At long last, some closure

The carpet installers got here at 7:45 this morning, and were done at about 1:45 this afternoon. They cleaned up after themselves, were exceedingly polite, and did a good job. We are pleased with the work, still unhappy about the 6 weeks it took to get the job done.

The saga of the basement continues....

I called Lowe's this morning, because they were supposed to install the carpeting (at last!). They said something about glue, and were going to be here in a while. Well, the installers showed up, ready to glue down the carpeting. I said, no, we had ordered installation with pad & tack strips, and I thought the glue was for the stairs. After some discussion, the installers left and I made yet another trip to the store.

After some discussion, the manager of the installed sales department decided to go ahead and comply with my request to do the job as we had asked for it to begin with. Supposedly, it is costing the store an additional $432 for padding and tack strips, but I have paperwork on my side to support what we had originally asked for

Anyway, the installers are going to come out yet again, on Monday morning. Maybe it will actually happen this time.

Visitors and stuff

My brother visited two weeks ago. It was a fine time, we had a chance to hang out and talk about just stuff. That's something I miss but is unavoidable in our family, as we all live so far apart. One of the things Bob does for fun and expression is to jam with his blues trombone at local joints. When he's going somewhere, he surf's the 'net to find bars that have jam sessions. Sure enough, there's one here in Maryville: Brakin's. We had a good time, there was a variety of talent, and everyone played the blues with enthusiasm and sometimes too much volume. (Maybe that's just me getting old...)

We also went out on the boat one day and viewed the scenery on Ft. Loudon Lake. The next afternoon, I had the boat taken out of the water, and Bob and I cleaned the bottom with my pressure cleaner. The boat ran a bit faster afterwards, but when I gave the helm to Bob, we hit a submerged chunk of wood that made a clunk, but did no damage. All in all, we had a great visit.

The day Bob left to go back to Milwaukee, another couple friends came for the weekend, Bob from Pleasanton, CA, and John from the Illinois side of the St. Louis area. We played golf a couple times and revisited memories from their visit to us when we lived in Germany. Our golf games were not great, but very much fun.

This week, we will go visit some friends from CA who have recently moved to north Georgia.

The basement saga continues

The carpeting was supposed to be installed last week. And our favorite home improvement store called about the time the installer was supposed to be here to advise that the carpeting we chose was unacceptable for installation on stairs. OK, that's fine, but why weren't we so advised when we selected the carpet?

We had to go into the store and select a new carpet, not so easy, because we had already painted a color based on the old choice. We found another carpet that will work, and are now waiting for the call to advise when this can be installed.