I learned a couple of things during the course of our bathroom project.
First… do everything in your power to get a good contractor. Hugo was highly recommended (by my next-door neighbor, who is the head of construction, maintenance project and capital planning for the Minneapolis schools. Hugo communicated well through-out, was easy going, delivered bad news gently and, of course, did a nice job at a good price.
Second… also do everything in your power to have a handy person living in your house with you – especially someone who is invested in the outcome of your project. I have YA for this. She is MUCH handier than I am, as she is more patient as she goes about whatever she is working on. She installed the toilet paper holder and the towel racks. She un-installed the new light sconces because she thought there was a “ridge” along the edge, spackled and sanded and then re-painted. She also installed two slider baskets on the bottom shelves of the vanity so it would be easy to get at our stuff. And she also took a teeny paintbrush from my studio to “straighten” a couple of the paint seams.
And she gets credit for most of the decisions in the bathroom. She picked the tile, the flooring, the wainscotting design, the medicine cabinet and the light sconces. I had final approval but most of the time, her choice was OK with me.
So between Hugo and YA, I don’t really get any credit for the bathroom, unless you count having to arrange all the financing!
Yesterday marked exactly eight weeks since our bathroom project started. It started as what I thought would be a quick (and inexpensive) fix of my weird shower system and very quickly went straight downhill. The hot water assembly was so old that when an interior piece of the handle broke, those words “not up to code” were uttered (for two different parts of the bathroom) and started that proverbial domino effect.
When the contractor was finalizing his proposal, I asked him for a guesstimate on how long it would take. He said four weeks. I assumed he was padding that and then padded it again myself so I wouldn’t be upset if the bathroom wasn’t up and running again in a month. Good thing.
The first issue was that the plumber put in the wrong tub for the project. It took several days to get this resolved; I ended up having the contractor replace the tub and I stopped payment on the plumbers until they refunded a chunk of change.
Second issue was the tile. We chose a tile that showed in stock at our local Home Depot. The day we went in to order it, the person who helped us said “Oh yeah, we took a pallet of this down yesterday – there’s plenty.” When contractor went to pick it up the next day, Home Depot said they didn’t have enough. This is when having a good contractor comes in handy – he beat them up enough that they ended up getting it at another store and delivering it right to the house.
Third issue was the vanity. Home Depot SAID that it would be delivered in 2-4 days. They must have meant hours on Mercury, because it certainly didn’t arrive within 4 days. Then when it did arrive, they informed me that they couldn’t deliver it up the steps onto the front porch because I hadn’t paid the additional “in house” delivery fee. Grrr…. Luckily my next-door neighbor was our in his yard and between him and me and YA, we got it onto the porch fairly easily. Of course, when the contractor arrived the next morning and opened it up, it was broken:
Since the return process didn’t go smoothly, I ordered the second one sent to the store. After another set of Mercury-long days, I got multiple messages via text and email saying different things about where the vanity actually was. Called Home Depot and got told the vanity was at the store. I called the store and talked somebody into checking that it was actually there. Called contractor (I spent a lot of time on the phone for this project) and told him he could pick up vanity in the morning. Then lo and behold, overnight I got an email saying vanity had arrived at the store broken. Apparently when the guy at the store told me it was there, it hadn’t been taken off the pallet yet so they didn’t realize it was broken. Sigh. I made kind of a large stink at that point. Not sure if it helped or not but the third vanity arrived undamaged. And even though the store said they had checked it, my contractor made them open it up so HE could check.
Did I mention that during the tear-down process, the toilet got cracked? The brand new toilet that we had put in just seven months ago? Contractor took full responsibility and ordered a new tank. In the meantime, I’m here to tell you that FlexSeal really works. Not sure you can really seal up a boat and drive around the Everglades like in their commercial, but it held the toilet together really well until the next tank arrived yesterday.
Now I realize that this isn’t too bad compared to a lot of the horror stories out there, including some we’ve heard here, but it was enough that the contractor’s 4 weeks and my 6 weeks weren’t padded enough. But overall I’m feeling relatively lucky; this is the second major project that hasn’t been nearly as bad as I expected. Before and after pictures tomorrow!
In the last seven weeks I haven’t gone more than a day or so without having to stop by either Home Depot or my local hardware store. There are only a couple of bits left until the bathroom is completely finished, but we are now slowly putting it back together. This has driven me to the hardware store several times in the last week. Screws, anchors, springs, plugs, paintbrushes…. I feel like I’m practically living there.
