Timeout, Consumerism and Murphy's Law

Friday we decided to take a much needed break - a sort of self-imposed timeout, so we drove down to Philadelphia after work to do a little shopping and have a nice dinner. Dottie met me at work around 4:30 and we headed down the PA Turnpike towards "King of Prussia" (yes that is the name of a city) where the "King of Prussia Mall" is located as well as a host of other shops. After a quick 50 minute drive down and we were there.

We had been catalog browsing for furniture in the last few months and are in desperate need of furniture for our bedroom having not ever had any "real" furniture. We had found some things we really liked in the Pottery Barn catalog, but we were concerned it might be too big for our new master bedroom.

We have gone from one extreme to the other in terms of bedroom size. In the old house, the bedroom was 16x20 - huge, with a great deal of un-utilized space. In the new place, the bedroom is a mere 13x16 and the big challenge is how to arrange furniture due to the way it is laid out. I don't think builders give any thought to how people might arrange furniture when they build homes. This room has a window one corner of the long wall, a bathroom door in the middle of one wall, a window in the middle of the opposite wall and a whole length of built-in closets on the other wall. There is really only one place to put the bed in this room and there is only room for 2 night stands and a very small vertical dresser. Additionally, we have a bit of concern about clothing storage as we have been spoiled by a huge walk-in closet in our former house that was nearly the size of a small bedroom.

We went to Crate and Barrel to look at a breakfast nook table that Dottie had spotted in their catalog. We could have ordered it and had it delivered, but we wanted to see it first. It is a round pedestal-style table in white with 4 matching chairs. It will look really good in the new kitchen with the cabinets and counters being all white.

This store was huge. There were two floors with housewares and some furniture on the lower level and and upper level that was all furniture. We were talking with a sales person and they informed us that the upper-level was actually a separate business under the same name and that they carry higher quality furniture than some of the stuff downstairs. If you have ever been to C&B or seen their catalog, they have some decent quality, well designed and relatively inexpensive stuff. The furniture on the upper level was significantly more expensive, but you could tell it was nice stuff.

We found a couple of beds we liked, but nothing that really grabbed us, until we saw one that we had passed by and managed to not see. It was a bit more than we wanted to spend, but we have always wanted some nice bedroom furniture and we promised ourselves we would stop buying cheap furniture that wears out in 2 years

This particular line is handmade in Vermont by a small furniture company that has been around for a long time. It is all wood...ALL wood - no MDF, no veneers - just solid cherry. It should last for the rest of my life. If it doesn't I'll have to return it.

We ended up getting the bed and dresser in the picture, plus a couple of nightstands. It isn't all in stock and when it comes in it will be shipped from a remote warehouse. We decided to wait and have it all delivered at once when it comes in, which won't be until the end of September. This is a good thing because we need more time to work on the floor of the master bedroom - we pulled out the carpet yesterday hoping to find a nicely preserved hardwood floor. Instead we found a floor that appears to be unfinished but with paint smears and drops all over it as if the original paint job was done without a drop cloth and then carpeting installed over it. We need to figure out how to get the paint off without sanding (if even possible) and then get some polyurethane on it before the furniture gets here.

My plan for yesterday (Saturday) was to get an early start so I could knock out two rooms. I was a little late getting out of bed, but I needed the sleep desperately. Most every night last week I got 5 or 6 hours at most. I got dressed and headed down to the breakfast room at the hotel around 7:30 and then headed up to get ready to leave. Dottie wanted to do a workout before she headed over to the house, so I took Madison with me to the house. We left at around 8:30 and I decided to take the time to get a quick haircut. I usually cut my own hair with the clippers (I have so much), but they are packed on the truck with the rest of our stuff. There is a Great Clips just down the way from the house, so I stopped there on the way.

We arrived about 8:45 to find that they don't open until 9. I decided to wait around until they opened, so Madison and I walked around the strip mall until they opened. Once in the chair it took about 10 minutes and I was as handsome as a mid-40's bald guy can be.

