Saturday, March 10, 2012

We're Moving! (part 6) How long has that been like that?

Yes, you!
Well, I guess we'll have to do a little touch up here and there.  At least a few baseboards where a former resident tended to sleep on her back while pawing the baseboards.  And where the cleaning ladies have bounced and dragged things (stereotype alert: Portuguese cleaning ladies tend to be a little aggressive; on the other hand they do a great job, reliably, for a decent price, and often sing while cleaning).

In spots, we even get a peek at the goat-puke green semi-gloss the place was covered in when we bought.

And Lee says: "We have to paint the bedroom".  But Gord says: "It's fine".  Lee: "I hate yellow". Gord: "But it's fine and it goes with the bedding".  Lee says ... well, nothing really, but we're painting the bedroom.

Oh, jeez look at those nicks on the wall corners ... how are we going to deal with those?  Paint the wall.  Which is connected to another wall.  Which is connected to a stairwell.  etc.

You know those two drawer pulls that came apart and that you can't get anymore so you have to replace all the pulls in both bathrooms?  Well, they only make screws that are 1/4 in. too short or 1/4 in. too long for the way the vanities were built.

I guess we never got around to framing that bathroom mirror, did we? It really would look better framed.

Lee: "We're painting the bathrooms, too" ... Gord: "Aw c'mon, they're great ... Those are 'treatments' and just the way the guy said that (with a certain trill and hand wave) I think cost us an extra $500" ... Lee: "I hate it. It's dated. I'm* painting the bathroom"
[update: an actual compromise ... with a little support from the painter, we agreed that only one washroom needed de-treatmenting.  Which brings us to the asterisk. "I'm painting" means "someone other than me is painting"]

And so on.
With Gord's amazing handyman skills, this should only take a couple of days.
[pause for hysterical laughter]
Without even applying the standard rule of thumb for Gord projects (double the estimate and take it to the next order of time ... 2 days = 4 weeks)

Simultaneously, we still have jobs, Gord is about 2 years behind on paperwork (courtesy of a very easy Quicken update that smoothly obliterated nearly a year of financial data just in time for the approaching tax season),  and as our own agents we have a ton of work to do for our own listing.

Enter John Peirson of Inside Job (jrpeirson@gmail.com ... 647-864-4464), painter handyman and saviour ... good, nice, calm, quick and reasonable.

The lesson of course is that all that stuff that you never got around to because you were busy and it wasn't that big a deal or you barely noticed -- is the same stuff that you would notice in someone else's house and everyone will notice in yours and wonder if it reflects your careless general approach to home maintenance.

Next up: a vitriolic staging rant ... sort of

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