The past few weeks have been a blur of activity.  I was working my buttocks off in a house without any air conditioning as I was trying to patch up walls and paint before new floors were to be installed.  This is where the lack of sleep and sweat equity really comes into play.

I was pushing hard against multiple deadlines.  I needed to paint the kitchen before the cabinets were put up.  That way, I don’t have to worry about stray bits of paint on the cabinets.  I also had to paint the upstairs bathroom, bedrooms, linen closet, and coat closet before the floors are installed, sanded down, and stained.  Unfortunately, I was not able to paint the living room because of all the cabinets that were being staged there.

Painting a room is not difficult, especially when you have a paint spray gun like I did.  Having one definitely cut down the actual paint time by at least half.  The biggest time sink was fixing up cracks, sanding them down, cleaning up the dust, taping off walls and floor, and such.  I was doing all this after my regular work day for 3-4 times a week, working until midnight or so.  There was no air conditioning, since it hasn’t been installed yet.  It must have been some where in the mid to high 80’s when I was doing all this work.  So I was really sweating up a storm.  Fortunately, I was listening to Pandora from my cell phone.  My favorite stations played music from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s.  So I was sweating to the oldies, literally, as I was putting in my share of sweat equity.  Oh, and the bathrooms haven’t been finished yet.  Whenever I had an office call with Nature, I made a trip to the local Target or Dunkin Donuts.  Thankfully, the IHOP that was 2 minutes away is open 24 hours so I was able to answer nature’s call and eat scrapple at weird hours.

So the kitchen was painted and the cabinets were mostly installed.  The contractor originally planned on installing the cabinets on the old floor.  I wasn’t happy when I learned of this because of the odor that was left behind in the wood.  After talking with the contractor, a new plan emerged.  The contractors removed the flooring in the kitchen and placed the cabinets on wood strips so that they would be at the same height as the new wood floors.

Another big milestone was the tiling of the upstairs bathroom.  Most of the tiles in the upstairs bathroom are up.  The grout should be put in soon.  The floor tiles in the downstairs bathroom have been installed.  The shower stall comes in next.  The vanity and toilet topper in both bathrooms are in and waiting for the sinks to be installed.

Of course, when listening to music from your past, you get memories,  both fond and otherwise.  Some recent work brought back bad memories from demolition past.  The door from the kitchen to the basement was a mess.  It was about 25″ wide, which was 2″ too narrow to move my washer and dryer downstairs.  Plus, I doubt that some of the planned furniture placement would work with such a narrow opening.  The contractors took the door and surrounding frame down.  What was underneath the door and frame were more dead bugs and a greasy film.  Pleasant memories indeed.

There was a bit of a water problem due to poor gutters.  Rain was running down the rear wall, into the cracks above the back door, and pooling in the basement.  The subfloor of the kitchen in front of the rear door was also wet.  This almost put a stop to the new floor installation.  Fortunately, the contractors put up some flashing underneath the gutter to divert the rainwater.  That should keep things dry until the gutters are installed.

Thankfully, the air conditioner was installed last week and the floor installation was delayed only by a couple of days.  I can now do more renovation stuff in relative comfort with the blessings of climate control and Air Supply streaming on my phone.