We headed to the house and as we pulled into the neighborhood, it hit me...I am locked out of the house. We had a locksmith out on Friday. They were there for over 4 hours and the final bill was $300. We have eight locks in the house at $15 each, plus the service call charge, plus one new deadbolt. Dottie was at the house while they were there and I was at work, so she took care of it and she had the keys. I neglected to get a key from Dottie before I headed over to the house. I called her and without even saying "hello", she said to me, "I bet I know why you are calling me".

She was just finishing her workout and needed to take a shower before she headed over to the house, so I decided to make a run to Sherwin Williams to get more paint. This turned out to be an epic trip. I searched the GPS for "Sherwin Williams" and it came up with a location 2.2 miles away on "Broadway Street". I set the GPS to take me there because even though it is close by, I wasn't sure how to get there from here.

It took me almost 30 minutes and I drove the most convoluted path of nearly 10 miles to get there because the GPS changed my route no less than 4 times while I was en-route to the store. To say I was frustrated was a massive understatement. I mumbled some choice words under my breath, to which Madison responded, "what's wrong daddy? are we lost?" She knows this because when the GPS changes your route, the voice announces "checking route" and makes this loud 3-beep sound. Somewhere in the recent past, I said I was lost and now she correlates the two.

Have I mentioned that we live near an amusement park?
http://www.dorneypark.com/

I mention this now because it is the reason for this epic fiasco of a trip. It turns out that the paint store is about a mile from Dorney Park, and so are we, however, we are on opposite sides. I didn't know this at the time, but I do now. I should also mention that it is 9:30 am on a Saturday morning when the inflow of traffic to the park is at it's peak.

Now, here is the significance of this: our GPS has some "setting" that are user-configurable and one of them is "default route method". Your choices here are:

• Fastest Route
• Shortest route
• Highway Preferred
• Streets Preferred
• Pedestrian
• Traffic Optimized

The default is the "Traffic Optimized", and that is where mine was set. Can you see where this is going? Feel my frustration yet?

I am trying to drive to a location 2 miles away and there is a massive amusement park between me and my destination. The GPS has a route plugged in for me, but every five minutes, it "checks the route for traffic" and if it finds any, it changes the route to an alternate one. It's 9 am on a Saturday morning and all roads lead to Dorney Park, so basically the GPS is bouncing me through every conceivable pathway to the paint store only to discover every 5 minutes that the current route has "traffic". At this point, I don't trust that the GPS "knows" what "traffic" is. Does it consider "traffic" to be 1000 cars? 100 cars? 10 cars? Anything greater than 1 car?

I finally get to the paint store and when I get there I am so irritated and now even more so because I have driven past this store dozens of times over the past few months of being out here, but I never noticed it.

After I buy my 12 cans of paint and load it up, I turn right two times to get out of the parking lot, drive 1.5 miles down Cetronia road, take a left on Minesite for another .5 miles and then turn into our subdivision. It took about 5 minutes.

It was after this that I realized that GPS is sort of like having speed dial on a phone - you never really learn or remember anything.

When Madison and I arrived (at 11 am), Dottie was there already and she sheepishly apologized for not giving me the key. It wasn't her fault. I knew the locks were changed...I didn't ask for a key.

I set about to finish the playroom that I had started Thursday night - the night I got started late because I left my painting clothes at the hotel. All I had left to do was to cut-in around the trim and pull the masking tape off. I knocked that out in about 45 minutes and decided to take a lunch break around noon.

We were eating sandwiches in the kitchen and Dottie asked me about the ice maker not working. I checked and the water spout in the fridge door worked just fine, but we had no ice. I pulled the fridge away from the wall and looked in behind it. I squeezed in a bit more and pushed it away from me and suddenly water began coming out of the supply line connection. Dottie quickly grabbed some towels and went about trying to see where it was coming from and getting it stopped.

