Welcome to Chez Cliff!

just love these before and after shots.

Before	After

The handymen were telling me that since they’ve started working with the varnish, people have walked by and noticed their work.  The younger handyman has received a few offers for working on other hardwood floors.  His answer "Heck no!"  I guess they handymen figured that they bit off more than they can chew this time!

Saturday afternoon, I was convinced that a third coat of varnish on the floors would be, to quote Handyman exactly "It’s more better."

OK.  As long as it’s more better.

When the handyman quoted me on doing the floors, he told me that he figured two, three days max.  He didn’t expect that the floors would be as bad as they were.  It appears that at some point, the owner felt the need to put down this black substance on the floors.  And that black substance had, what I suspect, a rubber compound added to it which made it virtually impossible for a sander to remove.

When they first started, I expected to have some dust as a result of their work.  However the adverb "some" doesn’t even come close.  And the dust got everywhere.  This photo here shows one pile of dust, created by the floor sander.  Every few hours, I would sweep up the dust.  You can also see that the pretty green walls were covered in dust.

Areas that weren’t even close to the sanding were affected.  The kitchen and bathroom, which started as white, quickly became some kind of orange color.  At first, I tried to keep them clean but you can’t fight the volume of dust that was created.  At some point I just threw my hands up and walked away.

And a few times a day, I’d take the dust piles and put them into one of the recycle bins.  After a while, the dust really started to add up.  What we did was move the bin close to the window so the dust could be scooped into it.  This photo shows the bulkiness of the dust.  By the time we were done, the container was almost 2/3 of the way full.

So what’s next?

Monday, we paint.  My things will arrive on Tuesday.  I can’t wait.

Here’s where I am at this week.

• Thanks to the French handyman, I now have a stove.  They are redoing one of their apartments completely and replacing the stove was something on their checklist.  It was a minor feat in gymnastics to get the stove through my door but it’s in.  I was warned to sanitize it completely before using it.  I think maybe the former tenant was using it to dry out his marijuana leaves.

• The floors are done.  The second coat of varnish was drying as I left last night.  And they look great!  Photos to come!  Lesson learned here:  Never have hardwood floors made of pine.  Never!

• The walls in the front house have been primed.  Once the varnish has dried, the paint will go on quite quickly.  I might have to do a majority of it myself.  The handyman volunteered to do it but they can’t keep giving me all this free time. 

• I started working on Phase 2 by building a brick path down the side of the front house.  My back is tweaking today but it already looks great.

• The back house is finished!  ROAR!

What’s next?

In one of the many inspirational books I’ve read, one author discussed "Everything that you do, do it with purpose."  Whether the purpose is to gain knowledge, increase self-awareness, have fun . . .  And I try to live my life that way.

I was standing in front of the houses with my real estate agent.  It was the first time he had seen them since they’ve been painted.  Since he fixes up houses all the time and then sells them for double what he paid, he knows what colors look good on houses and which ones do not.  We were discussing how much the houses had gone up in value during the past few months.

Cliff:  "Tell me something Agent . . . if something happened whereas I had no visible source of income for three months . . . could I lose these houses?"
Agent:  "No."
Cliff:  "Even if I got fired from my job, got into a terrible car accident, had to have major surgery, was laid up for three months unable to move and to top it all off I had the worse case of hang-nail ever . . . could I lose these houses?"
Agent:  "No.  I’ve only had one client in 20 years lose a house and that’s because he was a complete idiot.  If you get into that situation, you let me know and there’s always something that can be done."
Cliff (grinning):  "Excellent . . . ."

I discovered something very interesting in the paint department at Home Depot.

I was with the Handyman, and his wife, looking at finishes for my wood flooring.  While we were waiting for some minimum wage worker to assist us, I noticed these odd looking large drums at my feet.  The handyman proceeded to tell me that sometimes people get paint they don’t like, bring it back and then Home Depot re-sells it.  These large drums of five gallon paint mistakes were being sold at the ridiculously low price of $20.

