Nothing so spectacular as a sewer line this week (background noises of mad, hysterical flushing). Bruno the Concrete Guy came last Tuesday to patch the garage floor which he did with remarkable deftness. Also on Tuesday came Bill the Insulation Man to run through the house and give us a bid on insulating the attic.
In addition this helpful soul wandered around the house with some sort of little sniffer wand and told us that we were getting carbon monoxide levels at a little over half those required to cause physical illness. 😯 The reason behind this, he speculates, is because the garage ceiling, which isn’t sealed at all, communicates directly through the laundry room ceiling into the furnace room. The furnace sucks in the CO produced by our cars when we start them (with the garage doors OPEN I hasten to add) efficiently circulating it throughout the house. So in addition to insulating the attic Bill will be giving us an estimate to seal and insulate the ceiling in the garage thus improving the efficiency of the pipes and furnace ducts that go through same in addition to keeping car exhaust from getting sucked into the furnace. SIGH.

On Wednesday Bruno the Concrete Guy came back to patch the hole in the driveway and, WHOOPEE, the sewer project is done. Now for the godawful mess that used to be my front yard.

Sheri came by on Thursday to view the devastation, to take photos, and to plan. She and I spent about two hours stamping about in the dirt tugging at things, digging things, measuring and talking plants. Sheri went off with a notebook full of notes and I am almost hysterically eager to get going. In honor of same (or at least to get SOME of it out of my system) I spent this morning planting peas and much of this afternoon transplanting some lavender starts into their permanent homes out front. Then I started what is likely to be a 2-3 week job for at least two people and went around the front digging out weeds and bits of sod that the excavator left, pruning dead branches off of my rhododendron, trying to figure out how I am going to get what appears to be tar off of a fair chunk of the same rhododendron bush, and moving rocks. This area was in a glacial fill zone so there’s PLENTY lovely round river rocks just hanging about at the surface that will provide some lovely accents once I manage to figure out where they need to go and exactly how many of them I can move without rupturing myself. Perhaps I’ll send Joan a care package….. 😀 (Sorry. Inside joke. I fully expect the wrath of my father in law to befall me especially if I send Joan a box of rocks.)

I also went out yesterday and got the first in what I am beginning to think will be a large silo of wallpaper removing tools. The good news is that the wallpaper in both the upstairs bathroom and in my study seem to be moderately eager to release their grip. The bad news is that there is what I am going to have to describe as a cubic buttload of wallpaper. And I volunteered, eagerly, to remove it myself. I may have been an idiot.

Next week is a sort of in between week. Shawn isn’t quite completely moved out of the basement yet so we can’t have David The Contractor start until Shawn’s stuff is completely gone. We also haven’t yet gotten an estimate from Jim The Contractor, although since it’s taken him more than a week to put it together for us, and since David has been so Johnny-on-the-spot with his estimate and his information, we’re beginning to think that unless Jim The Contractor comes up with a REMARKABLE estimate, we’ll have David The Contractor here for most of the next month.
Next week we’ll also be visited by Dan the Shower Dude who will be coming in to look at both the upstairs and the downstairs shower enclosures and give us an estimate on putting together custom fitted shower stalls (we’ve got weirdly shaped spaces in both places) of what appears to be Formica.

It’ll be an interesting week.