She Said

Charles and Rob arrive at about 8:45 a.m..  Today they are going to grout the floor.

They first begin by sealing the tiles against absorbing the grout.  It’s a spray sealant that they’re using, so it seems pretty quick and easy.  Charles realizes, though, that it’s not a gloss-finish sealant he’s been provided, but matte.  He recommends that I get the glossy kind, so that the end result will be more dramatic.  I’ve seen the gloss finish before (at another house we considered buying.  That house had a pretty kick-ass kitchen.  Why didn’t we buy that house, again…?) and I have to agree.

Then they run out of sealant.  Oops.

No problem!  I’m a team player!  I volunteer to go out to get some more.  Charles says I can just get the glossy kind, and they can skip to that.  Meanwhile, they’ll work on the “shoe moulding” and some other stuff they need to complete today.  The nearest Home Depot is about a half-hour away, so I’m off in a flash, with coffee on my brain….

Naturally, the Barrhaven Home Depot is out of the glossy sealant.  So, I pick up a half-bottle refill to at least get them through the pre-sealing stage.  I head back and pick up “the usual” (Charles is an “extreme” coffee drinker – “extra large triple, triple”; the other two are less extraordinary…).

So, I deliver the goods, and then head out on my next Home Depot expedition.  The Barrhaven store checked their computer and South Keys should have nine bottles in stock.  They do, but not spray bottles.  Oh well, the nozzle from one should fit the other.  I pick up three bottles, since they went through two in the first case and ran out….

I arrive home to find that … boy, this is a messy process!!  Good thing we hired professionals (they get to clean it up…)!!

I’ve got a few other things to accomplish today, so I leave the guys to their tasks and proceed with mine, which seems a lot less daunting, now that I’ve got coffee, the ultimate motivator, in my hand….

Next thing I know, it’s 3:30 and they’re done!  “That’s it; that’s all”, says Charles.  I practically bound up the stairs from our office in glee…!

It looks gorgeous. 

“We’ve just got one issue; well, two issues”, he says.  Ugh.

“First, we can’t hang your passage door to the laundry room; it doesn’t fit”.  Well, presumably, the cabinet guys will have a saw and can trim it when they arrive next week.  This does not faze me at all.  The second problem, however, is a bit more significant:  the shutters on the sliding patio doors are going to “need help” to open and close.  That is, we will have to lift them, from the centre, to get them to open or close without dragging along the tiles.  Alas, they’re not made of wood (surprisingly – they’re “plantation shutters” which I genuinely thought must have been wooden until after we had ‘sealed the deal’; they are, in fact, PVC or something, but they look really nice, so I’m not willing, at this point, to part with them), so trimming them likewise will not be an option.

It’s at this point that I recall that the shutters, frame and all, were supposed to have been removed prior to working on the floor at all.  This would have (hypothetically, at least) allowed the frame to be moved up, enabling the shutters a bit of extra clearance.  Unfortunately, Charles and Rob’s work order does not have any of this listed; they say they only removed the shutters because they had to.  I wasn’t present for part of the day on Day Two, so I never noticed that the frame hadn’t been removed, since it is modelled to look exactly like a regular door frame.

Yes, seriously, in four days, I never noticed.

I now note that a small piece of plastic that was previously screwed into the floor – a stopper, to prevent the shutters from swinging right into the door, is missing.  Oops.  Rob thinks he must have thrown that out….

Well, no point in getting in a flap.  I’ll just call Mari, our project coordinator from Home Depot (more on Home Depot and our choice to use them, versus playing general contractor for ourselves, coming soon!) to chat it through with her….

I call Mari.  She and I have mismatched memories of our conversation around the floor.  She thinks I said we would remove the frame and shutters ourselves.  I think I said we *might* do it ourselves, but I would have to check with Mr. Man, so leave it in the work order and I’d let her know if we wanted to strike it out.

She says she’s reading our work order and it’s not listed.  I could have sworn it was, but I can’t put my hands on my file at this moment.  In the end, though, Mari says it’s never worth it to rely on human memory and she’ll get it fixed, one way or another.  Best case, we can just get the shutters trimmed.  Worst case, we’ll have to remove the frame and inch it up a bit.  Either way, it’ll require a service call.  She asks if I know what brand the shutters are.  Nope.

Right now, it’s about ten to five on a Friday.  So, we decide that we’ll just follow up with each other at the beginning of next week.

Stay tuned!

~ One of Seven