i.need.a.holiday...[part.two]

[sunday day.two]

id say we were all pretty wrecked from the work of the day before, but again everyone was up bright and early around 8am getting their coffee buzz and revving up for the day. obviously we were quite ambitious in our planning the day before [if you'll recall the list of anticipated projects...] and we didnt quite get to cross everything off our list on day one. so while we casually put some finishing touches on the projects from day one we discussed the "revised" anticipated projects for sunday and monday and assembled our lists for the store.

per revision our was starting to look as follows:

sunday. we were anticipating finishing the crown molding up for good after getting the little remaining additional length of crown from the depot, and then the girls were going to start caulking, filling, and painting all the crown. after the crown was finished for the guy part, we were going to move on to bookshelves. we werent entirely sure how quickly they were going to go, the first attempts that karen and i had made towards cutting and assembling the face trim had been very slow and very rocky, and i was expecting much of the same. given the lack of estimation, we werent sure how fast it would go, but we were sure we could get it done on sunday and move on to bigger and better things. additionally, karen had done some searching online both the night before and that morning and had found a few different options for fill for the planter and we were going to attempt to get a truckload of dirt to unload into the planter on sunday as well. then, after we'd finished those projects and still had all this energy pumping [hah. hah. hah.] we were planning to install the first of the two doors that needed replacing and that we were going to pick up at the home depot today - and at some point we were going to have to go to home depot obviously. then add in a few meals, and that should pretty well round out sunday.

monday. well the folks-in-law had to leave for the airport a little after noon if they were going to make their flight, and since we were going to get most everything finished on sunday anyway, it should be a pretty light morning anyway. so we were anticipating for monday to just be finishing up whatever painting still needed to be done and then installing the other door that needed to be replaced, piece of cake, no biggie. after we'd conquered that freaking crown molding, how hard could it be to install a few doors anyway? and allan had plenty of experience installing doors after ike's rebuilding, so this should really be smooth sailing. we were set.

so after looking at the anticipated projects and deciding our course of action and after karen made a few phone calls to dirt people we decided the first thing on our list was going to be picking up a truck load of dirt, then home depot, then to the house to unload everything [which included the dirt and filling the planter with it] then on to all the inside projects for the day. so after a coffee refill and checking the directions we loaded up and headed out to pick up our dirt. can i just take a moment here to say again how awesome craigslist is? free dirt, can you beat that? haha, anyway, so we arrived 5-10 minutes later at this guys house and he was out in the front yard working and waiting for us and waved us in. after briefly telling me where to back the truck up and after a couple of tries to back it up without destroying the guys yard [he had nice grass, but the curb was pretty tall and the yard was inclined so the truck needed a little coaxing and tlc to accomplish this little task...] we were unloading the shovels and making our way to his backyard where he had a HUGE pile of dirt. apparently hed been cutting the front yard of his house for some 5 or 6 months now and where it used to be sloped up to the porch level hed been cutting it down to the base of the stairs and planting garden and bedding all the way around. so if thats too abstract for you, just imagine an "L" shaped area about 6 ft wide around the corner of the guys house and about 3-4ft deep. thats... a lot of dirt. he said he must have moved at least 50yards over the last 5 or 6 months, lordy... anyway he had tons of dirt free for our taking and luckily a few buckets and a wheelbarrow we could borrow to load with, so we dug in. well, it turns out this particular person was quite the gabb-er and quite friendly, so while we worked he jabbered our ears off about his house, his landscaping, his trees, his kid, his dog, his current lack of work situation, and im sure about a dozen other things i didnt overhear. i feel for anne... wow... she was doing the "easy" [as she put it, not me] work of shoveling and this guy was on her hip the whole time, while the other 3 of us took turns shoveling, and lifting the full wheelbarrow and buckets into the back of the truck for dumping. i cant say for sure how long we were there, but it didnt feel toooo long by any stretch. maybe a half an hour to an hour? i dont know, i was concentrating on sweating and getting dirty, not the time. so anyway after oh, 20-30 trips i guess, we'd pretty well filled the bed of my 8ft long-bed truck pretty well and i decided it was time to stop. i didnt want this dirt spilling out in an avalanche when we opened the tail gate at the house, so we'd hit our threshold for the load. after thanking the nice man and his son we loaded up and decided it was time for a quick lunch break on our way to home depot.

