Home & Garden
May. 14th, 2022 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_a"Wait 60 seconds, then call me", I say, then I begin to quickly move forward, not running, but walking fast. I have 60 seconds to clear the store.
MONTHS AND YEARS EARLIER.
We are coming to the end of the beginning of our work to make our downstairs usable. This has been a long process with a number of obstacles:
1.) The biggest problem is that the center of our downstairs, the "family room", is a big unwieldy space that I haven't seen used well by any of the renters who've previously been here. It's a kind of figure eight space, with hallways, sliding glass door, and stairs all impinging on it. One renter had a big pool table down here and another a huge sectional couch. They both looked jammed in.
2.) Combined with that is the fact that I wanted to do my best to do the opposite, to maintain a nice open space that isn't crowded like those previous setups. That called for open, built-in shelves to house our many books.
But:
3.) We had problems with the initial sale of our Berkeley house way back in the start of 2020 thanks to COVID, which killed any initial momentum we might have had to do work on the downstairs.
4.) And then COVID really settled in, and we didn't want people in our house for the duration of 2020 (other than our solar-install guy, a necessary evil.)
5.) And then when I finally settled on someone at the end of 2020, they flaked on two different appointments, at which point I decided they weren't good people to do a major project.
6.) By which time I'd come to a conclusion that all of the flooring in the downstairs was appalling.
7.) The offices were both done in beige carpets, and that was especially problematic because it meant that Kimberly's office caused her pain whenever she walked into it because of the scar on her foot from her botched 2018 surgery. So we decided to refloor the offices in the same vinyl planks that we'd used to redo the downstairs of my dad's house. That's all done, except for my closet (which is now awaiting the family-room shelving getting done because I don't have any place safe to put a closet full of graphic novels).
8.) The family room itself was done in large tiles which are relatively attractive and which keep the downstairs cool. But somehow the renters who installed those messed them up so that about a dozen tiles were wobbling, or coming up. (And more than that sound hollow underneath, which means the adhesive is not correctly under them.) My dad and I ended up removing 13 tiles, cleaning off old adhesive (which required a chisel!), and then replacing them. We've since regrouted them, and they look pretty good. Except some of our replacement tiles are noticeably redder than the originals, so now it just looks like we have TRAP TILES all over the room. We are *hoping* that the ones we didn't do don't cause problems, but I was at the verge of deciding we needed to replace the entire floor there were so many problems, so we pretty much did what we could.
As the tiling problem, and thus more than a year's or more worth of occasional floor work, came to an end, Kimberly and I started thinking about our family-room shelving again, as we had back at the end of 2020.
Because one of my potential designs involved having cabinets at floor level with shelving above them, my dad suggested we go to Home Depot, where their design department could produce an entire plan for our cabinets and shelving, that we could use even if we didn't go to Home Depot ... but he thought it likely that buying cabinets from Home Depot would be cheaper than having them hand constructed.
So, after deciding against stopping into Home Depot for a few weeks, because we always felt too busy when we were in town, we finally stopped in last Sunday. And not going those other times was a good decision, because we ended up spending 2 hours there (after an hour at home locking down our measurements).
The incredibly helpful and friendly J. worked through what we wanted and figured out how we could kludge it with what he had available. So we put together a plan for cabinets in the Family Room and my office, plus a bench connected to some of the cabinets in the back corner of the Family Room.
It was *not* a complete solution because we couldn't get shelving that matched the widths of the cabinets (as unlikely as that sounds, given they were all from the same manufacturer, but apparently most people are not doing what we are). But our theory is that we get the cabinets and have contractors install them. Then the contractors need to build counter surfaces atop the cabinets (because everything they had at Home Depot was way too deep) and they basically form our first shelf when they do so, and then build three slightly shallower shelves up above the cabinets. We also have plans for places without the cabinets where we'll just run two high shelves. For over desks and beds and such. Voila! A theory for a complete system for the family room (and our offices).
We then had to take our design plans home, where we mocked up our cabinets with the boxes and bins (mostly of books) that currently fill our family room and my office. We found several places where we were too tight, and so rejiggered things and sent them back to J.
Which brings us back to Home Depot on Thursday and the run across the store.
We scheduled Thursday to finalize our order, sending J. our changes in the meantime.
So, we went in, gave answers on a few final details, and then it was time to pay.
This was, I should note, a fairly large expenditure.
No problem: I'd moved money into our checking account and had the checkbook.
J. didn't have a till, so he took us up to the front to pay with our check.
Which was rejected. I don't understand what was up with that, but Home Depot does some check on large checks and they got a rejection and when they called to ask why they were told they needed a merchant number which they didn't have. Except that was just an automated recording. But when the clerk tried to talk to a human, she was told their office was closed. Because it was 3.30. (6.30 on the West Coast, and 9.30 on the East.) I mean, yeah, outside of banker's hours, but people kinda write checks at all times of day.
We tried with our ATM card next, rejected, and then J. hauled us back to his desk, where he *could* take plastic, so that we wouldn't stress everyone out, including the clerk, the people in line, and us.
