| 09.27.2005 | pardon our dust
Pardon the dust, folks. We've been busy the past few weeks doing some home improvement. Now that the dust has settled, we're getting back into the swing of things.
The first step was getting a "handy man" in to build the work bench in the garage I'd been talking about for, oh, 2 years or so. I think Marla finally tired of hearing me talk about it.
I felt dirty paying a guy to come to my house, use my tools and my drawings to build it but, hey, it's done! I guess that's what counts. The handy man, who shall remain nameless, sure took his time. What I thought was a solid afternoon of work took him 3 days, which he spread out over 5. It was a sign of things to come...
His next task was to take care of a few minor things in the house and move the vent in the dining room down a few inches to make room for the crown molding. This all needed to be done in short order before the painters arrived. After showing up 4 hours late one afternoon to get started, he left with the vent moved down but gaping holes in the wall. He promised to return the next day to patch the drywall and the come the day after that to take care of the texturing before the painters arrived.
Our handy man didn't show up for the next two days and didn't return phone calls. I took care of the remainder of the job myself and, if I don't say so myself, did a better job than he would have. He finally showed up - with no excuses - the day before the painters arrived and had the audacity to complain that he'd taken the whole day off to finish the job and now had nothign to do.
"Fine. Put up my crown molding, then," was the suggestion. He spent a whole day doing nothing and ended up taking the molding home with him, supposedly to finish cutting all of the angles at home.
He didn't show up for 5 more days.
Meanwhile, the painters came and went in that time, which was quite an adventure. The only room in the house not to be painted was Henry's. It was our little island oasis where we spent the day playing. The rest of the house was like something from E.T. Entire rooms were wrapped in plastic and quarantined. I had to gingerly peel the plastic off of our beds at night so we could sleep and then carefuly reassemble things in the morning. (Though the garage was full of boxes of stuff from the house you can see that Henry seemed perfectly happy to play and sleep there.)
Unlike our giant loser of a handy man, the painters were excellent and arrived exactly when they said they would and did an all around great job. If you're looking for a referral in the Orange County area let us know.
I spent all of last weekend replacing every receptacle, switch and plate in the house with shiny new white ones and hanging up pictures. We still have a few
You'd think I'd be upset that the handy man had made off with my crown molding, wouldn't you? But, no, I was actually pretty happy. He'd left his nice ladder, an air compressor and a nail gun. I was hoping he'd never come back but, alas, he did call one day and wanted to swing by and get his tools and return the molding (which he hadn't touched).
When he arrived, he had the nerve to ask Marla for $25 for the little bit of work he'd done hacking holes in our wall. She gave him the Evil Eye and he scampered off. Good riddance.
