Finally, the builder has finished working on our house!!! They did the last major work the day before Thanksgiving two months later than we expected!!
It amazes me how the builders thought we'd accept a quickie job where they only buffed and coated the floor.......we weren't happy with those results at all as this was a beautiful red oak floor originally with NO dings, dents, rust stains & slightly lifted boards from water damage on the floor.......we insisted they the right thing to refinish, buff and then do a fine satin finish.....they dragged along for two months.......they obviously didn't want to spend the extra money despite promising me they'd refinish and restore the floor before I signed the contract. It seems to be a typical builder thing to chintz on things......we threatened not to pay......but now all is done well.
The only remaining thing to be done is replacing the damaged wood shutter on one of the windows. The construction people broke one shutter when they did the framing for the new upstairs rooms.
The floor refinisher came Tues and Wed before Thanksgiving to refinish the "old" studio floors that got damaged when they took the roof to build the second floor studio & office or what I call the "garden room"........I had a small room added off the huge fabric studio.....the two rooms are separated by glass paned French doors.
My downstairs painting studio is also separated by similar glass paned French doors so I can close off the studio from the now newly renovated kitchen and smaller dining room.....also have a side door from the new studio into the new mudroom where there's a small sink to wash my brushes and painting materials.
Despite all the best laid plans.....I thought we had decided to move in half the storage stuff back that day and the other half the following weekend which would mean Sat....tomorrow.......so, since we had this talk, figured I could go shopping for buttons and other embellishments and not have to hang around to supervise anything........afterall, Mr Wooly and I had agreed this was the best way.......the famous last words.....
Turns out, Mr Wooly and two other male companions for whatever reasons decided to move EVERYTHING back all at once......all the furniture and well over two to three hundred packed boxes all dumped into the already chaotic conditions as we were in the process of moving the boxes stored in the house & rearranging other furniture.........the only things left in storage are boxes of needlepoint and knitting yarns! Like some people who have wine cellars, I have enough yarns for a Yarn Vault!!
Gosh, I could barely walk into the house when I got back late afternoon last Sat!! There were dozens of boxes and pieces of funiture all over the driveway and in the house, there was only enough room to sidle in and out of all the rooms in a tiny path between stacked (taller than me) boxes!! Some of the overflow boxes and several wood chairs have been moved into my new upstairs studio for temporary storage......along with piles and piles of books and mags stacked all over.
Looking back today, I can laugh a little but it was no laughing matter last Sat........a friend said what did I expect leaving three men on their own?!! It was the equivalent of having The Three Stooges doing the move!
Little by little, boxes are getting emptied.......still need to find new places to store things.....this is when I wish I was into a MINIMALIST decorating style!! Unfortunately, being a designer interested in too many things, I've managed to acquire hundreds & hundreds of books and other colorful "toys" for inspiration through the years that now need to be displayed in new spaces or stored until I can decide what to do with them!
Another alternative is to have a "garage sale" but who has time for that and what do I give up??
Also found two huge boxes of stitched models.......it's amazing to see so many finished pieces of needlepoint & cross stitch....cushions, pictures, Christmas stockings, etc.......have NO idea how I managed to stitch so many models while designing & painting hundreds of canvases every year!
The second black mark against Mr Wooly......while putting together my prized Italian drafting table with the hydraulic lift, he managed to push three screws through the top of the drafting table from the back!! Now I've got to order a new top and who knows how much that's going to cost and what makes me think he won't do it again??? For now, I have a second drafting table, a slightly smaller drafting table by the same Italian company but without the fancy hydraulic lift that makes it easy to change angles (slant) and height of the table to work on.
Sooner or later we'll get it straight.........in the meantime, I need to do something with my hands to keep calm .....maybe I'll knit a new sweater.....got a bag of beautiful Noro yarns in bright candy colors I'm itching to work on.....can also finish needlepointing several canvases that are almost done for models or I can make mixed media fabric dolls........that's the best part about being a stitcher.....always something fun to work on!!