The saga continues.

So it’s been a week and you’re probably all waiting with bated breath to hear that the Kitchen Guy showed up and swapped out the cupboards, installed the fan hood, added the crown moulding, replaced the doors, gave the Bathroom Guy the go-ahead to do the backsplash and generally just made my kitchen look like a kitchen?

Unless you want to turn blue, take a deep breath and release it. (reminds me of an evening back in Ajax, about 20 or so years ago when a neighbour called up and asked if I wanted to go to a “relaxation” seminar with her. As I recall, I was on deadline and stressed to the max, so I said sure, I’m game.  We went and there sat some high priest or monk or guru in bright orange who talked for an hour and a half about bad air and good air and made us hold one nostril while we breathed in good air then swap nostrils to breath out the “red” bad air. An hour and a half breathing in one nostril and out the other. Wasn’t too bad till the guy in front of me started snoring, which of course started me laughing…one of those laughing fits you can’t stop? Orange Guy kept glaring at me with one flared nostril until I finally had to leave the room to stop laughing.)

So no, Kitchen Guy hasn’t been seen for a week and a half. Hasn’t been heard from since I sent him a nastygram email at 5am one morning reminding him he still had the f*&king bathroom cabinets to measure and build so Bathroom Guy could finish HIS job.

Which neatly segues into Bathroom Guy. He was here every day right up to Monday, doing what he could do, so I can’t knock him for that. Or wait…maybe I can. Monday was the day I took my car for an oil change and left Bathroom Guy holding a drill and eyeing the wall in the kitchen where the new vent for the stove fan had to be cut through. Keep in mind, the original walls in this joint are about a foot thick, and he could see the aggravation Electrical Guy went through just to drill a simple hole to thread new wiring through, so I’m sure he wasn’t anticipating any pleasure or ease cutting through an outer wall. I think it was a good thing I wasn’t here to actually see or hear the hole being reamed out. When I got back, however, he was finished and gone, a shiny tin pipe was protruding from the wall with the added decorator touch of a burgundy towel stuffed into the open end. The counters were covered in a fine layer of dust. The floors were covered in a fine layer of dust. The floor in front of the counters looked like it had been stamped for dance lessons, with footprints ground into the hardwood giving instructions for the Samba. The sink was full of freshly rinsed dishes and utensils, so he had obviously made an attempt to clean up some of the fallout. He’s normally good that way, and will even go the extra yard and vacuum the whole kitchen if it’s his dust making the mess. I’m guessing most of what was on the counters was residual crap that settled after he left. Cept for the dance instructions on the floor. Hmm.  Now Tile Guy was the best in that department. His momma should be proud. At the end of every work day, he tidied up his tools, put everything away, then got out a bucket and sponge and washed the whole floor!!!!!

I digress. So I wiped all the counters down again, washed the stuff Bathroom Guy either missed or didn’t think would gather dust, like the two steel containers that actually HOLD the utensils that he rinsed. Yeah, they were full of sawdust and drywall dust. Moved everything, wiped everything, washed the infernal floor…again. (I have washed the kitchen floor more times in the past month than I ever did in thirteen years at the other house. Which also brings to mind the Cleaning Wench who was going to come and clean the new joint on my regular day, a scant week after I moved in, and I said Uhhhh…no. At that time there were literally little pathways winding around the mountains of boxes, none of the rooms were organized, and there was new dust clouds every day. Being as meticulous a cleaner as she is, she probably would have fainted in the doorway, bashed her head on a box, we’d have to call EMS, who wouldn’t be able to get the ambulance up the driveway because of all the trucks, so they’d have to carry her down the steep slope on a stretcher, and she’d probably slide off and end up mashed against the fence, or worse, shoot all the way to the road on the flattened path of unraked wet leaves, and get run over by a passing car….  Nah. I cancelled that visit and told her I would be in touch when there was something to actually clean.)

