Thursday, January 14, 2010 - A Muddy Mess (and it has nothing to do with the yard)

I apologize to my loyal readers for missing an entry on Wednesday. A 12-hour workday followed by a three-hour business dinner didn't leave much time or energy for an entry.

(As a quick sidebar, The Germantown Cafe may have surpassed Sunset Grill as my favorite restaurant in town. The Germantown Cafe is pretty close to my office and I usually end up there about once a month for lunch and a little less frequently for dinner. But the food is always great, the service good, and I have never had to wait for a table. I have never had a bad experience there, which is why I return there again and again. Come to think of it, whether it is Germantown Cafe, Sunset Grill, The Tin Angel, Copper Kettle, or many of the other independent restaurants in town, we have got it pretty good in Nashville.)

Where was I? There have been many times, probably more often than not, when I haven't written an entry until the next day, but I am just going to let things slide since only a little drywalling was done. But Thursday, was a mixed bag of tricks. All of the brickwork is done, which is a great milestone. I didn't get much of a look because it was well past dark by the time I arrived home tonight, and the dangling floodlight wires haven't yet been connected to the new fixtures. I did get to flip on the (old) front porch light to inspect the bricks on the posts of the front porch, and it looked good. I think the brickwork has been the best part of the project...maybe the one part of this process that has kept me sane.

But I also came home to a drywall process that will, without a doubt, run long. Seeing the mud smoothed along the seams of the wall is a beautiful sight. Mud on the floor, not so pretty. But if they want to trash the floor of our current bedroom, more power to them. That just means they will need to refinish the floor when they install and finish the rest. In fact, we were going to go ahead and drop down the extra cash to have them do it so we could have the entire addition and the east half of the existing house all done with nice shiny floors. Think I will let it slide and get it done for free.

But they still haven't put mud over the dimpled screw holes, nor have they messed with any of the windows or the joints where the walls meet the ceiling. They have projected Monday, but I say Wednesday at the earliest. I am not even sure if what they put on today will dry well enough to sand on Friday. They placed two large kerosene heaters/blowers in the addition (one on each level) to assist in the drying process. One ran out of fuel around 7:00, and the other at some point before 10:00. I have set up an electric heater in one of the interior rooms to dry the mud in two rooms of the existing structure, and we will see if that works in the morning.

As I lay here in bed taking four or five times longer to key this into my BlackBerry rather than my PC, I am actually warm for a change at bedtime. All of the heaters have warmed up this part of the house nicely. Maybe even too nicely. We will see if the dogs and I are completely dehydrated in the morning. It is certainly a change of pace from the last two weeks.