Adventures in Renovation

See? That should keep you motivated. :)
What is it with the Roper family and crazy fortune cookies...

Posted by katie at March 26, 2007 9:43 PM

PARTY ON!!! So happy to see you post. Drywall rulz. Have fun painting!

Posted by Katie at March 13, 2007 9:20 PM

Sunday ended up much than Saturday. I had a pow wow with Camillo and he agreed to do my drywall while I was gone for the same price as my budget. I was incredibly relieved. He also agreed to install the gas line for the stove and dryer. And sure enough, 8:00 AM Tuesday morning Camillo and his Dad showed up with sheets of drywall and installed the new gas pipes that day. Things were looking up.

But I really drove myself into the ground trying to do everything else. And I finally finished the plumbing for the water supple for the kitchen, laundry room and the hose bib outside. With more help from Camillo! Apparently, he loves soldering water pipes. Probably because it’s such a macho manly thing. :)

But this last week I drove myself into the ground trying to finish a million little things on the house, prepare and pack for my 2-week trip, and getting ready for a brand launch I’ve been working on at work for the past 3 months. I haven’t been that stressed out since… I have no idea. It was like college finals. Lots of stress and caffeine and very little sleep.

But at about 10PM on Friday, the night before I left, I finally gave up. I let it go. I just had to accept that it wasn’t going to happen and focus on getting ready to leave for the trip. It was hard even tho I was so sick of working on it… I was so close. If I had just one more good day, I could have finished. So damn close. I was so sick of it.

And I was making really stupid mistakes. I couldn’t think straight at all. After I waited a couple hours for the glue to set on the plumbing, I decided to test it for leaks. Camillo was there and he said “Oh good. It’s better to have 2 people there for that.” (in case there’s any problems.) I turned on only the cold water and then went upstairs. Camillo noticed a little water near the washer hook-up valves and thought they might be on, but as soon as he touched the valve… BOOM! The pipe explode and water started spraying everywhere. It wasn’t the valves tho, I had actually forgotten to glue a joint. Duh! So I checked all my pipes and found 2 other joints I hadn’t soldered! That’s what happens when I rush stuff… I miss things.

Oh yeah… I also totally ran out of pipe. A few times. The last little bit I put together for the hose bib, I had to use 2 couples to put 3 little leftover pieces of pipe together. That’s all I had left. Barely enough to finish. Oh well, It’ll be covered by drywall so no one will ever see my dumb mistake. Except on this blog. And Flickr. Other than that… I’ll take it to my grave.

So I’m kinda glad I didn’t get it done. I was kind of skimping out on shit and not fixing problems that came up. Now I can make sure I do stuff right. That is, if I can remember what I was doing after I’ve been on the beach for 2 weeks. ;)

I just reread this post a year after I posted it... and I'm surprised at how poorly it's written! Almost every paragraph starts with the word "but" and I keep repeating "I drove myself into the ground." Maybe I couldn't write because I really was that drained. I don't always write this poorly, do I?

Posted by Alex at January 21, 2008 11:10 AM

My dad came up yesterday to help me knock off my slowly shrinking list of little things to finish before the drywall can go up. We managed to get all the things done that I had already figured out he could help with. Lot of little jobs: removing the door jamb to the basement, replacing the drain for the tub, putting in wood blocking to hang the kitchen cabinets and microwave on, fixing the loose floor boards upstairs and down, and running some flexible conduit to run ethernet cable through for upstairs. He’s been a tremendous help.

Now I’ve been trying to get Greg over so he can take a look at everything that needs to get done for weeks now. I wanted him to take a look at exactly what he’s got to do and talk about exactly what my budget and schedule is so I could make sure he was okay with everything. He even said he could hook up my gas line for my stove and dryer for me which was very exciting because that was a loose end that I keep forgetting about.

So I finally got him to come over to my house yesterday so he could see my progress. We talked a little about all the work I had gotten done since he last saw it. I showed him the gas line and figured out what I need to pick up from Home Depot for him. I ran over what my budget was and what kind of materials I had left from the last drywall job. And he seemed cool with everything until he was walking out the door and I asked him if he thought he could actually get everything done in two weeks. He asked me “When are you leaving? Well I’m going to be working on my house for another three weeks. So I won’t start until after that.”

Poof. All my dreams were gone.

It’s an incredibly huge disappointment. I’m crushed. I know Vicki won’t really care as much, but I was really looking forward to painting “I love you Vicki” or maybe “Welcome to your kitchen” on a nice big finished wall for the day she got back.

Oh man! I'm so sorry, Alex. I know how disappointed you must be. You could still make her a welcome home sign....

I'm sure she'll be happy just being back home with you, Mooshu and Ali. :)

Posted by katie at January 9, 2007 7:33 PM

Awwww, that's so sweet! Everythings working out anyway :)

Posted by Vicki at January 12, 2007 3:12 AM