Making Progress

We are making progress on all fronts, even though some of the work has exacerbated my allergies to the point of a sinus infection.

The floor done and even the dogs like it!

At the end of last week, the Engineering Geek finished up the Boychick's room. This weekend, the Boychick and I put his room back together, which was quite an involved process! Every piece of furniture had to be dusted, drawers had to be vacuumed and cleaned out, and stuff sorted into throw away and give away piles.


On the agenda as soon as my teeth no longer feel like they are about to pushed out of my head is a trip to Goodwill. That's in town, and until the antibiotic starts working, a trip involving elevation changes of greater than 100 vertical feet is out of the question.

With new throw rugs, the floor looks great, and the sheepskin from New Zealand has become a good place for the dogs to rest.

The Engineering Geek now has one more room to go; his office a.k.a. the firetrap. Because he feels he has to read each piece of the two years of accumulated junk mail, and because he has an absolute horror to throwing anything away, I expect that the office will take more time to floor than the rest of the house put together.

The Boychick has also been making some good adjustments in school. He has been doing his homework regularly, although there were a few evenings on which he started with whining. We reminded him that he had made a choice and that since it was his choice, he now must do the work entailed by the commitment he has made.

Well, actually, the Engineering Geek told him in a conversational tone to "put up and shut up."
I was the one making the earnest and mostly unheard argument about choices. Sometimes I forget that long and involved reasoning is goes in one ear and out the other of a teenage boy.

As I expected, although the Boychick is reading way ahead of many of his classmates in humanities, he gets behind in writing.
Like many 'Aspies,' he is a very slow writer physically, but also he has difficulty organizing his ideas coherently. We worked hard on sequencing as homeschoolers, but he is still quite slow.
Also, he tends to perseverate on the homework for one subject and forget that he has other assignments to do as well. Planning work and budgeting time are still areas where he needs a lot of support.

Math is another area of great difficulty. Here, it is a matter of the auditory processing disorder and deficits in auditory working memory (these go together!) that give the Boychick fits. He can understand algorithms, but he is very slow at the step-by-step solution to problems because he has such difficulty holding more many chunks of information in working memory at the same time. We had to intervene with the math teacher so that the Boychick can now use a TI-Math Explorer calculator. This frees up his working memory for the algorithm he is using. Often, he can get the right answer, going from A to D without the intervening steps at B and C, but this is not the way that math is taught. Also, in applied math, especially in science and engineering applications, he must be able to show how he arrived at a solution.

We have had a great response from the East Mountain High School faculty as we have set about getting our Boychick what he needs to succeed in this highly academic environment. He has a very experienced special education teacher to whom he can go to hash out problems and who can explain strategies for him to his teachers. He is in general education classes and those teachers have also been very helpful to him, and have been very willing to take our suggestions for strategies to help him build stamina for work that he does not particularly like.

I think part of the successful adjustment we are seeing is that we are not fussy about grades. I never have been. High school grades are just not as important as many people think.
Work ethic is far more important in the long run.
What we are emphasizing with the Boychick is that all his work has to be done to his best ability and in a timely manner. If he does that, we tell him, then the grades will come.
East Mountain High School does not practice grade inflation, and they do not give credit for course grades below a C. But even so, what tends to bring grades down is incomplete work and missing assignments. So these are the things that we are helping the Boychick keep in the forefront of his mind. He is not perfect--he carried one worksheet around in his backpack for a week after it was due. But we are after progress, not perfection.

Socially, the Boychick is doing well! He is actually popular with his classmates.
We are supporting him here in two ways.

First, we bought him stylish clothes. They are not over-the-top, but they look good. The Chem Geek Princess taught him how to take care of these clothes, and how to wear them. Since 'Aspie' kids are socially at a disadvantage already, this is very important. These kids need help understanding the importance of clean, neat clothing that is relatively fashionable and about regular hygeine. We didn't spend a lot of money on this. We were just very careful about what we bought with the money we did spend.