Now this is ridiculous, because we had the money in our checking account, but I called up our two credit-card companies, figured out how much limit we had on each, and then asked J. to charge about half to the first.
Rejected.
Arrgh.
I knew this was modern-day psycho-super-cautiousness of not letting us use our own money (or credit) lest it be fraud.
And at that point I figured that if I had to start calling banks, I might as well call _our_ checking account rather than the credit card companies. So I did, using J's phone because you can't get cell signal inside Home Depot.
No problem, we were just hitting our daily spending limit, which the bank could raise.
The customer service rep just needed to message me a code so I could verify identity.
Which he did. Which I did not receive. See: no signal in Home Depot.
So I put down the phone and walked a few hundred yards to get out of the store. The message never showed up.
I walked a few hundred yards back and told our bank guy that he needed to wait 60 seconds and then message me, as sometimes messages don't go through if you're out of cell range when they first arrive.
Which is where we entered this story, with me rushing to the front of the store.
Good news: his message arrived. And his previous message. And a message from our credit card company asking about that "fraudulent" charge attempt.
When we write about cryptocurrency, one of our focuses is that it's self-sovereign: only you are in control of your money. This is a pretty real-world instance of why that's notable. Banks and credit card companies can entirely censor your spending. On Thursday, it was just about overzealous fraud prevention. But in the modern environment, what if it's about censoring payments to family planning centers? I could totally see the American Taliban taking that as their next step to attack Americans' reproductive rights. Imagine your own scenario.
In any case:
So, onward. I'd hoped this would be done in 2020. Then I set a definite deadline in 2021. So 2022 for sure.
Oh, the garden part of that title. In the last few months our neighbors ripped out a big shrub along their property line for us, so that we can keep it clean in the future and keep buffalo grass out of their yard.
It's been a big improvement, though I now have more rough hillside to maintain. (Sigh.) But I'm very happy to look out at our yard and not see that shrub.
A retaining wall out there to flatten the hillside is next on our list, but whereas the family-room and office work is a necessity, this one is just resolving a major annoyance, so I want to make sure I'm comfortable with how much is in our savings and what we're spending when we do the wall, which means it comes sometime after the bookcases (and hopefully when the markets have rebounded from Putin's criminal invasion of Ukraine).
And I say that's next, but the yard is a constant battle as I try not just to maintain it but also to weed out current problems. There's another shrub on the opposite side I'd like to deal with (all buffalo grass this one) and I'd like to clear out an area in our front yard for a plumeria tree and ...
MONTHS AND YEARS EARLIER.
We are coming to the end of the beginning of our work to make our downstairs usable. This has been a long process with a number of obstacles:
1.) The biggest problem is that the center of our downstairs, the "family room", is a big unwieldy space that I haven't seen used well by any of the renters who've previously been here. It's a kind of figure eight space, with hallways, sliding glass door, and stairs all impinging on it. One renter had a big pool table down here and another a huge sectional couch. They both looked jammed in.
2.) Combined with that is the fact that I wanted to do my best to do the opposite, to maintain a nice open space that isn't crowded like those previous setups. That called for open, built-in shelves to house our many books.
But:
3.) We had problems with the initial sale of our Berkeley house way back in the start of 2020 thanks to COVID, which killed any initial momentum we might have had to do work on the downstairs.
4.) And then COVID really settled in, and we didn't want people in our house for the duration of 2020 (other than our solar-install guy, a necessary evil.)
5.) And then when I finally settled on someone at the end of 2020, they flaked on two different appointments, at which point I decided they weren't good people to do a major project.
6.) By which time I'd come to a conclusion that all of the flooring in the downstairs was appalling.
7.) The offices were both done in beige carpets, and that was especially problematic because it meant that Kimberly's office caused her pain whenever she walked into it because of the scar on her foot from her botched 2018 surgery. So we decided to refloor the offices in the same vinyl planks that we'd used to redo the downstairs of my dad's house. That's all done, except for my closet (which is now awaiting the family-room shelving getting done because I don't have any place safe to put a closet full of graphic novels).
8.) The family room itself was done in large tiles which are relatively attractive and which keep the downstairs cool. But somehow the renters who installed those messed them up so that about a dozen tiles were wobbling, or coming up. (And more than that sound hollow underneath, which means the adhesive is not correctly under them.) My dad and I ended up removing 13 tiles, cleaning off old adhesive (which required a chisel!), and then replacing them. We've since regrouted them, and they look pretty good. Except some of our replacement tiles are noticeably redder than the originals, so now it just looks like we have TRAP TILES all over the room. We are *hoping* that the ones we didn't do don't cause problems, but I was at the verge of deciding we needed to replace the entire floor there were so many problems, so we pretty much did what we could.
As the tiling problem, and thus more than a year's or more worth of occasional floor work, came to an end, Kimberly and I started thinking about our family-room shelving again, as we had back at the end of 2020.
Because one of my potential designs involved having cabinets at floor level with shelving above them, my dad suggested we go to Home Depot, where their design department could produce an entire plan for our cabinets and shelving, that we could use even if we didn't go to Home Depot ... but he thought it likely that buying cabinets from Home Depot would be cheaper than having them hand constructed.
