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A Trip To Town

Actually, two trips for Vince and the day isn’t over!

Because the grout still isn’t sealed . . tomorrow I hope . . I’m not making a mess in the kitchen. Vince said “Do you want to go eat Mexican for lunch?” I told him I’d go but I wanted to wait til at least 1:30 when there were few people in there. So . . we ate Mexican but then . . Walmart, Aldi, Dollar Tree (or some dollar store – I didn’t go inside) and Home Depot. He wanted to go in Goodwill and I asked him to please do that some day when I wasn’t with him and he said ok.

At Walmart, Vince wanted to get oil filters for the cars. We take our vehicles to a guy who changes the oil but we bring the filters and the oil. I need celery seed and mustard seed to make green tomato relish and it seems to be out of stock everywhere. I have enough but it will use all the celery seed that I have. I have enough mustard seed too but I’d love to make cranberry mustard again this year and that takes a lot. As soon as cranberries are plentiful, I’d like to make more of the cranberry mustard. I love that stuff! I was able to get celery seeds and mustard seeds at WM online but they only had one container of mustard seeds. Crazy.

Another thing I haven’t been able to find is Haagen Dazs Coconut Pineapple ice cream. I love it and WM has been out of stock the last three times I’ve ordered groceries. Today when we were in the Carthage WM, I checked. They have about 8 flavors of Haagen Dazs but the Coconut Pineapple slot was empty. I had to get Blue Bell Bride’s Cake. 🙂

Vince was hoping to find more red chairs at Aldi but the Carthage store didn’t have any so I guess we’re stuck with four. We’ve gone from no deck furniture to probably too much now but we’re not putting any of it out til the deck gets finished . . and who knows when that will happen. It’s weird to me that things went so quickly and I was thinking .. this is going to be done in no time and now, it’s just lingering but I think it’s because we have him working on several things and last week it rained a couple of days. They got all the roof . . I don’t know what you call it. The sheets of plywood looking stuff . . it’s all on the roof. They had hoped to get the felt stuff up today but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I would go out and take pictures but I don’t think I’m their favorite person right now.

These guys have done an amazing job with everything – the concrete work, building the new stairs, the dirt work around Vince’s shop, what they’ve done so far on the pergola but the deck!!

Every single seam/join (whatever you call it) is staggered . . except these two. This deck is probably 16 x 45 or maybe bigger and these two areas were put together like this. I saw it after they left one day and I went in and asked Vince if had seen it. Yes. I asked “Did they talk to you before they did that?” He said no but I’m not so sure about that. He said “They’re having a hard time getting lumber that’s straight and they were trying to use what they had.” NO! I told him . . for what this deck is costing us, forever I will look at those two spots and be unhappy with it.

Chad looked at it this weekend and said “You won’t even notice after it’s stained!” My feeling is if Chad and Vince were building this deck and we were trying to save money, maybe I’d be ok with it but for what we’re paying . . no, I am not ok with it. I told Vince . . every time anyone looks at that, they’re going to do a doubletake and wonder why? Why does this deck look amazing except there? I said “I’ll leave it but I want a rug over that area so I don’t have to see it. Vince said “I’m not putting a rug over it.” OK . . they can replace the middle boards in both sets of three and it won’t look so bad.

So, right now, they’re out there removing boards and replacing them to get rid of all those seams coming together at the same place. I can’t wait for them to leave so I can poke my head out there and see what it looks like.

That picky woman!!

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Comments

  1. I don’t blame you about the deck boards…they had to know better. Guess they were hoping you wouldn’t catch it until much much later. I’ve often said “It’s too bad you have to do other ppls job for them, cause you can’t always count on them doing it themselves.” …or something like that. My husband says “But they should do it.” Yep, I agree, but ya can’t count on it!

    • I really think the guy probably talked to Vince about it and even though it wasn’t the preferred way to do it, it wasn’t going to cause any structural issues and when he said “it will save $$”, Vince said yes and then when he saw my reaction and knew I was not ever going to be happy with it, he decided to have the guy change it.