Secondly, the Chem Geek Princess spent several hours with the Boychick, explaining and role-playing important social rules for adolescents. She emphasized that the Boychick needs to listen to others--very difficult for him!--and that he needs to be nice to all the girls. "Girls," she pointed out, "Are not like boys. They have long memories for meanness and slights. If you are nice to all of them now, you'll have no lack of dates for the Senior Prom."

This is something that a lot of kids would do well to understand. Ordinary kindness and manners go a long way towards social success.

Things are progressing here.
Now, I am just waiting for the antibiotic to make a quick advance against this stubborn sinus infection. Until then, it's altered reality with Sudafed and lots of tea!

Oh! And here's Lily, her ears all askew--the tomboy!
She wanted to be in on the picture-taking as she settled back into her room. The one that she deigns to share with the Boychick.

Adjustments

The past two weeks have seen us busy with making adjustments.

The Boychick has taken to school very well, overall. During the first week, he began to get the hang of planning for getting homework done and he also had to get used to getting up at the crack of dawn in order to shower, eat and dress before I am ready to get out the door with him. He discovered that he can get the assigned reading done in half the allotted time, but that he needs to schedule himself for extra writing time. He has enlisted the Chem Geek Princess as a math tutor. She is enjoying that role, and she understands the approach the Boychick needs--highly visual, do not rely too much on auditory working memory.

At the EMHS open house last week, we learned from the Boychick's advisor that he has been ajusting very well and that he is role model to others in his advisory period. He understands that many learnings do not come immediately and that work and patience are required to master difficult material. Also, he has learned to think about what he needs to learn and is not afraid to ask for adjustments from his teachers in order to get what he needs. His advisor says that he "has landed himself in a good place--a place conducive for his learning."

As the Boychick adjusts to school, and I am adjusting to being a GA, we are all needing to adjust at home because in the past week, the Engineering Geek has gotten to work on the Boychick's floor.

This is actually a big adjustment for us. The Boychick is sleeping in the Chem Geek Princess's room, and some of his furniture and stuff are in there. But the pieces to his bed, including the mattress and box springs are leaning on the wall in our bedroom, and the neatly stacked boxes in the hall have been gradually spilling out into the living room.

Yesterday, we were frantically going through boxes to find the kerchief and badge sash for the Boychick's scout uniform, as he had a scoutmaster council meeting for advancement. This meant more movement of his stuff into the living room.

All of us have great difficulty with this kind of chaos and so yesterday was one of those frantic days during which there was grumbling and snapping, in addition to productive work and conversation.

We all are striving to remember that the prep work is done, for the most part, and that the EG is now planning out the floor and laying out the pieces. Gluing will begin today and tomorrow, and the floor ought to be done by the end of next weekend.

The chaos is not permanent.

These kinds of adjustments are good for our flexibility.

And we can think ahead to when we move the Boychick's greatly reduced possessions back into his room. There are many things that are ready to find new homes via the helpful services of Good Will. So we will be spending some time this week going through these things and sorting the no longer useful to us from the no longer useful for anybody.

My current mantra: It's temporary. Order will eventually emerge from chaos. It did in May. It will now.

Tov Meod: Towards Order Slowly

Ahhhh!

Step one accomplished.

The office is set up and usable.

The books are back on the shelf
and the boxes have found corners to dwell in temporarily.

My desk is also set up.

There is more clutter on it now, but everything on the surface of the long part is related to IRD.

Tomorrow I can prepare for my classes this weekend in an office that is set up and workable.

And I even managed a quick trip to the grocery store.

Order is on the way.

; Tohu V'Bohu: Sometimes Chaos is Good

At the beginning of B'reshit (known to the Western World as Genesis), it is written:

"V'ha-aretz haita tohu v'bohu.
The earth was in chaos."
If you prefer King James--which is translated to masterful English--we read "the earth was unformed and void." It was the creative power of the Eternal that "moved across the waters" and brought cosmos out of that chaos. And ever since, human beings--especially female ones--have been laboring to do the same.

That seems to be my task this week.

While I was gone, the Engineering Geek took a week's vacation and installed the Brazilian Cherry hardwood flooring in my office.

