The homeowner’s life, so far…

Now seems as good a time as any to jot down a few particulars for posterity. Not sure I could drag ass out of this suddenly-so-comfortable chair right now anyway…

Friday, the loan closing went very smoothly. Suddenly we were back in the car trying to decide if we wanted to stop by “home” on the way “home”. I called and apparently left a very excited message telling mom’s answering machine all about how I was holding the keys to my new house, which she says she’s never going to erase. Who knows what I said, I do tend to talk to and address the answering machine like a weirdo if mom doesn’t pick up. Nice talking to you again, Mr. Answering Machine, please tell mom… yatta yatta…

Our giddiness was soon squelched, however, by the lackluster service at Lowes, one of our first stops, where we had to take a check from the attorneys for the countertop install. Oh, it took about five minutes tops to get the order in and ready to pay for, then the stupidest cashier in the world, who is supposed to take the check from the attorney for the bulk of the cost, then let us pay the difference, instead decides to strike the attorney’s check for the full amount which clears out the order and marks it fully paid. Now, me, I’m pretty sure I can live with not having to pay for the rest of the amount, but apparently she realizes she is FUBAR and goes whining for help, running off with my driver’s license. All manner of people come to look at the register, at the receipt, at my license, at the now cancelled check, attempting to do a return on the items so they can try to bill me again, and then realizing they’ve already cancelled the check through the system. I spend about a half hour wondering how to take the check back to the attorney and get them to cut me a new one, then they realize can’t “return” labor costs or “special-order materials”, which is my entire order. After about an hour of confusion, where the looks of sympathy toward us having to wait seem to have turned into looks of annoyance as if whatever we were buying caused this, a store manager finally answers a page, comes up and says all I need to do is pay them the difference, and they will attach the money to the check and send it to their accounting with an explanation. Except, I now have to pay with cash or check, because they can’t run a credit or debit card through the system with no bill outstanding. SO, the handy-dandy new Lowe’s account we got for just such immediate expenses is worthless as I write a check emptying my bank account for the countertops, because it is the only thing they can do.

So, there went well over an hour, we are starving to death, but already have plans to go to a “nice dinner” with Brad, dressed like hobos because we anticipated getting some work started, and still don’t have our paint or the rest of supplies for Saturday morning. Rather than buy the rest of the stuff at Lowes (had to do the countertop stuff by itself at customer service due to the 3rd party check paying for part, so we hadn’t done other shopping), we leave there disgusted, then realize that if we don’t get to Home Depot within the hour, it will be closed and we’ll have no stuff when his mom and step-dad show up at the ass-crack of dawn Saturday to help us work. Thus, we swing by the Home Depot nearest the apartment and order our 9 gallons of paint to be mixed while we shop for other supplies. About 40 minutes, and only one dropped gallon of paint by the employee, later, we are finally “home” changing to go eat dinner. Five Season’s Brewery was either fabulous or we were starving to death. Bradley got the tab, which was awesome, though I think he was actually dissapointed we didn’t drink more booze, and I managed to not let my pounding headache get any worse despite the noise and the 50 hot-chicks-in-little-dresses that were there for a wedding reception, who kept having to walk by our table back and forth to the rest rooms. Men are annoying to be around sometimes, especially when you’re tired, frustrated, and feeling a hell of a lot more like shit in a “cute” dress you threw on in two minutes than you ought to on your first day as a homeowner.

It was 11pm when we finished eating, and a hell of a long day, but we were somewhat revived and like crazy people, we loaded an overnight bag and the air mattress, changed clothes again and headed over to try to do SOMETHING at the house to get ready for Saturday. We crashed at about 2am, with the alarm set for 7 something, having taped some rooms and put together a good list of what we needed to accomplish Saturday, our one day with the Step-Dad and his borrowed tools, truck and expertise.

