Look who's here! It's Lee Rowan to talk about relaunching domestically (and the associated hair-pulling to which anyone who's remodeled can attest!) Lee, you have the floor... what's left of it! ;-)
Where is Mike Holmes When You Really Need Him?
Since this is for Jessica's blog relaunch, I thought I'd do a laundry room
relaunch. Got a good theme, stick with
it, right?
Sort of…
Trouble is, the teardown started June 4 (actually, the clear-out started
in May but the workers came in in June. And as soon as the whole basement was totally
torn up, the so-called workers started coming in for an hour or two every day,
and then vanishing. It Was Not Pretty.
We finally just gave up and dumped Mr I Can't Schedule My Time and forged
on alone, mucking with ceiling tiles and trim (my wife) and teeny-tiny glass
tiles (me).
It is, as I write, August 7. And
we only JUST NOW – as in, the lovely washer-repair man is leaving the house –
got far enough along to be able to throw a load of clothes into the machine and
wash them.
We're still not done by a long shot – we haven't primed or painted the
walls, the shower isn't even completely grouted, and we're still trying to
decide where to put the canned staples that we used to keep in the pantry under
the stairs. But … we have a working
laundry again.
I kept trying to write this the past few days and it kept coming out as a
prolonged whine, and who wants to read that?
But last night, my wife and I got the floor covering glued down (to the
last drop of adhesive in the bucket) and this morning a wonderful young man
with a load of plumbing tools showed up.
It was encouraging when I told him I'd be letting in a big friendly dog
and he said "Great!" and then, when Watson rushed in to say hello,
the first words were, "What a gorgeous dog!" The man is either a keen judge of dogs or has
learned how to butter up a customer…
Cassie, who is generally afraid of young men, hung back and frowned
suspiciously, with the occasional bark to let him know she was watching
him. Even after he told her his first
dog had the same name and was one of her parent breeds, she still wasn't going
to let him pat her.
He then (unlike the surly buggers who did the earlier work and have
departed because they refused to give us an itemized account and then billed us
for something they didn't do) proceeded to hook up our laundry tub, shower
hardware, toilet, and sink in a little over an hour. And then
he unstuck the upstairs toilet which had become surly only this morning,
explained why the bathroom sink has never drained properly, and figured out
where the ominous drip was coming from that keeps messing up a part of the
basement ceiling. And of course we've
made an appointment for him to come back and set those to rights … later.
We have found a plumber at last.
Praise Neptune and Calypso and all the water sprites and naiads!
Eventually Cassie, fed up with all the attention Watson was getting,
finally came close enough to accept a pat and a treat. Matt the Plumber has the right stuff – Cassie
has only let one other man pat her on the first date, and he was 87. And she never did like Mr. I Can't Schedule or
the weirdo plumber he brought along.
Watson wanted to go with Matt, and I suspect with any encouragement he would've
taken him.
Then we tried to shift the laundry stuff back into the room and things got
interesting… again. Mr. I Can't
Schedule had helpfully shifted the washing machine out of the room, and in the
process knocked its cover askew. I'll
tell you, a washing machine looks really sinister with its knickers off. Big metal frame and that suspicious-looking
tub… and the experts of the Internet
will tell you it's simple to put the thing back together, but it isn't – it's
one of those cases where you have 4 hands and have to hold 5 things in
alignment. After wrestling with it for
an hour, we were about ready to burst into tears. We've got friends coming over tomorrow to
house-sit while we go off to the memorial service for my wife's brother, who
died last month, and we really wanted to at least launder all the blankets.
Everybody we called could come put the frame on next week. One company said they could do it
tomorrow. And then finally, penultimate
listing in the yellow pages – yeah, they could do it between 4 and 5.
And there he was at 4:30, another delightful gentleman who had a couple of
big dogs at home and got Watson's seal of approval, wrangled the cover back on
the thing, hooked it up, and ran a short cycle to make sure all was well.
So now I'm off to feed the dogs and cats while my wife sorts out .. oh,
about a month's worth of laundry. And
then we'll WASH it.
THANK DOG!
And, by the way, my Royal Navy series, out of print since Cheyenne
Publishing closed its doors, is also relaunching – with Dreamspinner
Press. Ransom's new edition is due out
September 1 – look for it in Dreamspinner's "Coming Soon" section –
and the other books will follow at discreet intervals.
Look for a very nice bargain
with Winds of Change and Eye of the Storm – they will be in a single volume and
priced accordingly!
Text &
photos copyright Lee Rowan, August 2014
Book covers
copyright Dreamspinner Press
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