He was very good. He disturbed my things as little as possible by simply moving them as they were to other places for the duration.
Now it's my job to transform my office to make it a workable space by this weekend.




On Tuesday evening, we put the dedicated canine daybed back together and in place.
We also put the desk back, and hooked up the computer and speaker phone.
That got me ready for the last day of Distance Training for IRD.

The office was looking pretty good.
Spare and clean.
Too bad there were still books, binders, papers that need to be shredded, and all the accountrements of modern living to be brought in. But it still looked doable. Even with the 6 boxes of supplies helpfully dropped off on our doorstep from IRD.


I got some more stuff into my office on Wednesday morning, since I had started some of the IRD reading and lesson plan study the night before. It was still looking good.


But 45 minutes before I had to leave to take N. to Taekwondo Belt Testing, Fed Ex pulled up. The friendly Fed Ex man got out his dolly. Oh.
Nine more boxes that had to be opened and inventoried right away covered the new floor in my office. And it's a good thing I did not delay! I needed to inform the IRD shipping contingent that I needed more copies of The Fellowship of the Ring and some Level 6 packets, as numbers for that course had gone up dramatically. Those folks were already on it, though, and had already arranged for another shipment.


Here is the state of my office this morning.

It's kind of exciting to be getting the actual teaching materials for my summer's work.
But I'd like one more day to get the office in order so that I can then focus on teaching prep.

And I am not a chaos sort of person.
Order is my specialty.
Which is why I am forever working against entropy to bring order out of chaos.

So I must remind myself that sometimes chaos is good. It is the ground of being creative.
And creativity is one of the aspects of divinity endowed to humanity.

I do intend to post about summer plans and exciting changes coming our way in the next few months. After I do the work at hand.
Such as getting the office together so that I can think in here.
And getting a work routine down so that I can focus on the meta aspects of teaching.

And, quoting from B'reshit again, it is:
"Tov meod."
Very good.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig!

On Sunday we celebrated Memorial Day with a cook-out at my sister's house in Bloomington.

At the cookout we honored two graduations, a new job, and a pregnancy.

The Chemistry Geek Princess (pictured with tiara on the right), and my sister's daughter-in-law (middle), both received degrees in the past few weeks. My nephew (left) got a job as a Livingston County (IL) deputy sheriff. They are also expecting a new baby in December.

The funniest part of this was that my sister and her husband, who sponsored the party, completely forgot that Monday was their anniversary!

The night before the party,
my sister worked for several hours
to frame a picture of the CGP in cap and gown.
She had to use Photoshop and pictures from the internet to get the best picture for the special frame she had gotten as a gift to the CGP.

I think she did a pretty good job!

Yesterday, my sister dropped me at ISU's Bone Student center, where I caught the Peoria Charter Shuttle to O'Hare International.

I got there at 2PM for a 5:45 PM flight. Security was quick though--and the TSA employees in Chicago were amazingly polite and even kind! So I had plenty of time to eat and walk around the airport before catching my plane.

Bruce picked me up at the Albuquerque Sunport at around 8 PM. It is so good to be home.

Even though my office is still chaos!

Actually, the office is not. It is empty except for the stuff on the walls and the newly laid floor.

What is chaos is everything that is supposed to be in my office. But Bruce has promised that we can move the furniture back in tonight so that I will be back in business for tomorrow's last day of IRD Distance Training.

It's so cool! I went away leaving a messy office, and I returned to a newly laid floor!

Nice! Or it will be when we get the tape up and the stuff moved back in.

And it is so nice to be home. I slept well for the first time in ten days.
Those Select Comfort Sleep Number beds are addictive.
As is the husband that belongs in it with me.

Heat and the Geek

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

Living with an engineer is an interesting experience.

We heat part of our home with a pellet stove.

It provides efficient (very important to geeks), radiant warmth appreciated by all members of the family.

For the past few weeks, the pellet stove has been cranky, and did not ignite readily when the thermostat--of course it is hooked up to a thermostat--called for it. We had to fiddle with it. On Sunday, it refused to ignite at all, no matter how much I fiddled with it.