It was coming from the connection itself where it went into the pump. I ran downstairs to the basement in hopes of finding a shut-off. I wasn't able to trace it because the ceiling is finished, so I shut off the main. I took apart the connection and inspected it. I flipped a rubber washer over in one side of the connection and put it back together, making sure it was very snug. I turned that water back on and it seemed to be okay. I went back upstairs and left the fridge pulled out to check on later to see how it was holding up.

An hour or so later, I checked on it and there was moisture on the bottom of the fitting and some evidence of a few drips. At this point I decided to make a trek to the local hardware store and get the stuff to fix it properly. Dottie needed something to do that would help me and it was at this point we decided to pull up the carpet in the master bedroom so that while I was out at the hardware store she could get all the staples and tack strips up. It took longer than I had expected (this statement is a central theme to this entire relocation process), but we got it up in about an hour and I took off around 3:30.

I took a short drive down to Emmaus (the next town south of us) and found a little mom and pop store. They didn't have the fitting and the guy said from the description and picture I drew for him that it was a proprietary fitting that I would probably have to order from the manufacturer of an appliance repair company. I then went into amateur engineering mode. I bought some Teflon tape, a new compression washer and a tubing cutter. I should have bought another rubber washer, but I didn't think of that until later.

I got back around 4pm, and I crawled in behind the fridge to disassembled the fitting again. I cut about 6 inches off the copper tube, replaced the compression washer, slapped some Teflon tape on both sides of the connection and tightened the crap out of it. I would have preferred a new connector, but the reality is that when our stuff comes next week, we are putting our fridge in the kitchen and the existing one in the basement, so it's a moot point.

It was now 5pm, and our friends Don and Kathy were coming over from Princeton, NJ to meet us for dinner. Kathy is in for the week from Vienna and we haven't seen her since Christmas, so we were looking forward to getting together. We needed to leave by 5:30pm in order to get back to the hotel to clean ourselves up.

So there I was, the end of the day, and the only thing I really accomplished toward my painting goal was 45 minutes of trim work. That's it. I did manage to get that second room painted - Madison's playroom. The reward was not only a feeling of accomplishment, as small as it was on this very trying day, but also the reward of how good it looked. What a transformation it was from the former decor. The old paint was a really dull off-white - almost a pale grey color, and it had some absolutely obnoxious floral wallpaper on one wall. On the floor was some dark blue-green shag carpet. The package, as a whole, was a feast for the eyes. It is now done in a bright yellow called "Friendly Yellow". It's bright, yet subtle and not too bold. I'll post some pictures of the rooms later.

We got back to the hotel and got our showers and I had a much deserved beer (well, okay, 2 beers). Don and Kathy arrived around 7 and we set out for my favorite restaurant in Allentown, a place called "The Federal Grill". It's a really cozy and warm place with a huge antique bar. They have great steaks, seafood and make great martini's. We drive down there to find it is closed. The sign in the window says, "closed indefinitely due to fire".

We ended up going to a place called "Pistachio's" not too far from the house. They have good food and a huge menu. It reminds me of LuLu's in Indy. We had a good meal and a good time catching up. We got back to the hotel around 10:30 and we promptly put Madison to bed. I stayed with her for a few minutes after "lights out" - as I usually do - and I fell asleep next to her. I awoke about 30 minutes later and went off to bed.

Work, Paint, Sleep, Repeat

I awoke at 4:45 this morning by my brain informing me that I had way too much to do. I tried to go back to sleep, but the battle had already been lost. It was too early to go down and get coffee and breakfast, so I decided to read, which I don't do much of and always tell myself I need to do more of.

I have been sleeping soundly, just not long enough. The days so far have been fully consumed by work and work - work at my job, and work at our new home. Tuesday seemed exactly in most all ways like Monday, and expect that the rest of this week and next will be the same. In some ways, I can't wait for our stuff to arrive so that we can move in, yet at the same time, I wish I had more time because progress just isn't happening fast enough.