      I told Vince it looks like “we had a fire and had to cut out a spot and were too cheap to fix it right!” I’m just happy it’s fixed and looks good now.

  2. .Makes me think of a quilt==wouldn’t want all the seams butting together, if it’s same-color fabric!

    Your trips to town sound exhausting! I used to want to combine things when we ran errands, but that would be specific plans! (Nowadays don’t go out as much). At best, I’d call it exasperating. Did you manage to make your request without whining or anger? (Not that I’d blame you; I think it would take a good effort.)

    • I wasn’t whining or angry but if he insisted on going through Goodwill, I was ready to put my foot down. I’m still not comfortable being out and around people. There are places we need to go but just wandering aisles buying stuff we don’t need . . I’m not ready for that.

      When I go in the store, I go in, get what I need and leave. With Vince, we look at everything, talk about everything, often go back down a row to look at something. Vince is a better shopper than I am. It’s like I have blinders on . . get what’s on my list and leave. I never try new stuff because it’s not on my list. Last week at Aldi, I went to grab a bag of plain bagels, which is what I like. Vince saw Pumpkin Spice bagels and got those. I would never have bought those but they were delicious. Today he wanted to get more and they were out but right before we checked out, he went back to check to see if we had missed them and a lady was there putting more on the shelf so he got them. I would never backtrack in the store. But, I can be in and out with groceries for a week in about 15 minutes unless there’s a line. With Vince, we are never out in less than 45 minutes and sometimes, it’s 45 minutes to an hour in each of several stores. It is exhausting!

  3. I’m with you on the deck boards. My husband is always more willing to accept those kinds of things than I am, so I’m always the bad guy.

    • Yes. My guess is the guy told Vince that since he was having trouble getting boards, he could do it that way – not the best way but ok, and Vince said yes. Then when Vince looked at it, his first thought was probably . . Judy is not going to be happy but he didn’t say anything. That first day, Vince kept saying “I am NOT asking him to re-do these boards” so I figured that was it . . we’d live with it, but the next morning, first thing with the guy arrived, Vince told him I wasn’t happy with it (Judy is the bad guy here) and the guy was very accommodating and agreed to fix it.

  4. I had one spot on my master bath tiles that I asked for them to redo and he redid it, but a half assed job. Every time I sit, I see it. So many years later, 13, I know he was being a turd when he “fixed” it, lol.

    • I knew every time they walked out there, I’d be unhappy with it. He fixed it and I think it looks great so all is well.

  5. For the last four Walmart grocery pickup orders the store has been out of jalapeños–HUH!!! On Saturday I never received a text saying my order was ready, we drove to the store, called the pickup line and were told our order was delayed. How delayed–we don’t know when it will be ready. So, I cancelled the order, went inside the store and picked my own groceries–no jalapenos!! I would have complained about the boards too!

    • Isn’t it crazy the things they’re out of. Lately, I get something I didn’t order almost every time. One week it was 4 packages with 6 each of little boxes of organic apple juice. I’m sure some mom needed those for lunches or snacks. I filled out the errors form and they told me to keep them. One week I got 6 – 6 packs of little boxes of raisins. I dislike raisins so much I didn’t even want them in my kitchen but they said keep those. This past week, I got hotdog buns. I figured someone might be waiting on those for dinner but I had them and they didn’t. I always check my order to be sure I’m getting all that I ordered and so far, I have but they keep messing up someone else’s order.

  6. I would not have accepted those boards either! That looks just awful! They just made themselves more work having to fix it. They should have just done it right to begin with. The plywood they put on the roof is called underlayment. I work in construction so I know enough to be dangerous! LOL!!!

    • I remembered after writing the post. We’ve always called it roof decking. I thought that was it but then I thought . . I just have “deck” on my mind. I’m betting there are lots of things that are called by different names in different regions but thanks for the answer. Now I know two things I can call it . . and probably will never need to use that word again. 🙂

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