The Saga of the New Floor and the Period of Misery

I would say on the whole, that life is never totally great. It can go good sometimes, it can go bad sometimes, but most of the time it's just somewhere in between...where your fortune is neither good nor bad, or it's only leaning teasingly toward one or the other. That and a couple other sentences would get me a writing job on the X-Files or a perfume commercial. This post is about a period that's leaning towards the not-so-good...

Ok, let's not mince any more words. The past two weeks were not good at all. I mean, some good things still happened, like I tested my own carpentry skills and came out ahead, and Madeleine finally learned to crawl in forward gear, but on the whole the past two weeks just sucked. And I mean HELLA sucked.

First, let me just backdrop this - Becky & I have been wanting new flooring in this house for quite some time - the "new" carpet that was installed before we moved in 2 years ago is really only carpet in the figurative sense, in that it's made of carpet-like material, it's flat and you can walk on it. However, it's already started unraveling in several places and where it meets other flooring materials the join already has bare nails sticking through it. The kitchen was done up with this white tile, which I suppose trumps the original pukey-green lineoleum I found still under the stove, but....was installed by the previous owner (heretofore known as "F-in Carl" or sometimes even just plain "Carl"). And it's become quite obvious over time that Carl never met a level or a ruler he liked, because if he used one putting together any part of the house I know he worked on, I can't tell. The tile, for instance, looks like it was laid at random in some places. The newer concrete-based siding outside looks great from the street, but buyer be damned if you were to study it up close, it's frighteningly crooked. I don't want to talk about the fence or the utility sheds in the back.

So we took the plunge and decided to replace the carpet and the tile everywhere but the bedrooms and the bathrooms. We had the estimate and measuring done by the folks at Home Depot, and they sent us an estimate for about $5200 of labor and materials, which we got down to $5000 on a discount for using the Home Depot credit card. Several days later, our materials got delivered and we were ready to schedule the install.

Enter the flooring company, which only does one thing - install laminate and hardwood flooring. After a couple false starts, they showed up to examine the tile floor to see what was underneath it, and found both the green linoleum I mentioned above, and some black mastic (floor glue) underneath that. They immediately pulled off the job, saying we had to have that tested for asbestos, because they didn't have a license to deal with it....so we had it tested, and sure enough, the linoleum was clean but the mastic contained 10-15% asbestos. The flooring company, lacking a license to deal with such materials, was now stuck waiting for us to find another contractor to clean up our kitchen.

So I called up an asbestos remediation company from which I'd asked for a price quote, and set up a time for them to come out and give us an estimate.....now, I could have just yanked the whole project and returned the floor to Home Depot, but with two young children and a house I wanted to sell a couple years later (plus the imminent threat of asbestos-related litigation), I decided to get it removed. The estimate came back at $2100, putting the total price tag then at $6618.75 (got back the money for tile removal since the original contractor wasn't doing it). During the estimate, the kid (and I mean kid - he was 19) said we'd need to not only yank the tile, lineoleum and mastic, but they'd have to take out the kitchen cabinets too since the mastic ran halfway up underneath them. So now we're not only looking at re-doing the floors, but also practically rebuilding the kitchen as well.

Oh yeah - forgot to mention....I previously thought that the tile was sitting on a wood backing, and that the lineoleum and mastic was directly underneath. Wrong!! Apparently, F-in Carl declined to get the material underneath tested (or maybe he just decided to ignore the testing process)....and so it appears he removed just enough of the linoleum and mastic in the center of the floor to be able to glue his tile down - and never bothered to have the rest of it removed professionally. This, in California, is very illegal, and part of me really wants to go after F-in Carl, because by doing this he exposed us to asbestos - and to mold, since it was obvious the rot under the sink was there long before we moved in (it was covered up with a 1/4" thick masonite panel that fit into the bottom of the sink cabinet). If I didn't think the case would be impossible to fight (we'd have to prove he KNEW about the threats and ignored them) or that F-in Carl probably doesn't have any F-in money to help pay for the repairs, I probably would sue him.

Anyway, back to reality - the remediation company comes out, seals off the kitchen, makes a hell of a lot of noise, and begins work. About halfway through, the foreman calls me out to look at the wall behind the sink, which I notice right away is completely black. He tells me it's mold, and that the drywall will have to come off there as well - not to mention that the cabinet under the sink has been almost completely rotted away with the stuff. I can't believe I've been living with this crap, so I authorize them to rip the wall off and make sure the stuff is gone. Fortunately, it only went up half the wall and they were able to remove it for no additional cost...about the only thing on this project that didn't wind up doing that :)

The asbestos/mold guys finished in about 5 hours, and then I began the struggle to get a tester in there the next day to try and free up my kitchen before the Memorial Day weekend. I did manage to get a tester in there on that Friday, but he said the air sample results wouldn't be back until Tuesday because of the holiday. That whole weekend, Becky & the kids went to Berkeley so they wouldn't be exposed at all, and I held off doing any work in there until Monday when the lab called to say we were clear a day early (who knows what they were waiting for, the test got done Friday afternoon).

