Mmmm, Pergo (or similar).

Post title is a quote from Flippy, who will envy me my hardwood floors, which serves her right for taunting me with soft pretzels and nacho cheese. Also, Lisa had requested an update, so here 'tis. My parents came up Saturday to work on the floors. My mom brought a huge pot of chili. She makes great chili: instead of only the usual kidney beans, she also puts black beans and Great Northern beans. It's yummers.

So all day we worked more on the floors, putting trim down around the baseboards. In between, I filled several large black garbage bags with stuff and threw them in our dumpster. Ha-HA, skanky neighbors - I actually used mine!

Here you can see the new trim we put down. That grimy smudge on the doorjamb is where A Certain Puppy scratches his back every day. I should have cleaned it off before I took the picture, but oh well.

My dad did the difficult part: measuring, figuring out how to cut each piece (both length and angle). I did the easy part: installation.



Here is another part of the hallway. This part made me angry. When my dad cut it, those two pieces of outside angle fit together PERFECTLY, and I do mean perfectly, as perfectly as someone with a mechanical engineering degree from U-Cal Long Beach could do it. (Or is it Cal State Long Beach? I am not sure. Anyway, he went to college in Long Beach, SoCal and I'm pretty sure sometimes he actually went to class instead of surfing, because he is S-M-R-T.) But anyway, I was angry because when I installed first the front piece and then the long piece on the left, once I'd put the caulk/glue/sealer gunge along the sides, it wouldn't fit perfectly any longer, and now it's a wee bit off. This perturbs me.

I am becoming frustrated with this whole project. I'm very grateful that my parents are willing and able to help and I do appreciate them giving up their Saturday to work on my house. Alan is doing tons of work as well, so I don't want anything I write to hurt their feelings, because it's not directed at them. But it seems like we work and work and work, and get next to nowhere. My parents were here 6 or 7 hours on Saturday, and we got one threshhold down and like 4 pieces of trim cut. It's not like we stand around chatting and goofing around, either - everyone, including me, seems to bustle around busily doing this and that, but after hours of this, I collapse exhausted on the sofa and look around to see the results of our labours, only there aren't any.

Dad did run into a time-consuming difficulty Saturday. The hardwood was just thick enough that once we had the threshhold down, the kitchen door (to the garage) wouldn't close, so he and Alan had to take the door off its hinges and shave about 1/4" off the bottom. I understand that this unexpected side-track took a lot of time, but still, there is so little progress! The hall isn't even finished because one of the trims that goes in there is 1/8" wider than the others, apparently mislabeled and it looks wonky, so we can't finish until I go back to Lowe's and buy more trim!

I was going to re-use the trim that was already down in the kitchen, so today I figured I'd get that put back down. I can't find some of the pieces. When I yanked it up pre-hardwood installation, I put them all in a box, or so I thought, but the box does not contain 1 or 2 pieces of the appropriate lengths necessary. Other pieces that look like they'd go here don't fit together at the end with the only other piece of the right length to go perpendicular to it. I'm afraid to put any of it down in case we have to buy new pieces, in which case it would be better to buy enough to do the whole kitchen, so it will match. So that's some more nothing finished.

Oh, but Mom and I had a nearly life-threatening adventure! This is getting long so I'll post that as a separate entry.