It's hard to estimate time when doing projects like this and no matter how well and throrough it may have been thought out, it seems that it's always underestimated. According to "the plan" (something Dottie and I worked on before we made the trip out here), we should have wall paper down in 5 rooms and 3 rooms painted as of Wednesday. The reality is that we have 3 rooms de-papered and only 1 room painted. The closer I look, the more I find to do - for example: I just noticed last night that in 3 rooms the previous owners have painted the ENTIRE room in the same color - walls, ceiling, baseboards, crowns and windows.

I have gone about taking down all of the upstairs window dressings and hardware (which defy any sort of taste whatsoever and will end up at the end of the drive on trash day) and to my amazement, they were some of the most unusual installations. Unmatching brackets, 5 different sizes of screws and styles, crooked rods - you name it...it's there.

Sunday, I actually used the Wagner Power Roller for the first time. It's an interesting device in that it most definitely works well and saves a huge amount of time - while painting. The time saved during painting is mostly consumed during cleanup - for a single room. For a really large job like a basement or a same-color multi-room job it would be a huge time saver. For single rooms where the color is changing, I am not so sure about the savings. I had three walls painted in 1 hour - no second coat required. The paint is delivered continuously to the roller and in a heavy enough feed that one coat does it. I spent the next 2 hours cutting-in and trimming and then about an hour cleaning up.

Monday, I left the office at around 4 and got started about 4:30 at the house. I got two closets painted. What a pain. It took 3 hours to paint 2 closets. They way the interior was constructed, I couldn't get the shelves out and the top shelf was so high that I couldn't paint the shelf or the ceiling above it. Argggh. Dottie continued to rip down wallpaper and Madison managed to occupy herself for the day by watching movies on the portable DVD player, or just by roaming the house and doing whatever 3-year old girls do - make believe.

Tuesday, I again went over after work around 4:30 and met the Invisible Fence guy. We got a plot plan for the fence and an estimate and fortunately for us they had a cancellation for Wednesday, so there were able to come out and actually get it installed. The dogs have been in the doggy-resort since Thursday night and are running up a healthy hotel bill, so we need to get them home soon. We were going to do a physical fence - and we may still do that, but in this township you have to have a formal survey of the property, a plot plan, materials list, example photos and lord knows what else to get approval for a fence and it takes weeks to get the rubber stamp of the township government.

Wednesday, the Invisible Fence guy came to do the install and was there over 3 hours. Typically it takes about 1 to 2. With all the landscaping and the paver sidewalks he hand to hand-bury a significant portion of the cable. They use a ditch-witch for the open parts of the yard and can burn through 100 feet in about 10 minutes. After signing off on the work, I set off to pick up the dogs. When we returned home, they were freaked out. They have no idea where we are. Jake spent the entire evening standing on the back porch, at the bay window of the breakfast nook peering in. Everytime I passed by the window, he was standing there, on alert.

Last night, Thursday, with the hopes of actually getting some painting done, I left the office at 4:30 and discovered that I had left my bag with change of clothes for painting at the hotel. I was not happy. Not only is it rush hour, but around here, there are only two main arteries headed east/west (in and out of New Jersey) and they are pretty much a parking lot for an hour or so. On top of that, our hotel is in Bethlehem (the next town over) so the drive is east, toward NJ and takes 20 minutes on-way without traffic. I ended up not getting back to the house until after 6pm. After a quick bit for dinner, I set out to get something done.

I had the playroom stripped, spackled, sanded and ready to go (I had been doing that on the abbreviated past two nights). Once taped, I started rolling and with the Wagner I was done in just under an hour. The cleanup took half that time - another 30 minutes. All that is left is to cut-in at the trim and windows and I am going to try the accessories that came with the Wagner for that instead of an angle brush.

We are enjoying working on the place, but anxious to get in. The logistics of this are tiresome. Dottie has been getting up and heading over in the mornings and working while running errands that need to be done. She looked at a preschool on Tuesday, and it was really nice, but too far away. Then there is the hassle of getting all the services started and installed - internet, locksmith, cable, fence people, phone - PHONE - thank you Verizon for ignoring repeated requests to get us connected - another story entirely.