My husband, the engineer to the rescue.

First, we tried trouble-shooting using the list of common problems in the owner's manual.

Apparently, our problem was not described precisely in the owner's manual. That yielded a geek-complaint.
Engineers do not want simplistic explanations.
They want schematics that show them exactly how something works.
So today, the Geek took over the breakfast nook.
His office is--well--chaos is too mild of a word.

After several phone calls to the dealer and the manufacturer, as well as some more grousing about inefficient instructions...




...it was time for the specialized tool set to be brought out.

Another phone call yielded grousing about the costs of parts.

The ignitor element was removed and carbon build up was brushed off with a wire brush.





A ceramic screw was thoroughly cleaned to insure proper contact between the wires and the ignitor.


Careful updates were made to the instruction booklet so that "any idiot" could repeat this repair.

A phone call to the manufacturer was made in order to give helpful instructions for future editing of the owner's manual.



Wild waa-hoo's from the dining room served to gather the family so that the Gee...er, Engineer could demonstrate exactly how the pellet stove worked and how he had saved us money and a trip to town by two simple repairs.

As the stove was lit once more, the family got a demonstration on how the thorough cleaning and proper repair had made the pellet stove even more efficient than before. We had been operating at less than optimal efficiency! This information drew a collective gasp from the geeks of the family.









Armed with his newfound knowledge from the repair of the stove, Our Hero went whistling off to see if he could get the gas fireplace to operate more efficiently, too.





Efficiency. It's a beautiful thing.

Floor Update: Getting My Living Room Back

Stop the Presses!

This is a special report. Last night, Bruce and N. got the living room floor done.
Since Rosh Hashanah, we have had living room furniture in the dining room and in our bedroom and sitting room.

Tonight, with the aid of Bruce's long-suffering friend from work, the massive entertainment center will be put back--right where Bruce is sitting in this picture. He is working on the plate to cover the area where speaker wires will be coming from the wall.






I am really, really happy that we will have the living room back for Thanksgiving and Hannukah--which starts in two weeks.

I think the guys did a wonderful job, but it has all taken quite a bit longer than we expected. Much of that was due to the fall holidays.

We still have two offices and N.'s bedroom to do. However, we have decided to take a break until after Hannukah and the UNM semester's end before we start moving furniture for the next room. We really need a few weeks with an intact house and some free weekends.

Putting in our own floor is true sweat equity!

Chaos Moves!

Chaos is moving at our house. Not far. Just from the dining room to the kitchen





Tonight, Bruce's friend Tom came over because there are two things N. and I cannot help move.

The first is the china cabinet.
It's back in it's place, and they leveled it perfectly! See the yello level inside the main area?










The other thing that is too heavy for me and N. is the entertainment center. It is now in two pieces in a rather incovenient place.
But it was even hard for two guys to move. So it didn't go far. And they didn't put the top on the bottom. This saves them work in a month or so, when the floor is in and they move it back.








Tonight, Bruce also took a frame that was on the wall. The previous owner had left it and we finally took it off. It was behind the entertainment center before.

Sometimes we're a little slow!
I got the wall under the windows painted. One more part to go--the wall where the entertainment center was!





Yesterday, Bruce, N. and I moved the rest of the living room furniture. I painted the wall behind the couch then, too,

N. and Bruce a posing. They had to wait for me to actually move the couch! :)







Tonight, while we ate in haste, the coolest thing happened.
One of the does from last spring came back.
And she brought her fawn and her yearling male.


Here's the young man, himself.
He had just munched on the sunflowers by the scrub oak.

Amazing! They were only about twenty feet away from the kitchen window!









Here are the two together.
Handsome couple, aren't they?

Evidently, they really like our weeds and sunflowers out back.

A storm had just passed, and the foilage was wet and green and juicy.

N. says that the deer often come out between storms in the evening like this.

This time he was right. A new storm is brewing as I write.

Cold air is blowing in and the thunder is rumbling.

Chaos is moving in our house. And that's progress.

But we still have time to enjoy this little bit of G-d's country and the wildlife!

