Memorial Day weekend I take off from my second job so I can move my family up from Houston into Jen's parents' basement. We pack all our stuff into another Uhaul and get the picture of the boys standing on it again. It's a long drive and we swear we'll never do it again. Seems like we said that last time, too.
Back to work. I clear out the laundry room/bathroom on the main floor. I've done tiling before so I can get that done pretty easily. I need to put down cement backer board and decide to use my circular saw to get it done in about 45 minutes. Note: when doing the same thing for my bathroom in my house in Woods Cross, I used a knife to score it and break it off. It took about 12 hours and 15 blades to get done. I borrow my brother in law's
I get a batt of insulation and stuff it up in the ceiling of the main floor to muffle the sounds from upstairs. I wear long sleeves, gloves and facemask, but neglect to wear eye protection. That stuff is brutal. If you want to know what it feels like without having to buy the insulation, just crush up comes glass and use it instead of your contact lens solution.
At the end of most of my night shifts I open doors at both ends of the house and use my blower to create a wind tunnel and get as much of the dust as I can out of the house. We get the wiring and insulation set for the kitchen walls so it's time for a contractor to put the drywall up and texture the ceiling. "I'll do anything for remodels (but I won't do that)" my GC says. He's got a guy in his ward that does it so we talk to him and he says he'll be out by the end of the week to take a look. Never hear from the guy again. So I go to redbeacon.com to find somebody new (I'd done some work with them when I was consulting). I spend about 5 hours on the phone and talk to about 5 different outfits and they were all booked for 3-4 months. Jen talks to a friend of hers in the ward and has him come take a look. I meet him at the house and he says maybe a total of four words, not including some grunts. Three of the four words were, "Start on Monday". Sold. I have to take care of a joist that is hanging low, so I spend one of my shifts cutting it down while coming millimeters from the gas line we just put in. Don't worry the gas wasn't flowing at that point.
We took the next weekend off to go down to Austin to see my family. The cabinets we'd ordered were delivered about the time we got back, so Jen's dad and I got to work installing those (good thing we got the contractor out to put up the walls just before we left). For some reason they didn't make the cabinets exactly square (either that or our fur out job wasn't exactly square, but I think we can safely assume where the problem was), so it took a fair amount of work to get them into place.
Next time: the exciting conclusion.
