Another delivery snafu!

Running a delivery operation must be much harder than it seems. I was supposed to get a delivery today from Home Depot. When I scheduled, I was told to call at 8 a.m. to find out when my delivery was (morning or afternoon). When I called at 8 a.m., I was told the truck had already been to my house and left. Huh? Gone by 8 a.m.? I told them what I had been told (by them) and asked for the truck to be resent. They complied, and it arrived around 9. OK, it all worked out fine, but still, why is delivery so hard?

C took today and tomorrow off of work to work on the wiring. This is a rare treat for me because he almost never takes the day off! He has undertaken wiring the house for cable TV, computer network, phone and speaker wire. I think it's really ambitious, and I'm impressed with his willingness to take on such a huge task. He is really quite knowlegeable in this area, and we both think it will be great to have all the rooms wired for TV, phone, and network. It will give us a lot of flexibility in how we use the rooms, and it will be good to have all the wiring run while the walls are open. He was going to use a space in the laundry area to put the panel where all these things join up. Then he came up with the brilliant idea of using the space where the old heater flue was. Our heater was in the crawl space under the house, so there was a flue going up to the roof. The drywall surrounding the flue was created dead space maybe 18" square, and right in the center of the house. It's a perfect place to put the panel, and will make use of otherwise useless space. It saves the space in the laundry area for accessable storage. As I often tell him, he's really smart. It was a real treat to have him around today working on the house with me.

After meeting the Home Depot delivery, I waited around until 10 when C met with the electrician about running the non-electrical wires (cable TV, network, phone, speaker, etc). It's not normally something he does, but C was able to tell him exactly what to do and where to put everything, so he agreed to do it. We are both really happy because this will save a lot of time and effort. C would have been crawling around in the attice and crawl space, and we may not have the appropriate tools. Also, everytime a wiring issue came up, such as how to penetrate a floor-level wall support or how to round a corner) we would be reinventing the wheel but the electrician would already have done it a bunch of times. I think it is a perfect solution to have him do the work and C supervise.

After the electrician left, C and I got to work putting the delivery away. I was fortunate to be able to schedule it today because I really needed help putting it away. Home Depot and most other places will only do curbside delivery so we had to stash it all in the garage. Today was a big order - bathroom cabinets, water heater, bathroom vanity, and kitchen counters. We didn't have a hand truck, so we moved some stuff by rolling over two pipe scraps and moving the rear one to the front once it came out from behind. It was sort of like they do on Nova or Discovery when you watch a show on building the pyramids. C thought I was cleaver to think of this.

After putting the order away, I went to the local tile store and picked up one of the tiles for the bathroom. I also had to decide on grout for this and the granite for the laundry/mud area. That took about an hour an a half. What can I say, I am very particular but I do like the choices I made. Also, they do have about 60 grout colors, so it's not totally my fault that it takes a while to decide.

I then braved a trip to Ikea to pick up some cheap lighting and a kitchen sink. They have a really cheap ceiling mounted fixture which will be perfect for utility areas like the laundry. I also ordered a kitchen sink. They had one I really liked and didn't see elsewhere. It is stainless steel with two bowls and an additional 20" of stainless that sits flush on the countertop to use as a drainboard. I really like the idea of not needing a dish rack, and any drips can be easily wiped into the sink. I think it will look really good to have a little extra stainless in the kitchen too. While I was there, I picked up a faucet too. I'm not as particular about the kitchen faucet as I was about the bath, so I was fine picking from their 6 or so choices. It seemed like a simple and adequate solution.

My last stop of the day was to go to the house and put the trash out. I got another 4 bags out, leaving us with just 13 bags and 1 box of trash left behind by the prior owner. That's probably 4 more trash days, and almost certainly before we move in. Yay! I just can't believe we still have that much trash after he's been gone two months.