Twenty bucks?  For five gallons?  That’s a steal!

Until I saw the color.

Pepto-bismol pink.  Who in their right mind orders pepto-bismol pink?  And five gallons of it?  Who in their right mind thinks that pepto-bismol pink is a good color for a house?  Who?  Did someone say to themselves "Hey, I can’t get enough pink.  I want everything covered with it!!"

Now you may be asking yourself "Self, how does Clifford know that the pink paint was for a house?"

What else would you use 5 gallons of the same paint for?  Did some nutcase decide to get into the Guiness Book of World’s Records by having the world’s largest pink pinewood derby car collection?  If I was still living in Michigan, you could argue that someone bought that paint in order to paint their rust-bucket car.  But I’m not in Michigan so let’s move on.

Pepto-bismol pink?

Picasso once said "What is that?!?"

And he’s right.

I can’t blame Home Depot for this horrible color selection.  You can’t argue "The customer is always right" and then turn around and say "Home Depot is responsible!  Let’s sue them!" because some moron ordered some shade of pink that is illegal in most of the countries around the world.

A color policing system wouldn’t be a bad idea.  When a genius decides that "Mr. Yuck" green would be a perfect accent color to his flaming orange house, then an alarm goes off and he’s immediately shoved into a color class.  In that class, the individual is instructed on what are good colors and what isn’t.  Pepto-bismol pink definitely isn’t.  Furthermore, if you’re the moron looking at the 5 gallons of returned paint thinking "Wow!  Five gallons for $20?  That’s a deal!" then alarms should go off and you find yourself in that same color class.

And I am not immune to this system.  Oh no.  I remember quite distinctively that I selected two shades of green that made some people go to the bathroom in search of a toilet.  If I showed up at the big Home Depot and said "Give me 5 gallons of your best "Mr Yuck" green!" then I would have been sitting in the class, surrounded by a bunch of tweakers in the same boat I’m in.  Actually tweakers wouldn’t be in the class because they’re too busy selling stolen tools in the Home Depot parking lot.  But that’s another rant for another time.

I am not alone in my rant.  Oh no!  I did a google search for "pepto-bismol pink house" and found many articles from people, complaining about this same issue.  I felt sorry for this woman who promised their daughter that she could paint her room any color she wanted.  What was this woman thinking?  If that was my little girl, I’d say to her "Honey, you know your mother and I love you very much.  But the day your room is pepto-bismol pink is the day that pigs fly."

I don’t know what’s worse.  The fact that someone thinks that pepto-bismol pink is an acceptable house color . . . or that there’s a website where you can do the pepto-bismol dance!

Come on people!  I completely support the idea of people being able to express themselves through art, music, etc.  But not your house.  Please not your house.  Not when every neighbor has to bear the brunt of your decisions.

I’m now into week 9 of staying at Anne and Tony’s.

Two weeks ago, I was working at the houses.  Anne will sometimes call me between 5 and 5:30 to see how I’m doing.  So when my cell rang at 5:30, I knew who it was.

Clifford:  "Hey there Sunshine!"
Anne:  "Hey, how are you?"
Clifford:  "Working as usual.  You should see the paint on the houses."
Anne:  "Yeah, I know.  Are you almost done?"
Clifford:  "Almost.  I’ll be home around 7 or 8."
Anne:  "HA!  You said ‘home’!  We gotcha boy!"

Monday morning, Anne was telling me about their weekend trip with their family to Idyllwild.  Being located near the top of a mountain, Idyllwild is 5,300 feet above sea level.  For those of us that live next to the ocean that’s a large elevation difference.  And those differences can have all kinds of weird effects on the body.

Anne:  "We couldn’t do anything!"
Clifford (sipping espresso):   "The oxygen must be thin up there."
Anne:  "You have no idea!  Marissa couldn’t move, her boyfriend Cliff was sick, I had all kinds of knee problems and your father had chest pains."
Clifford (spitting up espresso):   "Tony’s my father now?"

Yep.  Nine weeks.