This weekend will undoubtedly be a painting frenzy because we need to get two more bedrooms painted and then the big rooms downstairs - Family Room and Living Room - before our stuff arrives next Thursday. At that point, all renovations cease and we go into "unpack mode" which we will have the entire holiday weekend to do.

More to come...

Life In PA...so far

This is day three in our new surroundings. I intended to do a day-by-day, but we are barely able to find enough time to sleep right now, so I will summarize everything so far.

- Thursday, August 16

We arrived Thursday evening into the Lehigh Valley (Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton) around 6:45 pm. This was after departing the hotel in Indy at 5am, a quick trip to the old house to pack up the dogs, bikes on top of the VW and personal items needed for the next two and a half weeks in temporary housing. We rented a 14 foot U-Haul to carry all the stuff we needed to have with us at the new house while we are in temporary housing (we aren't moving into the house until August 30 and are doing improvements in the interim). Dottie drove the VW with Madison and the two dogs and I drove the U-Haul with all our stuff.

The first order of business was to drop off the dogs at the Shady Rest Kennel. They close at 7pm and we arrived at just a few minutes before closing. We had planned on arriving around 6pm with plenty of time, but after a late start and having a 3-year-old and two dogs, well, it kinda throws off any sort of timeline.

So we dropped the dogs and headed to our home for the next 17 days - the Hilton Homewood Suites. What a great place this is. It is basically a 2-bedroom apartment with pretty much everything you need - including free housekeeping! It is quite comfortable with big rooms, nice beds, a full kitchen, 3 televisions, cable, wireless Internet, free breakfast (actually good food) plus a pool, tennis, basketball, and probably other things I can't remember. We got cleaned up and headed to dinner in Bethlehem to a place I really like - the Bethlehem Brew Works. They have good food and great beer.

We ended up getting back to the hotel around 10 and were exhausted. We didn't unpack anything, and pretty much dropped our bags and went to bed. We had our closing on the house scheduled for 11:30am and we still had to go to the bank before closing to get our certified check for the down payment, so we had to get an early start.

- Friday, August 17

I awoke around 6 and was rather sluggish, but after some marginally acceptable coffee, I was starting to brighten up. We got the check, met the agent at the new house for a final walk-through and headed to closing.

We met the owners at closing - Mr. and Mrs. Dean - and they were super-nice people. They were well into retirement years - I would guess them in their late sixties to early seventies. Mr. Dean was a former engineer (and it showed). He had all sorts of documentation in a file he gave me of with lists of everything imaginable. They gave us contact information and said if we had any questions we could call them. Mrs. Dean gave us the rundown of all the neighbors, their kids and their grandkids. It was a very pleasurable meeting and you could tell that they took very good care of their home and wanted to pass a lot of information along.

After closing, we grabbed some lunch and then headed over to the new house to unpack the U-Haul so we could get it returned. The movers were delivering my car on Saturday, so we only had one vehicle. On the way to return it, we were driving through the rough part of downtown Allentown when Madison informs mommy that she has to pee. We had two-way radios and Dottie calls me on the radio to tell me this. In this part of Allentown, I wouldn't even stop to pee myself, so it was out of the question. We didn't really know how far we had to go, so we tried to encourage her to hold it, but in the end she couldn't. We were both upset about having to put her in this uncomfortable position and she was apologizing, which made us feel even worse. We got the truck dropped off and luckily weren't very far from the hotel, so we headed straight there to clean up before heading to dinner. When we got to the hotel, I pulled the child seat out to clean it up after the accident, and it was bad. I think she held it for the whole day. Most of it was in the cover of the child seat, but a lot of it went into the back seat of the car. I tore apart the child seat and Dottie took it down to the laundry room at the hotel. At this point, we couldn't go anywhere for dinner, so I went out hunting for carryout pizza.