at this point karen and i knew where we were in the area and pulled over a few blocks away in a little shopping center with a half dozen food options and we decided on wendy's for lunch. as always it was a pleasant little meal [although they must have screwed up our order 5 times... lord...] and when we finished we had satisfied bellies and were ready to get a move on. next up was the depot, so we headed in that direction. although, before we got there we decided to take a quick detour to the home emporium to see about what the had to offer in the way of salvaged cheap doors. they did have quite a selection of doors although the vast majority of them were fixed doors [not operable isnt really what we were going for...] and the few non-fixed they had were about 8ft tall, about 6 inches larger that our opening so.... not so much. so we left there and made the short 2 black trip to the depot and got started on our list. this time around the home depot trip took a little longer, even though we split up into teams to try and cover more ground, faster. oh-well... seems thats just the way trips to the depot go. so at least an hour later, probably more, we finally departed the depot with both doors and necessary accessories [like hardware for instance - although they were pre-hung, so it was just doorknobs and locks for the most part], a replacement vent cover that wed had to remove to put the crown in, our additional stretch of crown, and a few other odds and ends [like some flowers that the girls decided we needed to pretty up the planter... dirt aint pretty enough for em??]. so we made our way homeward bound and before long arrived. at first there was someone parked blocking our unloading spot, so we temporarily parked elsewhere and unloaded as much as we could [home depot stuff] and then luckily the people with the vehicle showed up and relocated it for us [and we met some new neighbors apparently] and then i was able to back the truck right up to the planter. with the tailgate open we were about a ft from the edge of the planter so unloading should be pretty simple.

although things that should be simple, rarely are. not that the unloading and filling of the planter was overly difficult, just not as easy as we'd have liked. there was only room for 2 people to shovel at a time without hitting each other so at first we took turns doing that, then after filling the lowest tier of the planter the in-laws had a spark of genius. they decided that since the dirt was going pretty quick [although the whole process was going much slower than id hoped. filling the truck went pretty quick, but unloading was taking much longer... weird...] that we better come up with some other filler for the bottom back half of the planter so that we'd have enough dirt to finish the job [or at least get us close]. so in a stroke of brilliance they decided we should make a few trips to the backyard and fill the bottom of this thing with rubble from our still large pile in the back. it really was a fantastic idea, i dont know why we hadnt thought of it before! so we took a break from the dirt and started making a few trips to the back yard with whatever containers we could find to haul with [i.e. trashcans and our recycle bin, lol] and started filling the planter. well after about 10-15 heavy loads wed filled about a third of the back of the planter and decided we were done and it was back to the dirt. so for a while karen and i shoveled while the folks got to take a little rest, then anne started doing other yard stuff and soon allan relieved me and i got to take a little break. haha, and then the rain started.... at first it was just a little then it was a pretty good downpour of fat rain, but they were so close to finishing unloading that they didnt stop so i got quite a show from the porch as they shoveled the remaining mud into the planter, lol! well, by the time they were finished the planter was about 95% full had even planted their flowers in the mud, and mostly they were all very wet. so after rearranging the truck they washed out the back for me and soon enough we were all headed inside where they all found dryer clothes and we got started on phase 2 - the interior.

well... at this point, it was starting to get pretty late in the day, id say it must have been around 3? so allan and i decided to start with the remaining crown molding. after our experience from yesterday we were hoping it would go much faster today, but the last bit we had included the stupid rounded corner of our stairs and that was quite a pain in the arse to work around. after trying a number of splicing options and trying to figure out some way we could segment around the corner we gave up our attempts in sullen failure and decided to just make it a square corner and hope that the gap created by the rounded corner wouldnt be too unsightly. well, after we got it on there and finished the rest of the second piece of the crown all the way around we were frustrated as hell with all the pieces that didnt go our way, but we were very relieved to finally be done with the crown! woohoo! and while we had been working on that, the ladies had been busy painting the window trim for the two diamond windows in the stair and they were looking very nice [and im supposed to mention to my mom that they WERE able to clean the bottom diamond window from the outside and it looks a million times better now!] as well as finishing second coats of paint on the shelves and letting them dry and whatever other odds and ends they busied themselves with [im really not entirely sure, allan and i were just a touch distracted...].

by this time it was getting late and it was definitely time for dinner. so we started working on that. we grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and the girls made annes famous baked beans and some potato creation of karens, and we had a very satisfying dinner indeed! i might be a little biased, but i thought that everything turned out quite superbly and i was very pleased with my dinner. =]

well after dinner we were all pretty exhausted but there was still daylight so we felt a little guilty not working and started working again pretty soon. the girls started doing their caulking, filling, and painting of the crown molding while allan and i got started doing the face trim for the shelves. after figuring out a few tricks to measure and cut these things we got ourselves in quite a pattern of assembling them and before we knew it wed gotten the entire left half done and a pretty good start on the second half for tomorrow. but. it was getting late, and we were all wrecked, so it was off to bed for all the workers and we'd tackle whatever we could monday morning before they had to leave for the airport.... and with that, day two is concluded. and since i promised i would, heres a few pictures for you to show off just a little of the work we finished on days one and two. ;]

...crap.... my internet is being stupid and its not letting me put them on here... so youll just have to go to my picture album website to see them... sorry =/