Paradise surrounds our chaos.

When One Project Leads to Another

Yesterday was Bruce's 9/80 Friday off. In the morning the house was filled with the sound of the hammer as Bruce put the baseboards back in the dining room.

Here are Zoey and Lily helping me model the new floor in the dining room.

They kept getting into the pictures--I'd have a half a tail in one, and a wiggling back half in another! I finally decided that they really wanted to be in the picture, so I put them in the sit-stay and made like I was taking their picture instead of pictures of the floor.

The wood looks lighter in the picture than it does on the floor itself. Eventually, the actual color will darken further as the wood is exposed to light for a period of time.



When we put the wood in the hall and dining room, I touched up the pain where the baseboards had been because the floor is slightly lower now than the carpet was.

But I had no paint for the living room lower walls. The previous owners did not leave any for that antique green. That meant that we had to buy some paint that would match.

And I began thinking about that. I really did not like the actual color. It had too much yellow in it, and clashed with my hunter green leather living room furniture. And since we would have to buy paint anyway...well.

The other day I stopped at Lowe's and got some samples. The original idea was to paint it the same color as the kitchen lower walls. So I got that sample, and got some similar colors as well. Well the "Green Peppercorn" of the kitchen did go alright with the new floors. But the "Irish Paddock"--a lighter green with a little less blue really popped out when held against the floor. So Thursday, we came home with a gallon of it. And I started with the walls that needed baseboards put back on yesterday...

You can really see the difference here...The "Irish Paddock" is lighter and brighter.


Here, I have finished the wall between the entry and the back hallway.
The blue line at the top is actually painter's tape, put edge on at the bottom of the white wainscott border between the lower and upper wall.

I really like this color. It is lighter and brighter than the previous color, and I used a satin finish--it shines a little and is much easier to clean!

But now...well. I am thinking that the upper wall done in a rich neutral color doesn't work so well with it. I am thinking that maybe something a little lighter and creamier might work better there...this is how one project can lead to another one. I may paint the upper walls next. And that would mean painting the halls, too.


While I was painting, Bruce was putting padding on the bottom of the pellet stove platform. Then Bruce, N. and I put the stove back on the platform.

Then we put the dining room table up. It had little rubber pads on the bottom of each leg. But we had to put felt rounds on the chairs.

Bruce is holding the can of pre-cut, glue-on felt rounds that came with the Bella Wood Floor Care package.

Bruce and I took a hiatus for some paperwork chores (more on that later) and then N. and I went to the library and the skateboard park. N. bought a new board and new bearings with some of the money he has earned helping with the flooring. He's still using the old trucks and wheels, though. When the living room is finished he'll have those as well. When we got back, Bruce had the chairs done and the hall floor prepped for putting in the baseboards there. And it was time to call it a day and prepare for Shabbat.




After our baths, we set the dining room up for Shabbat dinner.

Yes! The first Shabbat in our dining room since the end of June. Whooo-hooo!

On Monday, a neighbor will come to help move the china cabinet in. Today we will move some living room furniture into the dining room--the living room is next!

But it was a Shehecheyanu moment.
This is a blessing that is said when you experience something for the first time, or haven't experienced it in a long time. It is also used on Holy Days.

In English it is rendered:

Blessed are You, Adonai our G-d, ruler of all space and time,

for giving us life, for sustaining us, and for enabling us to reach this special time.

We have done the hall. That was hard because of it's length. The dining room went faster. And now all we have left is the living room, and we will be done with the "public spaces" of the house. After that, we will take a break before tackling N.'s bedroom, and the two offices.


This morning we woke up to a lovely fog over Mountain Valley.

I got a picture just before the sun rose.

It was gone before we walked up to the high meadow to see our lot. That's right--we not finished the dining room and ate Shabbat dinner there, enjoying the new floor. We also signed the contract on our first choice lot in the high meadow.

What a good way to spend the last Shabbat of the year.

On Wednesday at sunset, the Jewish year of 5768 begins! May it be as sweet for you as this one has been for us!

Meanwhile, Back in the Dining Room...

