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| Goodbye Carpet! |
The woman’s grey truck bounced down our rutted dirt road, overloaded
with loosely rolled carpet and red padding. Chris and I stood watching in
disbelief as the first raindrops fell. Ever since we had been back on the Cape
we had struggled with the problem of how to get rid of the carpet that was
clogging up our garage. There lay 1000 square feet of broadloom that had
covered the second floor of our unfinished house.
Chris’ initial thought had been to hire someone to haul it
off. Then he considered cutting it into small pieces, stuffing it into garbage
bags and gradually disposing of it at our local dump. I suggested testing the
waters on “freecycle”, an online “clearinghouse” in the hopes that someone else
would have a use for it. And with storm clouds threatening Jennie arrived with
her truck, muscle, determination and a long length of rope.
We had been living with pieced together wall to wall that
had been salvaged from a home on the Cape for the last 2 years. During a trip
home in December we decided it was time to finish the second floor. We fell in
love with a rich red birch hardwood from Wisconsin and felt very fortunate to
have Chuck Lacey and his crew available to install it on the week-ends. The floor finisher
we contracted with agreed to use tung oil to seal the wood, more in keeping
with my “green” fixation. I was so pleased with how smoothly this project was
going while we tried to manage affairs from Chicago.
Although Chris had spent all summer painting the outside of
the house and I the first floor, we decided to hire someone to paint the
hundreds of lineal feet of interior woodwork on the second floor. Then we could
tackle the walls with a roller when we returned to the Cape in the spring.
When the DePaul University quarter, and the coldest winter in
history was over, Chris and I packed up our 1998 urban assault vehicle Volvo and
headed south to Texas to visit our daughter Laurel. After a pleasant stay enjoying
her company, warmer weather, Texas BBQ and the bountiful bluebonnets we turned
north and drove home 2100 miles in the rain. Finally with the Bourne bridge in
sight Chris suggested we stop at the “East Wind” for a cup of clam chowder and
a lobster roll, the perfect welcome home dinner.
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| Beautiful Birch Ready for Guests |
Once we finally got back to the house we were thrilled with
the new floors. Red birch had been a brilliant choice with the beautiful variation in color tone and the wood grain. It wasn’t until the next morning that we discovered that the brand new floor was covered with tiny paint speckles. When the painter was summoned by Chris to explain what
had happened he was as surprised as we were. He admitted to having subcontracted
out the job to someone else while he was vacationing in Miami and it was
obvious that the floors hadn’t been covered and the woodwork had been painted
with a roller. This debacle had to be remedied. So for the next 2 days he and his wife scrubbed the floors on
their hands and knees to try and remove the spots. And for 3 more days he did over the rollered woodwork with a paint brush.
Now we are in the throes of trying to choose a paint color
for our bedroom. Who knew there were so many hues of blue; gray-blue, green-blue, purple-blue, and black and blue.
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| Decision, Decisions. Decisions |