- Saturday, August 18

We were again on a tight time schedule because we needed to be at the house by 8am to meet the Internet installer and the moving company which was dropping off my car. We were scrambling to get out the door and trying to get a quick breakfast at the hotel when Madison spills milk on herself. Dottie took her upstairs to change her and by the time they got back downstairs, we needed to go so they had breakfast on-the-run.

After dropping me off at the house and unloading a few things from the car, Dottie headed out to buy supplies for our massive wallpaper removal project. Madison stayed at the house with me and she was giving the task of putting her toys away (we brought about 1/4 of the toy inventory). She was unloading boxes in the kitchen and carrying things one-by-one upstairs and for a moment I thought about carrying the boxes upstairs so she could be more efficient, but then it occurred to me that she was busy and it would occupy her for a longer period, which is always a good thing.

The Internet installers showed up around 9 and they were in and out in less than 30 minutes. I dug out the wireless router from the old house, plugged it in and made a couple of configuration changes and viola - we had wireless Internet in the house.

I then went about the task of unpacking some of the boxes in the garage off the U-Haul that contained tools and other things we needed for our rehab work. I also opened up ALL of the windows in the house, which literally took me 20 minutes to do because there are so many. There was that smell of "old, dusty and musty" from the house being closed up for so long (the Deans moved out in May and they were only in the house 5 months out of the year anyway).

My car was delivered by the moving company while Dottie was out, so now we could travel independently. My friend Don Rogers arrived also, to help us out with some of our work (Don took a new job recently with Bristol Myers Squibb and is based out of Princeton, NJ - a mere 45 miles away). Don and I set out for lunch and after feeding the crew, we set out for two destinations - Sherwin Williams for paint supplies and Circuit City to buy a GPS for Dottie so she won't get lost out here. If you have never had a GPS, I can't recommend one highly enough, especially when you are in unfamiliar areas.

We ended up getting back around 4pm and Dottie had already made significant progress on the wallpaper removal. She had nearly completed what will be Madison's playroom and had started on what will be one of the two guest rooms. She put Don on that room to finish it up while I continued to remove massive amounts of poorly installed and poorly chosen window dressings throughout the upstairs. We cleaned up the day's mess and packed it in around 6pm.

The four of us went for dinner at the Bethlehem Brew Works (again). This may end up being our new "Some Guys" because we like it so much. After a nice (albeit slow - the service could be better) meal and a couple of really good beers, we headed back to the hotel for the night and Don headed home. Don's wife, Kathy, will be coming in on Tuesday from Vienna, were she is currently living and working for Amgen on a two-year assignment. We are looking forward to seeing her again.

We were all exhausted, and I fell asleep on the way to the hotel, again on the sofa while watching few minutes of TV with Madison, yet again while we were in our story time, and then on sofa afterward before finally heading off to bed around 11. I awoke this morning at 5am to Madison screaming and crying. I went in to her room to console her (she has been having "bad dreams" the last few days - probably having to do with the disorientation and being out of her normal routine). She went right back to sleep, but I could not. The brain was already churning on "the list" and after about 30 minutes of staring at the ceiling and trying to turn it off, I decided to get up, get some of that marginally acceptable coffee and write this.

- Sunday, August 19

Today, I start painting. I plan to get the Master BR done and Madison's room at minimum. If I can get to her playroom, that is a bonus. Dottie will continue with the massive wallpaper removal project, which could very well take all of this week because 9 rooms plus the hallway, stairway and utility hall. We realized yesterday that basically we need to paint the entire inside of the house, including ceilings, closets, trim, and doors. Right now we are focused on getting the rooms done that will have furniture in them. We can deal with the rest as time goes on.

I go to work tomorrow for the first time as an Allentown resident and will be continuing to work on the house during the evenings this week and next week. We have this weekend and next with the long Labor Day weekend being the "move in" weekend. We hope to have some semblance of order at the end of Labor Day. I suspect we won't be fully unpacked until around Halloween.

More to come...