The castles in the air about the land and green building have been sharing time and space with the real job of the weekend: Finishing the floor in the dining room.

On Friday, Bruce took a vacation day and laid the floor for the 3rd fourth of the dining room floor. That's the part that is taped in the picture. It was glued down on Saturday evening.
Bruce and N. were late-night warriors--doing the gluing between 8 and 11 PM.
Yesterday, Bruce laid out the pieces for the last fourth of the dining room. He is working very carefully, using his spread sheets (don''t laugh, he's an engineer!) and cutting the correct pieces. In this way, he figures that he is closer to 1% waste, rather than the 5% that Bella Wood suggests planning for. In the picture above, the last fourth is mostly laid out. Bruce is not in the picture because he was cutting the remaining pieces to fit.


The guys were planning to do another late-night gluing last night, but after dinner and clean-up, they were just too tired! It seemed sensible to do it this morning.

They spread the glue for 4-6 rows at a time, then place the boards, and then tape them so that they do not move until the glue dries. Here they are, taping down the first set they glued this morning.

I was cleaning the bathrooms, running laundry and doing the other countless little chores necessary to starting the week tomorrow. But I did stop to take a few pictures.





Here are the guys, wresting the last board into place. It required a bit of force because it needed a notch cut into it to fit around the back doorframe.
The piece was slightly bowed, but the guys were pretty sure that, due to the notch, and their expert taping job, they could get it to lay right. And they did! They were feeling fairly triumphant about that, since they are determined to be the Bella Wood Waste Prevention record holders.






Here is N. sitting in the corner, having gotten the last piece in place. I guess some of the last row required a crowbar to get aligned just right! I heard the guys groaning as they used the crowbar to tighten the rows back against each other. Who knew that getting the pieces to fit tightly was so physical.

And they're done!

Tomorrow the tape can come off. Then we can put the baseboards back on. They will hide the quarter inch "give" space at the edges of the floor. T-molding will be placed where the floor meets the tile at the boundary of the kitchen, and at the hallway to the pantries, laundry room, and garage.

Then the pellet stove can be put back in place, and connected to the stovepipe. And none too soon. We can feel the fall in the air in the mornings and evenings.

After that, the china cabinet and dining room table can be brought back in--and viola!--I will have my dining room back--new and improved! It has been a long process. We started sometime around July 4th and finished around Labor Day. It took us the whole second half of the summer! Of course we had time off for California, but otherwise, the work has gone on every weekend.

But we are not done! Later this week, we will clear the living room. Bruce wants to lay wood down in there starting next weekend.

No rest for the chaos-weary!

Stand by Your Geek: Laying the First Planks

It took until this afternoon for Bruce to lay the first planks and glue them down.


Yesterday morning, he finished filing the doorframes so that the floor would fit underneath them. Carpet has some give in it, but the wood floor will not. And Bruce would rather have the floor fit under the doorframes than around the edges. Since wood expands and contracts with changes in humidity, space has to be left between the wood and the wall for that to happen and Bruce'd rather have that space hidden by the doorframe.


While he was at it, Bruce found imperfections in how the contractors put up the doorframes. They are not noticable with the casual glance but he fixed them anyway. "I'll know they're there and it will bother me." Yep. Geek to the core.




Yesterday afternoon, Bruce pieced out the first two rows that extend the length of the hallway. This involved some cutting at an angle because at the end of the hallway where I was standing to take the picture, the hallway expands outward to make a half-hexagon on the side where Zoey is standing. This accomodates N.'s bedroom door (pictured), the bathroom door and my office door. The corner between my office door and the master bedroom comprises an angle the straight line of the planks hit.


In this picture, we are looking down the hallway from the master bedroom door, through the living room and at the 2nd master suite at the end of the hall. It is quite long.



One reason that beginning to lay out the planks took so long was that the pieces in the boxes of wood are of different sizes, so Bruce counted out the number of each size in order to make sure not to come to a point where all he'd have left are small pieces.


I think it would have worked just as well to lay them out randomly. I suspect that is what most people do. But Bruce said: "I don't want to box myself into a corner." Figuratively, of course. He doesn't like surprises!


