water update; red (and throbbing) right (and left) hand; flood plain flooring excitement

• Wax talked to a contractor and a master plumber and got confirmation our plumbing IS done, but it needs to be tested with the pressure tester before it can be turned on. The master plumber was supposed to check with the guy who was working at our place and possibly about the device and get back to her but he didn't before the end of yesterday... disappointing but not unexpected.



• Primed the hall with white Uula paint diluted slightly with water since we were out of Uula primer, but it said you can do that. This took longer than expected because the other side of the house has modernist 60s/70s frameless doors and the wallboard just sticks out a half cm from the jamb, requiring me to hand-edge that tiny face and then wipe the jamb edge with a wet rag wrapped around a flat paint scraper. There are 6 doors in the hall, ugh. It lasted so long I didn't get to the second coat yesterday, plus we had to drive to Kaarina to get another can of paint.



• I scrubbed my hands so many times with the nail brush yesterday that they're still raw today. Uula paint's longer open time means it doesn't dry all the way on your hands, it just makes them sticky, so you have to wipe it off immediately or wash them repeatedly. Not sure if it would be less uncomfortable to wear disposable gloves the whole time.



• My sister's house in Baton Rouge was flooded by the last hurricane and it destroyed the floors and under them, but their flood insurance has a 5000 deductible plus it covers the "value" of your floor materials after "depreciation" based on how old they are, making it impossible (even without a deductible) to afford to replace them with an equivalent product. Their floors were wood and laminate and she says she now realizes why other houses in the neighborhood they saw when buying had all-tile floors. Given the likelihood of further floods they intend to replace everything with those tiles that look like wood boards and to lay them themselves even though they haven't tiled before (because Mom and I assured them it's pretty easy) because that's the only way they can really afford it. So there she goes shopping for flooring too! Wish I could spare her our experiences where we wound up with a ton of extra flooring we won't be able to use because we failed to investigate thoroughly enough before purchasing the new floors and now we've gotta refinish at least one room just by sanding and painting it instead! I mean actually I can spare her THAT part: all you have to do is be sure you've seen all the layers of sub floor and then consult someone who knows something to be sure you know what you can and can't do on that substrate. But as for the other potential headaches of floor replacement, I can just hope it goes better for her. (We've got an extra room's worth and a closet full of flooring we haven't had time to lay yet and our kitchen and bedroom are each like 3" higher than the next rooms thanks to extra layers. I don't even want to think about how we're gonna manage the thresholds.)