Photo Caption: This post is going naked. You can imagine whatever image you’d like and insert it in this spot, m’kay?
What I’ve Learned:
Despite my facebook declarations to save my melt-down for New Year’s Day, I met my end yesterday. Stood in the hallway in front of the kitchen door and just wept.
What’s worse, (yes worse than missing deadlines by months) I melted-down in front of the very nice guy who is plastering our walls. Two days after I stood in the very same spot and told this same plaster artist, “I don’t know how I feel about the plaster. I can’t think about that right now, because IZ is in the ER and they think he’s had a heart-attack.”
Yeah, it’s been that kind of a week.
Let me put you out of my misery. IZ is fine. Well, he’s not, but he’s not having a heart-attack or a stroke or anything dire. He’s just under the immense pressure of trying to finish our house and work full time and parent and hold the hand of his wife who cannot keep her “stuff” together.
For that, I’m terribly sorry.
I kept my “stuff” together in the ER. There’s that. I kept looking at this man I love, this PARTNER (because we don’t define our relationship in terms of husband and wife. We’re best friends, lovers, PARTNERS.) and I kept thinking “I don’t do so well with this role reversal stuff.” I’m usually on the gurney, he’s usually holding MY hand. And well, he’s really amazing at that. How does he keep so calm? How does he crack jokes and not look worried and not sit down in a puddle of his own snot and tears and lose it?
He will tell you he’s Danish and it’s in their natures to be stoic and solid and perfectly calm.
I will tell you he’s a rockstar.
A rockstar who is stressed out.
So, yesterday comes along (see this page, last post for details) and I faced my end. You know, the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back? That straw came in the form of an email break-up note and turned on the tear spigot.
I cried. I stood in the hallway and IZ, the rockstar that his is, both held me and cracked jokes to the poor plaster guy watching me come undone, about how his wife didn’t weep a tear in the ER, but is crying over the tiler. He’s keeping it all together, because he is IZ.
Because the love of my life is Danish. And he’s eating his stress. And he’s holding my hand. And he’s making everything OK for everyone.
Ann Taintor never fails to elicit the truth. . . or a smile. Her work here.
Go!:
It’s not that we lack news to relate. It’s that I’m struggling how to put into words what needs to be said without putting it in print on the internet. It’s taken me 2 weeks to stop being dumfounded!
Let’s just say, for now anyhow*, that IZ is our new General contractor. He’s doing a bang up job of it, despite the fact that the budget is now 14K lighter than it should have been! He’s lined up amazing people to put our home back together again and the tradespeople we’ve been working with have been so compassionate about our circumstances.
There will be sacrifices. Like the real potential that not everything will be done on our hotel vacate date (10/25). And some of our finishes are, well, maybe not quite what we had imagined going into the process. I’m sure we’ll continue to tally up the damage done to our jobs and businesses by being out of our home for nearly 3 months.
But, y’all have seen the before photos?! It could be cheap vinyl on the floor and be better than what was in the space before! And the upside is that our electrical will no longer be a fire hazard. (say goodbye Knob and Tube) Our plumbing will be legal and, at least theoretically because plumbing has a way of misbehaving, flowing properly. We’ll have a REAL tub in the master bath.
A REAL TUB. And not any tub. . . a gorgeous claw foot thing that is heavier than heck and has to come up a flight of stairs. I’m already wondering what I can do to soften the blow for our construction crew that will have to haul that thing up to the top floor. Cupcakes? Latte runs? Vodka? Ok, maybe not the vodka!
So, this is it. The plumber arrives tomorrow morning. The electrician is scheduled for Wednesday. All our finishes are chosen and most are ordered. And now we make a mad dash in the last two weeks to finish a project that started July 1 and promptly stalled for two months. I really shouldn’t be surprised by this, since procrastination is a state of mind this family inhabits. But just the same, I’m bracing myself for all the work to be done in the next two weeks.
Oh, and did I mention I’m changing the color palette of 90% of the house. Uh. . . hang on, it’s about to get BUSY up in here.
