Our house has become one large sliding tile puzzle. In the rooms with damaged baseboards, everything has to be away from the walls. Many of those rooms are also getting repainted, which means everything has to be removed from those walls. Also, the rooms that are getting new carpet (our primary bedroom and closet, my office and closet, and Susan’s office and closet) need to be completely emptied.
In a perfect world, the contractors doing the drywall and painting would have been finished before the carpet installers arrived. Instead, they only worked two hours last week and didn’t start installing baseboards until Saturday. Everything we own that was on a wall or against a baseboard has been moved into all the remaining free space in our house. Since we were told the baseboards, drywall repair, and painting would be finished before the carpet installers arrived, we were planning on putting some of our stuff back wher it goes which would free up space for the stuff we have on carpet. But again, since they inexplicably didn’t do any work last week, we have essentially had to put twenty pounds of “shaving cream” in a space large enough to hold ten.
What does that look like? Everything from Susan’s office is on our kitchen table. My rack of servers, which I had already moved from my server client to my home office (which was getting carpet), got moved again to our entry way. My recliner is in the hallway, blocking the bathroom. My office chair is in the dining room. My laundry basket and “dresser” (a set of those cheap white rolling plastic drawers) are in the show. Our bedroom rug is in the bathtub.
Yesterday morning (on time) our carpet installers arrived — a husband and wife team, I believe. They worked together as a team to rip out all the remaining carpet and pull up tack strips. After that, it seemed like the husband was in charge of “carpet” (cutting and installing) while his wife appeared to do everything else: cutting and installing padding, carring things in and out of the house, and more. Neither role seemed easy.
The carpet installers arrived around nine and worked until four without as much as a lunch break. Around 1 p.m., the lady apologized and asked us for a glass of water. I felt terrible that they hadn’t brought food or water and maybe the job took longer than they thought, but I can’t imagine doing that type of work and not traveling with gallons of drinks and snacks.
What a difference a day makes!
Today it’s back to painting and minor drywall repairs. We’re hoping things will get wrapped up no later than the end of the week which will give us a few days to start preparing for Thanksgiving.