got to move forward on this bathroom. It was an incredibly windy day - a perfect day to hang laundry out and have it dry in two seconds.
First frustration, the guard for my tile saw is MIA. What the heck happened to it??? I looked everywhere and it's gone. Maybe Jeff packed it up accidentally. I did get the bullnose tile up on the side of the shower. I can finally put the grout down tomorrow.
Speaking of grout. . .
You all know Jeff is fabulous but - second frustration - he made my life really difficult by putting all the woodwork in first. If I could have stained it separately and installed it myself - oh, life would have been much better. Even with that stupid blue tape the stain is seeping underneath and staining the beautiful white grout. ARGH! Plus the stupid toilet is installed and I'm crawling around it - (third frustration) and (fourth frustration) the plumbers nicked the vanity when they were working. Not badly but I think I'm going to sick Jeff on them - they still have to come back because . . . (fifth frustration) - why in the heck did they just leave everything as it is? The toilet doesn't fit right and there is a piece missing in the faucet of the shower. And if there were problems why did they call me immediately?! - I left my phone number on the faucet. Grrrr. :(.
The staining (when I manage to do it well) is at least quite beautiful. Here is the unstained threshold:
The stained threshold:
Tomorrow I need to:
fix the tires on my bike so I can go for a bike ride.
polyurethane the baseboards/threshold
grout
paint the ceiling
there's no point in painting the walls until everyone is done - they are too careless and there are scuff marks on everything.
call Lowes about the toilet and shower problems.
finish up tax stuff
lesson plan
call Melanie
and goodness knows what else, including wishing for more hours in a day.

1 comment:

Melanie said...

oh...you don't sound good. hang in there!!! talk to you tomorrow?
xo