one star review of this weekend

Today and yesterday is Wax's weekend but she feels sick and is also having a constant anxiety attack, which is really not a fun way to spend your weekend and means we can't really do anything. (There are things we can do on our side of the house, just not things that will help in any way with the big problems we have over there, namely, a lack of plumbing, electricity, and kitchen and bathroom fixtures. But, like, there's things we can paint, wallpaper, move, tidy up, etc. We can't really move our stuff over there en masse because the spare room doesn't have a floor yet, the dining room and hallway are full of kitchen and bathroom fixtures that aren't hooked up yet, and the living room is full of construction materials; but we could probably move a few things.) There are things I can do alone, but I can do them any time and they're even less useful than the stuff that needs both of us. And of course, we can't help feeling that there's no point (and PANIC SPIRALLING) when the contractors disappear without warning and change their minds about whether they're available within a pre-agreed timeframe.

On the plus side, Wax's little brother offered to try to negotiate with the contractors for us. I mean, it's probably bad overall to have your out-of-state brother call contractors for you, but on the other hand, he is also a part owner of our house and it's his tenant too, so. Whatever. And also, someone who isn't panicking is always a better candidate for a phone conversation.

My current livingroom plan is to paint the current ugly tile hearth under the stove matte black (this would be the more normal choice for hearth tiles: they'd usually be soapstone) and use the wallpaper to make rollerblinds for the room's two windows, with any extra being hung on the wall without actually being glued TO the wall (with hanging rods, like). And probably an avocado color on the masonry chimney wall in the corner. I'm a bit bummed that we didn't pick a bolder green in the first place, but OTOH milk paint is cheap and easy to obtain and easy to use so maybe someday in the future we'll revisit the wall color in there.

Errata from the previous 2 posts about Knypplinge and the hellscape of our renovation

1. The electrician actually had originally said in JULY that he definitely could come in AUGUST. Then they did the rough wiring - in August, yes - but then when Wax called about actually... finishing... he was like "Um, maybe in two weeks or more? But doubtful. IDK." The date we're supposed to be gone remains October as always.

2. Wax's bro contacted the contractor and apparently he's just been waiting for us to contact him the last 2 weeks because, perhaps from the phone call after the last time we saw the carpenters when she asked him were we supposed to put the tile backsplash on the wall before the counter was installed or what?, he somehow got the impression that we changed our minds and wanted to install the counter ourselves. We had previously confirmed that we definitely wanted them to install the counter. We also had told them we were going to tile the backsplash ourselves multiple times and we were fairly sure the counter was supposed to be in before the backsplash, but the carpenters had been... apparently killing time? for a week and not installing the backsplash, so we wondered if there were some reason and we were actually supposed to have been tiling that whole time to explain their behavior. Nope, it's better to have the counter in first, he explained, so Wax concluded we would just wait until they did the counters but HE concluded we were now going to install the counters. Which we still don't know how to do.

3. Now the plumber said they definitely can't send anyone in September AT ALL. Great!! Fantastic!!! Love to hear this!!! So now we need a replacement plumber??? Or something? (Even though this plumber was extremely nice and accomodating to us during the debt and dark times after MIL died and kinda went out of his way to help us delay payment by go-betweening to his office-accountant peeps when he was actually not supposed to be working because he had a family emergency in there.)

4. I don't think I mentioned before that when we pulled up the crappy vinyl in the spare room Wax noticed a ripple texture to the floor, which is caused by the solid wood plank floor - original - under a layer of like, cardboard that was not thick enough to correct the ripples. (Ripples caused by cupping, that is, boards absorbing water and swelling more at the edges than in the middle, or by crowning, the inverse.) You shouldn't lay a floating floor on a ripply floor; it can fuck up the floating because the tiles can settle on the uneven surface and gaps can open up. (You don't need the floor to be level, but you do want it to be close to all on one plane.) The LEAST intrusive way to fix this is to lay a whole new subfloor of ½" or thicker (maybe preferably thicker according to one source) interlocking plywood directly over the cupped plank floor, and you want the panels as big as possible. We don't know where you get the interlocking kind - or if you get it at all in Finland - but we do know that the panels of the regular plywood in the right size are bigger than would fit in our van, so even though we would be capable of putting them in - you just have to nail and screw them down - we'd have to pay a huge amount for delivery and we don't have all the power tools. So should we ignore all this and hope for the best, have the contractor put in a subfloor there (we'd have to have a whole conversation with him because that was never intended before), or look for another solution - researching the products, presumably, and trying to find a way to have them delivered...? WE DON'T KNOW! But we really need to move furniture into that room in order to move into our side of the house, and we can't really do that when it DOESN'T HAVE A FLOOR. Moving the furniture back out in order to do the floor later would not be simple (obviously would be an option), because that room is supposed to be lined in bookcases that have to be assembled, anchored to the walls, and filled with books and craft supplies.