Dust in the Wind

We're getting our floors done. Well over-due, I must admit. Laminate Pergo-esque stuff in the living room instead of that foul carpet, and tile in the kitchen and hall. We got installation quotes from a couple of companies, but they were mighty pricey. Then we realized we had a friend who did this sort of stuff, and he needed a gig, so we decided to ask him to do it. (I'll call him Paul, since that's his name, and calling him anything else would be weird, eh?)

Paul began the living room floors last Monday. It took him a couple of days, and he still needs to do the base-boards and stuff, but it looks fabulous. The room looks so much bigger now. The only down side is that the dogs barks are even louder without the carpet to absorb the sound. They love it and seem to think it makes them sound extra tough.

The kitchen and hall had this vinyl crap that Paul had to get up before he could begin the tile. He had a difficult time of it. In places it seemed to become one with the foundation. So, that took longer than expected, and by the end of last week, there was still no tile on our floors.

Monday, he finished getting all of the vinyl up. Tuesday, he realized that part of the floor in the hall was not level. Our house was built in the 50s, so various occupants have put all sorts of stuff on the floors. I have no idea what this stuff was, but he had to get it up, and then had to sand the cement that was underneath to get it all nice and level.

Now, I appreciate the fact that he wanted to do it properly. If he hadn't leveled it all out, it would have been really bad. However, Tuesday night and last night I came home to a kitchen and living room covered in a fine layer of dust. On. Everything. Darrel said he put up tarp-thingys between the hall and the living room and the kitchen, but the dust still got everywhere. Tuesday night it bothered me a bit that we had to rinse all the dishes that we had left on the counter in the drying rack the night before. (No time-saving, modern appliances like dishwashers for us!) It was also slightly annoying that I slipped and almost fell on my ass when I walked into the bathroom because of the dust on the tile in there. But, considering that I am really bad at adapting to trying situations like this one, I thought I held it together quite well.

But last night. Darrel had taken Emma to gymnastics, so I got home to an empty house and had to make dinner and tidy the kitchen. Again, dust on everything. The countertops, the floors, the table, the bookshelves, the windowsills, the kettle, the pots and pans that hang on the walls, in the dog and cat bowls, the kitchen towels, again on the dishes in the drying rack (why didn't we think to put them back in the cupboards? dunno, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because...) and everything in the kitchen cabinets! Our cabinets are old and apparently do not close well enough to keep that damn dust out.

So, everything was a mess. Everything that I needed to make dinner had this dust on it, so everything had to be washed BEFORE I used it. Now, for normal people, that may not seem like a big deal, but me, it is the kind of thing that sends me over the edge. Anyone watching me would have been amused as I swore, stamped my feet, slammed cabinet doors, and acted like an ass as I made dinner. Luckily I had got it all out of my system, and a beer or two into my system, by the time Darrel and Emma made it home, so I was capable of rational communication and was no longer acting like a spoiled brat.

Darrel promised that the sanding was over and that Paul would start tiling today. For everyone's sake, I hope he's telling the truth.