Small Space, Big Headache Weekend Recap

It's Monday...again.  Gee, I wonder what we did this weekend??

Actually, we did a lot more than that.  Settle in.

Our hallway is so small that you can't lay fully stretched without your feet being in another room.  Shouldn't have been a big deal to knock out that flooring but because we are, US, it was.  I've never been happy with the custom stained transitions we got from the place to "save us time" from getting the ones that matched but if you'd told us we were going to have a 2 month delay then we would've ordered what we needed and been done.

The Mr ripped up the last of the carpet and baseboards in the hallway Wednesday in preparation for the weekend job so the carpet could be out for the bulk pickup the next day.  Then he saw the stair nose we paid $100+ for wasn't going to work with a floating floor.  

Cue Benny Hill theme.

The only way we could still use it was if we nailed or stapled down the floors.  Having a pneumatic stapler could come in handy I suppose so he went to get that at the only Home Depot in the land that had it which took forever.  Plenty of reviews said they were able to install flooring with it so we were hopeful despite not seeing a ton of videos from YouTube University on it.  He did a test on a scrap piece of flooring into some plywood and nope. 

source

Of course not.

He called the woman from the place we ordered the floor from and she gave him a solution she 'thought' would work but he knew from what he read it wouldn't.  Now we're faced with the prospect that we're not going to get the piece for 2 weeks IF we can find an overlap stair nose and why?  Because no friggin' local stores carry those kind of moldings because they're flaming douchebags.  We already knew that but we thought we had that problem taken care of until it wasn't and then my vertigo set in.  This was also amidst me doing some back grouting on what I thought would be the final layer but oops, you forgot about the HUGE gap at the top that you have to backfill due to your walls being so out of square.  I was already playing the "Aggressive Battle Ropes" playlist before this doozy was laid on me.

As I'm furiously searching the internet for a solution, I come across a piece that looks the same as the profile we would supposedly need and already stained in walnut which isn't the color we have but will match the darker parts and it should at least look better than the poop we paid for that I'm probably going to have to stain walnut anyway.  No way to know, of course, unless we pay another $100 for the 'in stock' item that we can't pick up but should be here in 1-2 days which would put us at Sunday at the earliest to be able to start unless they meant they can't ship it for 1-2 days which means Monday or Tuesday.

source

I will be upstairs in the fetal position.  Oh wait, no I won't because the mattress is on the floor and despite having it that way most of my teenage years, when I try that as a middle aged hag with a broken body, I look more like this for my morning rise and middle of the night pee's:

source

Mind you at this point we haven't even made it to the weekend.

So we start thinking of the other projects we can do.  The Mr hacks off the top lip on the upstairs landing so the stair nose can be installed whenever that would be.  I went back in on Friday and did what I prayed was the final back fill on the grout before the final coat but wouldn't know until the next day if it shrank.  I had the intention of prepping my other accent wall materials and I didn't get around to it which sucked.  Then we got a shipping notice that the stair nose would be here Saturday!

source

Now the question was going to be, would it be the right color?  I did a big staining order for Saturday morning of stuff I was going to need including a metal can with water so stuff doesn't explode after staining, I guess.  Oy.  Then I wanted to see where the wall sconces I got came on the wall because they looked way bigger to me than I pictured and sure enough, they aren't going to work in the space.  I sent an email off to Lamps Plus to see how much I was going to be out to send them back before I bothered or if I was going to have to find a way to jerry rig these just like every other f&!*ng thing in this project or just get lamps that hang down instead of up.  Why do I constantly screw everything up?  I'm sure if I'd just taken my time instead of thinking sconce was translation for "small lamp that will fit" and measured that I wouldn't be in this delightful predicament.  But you know, why not catch another anvil when you're drowning?

