Take THAT "To Do" list!

Super super busy day today! I was up and out of the house early to meet the floor/ baseboard installers at 8am. They were early! They set to work right away on the floor and I started on my to do list. By the end of the day they had laid the wood floor in the dining room and living room and put up all the baseboards in only 8 hours! And they took a lunch break. The edges and joints are great, they even did the linen closets! We have 19 baseboards left over so that we can do the downstairs bathroom, hallway/ laundry room, bar area, upstairs kids' bathroom and our bathroom/ closet since they will be redone someday. I'm a little worried we overbought baseboard but oh well. The installers were great and they were so fast. It would have taken us weeks of weekends to do it all and it probably wouldn't have been so nice.

While they were installing all of that I was busy in the backyard. We had a huge pile of baseboards that had been pulled from the whole house in the backyard plus all the cork paneling. We want to put it in the garbage but you're not supposed to put sharp objects in the trash. So I took every single nail out of every single piece of baseboard, plywood and paneling. The paneling was glued onto the wall but also nailed all over the place. There were many different kinds of nails in the paneling varying from 3" super thick to finishing nails that looked more like staples without heads. It felt like a pound of nails and it filled a solo cup by the time I was done.

I also broke up all the baseboards into small enough pieces so they could fit in the trash can. Not all in one week of course but its easier than getting a dumpster. I also tossed and recycled several pots and dirt. She didn't leave anything living in them, just dirt. There were several pots of fake flowers when we first came by to see the house so that may be why.

There were several containers of cleaners and chemicals left throughout the house. There was a counter full of them in the kitchen and more in each bathroom. I found a bunch on the shelves in the garage and a whole box of them on the floor. I wanted all those chemicals out so I started gathering them up. I found three different kinds of laundry detergent and three different containers of bleach. I'm keeping those because they're useful of course and I don't think they have expiration dates. There were tons of yard chemicals and cleaning supplies. I found four containers each of Raid, Lysol and Comet. There were several used shampoo bottles, Pledge, and various cleaners. She even had lighter fluid that was 50% ether. There are more shelves in the garage that I can't reach that have the fun stuff like a gallon of paint thinner and what looks like used oil. I am going to have to schedule a hazardous waste clean-up. After I got them all together I got a little worried about spontaneous ignition in the sun so I covered them up loosely.

I cleaned up the rest of the side yard making sure all of our metal waste, spare wood, gardening tools, stuff to sell and stuff to freecycle were separated so we can start to get rid of some of it. We still have a lot of stuff spread out everywhere excluding the houseful of stuff in the garage.

In between all that cleaning I had a bunch of visitors. Mike's dad Bob was back working on the plumbing and he finished it today. We still have to put the dry wall back up, retexture, and repaint. The back side of the wall (laundry room) was outfitted with a new valve cutout but we have to patch those holes too. The cable guy came back and set up out phone and internet. We have to run lots of power to that media closet. I had to run an extension cord and power strip to it just so he could set everything up. He was a little hesitant to leave us with only one hook-up but I assured him we had friends coming to fix the rest of them.

Our neighbor Sue, who is an original owner in the development, came over to see how our progress was going. She had lots of information on the old owners and the changes, or lack there of, in our house. Sue recognized the three lights I pulled out of the house immediately and remembered where they had been in her house when she moved in. She took them down as soon as she moved in. Sue was nice enough to take me across the street to her house so I could see their changes. Rather then having a big nine foot bar like our house had they had a small wet bar along the short wall only. They had taken out the newells almost immediately but had kept the short entryway wall for a few years before removing it. They had put crown molding in the living room and dining room area and in the soffit in the dining room just like we want. It was really interesting to see our house but nice and furnished.

Sue also recommended her gardener who does her house and the rest of that court. He was at her house that day so he came over to talk to me about what we wanted done and offered us a great deal. He offered to start this week but with so many people coming in and out we opted to wait until next week. Later in the day the draftsman from the window company came by to double check the measurements for the window.

I was going to sand the baseboards that were rolled a few days ago but when I tried it the results weren't great. Plus with 19 extra baseboards (including the 9 that were rolled) I don't think we need to do it right now. We should be able to store the baseboards in the garage above the garage doors until we need them. Once the garage is empty of course.  I also called an irrigation specialist to get an appointment and tried to reach our home warranty company about the water heater. Of course if I had the information packet about the warranty I could probably do that easily but Mike put it somewhere in the garage. I'm not even positive which home warranty we have but I'm working off of an assumption its the one that sent us an email titled "Thank you for being our customer!"

After the floor was all done and everyone else had left, Steve and Tim came back to work on the cable.  I started taking the last of the drapes down which were up in the master bedroom. Between those and the ones we already had taken down we could fill two garbage cans with fabric. Mike got there around 6pm and decided to work on replacing the outlets in our master bedroom. Mike worked for a few hours more on the outlets and just got home. He is so excited about how the floors came out!

I went home. I had spent 8 hours moving things and cleaning. We had a total of ten people going in and out of the house today. Tomorrow we go back again ... but this time we could move some furniture in! If they're on the outside of the pile that is.