| Today's Basic Diary |
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Not much to report. Landscape contractor is out of town until next Monday. The workers came and did stuff, and none of them speak English. Between their limited English, my limited Spanish and charades, we may have had a few bits of understanding among the misunderstandings. I spoke with the pool fence people today. They are going to send their powder-coating company out either Monday or Tuesday to see what they need to do. Why do I feel like this will not get resolved until Christmas, if ever. The powder coating has a two-year warranty. If I hadn't called them to ask about it, I doubt they would have ever called me. The supervisor was here April 23. We're doing battle over the price of the tile and its installation. The person giving the figures to our home builder warranty supervisor is charging different amounts per square foot for materials for the two different jobs. The demolition and installation of the existing 682-square feet of tile is charged at $6 per square foot, and the installation only of the new tile in Conan's office is $5.53 per square foot. There's no demolition to be done in Conan's office since the dogs already took care of the carpet in there, which is why we're replacing it with tile. $5.53 to install the tile is a rip-off. We're not giving an okay to this until the price is reasonable. Still no word from the pool people as to when they're going to start the pool demo, or even if they are going to do it. The supervisor who came here had to go talk with his supervisor. blah-blah-blah, stall the customer and maybe they'll forget about it. He was here April 16. |
| Sprinklers in and working -- are they supposed to be at an angle like that? |
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| Walkway completed and dry Along the side are the plants we want. They did disappear the ones we don't want. They'd like to have put them in the ground, but I don't know what they'll look like as the years pass. I'd hate to put a plant that will look like Jack's beanstalk in a small area and put one that won't change much in a more open area, so I opted to wait for the landscape contractor to get back. |
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| Both trees planted in front, but not straight enough to suit Monkette here. Construction mess needs to be cleaned up, the mangled plants need to be replaced, my big ol' rock needs to be moved back in front of the two sewer thingies sticking out of the ground, and they need to get rid of the %^*$&*)_^#$^ spurge, which I was assured would be removed before the trees were planted. Spurge is a noxious weed that looks like pretty groundcover -- for which we are fined $20 per day if we have any in our yard. |
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| Second Ficus brought into the back yard and planted. I guess the beachball held sentry until the ficus was in the ground. |
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| Some of the concrete borders cracked, so we got new ones. I'm amazed this got done. When I was trying to explain about the set of plants we didn't want, they thought I was telling them I don't want the cement curbing. |
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| Garden construction finished and textured to match the wall. Now it needs good soil for my veggies! |
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| The pool pump visible |
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| The pool pump now behind a cinder block, textured wall. Color will match after it dries. |
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| Now for the inside |
| Bathroom wall torn out, which gave me an idea! |
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| My after-market doorbell alarm unit is plugged into the wall behind the buffet and has a wire that snakes up the wall and connects to the actual doorbell in the stairwell. We had priced having it put through the wall, and it was going to cost some rather large three-digit-number of dollars. I figured as long as the wall was already opened up, we may as well see if it could be done then. |
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| Cable now only visible across the baseboard. The area has been painted since I took this photo. The cable can be hidden more, but no point in doing it until the floors have been replaced. |
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| With the new drywall in and aligned correctly, you can see how the gap between the tile and the wall gets wider as it gets closer to the shower. The reason the wall wasn't straight to begin with is that there was dirt behind the sheetrock when it was installed. How incredibly stupid is THAT! |
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| Drywall up and ready to be textured. I didn't get photos of the texturing or the grey primer. |
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| And...as long as it had to be painted from scratch... |
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