Last Saturday morning, they were slammed; I wasn’t the only one with a home project. Rather than wait around for help, I ventured to the back where the entire wall is filled with drawers and boxes of nails, screws, bolts and the like. I needed some kind of rubber plug for the end of a spring I had bought the day before to hopefully allow us to keep using our current shower caddy. (Anything to staunch the flow of cash into this bathroom!) I did actually find something that would work perfectly.
None of the store employees was at the back of the store and I didn’t trust myself to remember the part number or even the price until I got to the register, as I had a few other things to pick up. Although I had a pen, I didn’t have anything to write on. I was just about to write on my hand when I suddenly realized I could use my phone to take a photo of the price and sku. Not an earth-shattering thought but I’d never thought of it before. Snapped the above picture and headed back to pick up my other items. The young cashier did actually thank me profusely. Apparently most people expect the employees to know all the prices which means a quick trip to the back of the store to check; I got good-customer brownie points!
When was the last time technology pleasantly surprised you?
The bathroom light switch was on the wall OUTSIDE the bathroom. I don’t know why. But for 30+ years I have switched on the light before I go into the bathroom and switched it off when I come out of the bathroom. Also for 30+ years, anytime a guest has used the bathroom I have cautioned them “the light switch is on the wall in the hall”.
Since the entire inside of the bathroom got ripped up for the remodel, including the wall where the electrical box was located, I figured we might as well move the switch to the inside of the bathroom. The electrician also moved the fan switch and overhead heat lamp switch over as well, so all three switches now live together.
Here are the three switches in their new location:
This is where the switch used to be:
It’s been two weeks. I still try to turn the lights on/off outside the bathroom at least 5 times a day.
We’re in the very last death throes of our bathroom remodel: the time when you realize you need a new shower caddy, a little table, new towel racks, new shade, new curtain…… aarrggghhhh.
Home Depot feels like it has become our home away from home. We were there last night for a toilet paper holder, a new shade (we have a new window that is a different size from the old window) and some towel rods. YA is fairly handy and took on the toilet paper holder on Saturday afternoon. She didn’t like the size of the anchors to attach the handles so we had to make a trip to the hardware store. It was the third hardware store trip of the day for me, although the other two trips were about the shower caddy, not the toilet paper holder.
Once we were home, she was able to get it finished up in less than a half hour. When she called me to look at her handiwork, the photo above is what I saw. Quite a bit of mess for a toilet paper holder. She’s not traditionally as good about cleaning up after a project, but she did straighten up. I suggested she could clean up more and she reminded me that she’ll need these same tools for the towel racks. Good thought.
When I had to take a picture of the big mess for the little project, she objected and then said “why didn’t you take a picture of the holder?” So… voila:
As always, I am continually amazed when I see signs that the apple of my eye hasn’t fallen far from the tree.
A couple of weeks ago, I bought a new set of bag clips; as time has gone by we are using these for more items than we used to, so we needed to beef up our supply. We get the magnetic ones and, as you can see from the photo, we stick them on the hood of the stove for easy access.
The surprise was when I walked into the kitchen last week and found that YA had arranged them in rainbow order. I laughed out loud because when I took the clips out of the package and put them on the stove hood, I did briefly think to myself “I should put these in rainbow order”. Then I got distracted and didn’t get to it.
Any discussion of rainbows makes me think of this one:
Today’s post is inspired by Anna’s “I went for a walk in my neighborhood” posts.
I normally wait until right before Halloween to buy pumpkins for our front steps, with the hope that they’ll last until Thanksgiving. This is a fool’s errand, as it usually only takes my neighborhood squirrels about a week to figure out there are good eats on the front steps. I almost always get the pumpkins from Mt. Olivet near my house. The prices are in line with other pumpkin vendors and the money always goes to one of the youth groups.
This year YA went with me to choose the three pumpkins that would grace our front steps – normally she leaves this to me. While I always choose standard orange pumpkins, usually all about the same size, YA wanted a big pink variety this year. After she had decided on the big pink one, she let me choose the other two. I stuck with my orange tradition.
As other years, it took several days before I noticed the first teeth marks on the pink pumpkin. By Halloween, it had a good hole so I just turned that side to the back. As the days have gone by, more and more of the pumpkin has been eaten up – as of yesterday, it looks like a shallow bowl filled with seeds. I’m happy that critters get good meals out of the decorations – I hate to think of them just going into landfill somewhere.
