Ajijaakwe: Doors and walls and mouldings and dimensions and baseboards and a host of visiting spirits. And expense. Shares needed.

Yup. We had five people working here today. It was a zoo, but a kind of wonderful one. I'm talking about the work, not even the eclipse and the gathering of spirits that accompanied it. With regard to the latter, we had the spirits of sun, moon, eclipse, an incredible otherworldly light on the ground and shadow above with a 10- to 15-degree drop in temperature and a change in the air pressure that defies description . Later, we had the spirits of lightning, storm, rain, and rainbow. We also were visited by a flicker (heard only; not seen); a pair of hummingbirds; a Northern harrier; the entire Bluebird Clan; one of whom reversed course and circled around to sit in front of me, look me directly in the eye, and deliver a very conversational message; and my girl, the red-tailed hawk, here about three months early and still wearing her summer white more than winter red.

We also had Tony, Reynaldo, Sherm, Sherm's brother Marcos, and Randy, who works for Floyd, the tile guy. They accomplished a ton of work today.

The big thing they had on top was what you see above, even if you can't tell exactly what it is: mopping upstairs preparatory to laying the flooring. That's about the cleanest that subfloor has ever been. The whole upstairs smells like wet wood, but in the fresh wet outdoorsy kind of way, not the icky mildewy way.

Sherm and Marcos started off with a favor for me, because I needed to get dimensions to the kitchen person at Home Depot, and even though Wings and I measured it all over the weekend, I wanted numbers from the pros. We weren't too far off, but I'm going with their numbers. I know you can't see it very well in the photos, but they drew it all out directly on the floor, and I've e-mailed all the numbers (and there were a lot of them, a lot more than we expected) to the salesperson, and now we wait to see how horrible the damage is going to be.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017;
all rights reserved.

Aside from the mopping (which actually got done toward the end of the day), Tony and Reynaldo got more woodwork done, with some help from the other two. First was the finish work and the staining on one of the hand-made small doors (I'm not sure whether this is coat closet or pantry). The other has to be redone, because the tongue-and-groove panels warped, so Tony's picking up another one tomorrow to cut into the proper sizes. The other thing they got done, which I didn't even notice at first until Wings pointed it out to me was this:

See that? I'm so excited; they finally were able to get the moulding up in the stairwell and the long wall that extends from it to the front of the house (the wall that adjoins our bedroom). And you can see, up close, the line I got yesterday on the edging. Turns out it's quite literally impossible to get a straight line on this broquette-textured drywall. That's because the little globs of plaster that form the texture are all over the place, including in the crease of the corner. Given those constraints, I think I got 'em pretty damn straight. Speaking of the wall, Wings liked it when we first went in this morning, so no extra coat needed. Topped out at nine. Here's a sorta close-up of the finish:

It's relatively subtle, which was what I wanted. When the rest of the woodwork and the light fixture get in there, it should look pretty awesome.

The fifth guy, Randy, was here today to do this:

He set the baseboard (what, around here, the guys call a "kick") all the way around the drywalled areas. H's using the same tile, of course, keeping it at a low-profile three inches so that we can get two baseboards per full tile. Tomorrow, he'll grout it; then he'll be ready to turn his attention, at long last, to the downstairs guest bath. But first, there's this:

The shower has to be finished off in about three different ways. First, though, is the tub hook-up upstairs, because its drain feeds into this one, and they can't cover the space up with insulation and Hardeebacker, much less tile, until those hook-ups are done. So Wings called Ismael, and he'll be out tomorrow morning to take care of it (amazing that he could get out here on such short notice, frankly). Reynaldo had to exchange something at the hardware store for us today, so we had him pick up the roll of insulation at the same time, and once the hookups are handled, they'll run that in and then put the Hardeebacker over it, and then Randy can start cleaning all the dust out, RedGuarding it, and then laying the really cool-looking tile. So tomorrow, we'll have at least six guys here, maybe seven.

They're rocking, which is great, but it all means a lot of expense, so we need to make sales, badly. We also need shares; the more of the cards we can accumulate, from folks who are willing to donate credit card points, etc., to them, the less cash that will have to be diverted to creating an actual kitchen. So here are the links:

Wings's site, for sales;
Lowe's cards (the physical version) via our Amazon wishlist;
Lowe's e-cards (delivered via e-mail) here; and
Home Depot cards via the company site. The e-version using my e-mail address is great; I take the tablet to the store with me, and they scan it off the screen.

And I'll say it again: Sales are always needed and helpful, because that's our living — both the baseline of the construction and our day-to-day living expenses. But other than that, right now? More than donations, the HD and Lowe's cards are truly the most useful; they free up our cash for things that can't be done any other way. And until we know whether the septic is truly covered or it's going to set us back some more, we need to keep as much cash in reserve as possible. (Of course, there may well come a point where we need cash to finish it all off, but we're not there yet.) Much gratitude to TG and SR and PK, who each sent a different kind of card, and much love to everyone. We are surrounded by storms at the moment and I need to go make sure the chickens have come into the coop from the fenced run before it gets dark, and then I have to get to work on tomorrow's items.

Ajijaakwe

Monday, August 21, 2017

Doors and walls and mouldings and dimensions and baseboards and a host of visiting spirits. And expense. Shares needed.

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