Saturday and Sunday are a blur, honestly. We did so much shit, my head hurts when I start thinking about it. Painting, painting, painting, painting, painting that involved 12-foot step ladders, hanging two chandeliers, sawing out a section of kitchen cabinets, tearing out old backsplash laminate, capping off old plumbing from a sink and moving the washer dryer hookups, running new electric circuits for the rack and entertainment system, and another ceiling light in the area where the rack will be, scrubbing the block wall of the basement and painting it with drylock, and JamesT’s biggest job, drilling holes to run conduit to the attic so we could pull network and coax lines from the rack to the attic, then drilling holes to drop bundles down into each upstairs room, then cutting holes in the room walls for outlets and fishing wires down from the attic to the holes in the wall.

Yikes.

The place is already transformed, though the list of “still to do” items is almost as long as the finished list. Today, I ran a load of stuff over at lunch, painted the conduit and finished off the office. Of course, then I got home to find out if I had waited another 20 minutes I would have been home to get my UPS delivery. Instead, I checked tracking at about 3:30 to find out, yes, they had left boxes at the house, which more than likely meant they were leaning on the garage door (again, did I mention this already happened on our closing day?) and it was threatening to rain. So, at 4pm, I hop in the car with another make-shift load of stuff, 50 minutes in traffic later, I pull up in the drizzling rain and find the boxes not too soaked yet, and get them inside.

We were NOT supposed to go over to the house tonight. We had stuff planned to finish at the apartment and needed the rest. BUT, having spent so long getting over there, I have trouble getting right back in the car to leave without doing something. So, I kick off my shoes and walk out on the front porch, where I have a bit better cell signal, to sit and call JamesT to see where he is, and tell him I might just try to put some furniture together or paint something before I head back, since I’m there. He’s okay with that. He just got home, he is exhausted, he is on early morning CMR duty this week, so has to be at work at 8am, which sucks. We hang up. A minute later I realize I have locked myself outside.

Now, James’ mother already discovered this little tricky-front door problem on Saturday, when she snuck off to smoke. You can turn the knob from the inside even if it is actually locked and won’t turn from the outside. Thus, you can walk right up to the door, turn the inside knob without a clue, walk your ass outside for a jiff, and be locked out before you know it. The garage door is closed. Every door is locked. I have no choice but to call James back and beg him to come let me in. At 5:30. Knowing the hell of traffic I just sat through to get here. My head explodes into a nice little migraine, but I call, convince him I’m not joking, then have an hour to sit around on the porch, barefoot, with nothing but a phone with shitty cell signal to entertain myself.

Chatted up Jimmy a bit, before the phone did it’s “I hate AIM, reboot trick”. Mostly, it was best served as something hard to bang against my head for a while. Thankfully, it didn’t rain too hard. Rescued, I offer to drive us to some sit-down dinner nearby because we are both starving. We eat, regroup, and I beat myself up mentally for a while looking at the dark circles under James’ eyes. The plan is a stop at the Home Depot we discovered looking for food, then a maybe go build one of the bookcases, then head “home”. Home Depot, though, was the shit. We have found the good one. They had my backsplash tile that every other Lowe’s and Home Depot around had told me had to be ordered, sitting right there in stock. The right pattern in the right color. I flipped out! So we ended up shopping a while, buying the rest of our big supplies (backsplash) a bit unexpectedly, and this time cleaning out JamesT’s bank account in the process. BUT hopefully we are now done with the “supplies” for things that we need pre-move in.

We dropped our purchases off, JamesT programmed the garage door into my home-link and a nifty key-fob for him, and then we headed home for the night having accomplished next to nothing, and being exhausted none-the-less. Some night this week needs to be an IKEA run, unless we can do that Saturday morning early enough to beat Marc and Jennie here. Couple more rooms still need paint. The backsplash has to be installed. Then there are still ends to be put on all that cable, and outlet boxes and covers to go in. Oh, and figuring out how to get the cable in from the outside to our handy-dandy hub. That part all needs to be done before Friday when Comcast comes out.

I sigh when I see that to-do list, then I’m sitting here surrounded by shit that still needs to be packed. Still, I can hardly believe how much we got done in just a weekend.