The 'born under a bad star' luck continued into Saturday when Sir Williams of Sherwin who assured me on their website that the quart of stain I was ordering was (and the CONFIRMATION of said order) said I was ordering chestnut gel stain.  When the Mr went to pick it up, they gave him slate.  The base said it's slate on the order but the color very clearly says chestnut.   Chaos ensues and I order from a different store (not SW) across town, I went with him and they brought out the wrong effing stain!  I didn't order RED chestnut...chest. nut.  HOW HARD IS THIS TO READ A FRIGGING ORDER!?!?!?!  This has happened to us no less than 3-4x and no, I shouldn't have to go in and do it myself to get what I ordered.  The guy went back in and got the right thing.  We made a few stops at emotional eating places to stifle my tears and his rage and made our way back home.  (Yes, I know better.  Didn't care.  We were having healthy turkey chili for lunch.  Balance.)  The stair nose arrived and miracle of miracles, it was a matching color!  What it emphasized though is that the ones we paid to have "customized" were going to look like a crap show compared to the stair nose.  I grabbed a dark walnut stain pen to use on a scrap piece of transition and it was confirmed.  Gee, guess what I get to do?

He went up and did floor prep and notching for crap with his multi-tool.  I cannot begin to convey the absolute cringefest on so many levels for so many reasons when he's using that thing.  I want to leave the house when he's using it like he is as I type.  It would be one thing if we didn't have attached living and despite having the absolute scourge of the Earth on one side and the most vindictive, flaming witch on the other since the day we moved in, I don't like being the inconsiderate neighbor.  Though I will say, it's payback for the crap we have to listen to from them on the daily but I just know I wouldn't want to listen to what we've been cooking the last three weekends.  Oh well!  I painted several layers of Retique It on some boards for the wall project and gave myself a headache.  It doesn't smell toxic but just a little weird and since my nose is sensitive to pretty much anything, it took 10 minutes before my sinuses were yelling.  That also meant no table available for meals so we were hunched over ourselves on the white couches hoping no stains were imminent.  We finally stuck a fork in things around 6 or 7pm.  Who knows what time is anymore?

Sunday I made us brunch and the Mr was anxious to get to it.  I bought 6 tack cloths that I now needed to use earlier in the week.  Do you think I could find them?  No.  Was I getting frustrated to the point of tears that despite seeing them on the stairs two days prior they were no longer there?  You bet your sweet bippy.  So I blasted the board with canned air and hoped I wasn't sealing in something I'd regret because who gives a rat's ass at this point?  Not moi.  The Mr got to measuring and cutting with the tiny little closet being the biggest pain in the ass at this point.  Notches galore and we were getting precariously close to the end of our boards despite ordering 15% more.  Our hope was to not have any seamed pieces on that part and we were sweating it.  There were only 4 boards that didn't look like they had demons and goblins in the hickory grain so I was saving those back and we were using the 'starter' boards as much as possible that would fit here and there.  I swear that part took just as long as the full on rooms.  I suppose it's best we saved it for last because if he'd done it first, he probably would've been like "yeah, let's just wait until the carpet disintegrates in the bedrooms."   

Of course, it's always that last board in every section that gives you the most trouble.

If it's any consolation to him, this reno has enabled him to lose 8 lbs in the past 4 weeks while I've lost two from stress and not doing nearly as much as he has.  Le sigh.

I rounded things out by getting to what I thought would be the final grouting on the stone wall using the complementing grout-like caulk I bought from them that takes a few weeks to make for some reason.  I quickly realized their recommendation of one tube per panel is grossly wrong and I wasn't going to have enough.  Like if I'm lucky I might get 2/3 of it done and that would be just to cover the cracks and not bring it up over the stones. 😡

But wait...deaaaah's more!!

I HATE the color.  Like passionately.  Instead of light stone color conveyed online... it's beige and it now makes the stones look dark and crappy.  So I have a rather pathetic email in to the company asking if they have any hanging around or not so I don't have to potentially wait another month to finish it.  Then when I do, I am clearly going to have to water down some joint compound and paint it over the company's grout to significantly lighten it.  

FML

He finished a little after 7pm and hopped in the shower while I heated up meatloaf and no salt sweet potato fries in the oven.  We settled in for some Chateau and co-ceau and I nursed a migraine the rest of the night that I still have this morning while he looked up how long you can still get an annulment.

How was your weekend?

====================
Follow me on Bloglovin. Some posts may contain affiliate links that help keep this blog running at no cost to you.  See the Disclaimer page for more info.