Okay, so a SUPER BUSY week and some, just when I should have been settling down and finishing the workshop cleanup and prep for new floors.
I have NOT YET put up pictures from Halloween, but it's tops on my TODO list. Really. Soon now!
Last week, instead of putting up Halloween pictures, I helped out the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz with a promotion for the new Coen Brothers film, "No Country for Old Men". It looks awesome! I'll be doing a roadtrip, perhaps next weekend after turkey day, or may be the week after, dunno, to see it on the comps I'm getting for the promo work. I got a GREAT photo out of it, too; a pic of me taken by the Chronicle photographer who was there. Look for me next Thursday, by the way, in the Chronicle. I should have also been on TV last week, perhaps, on Fox and KVUE. Dunno.
I also understand that they are using one of the brain-blowing-out-of-gourds tests we did for the press on Wednesday as a "please don't talk" bumper.. "don't talk, or else" is the theme.
Oh, the promo itself? We, Josh (the Alamo South manager) and I, were in front of the Ritz before showtime, using a modification of my BoomStick, blowing nasty brains (banana and blood) out of watermelons.
It was fun!
Then, this weekend, we prepped the house for laying floors.
Saturday was easy enough; after a late start to the day (we needed sleep!) we finished moving everything with the help of Matt and Susan, and it was nice.
Sunday started bright and early at 6:30 am just like a work day (not on purpose, we just happened to be awake) but with nice french press coffee. About 8:00 or so, we ripped up the carpet and padding in handy little squares with a lovely curved blade in my box-knife handle. It was easy, and only took a couple of hours to strip the floor and carpet tack strips from 400+ feet of complexly contoured floor.
Under the carpet were some significant concrete cracks, and an apparent severe discontinuity in the middle of the house; either a bulge or the house is slowly splitting into two halves and falling apart. I think it's a bulge, after inspecting the outside foundation walls.
So off to Lowes to get some epoxy and seal the crack, since we don't want humidity issues under the floor.
A quick wash and we would be ready to seal the concrete!
That "quick wash" turned into four hours of scrubbing on hands and knees as we stripped up the two quarts or so of !@#$% drywall mud that the lazy-ass builders had left under the carpet. I'm not kidding; we scrubbed with TSP water (harsh!) and, after that loosened up the mud, we used a scraper to peel up double-handfulls of mud. Used 20 gallons of water, dumping the saturated 5-gallon bucket several times, each time with an eight-inch of sludge on the bottom as well.
It was brutal.
But now it's done.
Almost. The sealer went on really easy -- a gallon covering the entire floor, when it should have been four gallons. I don't understand how that worked, so we'll paint it again tonight.
Posted by Edwin at November 19, 2007 10:39 AM