So the vinyl installers didn’t come on Tuesday. Their boss moved to Mexico and didn’t leave a list of jobs the rest of them needed to finish out. I called Lowe’s, as they were the contractors, and got them to talk the installers into coming the next day. Lowe’s offered me a $25 gift card for my trouble.
The next day the installers were supposed to be here at 8am. They show up at 9:45am. I had a meeting to be at at 9:15, of course. Thursday morning they show up at 9:05am. I ask them about transitional material for where the vinyl meets tile, as they hadn’t put any down in the “finished” rooms. They said that Lowe’s hadn’t allocated them any, so they weren’t putting any down. I call Lowe’s for confirmation and they tell me that the person that wrote up the estimate hadn’t included the transitional material and that Lowe’s hadn’t caught it either, so they’re going to comp me the materials. Fine, great. But I have to go get it because “there were colors to choose from.” Yeah. I get there and they have it out and ready to go. No colors to choose from. Grr.
Later that morning the vinyl guys call me and say that the stuff I got from Lowe’s was not enough; they need more to complete the job. I explain to them that I can’t go out; I’ve got a sleeping baby and anyways, wasn’t that them that I saw smoking outside of my house just a minute ago? “Yeah, we’re waiting for the cement to dry.” *sigh* I make them go get more. Later on they call again and tell me that I hadn’t gotten the right product in the first place and that it wasn’t working. Me: “You told Lowe’s what to give me and that’s what I brought you and you looked at it and said it was right.” Them: “Oh, well we didn’t know the tile was higher than the vinyl then. You need to go back to Lowe’s and choose another color of the right product.”
So I pick the boys up from school and head to Lowe’s, where my contact there has just been told that she has to go home because she’s not allowed any overtime this week. So someone new is assigned to me. It takes us an hour to find as many of the right kind of product in the right color that we need. During this hour I have to entertain three children with the contents of my purse. (Contents of my purse: one small hair brush, one bottle of eye drops, one tube of lipstick, three pieces of paper written on both sides, one blue ballpoint pen, one necklace, one napkin, two ponytail holders, and a pack of mint gum–I had just cleaned it out) We make hand puppets (pen & lipstick), pretend we’re rotating Christmas trees (necklace), make a slingshot and see who could fling things the farthest (ponytail holders, eye drop bottle, gum), do the tango, do some swing dancing, brush each others hair (brush), wipe Gregory’s nose (napkin), and read the newsletter in funny voices (paper). Finally we get something and go home.
This morning the installers show up at 9:15am. They finish installing the transitional stuff around 11am. I hook up the computer and read my 12 billion messages, only three of which are personal. I am happy to see the internet again. I look for my list of things I meant to look up all week and start looking things up. It is happy. Whee!
I’ve moved in three pieces of furniture already. Just three. The lightweight things are all hiding behind the heavy things at the moment and Nick pushed things close enough to the garage door that they will fall on me if I attempt to open it. I do not need an injury; I’m still not over pneumonia yet.
But my house, it is almost done! (We just need to put down the baseboards, which will hopefully happen a week from Sunday; we’re full up, schedule-wise, until then).
