Thursday's Thoughts

A lot has happened since my last Thursday's Thoughts post. By the way, I just reread that post and discovered a major flub. And yes, "flub" is a legit word. The writing error drove me batty and the perfectionist in me could not leave it alone. So, I ended up editing the post to correct the mistake.

Garner is All About the Frio River
We went camping at Garner. We were there for almost a week and had a wonderful time. There was family around and thus, things seemed more normal. Garner isn't Garner without family. I loved seeing every single one of them. I did have a meltdown on the first day when I saw my eldest brother exiting a path from the river while sitting at our campsite. At the time, he was the spitting image of my Dad and I miss him so much. But, life goes on, right? Right.

As soon as I find the time to go through the pictures I took, I will post them. The general and family pictures will be posted this blog. However, the flowers, bugs and more will most likely be posted on my Pictorial Reminiscence blog simply because I do not desire to overwhelm my readers with a deluge of pictures. I will put out announcement(s) pointing you over to the other blog whenever I post update(s).

When we left Garner, we practically did a 180° in focus. We looked forward to our new house and started making plans. We decided to put the garage conversion on hold due to a variety of reasons. The process of converting the garage will be a lot slower. I think we are just anxious to move out of this rental and into our own house.

So, we cemented some of our plans and went over to the house this past Saturday after renting jackhammer. By the way, we rented the jackhammer from Saturday morning to Monday morning for the price of one day's rental. This is an awesome savings in my book. Anyway, our goal was to rip up the tile from the living room, hallway and the closets along with all the carpets in the bedrooms in one weekend. By the way, we are leaving the tile in the kitchen and bathrooms.
Dan started the work in the hall closet Saturday after lunch. Whenever he took a break, I would take over the work. We finished the hallways and the closets (three in all) just before five o'clock. The carpet was pulled from Bedroom #1 and #2 Saturday evening. We never did get around to ripping up that carpet from the Master bedroom; but, pulling carpet is easy. We began ripping up the tile in the living room just after eight o'clock Sunday morning and finished just before three o'clock. And yes, we had lunch. It turned out I finished up with the last of the tiles. He started and I finished. I thought it was interesting, no? Anyway, both Dan and I were so happy. We decided to just clean up, pack and head on home.

The State of Things
Let me tell you, ripping up tile is hot brutal work. I have an enormous amount of respect for people who do this for a living and never ever will I criticize the cost of labor. It is well worth it to have someone do it for you! With that said, I have to say that there is a sense of pride and accomplishment for managing to complete this work ourselves. And, we saved megabucks.

Anyway, shall I list the minor causalities? No? Well, I am going to list them anyway. Ha!

• Dan pulled a stupid and scraped the top of his middle finger while shoving tile aside without his gloves. It was a bloody mess; but, not really a bad wound.


• When I first took over the jackhammer, I slipped and fell on my right knee receiving a very tiny wound from the broken up tiles. I thank God that I decided to wear jeans even though it was extremely hot (90°+ temps) because the injury could have been a lot worst without the jeans.


• Dan got a major blister on one of his palms.


• I got three major blisters -- one on each thumb and another on the side of my right heel. Only one of these blisters busted and, as a result, it became very painful.


• I banged up the side of my right knee (with the jackhammer) over time and, as result, there is now a lovely bruise.

The plan for this coming weekend is to rent a jackhammer again to get rid of the thinset, pull up the carpet from the Master bedroom, scrape up the glue from all the carpet in all three bedrooms, rip up the baseboards and throw it all into a dumpster that we hope to get from a trash company. We will see how well we will do this weekend.

We purchased the hardwood flooring this past Monday and will be picking them up Saturday morning. We will take them to the house and leave it behind to get acclimated in the house. We will purchase the necessary stuff to put down flooring next week. The ultimate goal is to start putting down the flooring in two weeks (July 7th).

Wish us luck!



{You might also be interested in reading Demolition Man.}