Thursday, March 23, 2006

There is definite progress. Insulation went in today, and wall board is up and will be textured tomorrow. Can paint be far behind? Mimi the cat is delighted to be able to go into her bedroom again (the door has been closed for weeks), although there is still no bed in there upon which to lie and soak up the morning sun.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Much progress this weekend. Painting and the beginnings of a new closet. No wimpy colors here! Tomorrow we get measured for new carpet. (Oh, no! The old one is so attractive.)

Before

Slightly after

Sunday, April 2, 2006

The painting is done, the new closet shaping up. The carpet has been ordered. I predict move in to be in two weeks or less. Stay tuned. In the meantime….

Mimi sleeps on on the mattress on the down comforter in front of the heater on the floor. She’s in no hurry for a quick fix.

Thursday, April 6, 2006

The tree guys came and spent the day cleaning up the mangled trees that were part of last month’s weather event. They were planning to come on Wednesday, but it rained–just as it has almost every day in March. Nice to have a roof over our heads.

Friday, April 14, 2006
The carpet arrived at the installers today, but they missed us when they tried to call to set up an appointment for installation. We will do that on Tuesday when they open again. My guess is that it should be done by next weekend. We are ready to move back in.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Two nights off the floor! Slowly we move back in. We tried rehanging the closet doors. It was a routine worthy of Monty Python (notice the slight offset at the top). There is another set to go in; we will persevere–eventually. The baseboard behind the bed is nailed in; the rest is not.We won’t move other things until it is finished. But moving the bed out of the living room has enlarged the rest of the house.

Mimi is not feeling well this morning.

Click for Chapter 3

I worked in Palo Alto on Monday and it was pouring. I had my Spanish class in Los Gatos that night and drove there in a deluge. After class it was still raining and I wondered what conditions I might find on the mountain. But I got home without incident.

About 11:15 I was sitting in bed reading. Gordon was already asleep. It was still stormy and extremely windy. Suddenly there was a gigantic rumble. The house shuddered. Gordon bolted up. The cat looked alarmed. There was a crash and then just the wind. I took the flashlight to look outside and see what had happened. Maybe a tree limb had crashed into the house. When I went out to the driveway, there was part of our roof leaning against our cars. It was the part from directly over the bedroom.

I called the insurance company.

The next morning I called roofers. They were all busy and only one returned my call. On Wednesday we got a quote for the roof. We took it.

On Thursday workers came to tarp it. The insurance company had promised to have an adjuster call in 48 hours, but that passed and it rained on.

We had buckets all over the bedroom. By Tuesday night when I got into bed in a seemingly dry part of the room and opened a book to read, a drop landed squarely in the middle of the page. We wrestled the mattress into the living room where it remains and will probably stay for a while. We tarped the bed. This shows the area that was directly above the bed as it looks now.

Finally on Friday afternoon, we heard from the insurance company. They sent someone up from a company they hire to intercede in this kind of event. Our guy was supposed to inspect and report back to them. Instead he recognized our plight and immediately swung into action. By that evening we had a crew here ripping off wallboard and insulation in the bedroom. They set up five gigantic fans that are roaring away in there right now and need to run all weekend to dry it out.

It snowed on Friday.

Saturday was clear. Our roofer thought he could get a new roof on before the next big storm came on Sunday (today). The foam roof needs to have a waterproof coating rolled as a final step. A temporary coating was installed until the weather is dry enough to do a permanent one.

With the soggy insulation ripped out in the bedroom below, you could see patches of sky when the tarp came off.

The new roof was finished just in the nick of time. The wind is up and a new storm should be here by evening.

Mimi, the cat, has been remarkable. She underwent a personality transformation during our trip to Sunriver. For all of her eighteen years she has hidden in the closet whenever there was anyone in the house.Most people don’t believe we have a cat. They have never seen her.

But Mimi LOVES having the mattress with the down comforter in front of the heater in the living room. She sleeps right through the constant stream of roofers, demolishers, and contractors parading through the house.

Occasionally she will nervously lick her foot.

You would think that after taking three giant bags to the thrift shop yesterday and two bags of books to the library, there wouldn’t be that much stuff left from the bedroom. Yet I am sitting here in my always impeccable office surrounded by all the stuff that was once in the bedroom. At least I now have an excuse for it.

Needless to say, life here is not same old, same old at the moment.

Click for Chapter 2