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This week has been... challenging... for me.
See, the landlady and her husband have a house inspection coming up around here. This means that all the stuff they've been putting off and putting off is getting attention in very short order.
Monday, they were in and out all day, both in this apartment and the one below it. Some of it was drainage-related, some painting related, some glass-related. By Monday night, I noticed I was getting sick.
Tuesday, they had someone in to paint the kitchen ceiling. This is another tenant of theirs who happens to be behind on his rent. The guy puts in floors for a living, but doesn't seem to be having much luck landing jobs. He was supposed to be here at noon, and arrived shortly after 12:30. I was sick and not feeling very sociable, but he's friendly so I felt obligated to chat while he worked... But the more he chats, the slower he works. I lost count of how many times he said he hated painting. They stiffed him on supplies, too, so he had less than a half gallon of paint to do the job. My throat was off, and I was a steady river of germs, so I decided to spare my fellow choristers from my ailment. I was sad to miss it, but a facebook message from
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flnerd and friends made me smile.Tuesday night,
mechanchaos, Aidan, and I work to get everything not nailed down out of the kitchen for floor work. Wednesday, he's set to come back to work on the kitchen floor at 10am. I got a call around 10:30 asking whether the landlady or her husband were there. Apparently, his supplies were in the downstairs apartment, and he's worried about access. I let him know that I have a key. He said he'll be there in a half an hour, then after a brief explanation amended that to 45 minutes. He actually arrived about 11:30. Granted, he's less chatty and more down-to-business. This is what he does professionally, and it shows in his confidence. However, Aidan gets home early on Wednesdays. With plywood down, "We're at the halfway point now," he packed up for the day less than an hour after Aidan arrived.
Meanwhile, I feel like hell. My nose is running like a faucet, my headache makes me feel as if I've taken two vicodin (sans nausea, thankfully), my throat is raspy. All I want to do is nap, which is something I really don't feel comfortable doing with someone I barely know (aside from the chatting) working in the place I call home.
Thursday dawned windy and rainy. He arrived 11-ish, took a look at the seams in the plywood that he'd sealed with some grey putty-like stuff, makes an exclamation of dismay that it didn't fill in well enough, and redoes it. The stuff takes an hour and a half to cure enough to put glue over the top of it for linoleum. So he left saying a nebulous, "I'll be back later." More than an hour and a half later, the buzzer rang. I thought it would be him again. Nope, the landlord was there. He asked how things were going. I discussed the quirks of the "fixed" faucet, and he came up to take a look. He didn't seem too happy to hear that the floor wasn't put in in a single day. He was glad to know that the fellow had been back today, but seemed cranky that I didn't have a set time I could tell him re: when the floor guy would be back. He left and it wasn't that much longer before the guy arrived to work on the floor. He was much quieter this time... makes me wonder if the landlord had bitched at him or something. Anyhow, I was glad for the reprieve from conversation since my headache was raging.
Aidan got home around 4 and things were still in progress. I tried to help Aidan with his homework, but I was having a case of noun impairment. Things are kinda cramped in the non-kitchen rooms of the apartment since everything that was in the kitchen (including fridge and stove) had to be out of the kitchen for this. So I was getting twinges of claustrophobia with Aidan and I squished into a small corner of the living room to work on things. At one point I gave up, apologized to Aidan... then the phone rang. My Mom. She wanted to talk about the linoleum. I wanted to vent, but the guy was not 10 feet away working on it. So I didn't say much of anything, handed the phone to Aidan, and she told him to take a break from the homework and get back to it. (Which he did... when he picked it up again, he decided to look up one of the terms in the dictionary, which led to him understanding the problems much better. Yay!)
6:30 rolled around and he was still working on the floor.
mechanchaos was working late. I was getting even more loopy off the fumes from the linoleum and the glue used to adhere it to the floor than I was with just my headache. Finally around 7 or so, he was packing up to go. There were (and are) some bubbles in the floor. He says that those should be drawn down as the glue cures, that they're there because the floor is cold and he doesn't have the heat gun he'd normally have used. (His brother was borrowing it.) He put the stove and fridge back, the trim back on the walls and the metal edge where the kitchen floor meets the rug. He did not put trim around the cabinets yet, because he "didn't have time to stop at Lowes." Today, those bubbles are still in the floor. I'm not sure how long that glue is supposed to cure. So I am reluctant to set much up in there, in case he needs them moved again to fix that. I am impatient to have the apartment back to myself, but they still need to do the bedroom ceiling. I am dreading moving all that stuff. :P I probably ought to grab the naps that I didn't get the rest of the week. But once I woke up to make sure Aidan got on the bus ok, I was awake. I have no idea when the landlady or her husband will be back, possibly dropping in at random.
I am a ball of stress. I am a ball of stress who is also sick. *hack* *cough* Bleurgh.
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I'd call either the guy or the landlord at this point and tell them your concerns re: bubbles in the floor. It just sounds bogus that the onus is on you guys to move the appliances around yourselves, and to determine when the floor is done. Ugh.
"Didn't have time," whatever.
*more hugs*
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Oh, and we moved the chairs out of the living room so there was space in there for the fridge/stove. He would have done that, but given how slow he was working, I think it was more efficient that we did.
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I actually have to redo my kitchen floor, kitchen cabinets, part of my living room ceiling (leaking, probably have to tear up the second floor porch that is over it), my garage and my driveway. I tell ya, the joys of home ownership never end. At least on my side of things I can choose when/how it is done. That is a big bonus.
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So the jealousy goes both ways. I would love to own my own space so that I could fix it up the way I want to, even if that means I need to learn a bunch of construction skills in the process. To me it would be worth it to have space that is truly my own.
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Stupid landlord people.
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