Racing to the Finish Line!

 We are on the home stretch...

At the end of July I began the unenviable task of packing up the current digs in Longmont. There was 2000 square feet of Mark’s and my stuff, 18 months of boxes still unpacked from our last move(s), accumulated “stuff” before and during the last 18 months and the general disassembling of the Longmont life of two single people who recently combined households. I swear, people thought I was crazy for beginning to pack, purge and clean, so far out from the projected move date of August 25th. But I knew better. When the final week is upon you and work is crazy, the house is chaos and EVERYTHING needs to be cleaned and organized, it’s too late to begin.  And honestly, it’s too stressful on any couple if we all care to admit it. Who wants to be cleaning the blinds at 3am on moving day? Not me. 

Around this time, I secured a lease for the Terry Street house too and my new tenants, hot off their cross country move from Brooklyn, had possession starting 12pm on the 1st of September. Striking a balance between the security of having rental income and a real, fixed timeline for getting out, come hell or high water, is tricky. My anxiety levels were at about a 7/10 and set to rise.

Meanwhile back at 285 Martin Drive there was an astounding checklist scheduled for the following month. Really… Astounding!

In the first week of August alone the wood floor was laid and got the first couple of coats of water-based finish, the bathrooms were half tiled and trim was installed around the windows and door frames. Pocket doors appeared as if out of nowhere.

The bathroom vanities arrived and were installed… Then covered to protect them. So this was the last time I saw them for quite some time.

At this time, the kitchen pantry and upper cabinets were resurrected from the hangar and returned to 285 Martin Drive. I was excited and anxious to see how the kitchen had survived it’s travel, storage, weather factors (when the roof was open) and being boxed in place for so long. I still had some waiting to do as the island remained sequestered and the appliances had not made the trek back yet.

Subway tile was in and awaiting grout. Where is the floor tile?  Hmm… still coming. You see, I had chosen to take the same tile as used in the kitchen for the guest bathrooms and the mudroom. The problem being, the tile in the kitchen was circa 2010. While I was not sure if the tile was still in production, I was sure that it was no longer carried by the local tile store. Ken was up for the task though and patiently had his tile gal scour the country for the exact same as the kitchen floor was dressed in. It took a week, but he located enough to complete the job! All that remained was shipping… which seems easy enough, but really isn’t!

At the same time as this was going on, the tiler discovered that the Carrera marble tile I chose for the bathroom was fraught with complications too. You see, the subway marble on the walls was a different thickness to the hexagon I chose for the floor. Again, not a problem if they never have to go side-by-side. But they did. I wanted a border of subway tile around the hexagon on the floor and with the hexagon being thinner, it was never going to happen. You cannot build up tiny tile underneath because it will surely never be laid without some unevenness and becomes pretty noticeable.

I found a tile supplier in NJ that met my needs and quickly ordered subway tile and hexagon tile that was all 3/8″ thick. Perfect right?  Yep, except for a couple of minor details. 1. With the subway tile already on the walls, we had to pray that that the new stuff was a good match to it. 2. Shipping tile across the country is apparently a royal pain… And now Ken and I had matching tile shipping woes. The transport company swore it would be here in 5 business days, but it was almost 2 weeks later that it actually arrived. That stretch of road between Ohio and Denver is where the tracking stopped and someone must have been hand carrying it! Ugghhh… Why promise if you can’t deliver? Why send a tracking number if you don’t send it via a vehicle that utilizes tracking? (Uh huh, the customer support rep that I talked to, literally told me that the tracking had stopped in Ohio because it was transferred to a truck that didnt do tracking! Useful?!)

The tile I ordered, arrived about the same time as Ken’s floor tile, after the tiler had to move on to another job temporarily. A little delay to our timeline ensued. It was not to be the first or the worst.

Remember when my upper living room was a taco station for the drywallers?  Now it was a work station for trim and about to undergo another functional transition shortly, too.

Everyday 285 Martin Drive was a hive of activity. More electrical – I now had outlets. More HVAC – the duct work was complete. More everything! I spent many of my days going back and forth to Home Depot and the like, to choose carpet and bathroom counter tops and onsite, a thousand little decisions were frying my already fragile brain. If this wasn’t dementia prevention in the use-it-or-lose-it extreme, I don’t know what is.

Mark and I spent a Saturday morning choosing carpet at The Home Depot. The staff were friendly and it was time well spent, taking our painted drywall piece with us as well as little bits of tile and a scrap of cabinet, in order to be really sure the color we got looked good and the carpet felt nice underfoot. At decision time, we were advised to first call ahead to HD and confirm the carpet was in stock. It was apparently on sale because they had ordered miles of it… but we were told that was no guarantee. Go figure.

I called and got the ok that it was in stock and placed the order. Later that week being informed that “in stock” generally meant they had it at the mill, but not actually in Boulder. Ok…  I also found out that when HD gets something shipped to the store, it only arrives on a Friday. The carpet needed to be shipped from goodness knows where by Monday afternoon in order to make it to Boulder by Friday afternoon, or expect it to be another week before it can be picked up. Annoying but doable. It might have made it the 18th, the the 25th was looking more likely.

The next week, after being told it didn’t ship because actually it wasn’t in stock and was still in production at the mill, it was more annoying. And we had definitely missed the carpet installers window. Drat! Now it was looking like the end of August before my carpet could be picked up at HD, assuming no further delays.

Stay tuned for the outcome of this little saga. We are getting ahead of ourselves now.  Just know that the french doors were joining the carpet and tile in competing for the title of “most accomplished at delaying move in”.

 Footnote: Months after writing this... reading it for the first time since stopping to take a breath, I found OODLES of mistakes. A testament to the brain-fried state that I was in as tasks, deadlines, orders and decisions sucked the last of my sanity and wherewithal.