Adventures in Renovation

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. ;)