After an incident where one of our subs marred the floor pretty badly (We won't name any names, but it was the electrician), we decided to put protective plastic on the floors to cut down on the damage to the floors since we still had the movers coming and various other contractors. This was several weeks ago.

This plastic you can buy at Lowe's in the flooring department. It comes in 100' lengths and has a sticky back on it to adhere to the floor. When you lay it down, enormous amounts of air gets trapped underneath and form "bubbles". The longer you walk on the plastic the more it gets pressed down and in turn the more it compresses the air in the "bubbles". Cats hate walking on plastic, so Moscow was generally not fond of what we had done and as it progressed we became increasingly less fond of it too. You see, these compressed air bubbles became something like little sonic land-mines, with an explosive sound not unlike bubble-wrap (the BIG bubble-wrap). Not even the stealthiest of ninjas could have traversed our floors without a snap-crackle-pop. The pinnacle of the absurdity of the situation occurred one night while laying in bed, we heard a loud snap! We both about died laughing while we were imagining the look of disgust on Moscow's face as he walked across the floor snapping one of the loudest bubbles yet.

Well, kitten is happy now, because this weekend we pulled up the plastic. When the plastic came up in the bedroom, he had a solid two hours of frisky-time. Unfortunately, this was when we were going to bed, so I had to remove his bell collar so we could get some sleep.

Since the plastic has come up, we have purchased cute little baby blue booties for any future contractors to cover their boots with. I can see it now... "You want me to wear wut?

Tags: Floors, Contractors, Kitten, Plastic

Well, the interior build-out for the house is now complete, in both the upstairs and downstairs, and after a bit more demo it will be near to new stick frame construction. Kristin and I are very happy with how it has turned out thus far.
    Many thanks to Kendall Stephenson and his crew at K-S Construction for their patience, and tolerance in our renovation, even though their suggestion of how the house should be remodeled was a can of gasoline and a match. Also thanks to John on the K-S crew, who I made tear out and rebuild not one, but four different walls after he’d just finished building them. His patience must have been running thin. But as he puts it, “Hey, it all pays the same.”

Tags: Contractors

I always thought, that hiring a contractor was like hiring a builder, but now that I’ve had my own experience acting as general contractor... I realize it is more akin to a juggling clown.  
    We have “broken ground” on our renovation, and coordinating the whole thing is probably about as easy as coordinating a 2nd grade Christmas pageant.
    First I needed my electrician to put up a temporary pole so that I could get the walls demo’d so that my builder could start building, but before that I needed the lumber to be delivered before the builder arrived, and before that I needed to have the Roll-Off dumpster emptied before my lumber was delivered so I wouldn’t have to move the lumber out of the way to do so. Sounds like a great plan, right? Not a single part of that plan worked.
    Ok, I haven’t heard or seen hide nor hair of my electrician,  so the walls can’t be demo’d properly. The builder showed up on Monday morning, but the lumber didn’t show up ‘til late afternoon. The Roll-Off truck didn’t show up until after the lumber had been delivered, so my builder who could have been building once the lumber arrived had to instead move the lumber out of the way.  And me? I’m the goofy clown in the middle trying to juggle all this.

Tags: Contractors