What I don’t understand is why they are only eating the pink one? Is this a squirrel mania, like eating one course of your meal at a time? Will the pink one have to be completely gone before they start in on the orange ones?
A favorite book when our children were growing up was “Louhi, Witch of North Farm” by Toni de Gerez with illustrations by Barbara Cooney. It is a story taken from the Kalevala about Louhi stealing the sun and the moon and hiding them. The hero, Vainamoinen, eventually gets them back with the help of Seppo the smith.
A minor character in the book is Sit Behind the Stove, a character from Russian mythology, who lives in Louhi’s cottage. Husband sketched pictures of Sit Behind the Stove, which our children loved. I imagine Louhi’s kitchen looking like this:
I hadn’t thought about this until recently when Kyrill our Cesky Terrier found a small red ball in the yard and brought it in the house. It is an official Minnesota Twins T-Ball that he loves to chase. At times the ball seems to have a mind of its own, as it is ultrasensitive to even the smallest imperfections and dips in our laminate flooring in the dining room and living room. It gains momentum for movement with every dip in the floor and then rolls. Kyrill has learned that if he tosses it under the furniture it will eventually roll back to him. He watches intently to see where it might emerge, and then pounces on it.
The other day the ball rolled under the buffet in the dining room. When that happens, we usually have to retrieve it for him. After a minute or so, though, it magically rolled back out! It was rather unsettling, I admit, and I imagined that Sit Behind the Stove or perhaps a tomten must have tossed it back out.
Who or what are your favorite mythological characters?
I got the first calendar of the holiday season in the mail yesterday. It’s pretty – scenic destinations from all over – but useless. Nobody on the planet needs additional calendars less than I do – I know that you all know this.
My most expensive calendar is my Daytimer. I was actually given this portfolio-type calendar by my boss over 30 years ago. After he had gotten a good annual review, he presented his three employees (me, Alan, Ann) with this gift saying that he could not have gotten a good review if we weren’t all doing good work. As you can see from the frayed edges, it’s the original binder but I do spend the money every year to update the innards. In the various pockets I keep stamps, address labels, deposited checks and my old vaccination card (before I started carrying around the covid card in my purse). It also contains an address book that I update every couple of years.
Every month I do all my birthday/anniversary/occasion cards at once – on average about 20 cards a month. I pick them out, stamp the appropriate greetings/sayings, sign them, seal them, affix a stamp to them and stick on the address label and then sort them into my Daytimer for the week they need to be mailed. That’s why a lot of the time, my Daytimer looks like it does in the photo above. If I do cards for a holiday, I usually stack those on my dresser next to the Daytimer. Right now I have Thanksgiving cards and National Origami Day cards stacked up. (I have to justify all these stamps/dies/papers you know!)
I’m pretty sure that I could devise a cheaper system for storing cards that are waiting to be mailed but my current system works great and I do have a sentimental attachment to the Daytimer. My boss back then was a fabulous person to have as a boss – I was sorry when he left the company. Alan, Ann and I weren’t long with the company after that.
I’m sending the scenic calendar to work with YA – free stuff goes fast when left on a lunchroom table!
You wouldn’t think that making a batch of cupcakes would be a full-morning event, would you?
First, I had to decide what cupcakes to make. I have a couple of cookbooks that embellish box cake mixes so I started there. First there was a good looking lemon filled cupcake but this would require going to the store for lemon curd. (In addition to the contractor being here, I’ve been trying to make inroads into what I think is just too much foodstuff in the house.) Then I moved on to a cupcake made with juice concentrate – oops, no concentrate except apple. Coming off the autumn, I’m a little appled-out. Maybe a cinnamon toast cupcake – shoot, no pudding mix. By this time I was thinking I should just use the box mix and be done with it.
Then I saw the white chocolate cupcake. I knew I probably had the 1 cup of white chocolate chips (or the equivalent) and I knew I could approximate whole milk with the skim milk and the heavy cream I had in the fridge. Of course, when I was pulling out the chocolate chips, I found an unopened jar of lemon curd. Oh well, next time.
So I finally had cupcakes in the oven by 10:30 (a full hour and a half after starting this project). Luckily I did have cream cheese for the frosting so at least I didn’t have to spend time looking for alternatives. The cupcakes turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself!
When was the last time it took you too long to make a decision?
Trail Baboon 