This morning Bruce did more cutting and piecing, so that he could lay out about 5 rows of the planks straight across the entire hallway from master suite to second master suite.



The glue is spread out using a large trowel with darts cut out on the edges, so that the glue is spread as stripes. These stripes match notches on the bottom of the planks. This provides a better "grab" between the glue and the plank, so that the boards will not shift.

Blue painter's tape is used to tape the planks together while the glue dries. The floor can have "light use" after a few hours, but it will be 24 hours before furniture can be put on it and normal use can resume.

In this picture you can the flooring that has been set on the glue to the right, and the pieces, together like those of a puzzle that are still to be put on the glue to the left.

I have not been much help in this process.

Bruce is in "quality control" mode, and he does not really want anyone else to touch the work, because he knows what he is doing.

So I have been working on my power-point presentation for the New Mexico State Gifted Conference. Lily has been sleeping on the daybed in my office while lending her moral support. Every now and then, she and Zoey will rouse themselves and check out the work Bruce is doing. Then they return to keep me company.

It is frustrating that I can do so little to help. But Bruce's perfectionism will not allow it. And although I am also frustrated by the intensity of some of his methods, I breathe through it--as much as the glue smells allow!

The perfectionism may take a little longer, the results will have a quality that no contractor can duplicate.

You can see the concentration, here.

Look at the intensity of effort!

He is so focused. So intent on getting it absolutely right!

I gotta love my Geek!

Finally....Chaos: Starting to Lay Flooring

It has been two weeks since we brought our wood flooring home for installation.

The flooring does hace to sit for at least 72 hours, but ours has acclimated for much longer. That's good--I suppose, but it was NOT planned that way. We planned to start laying floor last weekend. But you know how it is--Sh...tuff happens!

We had N. to get home from camp and N. to send off to Illinois. We had the water softener blow a gasket (actually an 'O'-ring seal) and start leaking all over the garage...

So on Friday, we'd said, we'd begin. On Friday, we went about measuring because before you can begin, you have to PLAN. And Bruce is a planner extraordinaire.
And that planning is important so that the boards are centered in the room, and so that any "ripped" (sawed longwise) boards aren't so narrow as to look funny at the edge of a room.
I am really glad Bruce knows about these things, because I...being engineeringly challenged...had no idea how much goes into getting ready for laying a floor.


Then, we had some more supplies to get.
Friday evening, before we began our Shabbat, Bruce spent some time on the phone with Lumber Liquidators. We found out we needed a different trowel than the one we used on the composite flooring we installed at the other house. We also needed solvent to clean off any misplaced Bostik Adhesive.


After Torah study yesterday, we went to get those items. We also needed the MSDS (Materials Safety Data Sheets) print-outs, so that we knew how to safely handle the adhesive and the solvents. Then we stopped to get gloves, knee pads and blue painter's tape.

After Havdalah, I emptied the china cabinet, and we moved the furniture out of the dining room--the first room we plan to do. Except---the china cabinet! It is too heavy for Bruce and me to move alone--we need more muscle. So we are working around that until we can get some help. I saw my kitchen become crowded and my dining room emptied.
Bruce disconnected the stove from the stove-pipe because the platform it rests on must be moved, too.

This morning--well, we did not get an early start. I should hide the newspaper! I kept walking out to the kitchen and saying, "Bruce, should we get started?" And he kept saying, "Just let me finish this section."

Maybe I'll cancel the paper for the duration!

But we finally got moving. More measuring, more calculating. Some heated discussion about where to actually start and which way to orient the boards.
Our hallways are orthogonal (at-right-angles-to) the large rooms.

But finally--action! The baseboards came off. More measuring was done to make really, truly sure we would not glue ourselves into an off-center look.

Then the carpets started coming up. We are now committed to trying to actually, really, truly get this done...before the High Holidays, I hope!

I find that as I age--and believe me DIY ages me FAST--I am less and less willing to tolerate chaos for long periods of time. And I am mindful of how long it took to get the tub in! That "weekend project" actually took close to three months. (Holidays and a Bar Mitzvah intervened).

