In the Thick of It

Now we’re at the scary part. We can no longer afford to rent the house nearby and pay the mortgage, so we’re moving in at the end of the month, come hell or high water. We’ve given notice to both the landlady and the contractor. Today is the 20^th, which means we’ve got 11 short days left, and our house is essentially gutted.

There’s a floor, thank God. Well, almost. Since our house has more square footage than we were told when we bought it—normally a blessing—and the terrazzo tile we bought at the Habitat for Humanity Restore has less square footage than we were told when we bought it, we ended up about 100 square feet shy. We ordered more tile, but it’s still not here.

Right now, everything is tiled except the laundry room (formerly the master bedroom closet), the “master” bathroom and the bedroom closet. Wet grinding has been going on for days, which generates a layer of wet, pale-gray goo over the entire surface of the floor. This, as one might imagine, makes it difficult to envision anything pretty at the end of it all. Luckily, Grinding Guy swiped off a section so we could see what the finished floor will look like. Heaven. Pure heaven, my people. Next comes grouting. Then one more grind, then sealing.

Last time I checked (last night) there wasn’t a kitchen. There was some plumbing for an island and some framing for some cabinetry. There were some Ikea cabinets, still flat, in boxes, in the garage. (We still haven’t gotten any drawer/door pulls, by the way, because Ikea discontinued the ones we wanted. Ikea likes to discontinue things we want.)

Both bathrooms are all torn up. They both have tubs, which is nice. Neither one has a toilet or sink. One has a wall that’s . . . well . . . gone, which is unnerving, at best.

What was once two, small “Jack & Jill” bedrooms and is now one, big bedroom—which will be our bedroom—has a closet with no means of hanging clothes in it. Conduit snakes through one end of said closet and it’s missing its ceiling. Speaking of ceiling, there was some damage to the tongue-and-groove ceiling in this room, which had to be repaired from the roof down. So there’s a big hole up there, through which one can see the sky. I said “unnerving,” right?