Oh, this has been going on a while, hasn’t it. On March 14 I blogged about a pipe feeding the radiant heaters that had apparently busted in our kitchen wall, in January, and how it was humidly wrecking havoc on the kitchen with steam pouring through the wall, peeling paint etc. And it couldn’t be fixed until the winter months were over as it would mean turning off the heat to everyone’s apartments for an unknown period of time. Rather than sacrifice everyone else’s heat, I figured we’d put up with the mess and then it would be taken care of in the spring and I’d get a new paint job in the kitchen.
They began working on the pipes yesterday. They’re now packing sand in the hole that was part of the kitchen floor and readying to lay concrete over it. And part of a kitchen wall is torn out. What was involved was replacing a series of busted pipes that feed the radiant heaters. Those pipes not only ran through the wall, but down into the concrete foundation of this old building. We’re the third apartment that they’ve had to excavate. I was hoping for a new kitchen floor (I wanted black and white checkerboard like in the apartment above) but they salvaged the old linoleum just peeling it back and will lay it back down over the new concrete. Which is kind of, well, gosh darn, drat, because I had my heart set on a black and white checkerboard floor after this mess. I don’t know when the wall will be repaired but I understand the kitchen won’t be painted probably for another couple of weeks.
Later. Now the concrete is setting. I don’t know if the landlord is gone or not. No, wait, his truck’s still out there. We’ve got mosquitoes inside from the back door being open all day long. They were trying to figure out how to rebuild a threshold. Or not. I said yes. Please. I don’t want a gap under the door. Looks like we’ll be getting a bump that should be painted neon orange so we don’t trip over it. I guess. I don’t know. I would occasionally make an appearance and ask a question and get vague responses. The landlord, usually a fairly cheery guy, hasn’t granted a smile once throughout the whole procedure.
It was smelly in here today, what with all the welding going on, and all this has been taking place really right next to my desk as my desk is right next to the kitchen and the kitchen is barely six feet long, if that much. So, six feet from my desk all this has been taking place.
The landlord went ahead and cleaned the walls in preparation for painting. They were a mess from those months of steam. I suppose I could have washed them all down myself this summer but I mean they were nasty and paint was peeling in places and I…didn’t. I kept thinking well they’re going to be in here tearing up the kitchen sometime soon, next week, the week after, when (?).
Then a couple of weeks ago the landlord said he believed that with the replacing of the pipes next door he thought it was all fixed and sounded vague on painting over what had happened in the kitchen, so I told Marty it was time to get some paint ourselves and do it and we almost purchased paint on Sunday but couldn’t decide on a color so we just got some flat antique white for me to touch up the walls in the other rooms. Then this week the landlord appeared at the back door. The problem wasn’t fixed. The pipes were tested and water poured everywhere. Right next to our back door. Right where I said I knew the pipe was busted. It was time to tear up the kitchen.
Fortunately they didn’t start work until Thursday. H.o.p. was sick with a bug and throwing up Tuesday and Wednesday. So we went from vomiting child to well child and kitchen being torn out. I had them hang plastic over the doorway (there is no door) because of my computer being right there, and because I was hoping to keep in the kitchen airborne dust and debris of deconstruction.
Later still. The landlord returned. Too late to do the threshold today as they have to level things. It’s too late to glue the floor back down and the concrete’s still setting and they have to level the floor some more it turns out because where the new concrete was laid in it’s uneven and doesn’t match up with the old floor. Besides, when he laid the linoleum back down, the new pipe coming out of it has been installed so it’s situated a couple of inches from where the old pipe was and now the linoleum has superfluous cutouts. The landlord didn’t mention a new floor. This is discontinued linoleum so if he’s planning on just patching it I’m wondering where the patch will come from.
I’m sympathetic. He’s exhausted. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and usually there’s no problem with that. Maybe because he knows I would prefer a new floor to a patched one.
It’s certainly not been chaos around here the past few days but it’s been…unsettled. Despite it all, I was in a great mood yesterday. Today, not so much. Last night would have been a great night to go to the observatory but H.o.p. said he’d prefer to go tonight when he knew it would be busy with people. But there’s cloud cover so no observatory tonight. Too bad. An excursion to the observatory would be welcome right now.
Last week, on our way back from Augusta, the sky was clear and there was no moon and the stars were bright and the milky way shimmering. I had Marty pull off the interstate and we found a place next to a cow pasture where we stopped the car, got out, and stood for a long time taking in the sky, cows on the other side of the fence occasionally making hulking cow sounds.
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