But I have to keep tellling myself that:
1) I was the one that wanted hardwood floors
2) We are saving thousands of dollars by laying the floors ourselves
3) The value of our house will go up by about double the materials cost plus the estimated installation (the part we are not going to pay!), making our installation real sweat equity
4) My husband is a perfectionist--meaning the work will be done beautifully
AND
5) I will enjoy the fruits of our labor for far longer than I will have to live in Chaos.

So--bring on tohu v'bohu (chaos), because the joy of DIY cannot be far behind.

Summer Projects

We first saw our house on a house hunting trip last year. Our realtor understood that this was the house we were going to buy. As we drove away, discussing the information that we needed to find out before making an offer (restrictive covenants, etc.), Bruce said: "Of course, we'll have to replace the carpet."

My observant engineer--I had not even noticed the color of the carpet, being enamored by two (count 'em) pantries and a second master suite. I certainly did not notice that the sculpted Berber was worn in the hallways and fraying at the seams. Only 4 years old, it was definitely well used.

And the color was realtor neutral--very blah. But last year, we had bigger fish to fry. We needed to paint before we moved in. We had work to do to sell the old house, and we bought furniture. My very first--and probably last--good, matched furniture. So the carpet had to wait.

Not that I let it go. I showed Bruce the regular updates I got from Lumber Liquidators. I dreamed over flooring options on our many trips to Lowes and Home Depot. I got samples of wood flooring to show my mom when she came out for the Bar Mitzvah.

But I expected we'd be waiting another year or so.

When I was cleaning for Pesach, I accidently caught some unraveling carpet in the vacuum, making the hall look more rag-tag than before.

But last week I showed Bruce the latest sales flyers about flooring. And he said, "I suppose we ought to take care of this before the hallway carpet completely unravels." My astute husband! He noticed. "And before the prices go up due to cost of gas." My financial wizard! "Anyway, it will bring up the value of the house." My fine investor--as long as he doesn't want to sell this house!

So last Friday we went to Lumber Liquidators. There we saw some Brazilian Cherry that we really liked. And we shopped at FloorMart. Just to compare. There we also found a great sale on carpet and I brought home some samples. But we also learned that the cost of installation on the hardwood flooring would cost more than the materials cost per square foot. Ouch! I could see my dream of hardwood fading before my eyes.

When we woke up on Saturday morning, my intrepid mate said, "Last night I dreamed that we installed the flooring ourselves." And I said, "Funny, so did I." It was basheart*! Obviously, we are meant to do this. So on Sunday, we got out the house plans and did some calculating. We decided that we will have the master bedroom suite and the guest suite recarpeted. And we will put in the hardwood flooring--Brazilian Cherry--in the rest of the house. We are DIY people anyway. We painted our house ourselves, we put in the faux hardwood flooring in my son's room and the office of the old house, we have done landscaping and we have put in a bathtub.

Today, the carpet man came to measure the two rooms that will get carpet.

It is funny how that worked out. At FloorMart, I picked up a sample of carpet and said to Bruce, "This will not look as dark in our house." It was a sample of Stainmaster Manic series called Desert Pebble. I brought it home with two other samples, both lighter. On Monday, when we scheduled the measure, I took the other two back and came home with three that were darker. But it was Desert Pebble all along! It is a frieze, that has a very light pinkish-tan base with yarns of green and brown mixed in to give it texture.

Tomorrow, we pick up the wood. Putting that in is going to be a job! It is Bella wood, which is not engineered. That means we put it in plank by plank. But in this house we do not have any curved walls to deal with, as we did in the old house. (Picture from Lumber Liquidators page).

This weekend, I must finish my stonescaped steps out on the hill. Because the wood has to sit here for a week before we can begin. I expect we'll be very busy throughout the month of June!

Hurrah for sweat equity! I will have beautiful floors at less than half the cost. The sale price on the wood was incredible. And by installing it ourselves, we'll have lots of "togetherness."

It's gonna be fun!