Happy Wife=Happy Life
I've always used the term, "If Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody gonna be happy", but I like Tim's version better. When Lindsay is happy, everyone is happy. This is a rule that I have been slowly learning. I usually pick up pretty quickly on life's valuable lessons, but this one is taking its sweet time to set in.
While the title of the post is about carpet, I must first orient my readers on our history of other fiascos. The first, and greatest fiasco is still ongoing and has become the joke of all, near and far, best known as the POND. I bought our humble little home in 2005 and by February of 2006 I had developed a plan to build a pond around the base of some decomposed granite and rather large Ponderosa Pine Tree. The plan wasn't really concrete, or even well thought out when one warm afternoon in February I was bored, Lindsay was napping, and I needed something to do. Armed with a shovel and pick, I started digging out my new pond. Progress on the pond went rather well for the first couple months. I made good progress on digging the hole, building a retaining wall, smoothing out a "patio" and designing my stream/waterfall feature. I bought a pond kit with a rubber liner, plumbed water to the site, and ran electrical wiring to the area as well. Then the pine beetle's changed my game plan. The best feature of the pond was the pine tree leaning out over the pond, providing shade and great ambiance.
Well in the summer of 2006 the pine beetle epidemic hit Montana pretty hard and we lost the pine tree (the "tree fiasco"). We hired a sawyer to come cut the tree down for $500 but I was tasked with cleaning, removing, and picking up the mess. This should have been a job that took a couple weeks at most, but the wind had left my sails and I spent considerably longer getting everything done. By spring of 2007 I had finally cut and chopped all the usable fire wood and built a rather large bonfire for the remainder of the limbs. Over a year had passed since I started digging the hole and now the primary feature was gone. The pond project sat idle for some time. Finally, with some pushing from Lin, I started hauling rock for the pond and bought some privacy panels and installed them.
At about this time we purchased another fiasco, the dump truck, for working on the pond. Don't get me wrong, the dump truck is cool, but it was worth less than the $700 we paid for it. The truck is a 1952 Ford, which still uses the 6-volt, positive ground battery system. I spent a lot of time working on the dump truck, attempting to get it in shape for hauling rock for the pond. In fact, I actually made one trip with the truck from Jefferson City with rock. About this time, Lin's parents were working over their yard and had a bunch of rock we could use for the pond, thus we took the truck to their house. Lin's dad, Dave, is much like I am when it comes to projects. Sometimes it takes time to get to them. The truck sat for some time before he filled it with rock for the pond. By filled, it, I literally mean filled it. The truck was overloaded when I went to get it and we decided Dave would unload some of the rock. A year later, the truck still sat in their yard filled with rock. Eventually Dave did get the rock unloaded, but the truck is still at their house.....waiting for me to come get it.
In 2008, the pond was delayed due to financial shortages related mostly to the "bathroom fiasco". The bathroom fiasco started when we (okay Lin this time) decided to put new flooring in the bathroom, update the fixtures, and paint. I was tasked with putting in the new fixtures. While attempting to take out the old fixtures, I broke the pipe behind the shower wall. So, out came the shower wall, which come to find out was hiding a bunch of mold. Out came the bathtub, and the mold was cleaned up. At this point we decided we wanted a new tub and shower wall. I was ready to build a whole new walk-in shower and buy Lin a clawfoot tub, but wiser minds prevailed and we decided to just replace what we had. The first tub we ordered arrived and was damaged. The second tub we ordered was built with the shower surround as one piece, but it wouldn't fit through the front door. The third tub was the wrong size, and the fourth was the original style we ordered and took two months to arrive. Eventually, we got the tub in, the plumbing finished, drywall installed, and mudwork done. This took 11 months from inception to finish and was finished as a Christmas Present to Lin.
Sometime in 2011 I decided it was time to start working on the pond again, but Lin and I (okay, I, not Lin) had expanded our pond project to include "gardens" and more patio area. Rather than continuing to work on and finish the pond, I became obsessed with the gardens. I fenced off an area, ran water, moved dirt, and attempted to prepare an area for a garden and patio. As all things related to the pond go, I got derailed when we realized the money we were saving up for the pond needed to be spent on putting a new roof on the house.