Where was I?  Oh yes, cleaning the kitchen. So when all was tidy, dust-free, swabbed and swept, I made myself a much-deserved cup of coffee. Went to get my cup out of the cupboard and….a tiny waterfall of dust and sawdust spewed forth onto my clean counter. AUGHHHHHHHH. Every cupboard, every shelf…drywall dust and sawdust. And of course, the corner where the hole was cut has the most cupboards clustered around it, so after I used every version of f**k I knew…as an adjective, verb, noun, adverb…I had to take everything out  to clean again.

Now…is it just me? Or is it  men in general who suffer from brain farts? Me, as a woman, knowing I was going to create a Vesuvius of dust and debris, I would have covered the cupboards either with a dropsheet or with some form of plastic. If not to save them from dust and destruction, just to save them period since they’re new and custom made and cost a blinkin fortune!!!!! A ten cent garbage bag taped over the top and hanging down would have saved all the aggravation. Or…*gasp*…MOVING the stuff off the counter and over to the island and covering it would have avoided the whole rinse and dry rinse and dry issue entirely!!!!!! AUGHHHHHHHHH!

On to the bathroom itself. Tile Guy did his job and the shower is magnificent if I do say so myself. And as mentioned, Bathroom Guy did what he could do without Kitchen Guy/Cabinet Guy putting in the cabinets and vanity. He left me a note on the Monday saying the Glass Guys would be here on Friday to install the 8 ft glass doors for the shower, and thankfully, I have learned to hold a nostril and let out that bad red air and not hold my breath waiting, cuz yes, you guessed it, Glass Guys did not show up.  Electrical Guy was here to connect the washer, dryer, dishwasher (Yay, Yay, Yay,) but he couldn’t do anything more in the kitchen until Kitchen Guy shows up from whatever mountain retreat he’s vanished into to swap out the wrong sized cupboards for the right sized cupboards and gives Bathroom Guy the go-ahead to tile the backsplash.

Today’s hopeful little mission is to move a couch out of the family room that is standing on it’s end because it doesn’t fit up the stairs to the TV room. The Clone is supposed to come get it, assuming his mother in law’s spouse kindly provides a truck capable of shlepping it the six blocks down the street. Going also is the island that used to be in the kitchen before it was gutted. My DIL spied it as it was being marked for demolition and threw her body across it, claiming it for a bar for their basement. Fine. They moved it out intact over a month ago and it’s been sitting in front of my garage draped in a bright blue tarp ever since. Gone. I want it gone. I already feel like I’m living in an episode of Hoarders with all the junk still lying around outside…although thanks to Number One Grandson, the mountain of empty boxes that was piled on the front deck was all shlepped down to the curb on recycle day. And I do mean a mountain. He made about ten trips hauling it all down, folding and stacking and packing the piles…pinning them down with sections of an old toilet. I’m not surprised that only one neighbour has ventured up the driveway to say hello. I’d be inclined to think Granny Clampett had moved into the ‘hood too.

Breathing. I’m still breathing. Laminate Guy is supposed to show up today to finish installing the quarter round in the rooms upstairs. I won’t even tell you what HIS excuse was for not showing up the last four times he said he would. I’ll just say it was an excuse I’ve never heard before and original enough I couldn’t even think of a comeback.

Kitchen Guy has vowed to have all the work in the kitchen completed the week of the 20th. Of November. That would be next week. My birthday is on Monday, so wouldn’t that be a nice surprise to see trucks in the driveway and cupboards being carried into the kitchen. I might even *gasp* get the baseboards and crown moulding put back on my office wall unit…or *double gasp with swoon* mouldings and baseboard put on the bedroom armoire. The latter also has to be permanently attached to the wall because it’s on a definite tilt forward (love the gently sloping floors all through the house)  and I have visions of waking up one morning pinned under a ton of solid oak from it crashing forward. As it is I have to close my eyes and grope for clothing cuz I get instant vertigo if I stand beside it and see/feel the slant.

Breathe. Good air in, red air out.

Not the end of the saga, I’m sure. As Ahh-nold would say: I’ll be baaaack.