* for those of you who have heard part of the story, I’d really appreciate it if we kept the details out of the comments. I’m happy to share our experience off-line, but it’s probably best to keep it there. Thank you! 😀
What is it, day Sixty-three? I’m throwing in the towel. This cup? This was left, ON MY PIANO (which is in my dining room, and not in the scope of construction), weeks ago by someone in the construction crew. I keep waiting for someone (other than ME) to notice it and do something about it. And the dust build-up is because, despite being told it would happen, nothing was tarped off before they gutted my kitchen.  It’s clearly time for some Pickle Jars.
Oh Hai!
Remember me? I blog here? Or not. I’m throwing in the towel counting my summer days. It’s pointless and depressing. I’ve fallen into a pattern to survive hotel life, but it’s not creative. It’s more of a “lather, rinse, repeat” endeavor.
Progress on the house is achingly slow. Song and dance, people. That’s what we’ve been getting for weeks. IZ is meeting with our contractor in about an hour and all I can say is that it’s probably a very good thing it’s not ME meeting with him. I was outlining dead bodies on my kitchen floor weeks ago, you can imagine that I’m well past being diplomatic.
It’s beyond me. I know I run my own “business” differently. Customer service (and managing expectations) is a high priority for me, and I’ll confess I get a bit “Judgey” when I bump into poor customer service models. However, I don’t think I’m being completely a diva here—it’s been 7 weeks since the first insurance inspector walked through my door with the contractor and STILL there is no operating budget. And meanwhile, nearly every person (save the two guys who demolished my bathroom, they were AWESOME!) who has worked in my home in the past 2 months have treated it like a trash heap. You think I’m kidding? Um… how about this:
Day Forty-eight: Has it really been a week already?
My week has flown by. We’re feeling so much better in a larger space. But the days just meld together—it’s a continual stream of logistics. Up to stagger breakfast (since Sophie can’t be left alone in the room.) Then off for a morning walk. Back to the hotel for a quick cuppa and then up to the house with Sophie to work for most of the day. Leave Sophie at the house around 4 to meet the boys back at the hotel for dinner. Squeeze in a walk after dinner (assuming we don’t walk TO dinner) and then back to the house to pick up the dog.  Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
It makes for a very choppy day, especially when you get to one place or the other only to realize you forgot something. Oy.
And our one month stay has quickly become two. I’m hopeful that will be the end of it. It all depends on how quickly our insurance can get around to issuing checks (and if they have to go through our bank, or can directly issue the checks to us. If they go through the bank, well… it’s Bank of America. Need I say more?)
As of this moment, the scope of work includes: (please keep in mind, this all started with a bathroom floor)
Electrical: Removal of all the knob and tube electrical. Apparently, the electrical upgrade we were told happened about 10 years ago, was a “cosmetic” upgrade. When you dig into the walls, it’s clear that only the places that would be checked were upgraded, everything still ties into the old knob and tube. Frankly, we were a house fire waiting to happen and are very fortunate to have escaped it. So the entire house will have be brought up to code in order for it pass inspection and for us to be able to move back in.
Plaster: Our home is lathe and plaster (JOY) and so everything that gets damaged in the rewiring will have to be replaced. Presently, that’s the bathroom and the kitchen–and will probably mean assorted walls and ceilings as the electrical is upgraded.
Bathroom: It’s an entire gut. Everything has been stripped at this point. There isn’t even a floor. It will all need to be replaced.
Kitchen: It’s not quite a gut, but the flooring, walls, ceiling, and cabinetry will have to be replaced.
Plumbing: Um.. yeah, it’s looking like everything will have to be brought up to code. It’s a central plumbing situation, so one repair means it ALL has to be repaired.
Structural supports: When the bathroom was renovated 10 years ago, and plumbing was put in for a shower, all sorts of “short-cuts” were taken, putting the structural integrity of some portions of the house at risk. One wall isn’t supported and will need to be remediated before construction can commence.
<wende putting on her angry eyes> Whoever did this work. . . a POX on you and yours. The very idea anyone would put their OWN family at risk, doing home repair work just boggles my little brain. Doing a half-assed job tiling a bathroom because you watched some show on HGTV and think you’ve got the mojo to fake it, I get. Doing a home installation of plumbing that cuts into support beams in an illegal DIY job… insanity. You know who you are, and you should be ashamed. </angry eyes>
Ahem.
So that’s where we are. Or where we’re not. I suppose it depends on how full your glass is.