So, after deciding against stopping into Home Depot for a few weeks, because we always felt too busy when we were in town, we finally stopped in last Sunday. And not going those other times was a good decision, because we ended up spending 2 hours there (after an hour at home locking down our measurements).
The incredibly helpful and friendly J. worked through what we wanted and figured out how we could kludge it with what he had available. So we put together a plan for cabinets in the Family Room and my office, plus a bench connected to some of the cabinets in the back corner of the Family Room.
It was *not* a complete solution because we couldn't get shelving that matched the widths of the cabinets (as unlikely as that sounds, given they were all from the same manufacturer, but apparently most people are not doing what we are). But our theory is that we get the cabinets and have contractors install them. Then the contractors need to build counter surfaces atop the cabinets (because everything they had at Home Depot was way too deep) and they basically form our first shelf when they do so, and then build three slightly shallower shelves up above the cabinets. We also have plans for places without the cabinets where we'll just run two high shelves. For over desks and beds and such. Voila! A theory for a complete system for the family room (and our offices).
We then had to take our design plans home, where we mocked up our cabinets with the boxes and bins (mostly of books) that currently fill our family room and my office. We found several places where we were too tight, and so rejiggered things and sent them back to J.
Which brings us back to Home Depot on Thursday and the run across the store.
We scheduled Thursday to finalize our order, sending J. our changes in the meantime.
So, we went in, gave answers on a few final details, and then it was time to pay.
This was, I should note, a fairly large expenditure.
No problem: I'd moved money into our checking account and had the checkbook.
J. didn't have a till, so he took us up to the front to pay with our check.
Which was rejected. I don't understand what was up with that, but Home Depot does some check on large checks and they got a rejection and when they called to ask why they were told they needed a merchant number which they didn't have. Except that was just an automated recording. But when the clerk tried to talk to a human, she was told their office was closed. Because it was 3.30. (6.30 on the West Coast, and 9.30 on the East.) I mean, yeah, outside of banker's hours, but people kinda write checks at all times of day.
We tried with our ATM card next, rejected, and then J. hauled us back to his desk, where he *could* take plastic, so that we wouldn't stress everyone out, including the clerk, the people in line, and us.
Now this is ridiculous, because we had the money in our checking account, but I called up our two credit-card companies, figured out how much limit we had on each, and then asked J. to charge about half to the first.
Rejected.
Arrgh.
I knew this was modern-day psycho-super-cautiousness of not letting us use our own money (or credit) lest it be fraud.
And at that point I figured that if I had to start calling banks, I might as well call _our_ checking account rather than the credit card companies. So I did, using J's phone because you can't get cell signal inside Home Depot.
No problem, we were just hitting our daily spending limit, which the bank could raise.
The customer service rep just needed to message me a code so I could verify identity.
Which he did. Which I did not receive. See: no signal in Home Depot.
So I put down the phone and walked a few hundred yards to get out of the store. The message never showed up.
I walked a few hundred yards back and told our bank guy that he needed to wait 60 seconds and then message me, as sometimes messages don't go through if you're out of cell range when they first arrive.
Which is where we entered this story, with me rushing to the front of the store.
Good news: his message arrived. And his previous message. And a message from our credit card company asking about that "fraudulent" charge attempt.
When we write about cryptocurrency, one of our focuses is that it's self-sovereign: only you are in control of your money. This is a pretty real-world instance of why that's notable. Banks and credit card companies can entirely censor your spending. On Thursday, it was just about overzealous fraud prevention. But in the modern environment, what if it's about censoring payments to family planning centers? I could totally see the American Taliban taking that as their next step to attack Americans' reproductive rights. Imagine your own scenario.
In any case:
- Cabinets ordered. Arriving in 3-5 months on a truck delivered straight to our house.
- 13 tiles entirely removed, cleaned, and replaced, with final grouting occurring yesterday afternoon.
- No contractor found yet. That's the next step. We'll need them to install the cabinets and build tops and shelves.
- Thanks to our mock-ups, we've also got a good idea of furniture space in the Family Room, where I hope to have a loveseat and chair or two chairs. We can buy those soon if something strikes us.
So, onward. I'd hoped this would be done in 2020. Then I set a definite deadline in 2021. So 2022 for sure.
Oh, the garden part of that title. In the last few months our neighbors ripped out a big shrub along their property line for us, so that we can keep it clean in the future and keep buffalo grass out of their yard.
It's been a big improvement, though I now have more rough hillside to maintain. (Sigh.) But I'm very happy to look out at our yard and not see that shrub.
A retaining wall out there to flatten the hillside is next on our list, but whereas the family-room and office work is a necessity, this one is just resolving a major annoyance, so I want to make sure I'm comfortable with how much is in our savings and what we're spending when we do the wall, which means it comes sometime after the bookcases (and hopefully when the markets have rebounded from Putin's criminal invasion of Ukraine).
And I say that's next, but the yard is a constant battle as I try not just to maintain it but also to weed out current problems. There's another shrub on the opposite side I'd like to deal with (all buffalo grass this one) and I'd like to clear out an area in our front yard for a plumeria tree and ...