Picking up the Pace

 At this time, you’ll already be guessing (if you read the last post) that an end of August move in is but a pipe dream and that despite the onsite guys working like madmen to get so many things accomplished every single day, the universe has it’s own plan. Ken was super gentle about trying to reset my expectations and it probably stressed him out to hear me say, we’ll be there September 1st!

Picking up where I left off; the carpet saga continued. The next phone call I got from sweet Brian at the flooring department in The Home Depot was one of the most frustrating to date. Both he and I began to admit the level of control we have over these things is about close to ZERO. The carpet mill informed him on Monday morning that the carpet had come out of production on Saturday and would ship that same Monday afternoon, thereby putting it in Boulder Friday the 1st of Sept. When Brian called them back Monday afternoon to confirm the shipping, he was informed that the carpet was not out of production after all! Seriously?  Yes!!! While this was not Brian’s fault, he was on the other end of the phone when I lost it. I asked him when it would be out of production and he informed me that nobody knew.  I called bullshit! Either the mill is producing my carpet and someone who works there is aware of this, or it’s not, and that is also good info to have and I expected Brian to get a hold of the person who had some/any info that was helpful in this regard and get back to me. He agreed to call me the following day @ 10 am.

I sat at the dining room table in Longmont, surrounded by half packed boxes, no comfort food and an increasingly attractive bottle of wine and had a little meltdown. I’ll admit that after working every day since February, physically exhausting myself with packing, financially stretching myself with a new house, mentally draining myself with decision making and emotionally losing it with a guy who sells flooring, I was about ready to curl up in fetal position and retreat inside my head until further notice! 

Mark came home shortly afterward and somehow managed to get past my wall of negativity and convince me to investigate alternative carpets at our friendly Longmont Carpet One. Off we went… Me with no expectations of finding success, slumped over in the passenger seat of his Jeep, a scrap of the Home Depot carpet in my tired fingers, almost resenting his “solution oriented approach” to my bad mood. What did I do to deserve this guy?! He has the patience of a saint.

Carpet One was awesome. They took us out the back to the warehouse area, pulled out samples of the stuff they had in stock and when one appeared that was close enough to the HD order, we committed to it and booked their carpet installers too.  John-Paul climbed the ladder to the top shelf and put a large hot pink HOLD sign on my giant roll of carpet. Installation was scheduled for Sept 5th and 6th and I texted Ken the good news. (He then took on the task of cancelling our HD order for me.)

Back at the house, this was happening in the second week of August:

Paint!

The trim was painted white and the walls were primed. Aaron installed a beautiful hand rail and pickets on the stairs. The guys were now turning their time towards working on painting doors and some exterior clean up, while the house had to be closed up.

Exterior lights looked good. They used my old flagstone hearth as the new step for the storage unit. Great idea! I’m all about recycling, reusing and gifting as much as possible during this Martin Acres new construction project.

I know what you’re thinking. Things are back on track!  Kinda. Until I fell on the stairs at the Longmont house and did some damage. The ankle was as right as rain in a couple of days but it would be 3 weeks before the toe (fairly sure it was broken) would not need to be taped to relieve pain. Not that I really had time anyway, but this sealed the fate of the feet that already needed a pedi. Oh dear.  🙁 

Some days you just have to “suck it up, Buttercup” and carry on. So I did. 

Next on the list was selling the hot tub at Longmont. The new tenants were not hot tub people and I didn’t relish the thought of seeing some sort of soupy mess in it at the end of a year lease. It found a buyer within hours and I’m happy to say its new family are going to love it like it deserves to be loved.