Getting Worn Out

You never realize how much goes into remodeling a house or buying a house that needs repairs until you actually do it.  We were driving back and forth too, from Dallas County from our house in Sachse to the country house in Bivins is about a three hour drive if you don't stop for any reason, somewhere around 150 to 160 miles or so.  We had been driving back and forth working on both houses too.  Painting at both houses, packing up one and unpacking at the other and making repairs.  

I was working on the windows at the country house, all of them needed to have the caulking removed and reapplied before we painted them.  I was tired and sore, it was probably not a good time to use anything sharp, but I grabbed a curved knife to cut the old caulking out.  Crew went to town to get something's we needed and he saw what I was doing and told me to be careful before he left.  I was switching between a putty knife and the curved blade and trying to be careful when I hit a nail with the curved knife and it twisted out of my hand and cut my index finger almost to the bone.  I just grabbed paper towels and wrapped it up and ran to the bathroom to inspect the damage.  It was deep, it had cut from the inside tip of my finger over into about a third of my nail and was bleeding pretty good.  I called Crew and asked him to get some butterfly bandages, gauze and tape...I am not sure what was going through his mind, I told him I hit a nail and it twisted out of my hand, I probably needed a stitch or two, but a butterfly bandage would work.  I took a break after that.  I probably got on line and tried to find cabinet knobs or something.  I waited to get back to work until after Crew came back and we bandaged up my finger, he even got finger cots so I could keep it clean or wash my hands without getting it wet.

I switched over to painting baseboards, I could not tell you everything Crew was doing, we worked in different rooms a lot of the time.  We finally got a date for installation of the laminate flooring.  It had to sit a few days before they could install it, it was a lot of boxes of laminate...something like 53 if I remember right.  They were stacked in the living room because I was in what we called the office/workout room with a countertop on top of sawhorses and surrounded by all the baseboards that needed painting.  Crew had been putting decking in the attic so he could run wiring for the computers, speakers and TV stuff...that much I do remember.  He spent quite awhile up there and measuring trying to figure out where the walls could be drilled to run wires.  After the laminate arrived, we decided to go spend a few days at the Dallas house while they were acclimating.  My finger needed to heal up some too.

I had climbed up and down ladders so much the past couple of months my knees would not operate properly, I even had to get a steroid injection in one knee because it hurt so bad.  I had taken to putting a heating pad on my back and both of us rubbed deep heat ointment on all of our aching body parts.  Some nights my hands would not straighten out fully from holding a paintbrush for so long.  Crew and I both started our day with a couple of Aleve for quite awhile too. 

We finally got the call, laminate installation date!

We salvaged all of the baseboards to reuse to save money and only had to totally replace a few.   4 coats of paint with primer later, they looked decent, but I didn't get done with them until the laminate was installed.