I subscribe to the notion that you can’t really relax unless you have finished a job. Supposedly, weekends are for relaxation. But if you haven’t accomplished something during the week, you have to do work on the weekend. With me so far? Me neither. Onward!
Just because I wasn’t quite exhausted enough from oven moving mayhem from last weekend, this weekend’s project was to lay down flooring in the sunroom. (I really ought to call it the solarium, or the loggia, to make our house seem more fancified.) We bought the cheapest flooring we could find at Ikea (mistake 1), having decided to get a bleached white wood-look floor (mistake 2). Friday afternoon, while my wife and Baby Harbat were at the beach, frolicking in the waves and doing slo-mo running on the sand, I was on my hands and knees on the concrete floor of the sunroom pulling out nails. Some wisenheimer back in the 70s installed shag rug with nails. Into concrete. Okay, easy enough and soon I had the floor vacuumed and swept and ready for plastic sheeting underlayment. This picture makes it seem as if it were easy. Imagine trying to flatten out crimped sheeting while you’re standing on it. Now imagine ME doing that. See, it’s good for a laugh, schadenfreude style.
Next came the foam padding. I learned that when you saw through an entire roll of padding with an X-Acto, make sure you are making a perpendicular cut. For results, see the trapezoidal strip and narrow fill strip below.
Finally came a long period of cursing and missteps. But of course. I got to learn how the corners of rooms are sometimes not ninety degrees, and also managed to cut two floor planks wrong. The first one got screwed up. Then I made the EXACT SAME MISTAKE on the second one. Then I yelled out some naughty words. I got about half done by the end of the day, and finished the rest on Saturday. Saturday night I watched Blade Runner at the Stately English Manor, and drooled over the image quality on the Blu-Ray. Saturday night, while my wife was out with the neighborhood gals, I replaced all the furniture in the sunroom and obsessed over every speck of dirt that showed up. [Special note: I will now provide every blog reader with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. When you meet me, hit me over the head with it and say, “Don’t buy a white floor!”]
Which leads us to Sunday, the real day of relaxation. I did a long run with some friends, had a large breakfast, and made some lemonade. Then we had friends over in the afternoon and lazed around in the pool. Baby Harbat circumabulated in the hot tub while I held her hand. Then she got out, got dressed, then got back in the tub with her clothes and diaper on. Then got dressed, take two. Pizza and beer were consumed, and I floated in the hot tub like flotsam for an hour or two. There was much merriment as my wife and I played with our friend’s iPhones after which it was determined that, A)we need to get iPhones, B)there is an app for everything, C)we will need to get all those apps in the first week. I joked about the possibility of an app called iFart. Of course it exists. And our friend actually had it installed. This is what we do with our global telecommunications network: download programs that make fart noises. Vive la technolgie!
Writer, architect, father, husband.
Actually it's not the cheapest flooring IKEA has. Plus, it's not like we didn't want to put in the nicer Marmoleum, we just couldn't. It looks good 🙂
Harbat. Yes, we do have champagne taste with a beer budget. I think it looks good too, and is a huge improvement over the bare concrete.
Well I'm sure it looks dandy and, besides, that's what area rugs can be used for–to cover up all marks. Enjoy it. I bet it looks awesome. Glad there was some relaxing on Sunday.
I think it looked awesome, and the sort of distressed blue-white look really should lend itself to relatively low maintenance. The house looks amazing, you guys have done a great job–I forgot to say, the fence looked great. I know there was a lot of work there too, but it all looks built solid and to last, looks fantastic. But what do I know, I had iFart on my phone. 😉 (Although at least I don't read Laura Hamilton. ;p (*cough* you know I'm giving you cr@p out of fun, right, not actually judging you for reading such terrible books just because they're not the same terrible garbagey books I read? Just double checking. 😉 ) ) Thank you so much for having me and the mocopus over, I really enjoyed seeing you guys, your lovely house, hanging out with Hilari, and I really appreciate the hospitality. Not many friends would let someone bring their baby over who had made it clear that he wanted to eat their babies and it was nice to just chill and talk about random stuff.
Hi Wendy,Thanks for the props on the house. We've been working a lot on it this spring and summer and will get a well-deserved break in the next couple weeks. No worries about the trashy novels–I myself read high quality literature, like Life is Hell. It was good having you over and Baby Harbat liked having a bed just her size, even if it smelled like dog.