Craigslist Flake Syndrome strikes again

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So yesterday we rearranged our afternoon to allow a craigslist flake to come and view the car. I actually quite liked him, despite the attempt to kill us both when while test driving we ended up with him going the wrong way up a dual carriageway (divided highway) after performing 3/4ths of what I suspect was a U turn of dubious legality. Still, seemed nice. However, he appears to be suffering from acute craigslist flakitis.

He didn’t bring money, though, or any way to get the car back (?!). This I only discovered at the end of the discussion, but being in a relatively good mood I was fine with him picking it up today. This decision is part of the reason I’m in a very grumpy mood now.

So today I got a message this morning saying he couldn’t get off work early – and eventually got a message that he couldn’t find someone to give him a ride down to collect the car. He lives up towards Seattle.

Which is more pissy because I’d put off someone else and said it might sell. Now that person’s disappeared too, which leaves me feeling really quite annoyed.

Then I made the mistake of going to Lowes, because they sent us a discount voucher and we wanted something to put down on the floors to try and prevent quite so much draft coming in. Partly because the void under the house is filled with rat urine, partly because it was beginning to smell pretty damp (like underhouse void), and partly because we want to heat it enough to keep damp at bay. It’s currently at a whopping 10C / 50F (which I didn’t twig was only 10C, so I might nudge it up a bit tomorrow).

Anyhow, so I gathered together some stuff (plumbing stuff here is suuuuper expensive, btw). And trekked round the shop in search of the underlayment which is what was in the house before… and which some people still seem to recommend. The idea in my head being what I don’t use up now would be useful on the house later…

Only I had an appointment at 10, so I needed to be quick through Lowes. After trailing around and not being able to find it, I asked an assistant. Who after looking blank, and eventually pulling out a tablet to try and locate it after I showed her on my phone what I was after, decided she didn’t know where it was. Then said I should find someone from flooring to ask (there was no-one in flooring when I walked through it), then informed me really helpfully that “it’ll be out on a shelf though”.

Uh hu.

And I thought it would be on the ceiling, no-fucking-wonder I couldn’t find it… I managed to restrain myself from saying out loud.

At this point I realised I’d be late if I spent any more time looking for this stuff and threw the stuff I had collected onto a shelf*. Then I made my way over to the appointment where the guy was late (but didn’t apologise)…

…although he seems competent and his quote is about what we’d expect based off other things.

And then, because I can’t get a remodel permit without the roof truss diagram (and we’re waiting on a quote from our fourth contractor before we can get those) I’m kinda stalled out. I spent the day installing the plastic sheeting, the hammer-stapler-thing is at least a bit therapeutic. But that and the little bit of plumbing is kinda it until we can get the contractors to do the roof.

The city were pretty hazy on whether we could take down drywall, but the job that really needs doing is removing the electrics. The drywall can come down in the demo party, but that party will be a million times easier if there’s no electrics in those walls to worry about. Similarly, lopping off the plumbing would be nice, but I don’t have my bucket of shitty plumbing parts available anymore, and again, pluming stuff here is super expensive, so I’m resisting doing more to that than I have to, keeping it to a really minimal leak-stopping.

Tomorrow I’m planning to turn off the water and disconnect the leaking pipework. But after that there’s going to be a bit of a mental debate about how much I can do. This weekend we might take down the carport – which is partly a shame because it’s handy to have, but it’s in the way of the electrician.

It’s irritating, because what I’d scheduled tomorrow was going to look at the car we’d like to buy. But again, because of craigslist flake syndrome I can’t.

Oh, but good news – our washer has found a productive home. It took a while, but freecycle worked :)

* I would not normally do this, but I’m not wasting my discount voucher on a few small items if I can get something bigger that we need, and after the lack of help I was feeling pretty pissed off.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.