Here We Go Again (Part II)

Flag Stone Floor

The day after the tardy, sans writing utensil, carpet estimator showed up to measure the room, I received a call from Lowe?s, my estimate was ready. $445 and change.

Huh? Mentally doing some math in my head, carpet 144 sq/ft at $1.28 per plus 52 cents a sq/ft to install is around $250. With tax I should still be under $300. So I asked the girl on the other end could she break it down for me. There was 156 sq/ft of carpet (I asked for this so we could cover a little step going into the kitchen) so that is and additional twenty bucks. There was an additional $47 for the extra labor of covering said step. That seems a little high for amount of work, but that still leaves us in the middle $300 range. Then there was an additional 35 dollars for floor leveling compound and $45 for adhesive. I told her that my floor didn?t need leveling and she said she would have a Mr. Howard from the installation company call me.

So Donna and I started whittling away at some of the costs to get the price down to a manageable level. Forget the extra foot of carpet, I’ll just paint the step. No leveling and a favorably installation date & time and we would go for it. And WTF, the installation cost didn?t already include the glue? For the 52 cents a sq/ft they were basically trimming 5? off two sides and laying it down in the room? I?m betting the installation cost you see advertised in the store for wall to wall carpet doesn?t include the tack strips either.

Mr. Howard never called me, but the Lowe’s girl left a message on my work phone the next day to the effect that she had spoken to him and he said if the floor wasn?t leveled we ran the risk of seeing or feeling the joints in between the flag stones of the existing floor through the carpet.

Because I never got to speak to Mr. Howard I never got to explain to him that it is not real flagstone, it is some sort of hard vinyl outdoor flooring from the fifties that is a fairly convincing simulation. There is a difference in height between the ?stone? and the ?grout?, but it is measured in thousandths of an inch and in no way would be felt through even the thinnest carpet applied over it. And had the mental midget who measured, looked down at something besides his tape measure, he would have noticed the swirly glue residue left behind from when we had pulled up the previous carpet and maybe realized that the floor didn?t need leveling.

So what now? We are into Lowe’s for $51 for the measurement visit, but thirty-five of which we would get off the install charge if they did it. The other $16 was for an asbestos check that was spent on our estimation guy using his Jedi mind powers to look for this problematic material. Either that or he can smell it because we didn’t see him do anything except unfurl his tape measure twice.

So we did the smart thing, cut our loses with Lowe’s, found some commercial carpet we liked at Home Depot for 85¢ a sq/ft, bought a tub of glue and some fresh blades for my box cutter. Total cost, is under $200 because my labor is free and that even includes the $51 we threw away.

(coming soon: Home Depot carpet buying experience & Lowe’s Ship to Store fun)

The Miata Is As Good As A Pickup*

*on a non-rainy day

Carpet Carrier1

A 12′ wide x 12′ long piece of carpet gets brought home easily from Home Depot.

Carpet Carrier2

And, believe it or not, Donna was able to ride home comfortably in the passenger seat as well.

Who The Hell Is William Foster?

And Why Is He Pestering Me?

He asked me to friend him on Facebook. He has asked me to join him on LinkdIN. He’d like to add my birthday to his MyCalendar reminders. He’s waiting for me to join Twitter. William Foster has added me as a friend on Zoosk. He is sharing with me on Google+. Bill Foster has left me a message on WAYN (which I had never heard of until good ol’ William Foster left me a message there.)

I don’t know anyone named Foster. The person I can remotely remember that had the last name Foster was a fellow I knew in the Navy when I first got to Guam, but he was called JD and I don’t see how that might translate into William.

William FosterLike I use Brian the Red in a lot of my online worlds, Mr. Foster favors gandalf3224 and his avatar certainly makes him look a little like that wizard, but he doesn’t look too familiar to me. The only thing I can figure is he has me confused with some one else using the same Brian the Red online.

William Foster, I’m not that guy, stop inviting me to things OK?

Here We Go Again

We decided that it was time to update the carpet in the “computer room.” It was put down at the same time that the carpet in the kitchen was, probably 15 years ago. It had two circular spots matted down in two of the four corners from the computer chair sitting on it for long periods of time. A couple years back we broke down and bought a chair mat, not so much to protect the carpet, it was too late for that, but to hide the most worn spot.

At first I was going to do it, then we thought maybe kitchen contractor guy would do it, but in the end a Lowe’s sub contractor will be doing it. They want just 50¢ a square foot, which in our case amounts to less than $75. Cheap enough.

They charge $35 to come out measure the room or in our case $50 because our house was built before 1978 and they need to check for asbestos. That cost will come off the installation charge as long as you do get them to install the carpet. We hope this guy is better at measuring than the last guy.

We scheduled an appointment for measurement today and was given a time range of 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM. We went into work a half hour early for three days, so we could make up the 1-1/2 hour off we left the plant today to make it home in time for our appointment. Three o’clock. 3:15, 3:30, quarter to four, 4:00 PM, nobody shows. Ten after four Donna starts calling numbers to find out where the measuring guy is. At 4:13 a red pickup pulls in our driveway.

He comes in and apologizes profusely for being late. Two quick measurements and he’s done. Pulls out his pad and starts patting his pockets. “Could I borrow a pen?” he asks. Sure you can, Donna hands him a pencil and I roll my eyes.

At least he didn’t leave a mess…

Straight Hat As A Metaphor For A Baseball Season?

500x386_rsnhatMy Red Sox Nation Citizenship package arrived in the mail Saturday. This year instead of the basic Starter Level package I usually purchase for $15, I doubled my investment and went for the All Star Level. For the extra dough I got some stuff that was cool, a 12″ x 18″ page full of Red Sox Fathead decals that I can stick various places and a Red Sox Yearbook. And some not so cool, a catalog of Red Sox themed merchandise to buy and a small drawstring bag made sort of like a sweatshirt or a small sweatshirt turned into a sort of drawstring bag.

But the real draw was the free hat. Regular readers who are more obsessed with my life than I am will remember that last year’s Red Sox hat only stayed in the head wear rotation until May before being donated to Goodwill because the sox were hanging crooked. This year’s RSN hat has its socks dangling at the proper angle and this season is looking good so far.

Carpet Of Ferns

Carpet of Ferns

After breakfast at the usual place we went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods. A nice little 3-1/2 mile trek and we had the woods practically to ourselves, only seeing a group of three people walking one trail over and a woman walking what looked like a dozen leash less dogs, some of whom trotted over to give us a closer look. When Donna asked her how many dogs she had with her, she replied, “Too many.”

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1220

Kitchen Before & After Photos

From February 2nd:
Here is our soon to be remodeled kitchen. The cabinets are original to the house. As is the yellow tile counter top and back splash. The floor is currently covered in dark blue commercial grade carpet and there is at least 2 layers of vinyl under that, who knows what is further down. Currently the dishwasher is the old fashioned manual kind.

If all goes according to plan in about a dozen days this will be an empty room, maybe even just a skeleton. D-Day is February 11th.

Here is our newly remodeled kitchen. The cabinets are Shenandoah Breckenridge in Maple Spice. The counter top is Caledonia granite and the back splash is 3 x 6 white tiles in a subway pattern. The floor is 12 x 12 light gray tile laid in a staggered pattern. The dish­washer is a GE Top Control Dishwasher with Steam Cleaning.

If all goes accord­ing to plan we will never remodel another kitchen.

This morning I washed off the Miata car cover to get it clean in the hopes I can sell it for a few bucks. I placed it on top of the Emperor to spray it off then left it on to dry. This afternoon I removed the cover and washed the car underneath. Then I washed rinsed off the Sonata too.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1219