So was the roof a fiasco? Well depends on who you ask. I thought it went really well, Lin remembers it a little differently. Tim, Ty, and I put the roof on the house in three days. On different days we had additional help from others but it was the three of us for the majority of the work. Prior to installation, Lin and I removed all the shingles and put new tar paper on the roof. I only fell off once.....headfirst. Fortunately there was no damage, at least not short term. I fell off the roof while I was carrying a load of shingles to the edge. Right at the edge the roof sheeting was a little rotten and when I stepped on it, it caved, tossing me headfirst into the dog kennel. After the fall I laid still assessing if I had broken anything while catching my breath. Meanwhile Lin was asking me if I was okay. Apparently it took me a little while to respond. On the last day, Tim slid off the roof and landed a 10-point landing on the deck, and I am still amazed he didn't get hurt. We were lifting one of the last steel panels onto the roof when Tim's feet slipped. He had to lay back to slide under the panel we were lifting, then sit back up, windmill his arms, and land on his feet. If I hadn't had my hands full with the panel I would have jumped up and yelled "I give it a TEN" in Billy Bob-style (Varsity Blues).
Then, in January of 2012 one of Lin's coworkers was getting rid of a hot tub and we decided to buy it. Problem was, we didn't have any (good) place to put it. So sometime in February I added onto the deck which took me well into March but we got the rest of the deck fixed up at the same time. Eventually by April we had the hot tub in and were using it on a pretty regular basis. Then, Lin found out she was pregnant and we started planning for a baby, which leads us to the very beginning of the carpet fiasco.
In reality the carpet fiasco really didn't start until 2013, but in 2012 we started making some changes to be more baby friendly. Living with dogs, and having no entry way into the house, our carpet was in pretty rough shape. In the downstairs bedroom where we decided we would put the baby, I had previously had some water damage due to a poorly placed downspout. Thus we decided to replace the downstairs carpet first, in 2012. Overall, that went really well but I think we're still wondering why we chose a blue carpet. Yes, we have blue carpet! Our plan was to have the carpet in the living room replaced before the baby came, but time and money were short so we waited until 2013 to replace that carpet.
The day before our installation we got a call from Carpet Pro that they couldn't do the job on the scheduled day because another job had gone long. So we got scheduled for another week out. The day before that installation, which was supposed to be Wednesday, we got another call and surprise, we can't do your carpet on Wednesday. At this point Lin was ready to bust some balls so she called Carpet Pro and complained. After a couple hours they called back and informed us that they had a crew from Great Falls who could do it on Thursday and they would be arriving between Noon and 1 pm. By 5 pm we still hadn't heard from them. Finally we called Carpet Pro and they in turn called the installers who called me. They could start that night or be at the house at 8 am on Friday. We chose 8 am on Friday. Well apparently 8 am on Friday is really 2pm, because that's when they showed up. They worked from 2-11pm and still weren't done, but promised they would be back on Saturday at 9 am. I guess 9 a.m. means 2 p.m as well. Finally on Saturday night around 10 p.m they informed me they were done. We were so happy to have the carpet done and them out of the house I didn't really look at the carpet. We just signed the papers and sent them on their way.
Sunday morning we started looking at the carpet and realized it wasn't installed very well. Most of the issues were due to a sloppy installation. The seam was pretty bad, the pad was missing in one spot. The metal transition wasn't cut at a 45 degree angle to match up on the corner, and the list goes on. The two biggest issues were that while cutting carpet out for the stairs, they had cut into the newly installed carpet, and they broke my drywall while stretching the carpet. This is where things became a real pain. First, Lin and I were so excited to have carpet in that we decided to just deal with it, but after a few days we decided that wasn't going to work. Thus we started the process of getting Carpet Pro/Home Depot to agree to buy and install new carpet. This became a big game of scheduling and conflicts and missed appointments and so on. By this point we were both pretty upset and finally Lin got her bitch on and called Home Depot and demanded they meet her at the house. And by darn, it worked. They showed up, took pictures, got in touch with Carpet Pro, they sent managers, etc, etc. Finally, they agreed to buy and install new carpet. But we had to get it ordered, delivered, and schedule an install. Finally, the stars aligned and on Tuesday, January 14, 2014 we had our carpet installed! Correctly, installed, I might add.
Needless to say, I have spent a lot of time dealing with carpet this year, and while we still have some moving in to do, I am hoping that I have a happy wife, because that makes for a happy life!