THE LOWE FAMILY NEWSLETTER : VOLUME 155                                                     MAY 2024

Dear Readers,

Since my last newsletter, I have spent months painting twelve doors, about fifty spindles, yards of baseboard, acres of walls and even my front porch furniture. I was fortunate to have help with painting two upstairs bedrooms and the upstairs hallway - Sean volunteered   in exchange for childcare: keeping his children out of his way while he painted!  Coryn and Jeremy came  to help me paint the upper half of my bedroom which was made necessary because they gifted me a new bedding ensemble for Christmas that looked awful with the color scheme I had previously painted in my room to compliment the bedding set gifted to me by Lori and her mom after Norm passed away. Instead of painting,  Jeremy actually ended up fixing my upstairs shower’s plumbing after Sean used it and  noticed it was making horrendous banging sounds and leaking too! I had been quoted a thousand dollars to fix it by a professional! So thankful for my handy and always willing to help sons, son-in-laws and grandson-in-law who all make my life so much easier!

Once most of the painting was completed I decided it was time to replace all the mismatched carpeting in the dining room,  family room , the upstairs bedrooms,  and on the stairs. And since I have never liked the tile in the entryway I decided to go for broke and replace it too!

Knowing that many flooring companies require your rooms to be emptied of furniture before they will remove your old floor coverings and install your new ones I decided to go with Home Depot who will help move your furniture into another space in your house- rather than having to use pods  and a furniture van like one of my neighbors who picked a different company!

I knew that I wanted to go with lighter and brighter flooring to complement all my new wall colors so I picked out a cream plush carpet for the entire upstairs, a more adventurous textured cream carpet for the stairs and luxury vinyl wide plank flooring for the family room, dining room and hallway.

 

I was fully expecting to wait a month or more for installation but to my amazement Home Depot  informed me that once my new flooring arrived - within two weeks  - I would be scheduled immediately! I was still painting my downstairs two storey vaulted hallway at this point and  knew I needed to get it finished !  I had to call in Sean when I realized that I was too short to edge the top of the wall that meets the ceiling - even standing on the top rung of my tallest ladder!  Kay also volunteered Richard for the job since he is well over six feet! Sean climbed to the top of the ladder and couldn’t reach it either - I had woefully underestimated how much taller I needed to be to get the job done! Sean had to return to his house to fetch his ladder that expanded to twenty feet or so! Sean saw my inability to judge the height needed as a  definite shortcoming!

Once I had accepted the bid from Home Depot , a call came from one of the two installation companies that were going to be working at my house. He had noticed in the photos  taken by their job cost estimator that I had a heating vent installed in my hallway tile floor and that could complicate things so he asked if he could come over and inspect it for himself. He came and said it was probably going to cost me another thousand dollars as pulling up the tile would likely pull up chunks of the underlying concrete subfloor necessitating putting in a new one. I looked as horrified as I possibly could at this news and said I would have to think it over as this was a significant cost for such a small space The next day he called again and said he had someone on their four man installation team who was willing to try  prying the tiles up one by one ahead of the installation day if I was agreeable ! This was a no brainer of course so I said he could come whenever was convenient for him! One crisis solved but more to come!

We all know that Mother is not a morning person so imagine my horror when I got a phone call from some freight service at six o’clock in the morning to inform me that within twenty minutes they would be delivering a pallet with my plank flooring. This was days ahead of my installation date so I rushed out in my nightie and backed my car out onto the driveway so the pallet could fit inside the garage -  protected from the weather and do-it-your-selfer’s cruising my cul- de- sac for free construction materials!

A three man crew installed my new carpet in about three hours - they were working with great speed but unfortunately not skill. They opened a bedroom window and threw the carpet down onto my plants below - it may have saved them time by not carrying three bedrooms and a hallway's worth of carpet and padding down the stairs but it didn’t save my window sill or plants from damage! In their frantic rush to complete their job they scratched my newly painted baseboards in two bedrooms and broke a spindle on the balcony overlooking my family room.When I was  summoned to inspect their work I was floored - not in a good way. The carpet was fine except for the stair installation but there was a lot of damage to my newly painted woodwork!. Mother had contorted herself into positions not even depicted in the Kama Sutra in order to get a paintbrush into the nooks and crevices of all those spindles while hanging over a bannister! !  

When I asked how they had managed to leave one bedroom and the hallway without damage to the paintwork I was told that a professional painter must have painted those spaces! I let him know that I had painted every single scrap of wood in my home!