In the meantime, I went back to Home Depot and got a bunch of drywall stuff to redo the kitchen wall, since due to a lack of funds I was going to have to rebuild my kitchen by myself. This is where the fun really started - I have become a fairly gifted sculptor with putty, having done a bunch of decorative wood railings in most of the rooms in our house, but I never worked with drywall before. It took some negotiating, but I got most of the wall done except for the area around the pipes where the sink went.

I had one or two more pieces to fit into place around the pipes, and was driving a screw into one of the studs when I saw some water dripping down at the bottom of the wall....I thought "that's not good" and undid the screw I was working....and PSSSSH hot water sprays out of my wall like a jet. I go sprinting for the hot water heater around the corner and turn it off, then after several minutes spent cursing my own stupidity, I called a plumber to come fix the length of copper pipe in my wall I just put a screw into. Even though it's a holiday, the plumber happens to live in the neighborhood and comes out anyway, fixes the pipe for $75, and offers to help me reinstall the sink and dishwasher and stuff when I'm ready for it. I decide right there that that's probably a good idea and make a mental note to call him when I'm ready - especially since he helped me out by putting nail covers over the studs where there were pipes or wires running through them. Running total now, including materials purchased from Home Depot : $6982.67.

So later that day I got all the drywall in, patched, and sanded. By this time, Becky & the kids were back home and I got her to put a coat of paint on the wall so that we didn't have this dingy gray and white crap behind our cabinets. The next day I spent rebuilding the sink cabinet with new particle board, and managed to do a pretty good job of making something that fit in exactly and was level with the rest of the cabs on that side. That took pretty much all day, and was a real bitch to fit in with having to do my real job as well.

That evening, I was ready to install the cabs on the sink side. I lined everything up, got the first screw ready, started to drive it in...and BZZZT. I put the screw right through the electrical cable leading to the outlet right above the screw. Couldn't believe it. I'm telling you, if you've got something in your wall and you need a drywall screw put through it, give me a call - cause apparently I can't freakin miss. At any rate, Becky remembered there was a kindly elderly electrician who lived two doors down and sweet-talked him into fixing the outlet...which he did for the very neighborly cost of $50. New total : $7032.67.

That night I finished attaching the cabs without incident and glued the hell out of the counter top...managing to make it level in both directions, which it previously wasn't. The next day the plumber came back and installed the sink, dishwasher and the new water filtration system I got from Home Depot. Nice guy, does good work, but brings his damn wife with him and charges me $65 extra for an hour of HER time. I trust the guy's work, but I'm not having him back unless he comes alone. Oh well, at least we have a working sink now. New Total : $7240.00

Next up, the stove has to get hooked up and the cabs reattached. I hooked a new gas hose up to the back of the stove and got ready to do the cabs....but both Becky & I smelled gas. So I called PG&E and talked them into coming out that day to take a look at it. They did, and it was leaking, so they fixed it for free (yay!! free!!), and I was free to reattach the two cabs on that side and put the stove in place - all of which went down without drilling through the gas line (which given my previous record I was sweating bullets over).

So where we are now - the doors and drawers still need to be put back on, Becky is in the process of painting everything. Once it's done, it's going to look great, and the floor is scheduled to go in on June 14th, which is exactly one week from today. Hopefully nothing else happens because, being a homeowner now, I actually do have an axe in the back shed to take with me while running mad down the street.

Now as if that all wasn't enough, let me tell you what else is going on right now...lives, ending. Around the same time we got told there was asbestos in the floor, Becky found out her mom is doing a whole lot worse health-wise than anyone expected....she now has at least 4 majorly bad diagnoses - some sort of lung fibrosis, recurrent diverticulitis (blockage of the lower intestine), acute scoliosis, and degenerative arthritis of the discs in her lower back. Basically, she's stopped eating (already a very small person at 4'11", she's down to 98 pounds), she can only manage to get out of bed for an hour a day, and she's in constant pain....not to mention she has started to show signs of senile dementia. The doctor has said privately that she's living on "borrowed time", and between all the stress of the stuff going on at our house, and her mother wasting away...not to mention having to deal with a rampant 3-year-old and a teething baby....it's a ball of stress here...

...so it should come as no shock that, given the old adage that bad things tend to happen in threes, that my dog Bootsy should be diagnosed with some sort of unknown tumor. I can't even afford the exploratory surgery, and she is 11 years old, so she will have to be put down later this week - she has trouble standing, she can no longer play, she basically just sleeps and eats and poops. It's funny, I've felt something like this coming with her for the past couple years...but then again, this dog has always skirted death - she's eaten mounds of chocolate, lighter fluid, hair clipper oil....even an entire package of rat poison, and LIVED. But then again, maybe all of that stuff mixed together is what did it to her. I imagine if this were 5 years ago and my dogs were still my children that I'd be more upset about this, but I guess it's not terribly suprising with two kids of my own that I just....don't feel much about it. Nothing but a twang of guilt that I can't do much for her. I just don't have any more room left for the hurt right now, I only hope that I've given her a good life and she can go happy and not in that much pain.

Somewhere in all of that, the cable box died and DirecTV had to replace it with another one, but I think we hardly noticed....