Living like A Normal Human Being Part I of II
Sorry for the long delay in between posts but it’s been a very busy 2 weeks. Since May 30th we’ve had the new floors installed and laid the marble entry. We’ve finished painting every room in the house and laid carpet in one of the guest rooms. We’ve also purchased the Granite tile countertops and Travertine backsplash tiles.
Now, for the story behind all the work that’s been done. Last Friday, after the floors had been up for one week, we scheduled the flooring people to come out that Saturday. So, I knew I had to clean out the garage because it was full of old sheetrock and laminate flooring. I took Friday off and decided to hire some day labors to help me move all the crap in the garage to the local dump.
Keep in mind I’ve never hired day labors but I have a friend who has lots of experience with this sort of hiring process. So, I called him and ask for his opinion, which usually consists of “Dude, come on its easy don’t be such a pussy. Go get you some MESICANSS and get’er done”. So, after the encouragement I decided to rent a trailer and go to the local Home Depot (HD) and see what I could get for 8/hr.
I must have smelled like work because as I drove up HD they spotted me like a two dollar whore on 5th avenue window shopping at Gucci! As soon as I hit the parking lot they started running towards my truck. Seriously, I felt like the ice cream man, ya know when all the kids would come running up to the truck! Anyways, as I tried to step out of my truck there were literally 20 guys crowding me saying “what you need, what you need?” I was like “Yo, STEP BACK! STEP BACK!…ocho dólares que una hora de acarrear basura!” what did I just say? Excuse me? Oh yes, I spoke Spanish and I spoke it well!!!
Anyways, as soon as I said that many we’re trying to get me to come up to 9 an hour but I was hell no, all you’re going to be doing is hauling trash. Come on! What was interesting was these two kids, I say kids but they were like 20, dressed fairly nice, ear rings in their ears, semi nice shirts, and designer jeans were like we’ll do it we’ll do it. But something told me that they wouldn’t work very hard. They didn’t have that desperation in their eye to work. Know what I mean? How hard are they willing to work in their nice clothes?
Suddenly I noticed this quiet man in the back of the crowd saying I’ll do it for 8. Boom! That’s all I needed to hear and I said you! There, you come with me. As I said that he started to point to the guy next to him saying “mi amigo, mi amigo tambien!” and I said to his friend “ocho dólares que una hora” and he said si si! Ok you two! Let’s go! As we started to pile in the car the crowd began to quickly disperse much quicker than I would have thought to be normal, when all of a sudden a sheriff drives up on a golf cart.
The first thing I thought was Oh shit! I’m busted!
But he just asked me if this was my car and I said yes and he said “Well I’m not trying to stop anyone from working but it’s illegal to hire people on HD property. You can’t do that here.” “Oh” I said, “I’m really sorry. I’ll just leave then.” “Ok” he said and I got into my car and looked at my two new employees and point to the curb just down from where I was parked. I started to drive towards the curb when I noticed 4 guys were running to my car. Two of them being the ones I picked out and two others. I rolled down my window and was like no, not you, NO MAS, NO MAS! Culado!
Next thing I know I’m driving to my house with two Mexicans in my car!! SWEET! I told them that if they worked hard I’d buy them lunch and pay them well. They worked hard so I bought them lunch. We, I mean me, actually had a good time. I tried my best to speak Spanish to them and we came up with a term called escoba loco, the crazy broom. I was looking for my broom but didn’t know where it was so I asked them how to say broom in Spanish. They told me and then I was the joke for the rest of the day.
And to my utter surprise it only took us 3 hours to completely clean out my garage and dump the trash!
Random Link of the Day
Billy, what are you doing!?
Home stretch..
Well, L and I seem to be on the home stretch of Phase I of the remodel. Last night I pulled up almost 1k square feet of laminate flooring. At first I thought this project would be very difficult and it was going to kill my back. I thought maybe I should hire some day laborers to help but as I started it went pretty fast actually. And in about 2 hours I had almost removed all 1200 square feet of it.
It’s vital to get the old flooring up because we had a high amount of moisture in the floor so the concrete has to dry before they can lay the floor. In addition to that we found out that the flooring we chose doesn’t come with stair nose. So, now we’re going to have to stain a piece of unfinished stair nose and hope that it matches well. Also, the stair nose that comes closest to the grain of the wood we chose is 5/8 of an inch thick where the floor wood is 3/8 thick. That means the layers are going to have to cut the stair nose down to match the thickness of the floor. This should be fun!
Plus, all the concrete in the entry and hallways have to be leveled because it looks like someone added a different layer of concrete which is not only higher than the foundation concrete but it’s really really rough too. So, I’m sure there will have to be a lot of leveling and chiseling out where the rough concrete meets the smooth slab concrete. Good news, on the other hand, is that we’re almost finished with the kitchen. We hung all the doors, painted the interior kitchen walls and I did some electrical which went really well.
I also dropped a gas line down the kitchen wall and accidentally put a hole in the dinning room ceiling in the process. But this project was quite pleasant because what I thought was going to take several days only took a few hours. Man, I wish I knew where my camera was so I could document all this. We tried taking Polaroids but it’s just not the same. Anyways, the gas went smooth as silk compared to our last house which took 3 days to get it right. Guess there are some advantages to owning a house that isn’t as old as dirt!
So, now that the floors are almost all up we’re heading into the final stretch as far as the major construction is concerned. We still have to tile the counters and move the gas cook top but that shouldn’t be too difficult (I hope!). Once the floors are in I think the house will begin to actually feel like home. Right now it still feels like a construction zone with dust dust dust everywhere!
Random Link of the Day
Write an Essay!
Street fighter with Jackie Chan
STREET FAMILY GUY: PETER GRIFFIN VS SAKURA
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