Just as they left, the supervisor of the plank flooring crew arrived and could see that I was not happy as we toured the other crew’s handiwork and as I touched the broken spindle that they claimed to have fixed it broke in two and fell onto the sofa below. We were both shocked and I said thank goodness that wasn’t one of my many toddler grandchildren flying through the gap - a lawsuit waiting to happen. He immediately called Home Depot to let them know about all the issues and I soon took a call from the manager of the carpet installers who committed to being at my house to inspect the issues the next day.

Sean and his three youngest children fortuitously arrived at my house shortly before the manager  so she was immediately aware of how dangerous the broken spindle situation was: they could all easily fall through the gap in the balcony ! She toured all the rooms, took numerous photos of all the damage and deficiencies, including to the window sill that they had pushed the old carpet out of. I asked her if this was normal practice and she admitted that it wasn’t but she thought they might have been trying to avoid getting more dust in the house by not carrying it down the stairs! I rolled my eyes. She agreed that the stair carpet installation was a do over - thankfully I had a whole roll of carpeting left over. She also undertook to repair or replace the spindle and said that they would provide and pay for a professional painter to fix the issues. I requested a different installer for the stair redo as I did not want any of the previous installers in my home again. I am pleased to report that all the repairs were carried out and now I am thrilled with the results!

The family room needed a lot of leveling!

The dining room ony needed a patch in one corner

The hallway after tile removal and leveling

I hoped my plank flooring installation would be less stressful but  once the old flooring was removed it revealed  uneven sub- floors which would have to be leveled before installation was possible. I frankly thought that one of the great advantages of vinyl plank flooring was its flexibility but I was informed that the boards could not flex enough to be installed as the height difference was too great. I had two options: find a carpenter to pull up the subfloor and shave down the joists or use self leveling cement. Since most of my living room furniture was in my bedroom I didn’t feel that I could wait weeks to find a carpenter to do this - I certainly did not have one  on speed dial that would be available that day so I took the other option which cost me  another twelve hundred dollars!  I mentioned that  I was having some foundation work done soon so they had me check that this would not involve lifting the house at all as they feared my concrete patches would crack. I called the fondation company who assured the installers that they were placing piers to support, not lift my foundation! By this point Mother felt like she needed a lift - more than just a cup of tea - to deal with all the stress. Fortunately the floors went in without a hitch and as I had pre painted all the quarter round needed for installation ahead of time the four guys had the floors installed very quickly and seem to have done a fine job. I love everything about them! Of course Lochlan who is potty training - christened them on his first visit - but they are so much easier to clean than carpet!

It’s amazing to think that all this remodeling came about because two of my children commented on my dark , dated wall paneling during their last visit and in a couple of days they will be here to see all the changes their chance comments caused. Of course since one of them lives on the East Coast and the other on the West Coast they were not available to help with any of it!

The updated look from the front door into the family room

From the hallway into the dinning room!

 Last week I  had four guys armed with jackhammers drilling under my double fireplace bricked chimneys - through my concrete steps - in hopes of sinking two piers many feet down under the original foundation to support the weight of the bricks which the foundation expert believes is causing my dry wall cracks.This was horrendously noisy and messy so hopefully it works! I am hoping for a break from home improvement projects for a while!

Four guys alternated shovelling to dig two holes to bedrock - took three days!

This Memorial Day weekend we are having a family reunion of sorts, only Blake and Josh will be missing. I am not going to be out done this year as I was last. I have a huge inflatable  bounce house with a pool, slide, climbing wall, and a play cafe that takes up most of my front yard! I also have a splash pad, slip n’slide, and a spare pool.! Sean has volunteered to man the grill and I will be serving food all day Saturday and Sunday, with the Logues hosting us all on Monday!

Ava Claire and Owen recently spent a weekend with me as Coryn and Jeremy were on an adults only trip to New Orleans. We experienced very heavy rains virtually the entire time they were here and late one night we found ourselves down in the basement furiously mopping up water and rolling virtually every towel I possessed to dam the flood along my baseboard! It was about 11;30 at night when Ava Claire announced that she thought we needed a nice cup of tea! I was greatly amused at her coming up with the British  solution to everything! I put the kettle on and found some European style chocolate biscuits! I didn’t worry about the late hour and caffeine as I knew we were all exhausted from our labors and would sleep well - which we did! Another lovely memory of the treasured time I spend with my grandchildren!   Love Mother