Today’s been hard. It’s not even November yet, and this morning we heard the whooshing noise of another self-imposed optimistic timeline whizzing past us and crashing into a wall.
We’d been quietly working towards moving in at the end of November (this being the missed deadline from the end of October). With the arrival of the kitchen we’ve started looking at our dates – thinking about when we can hand in notice on our apartment… And we realised that my work trip, Kathryn’s busy work month and the decision we made (at my enthusiastic behest) to see Marika Hackman this month mean that… we won’t be in by the end of November.
It would have been a substantial push, anyway, but sitting down and looking at the calendar, and thinking realistically about where stuff needs to be stored (fundamentally: in the garage); resulted in us reluctantly concluding that November won’t be our move in. December’s a possibility.
In other news, as predicted, the self-levelling compound has started to develop hairline cracks. I initially thought these would be related to the metal plates underneath, but they do just seem to be random. So the vague thoughts of “do we need an antifracture membrane” have been put aside, and we’ll be ordering and applying much goop to our floor before the top-coat of epoxy goes on there. I just ordered what appears to be a somewhat vapour permeable, low VOC antifracture membrane. Let’s hope it works.
With all that in mind, today did not turn out to be hugely productive. We’d intended to put down the marmoleum flooring that covers the floors in front of the two attic accesses (which, it turns out, has an somewhat more complicated installation method than I’m used to with cheap old lino). However, it was not to be. Despite us renting the 100lb roller in preparation, and turning up at the house all excited like, when we got to the house we realized I’d been a bit overzealous in turning down the thermostat.
The special marmoleum glue specifically states that it must not be applied below 65°F (18.3°C), and the house was at a whopping 54°F (12°C). Which obviously wasn’t going to work out. Thankfully, because we returned the roller quickly enough, we managed to get a full refund.
Instead we put together our pendant lights for the lounge and dining room. Unlike in the UK where it’s pretty simple to get a complete kit for this, over here it seems to be pricey and involve you knowing exactly what bits you require. It’s taken us a couple of goes to get all the required bits.
You can’t really see it in the photo, but the light cords are baby-blue, which has turned out to be very pretty. Don’t tell anyone, but it’s Euro cable (so the colour code is all wrong). This is because there’s a nice company in the UK that make 3-core cable that’s the same diameter as vintage 2-core cable, using a rather complicated twisting scheme so that it still looks like two-core, but actually has three – meaning you can ground your metal lights without getting a larger diameter hole’d light socket. We did get some US fabric covered cable, but it’s hilariously over-large for the hole it’s meant to go into. I’d worry, but frankly, this stuff is rated for a few-hundred watts at 240v, and we’re using it for 7-10W at 110v, so yeah, the current is roughly doubled, but we’re so far under the max rating it’s ridiculous.
We did temporarily mount one of our unsprayed shades, and having seen that it does, indeed, look lovely… we took it down. The shades, when they’re sprayed, will be a sort of navy blue with a creamy white inside. Again, this process changes the inside space quite dramatically, making the main room of the house feel warm and cozy (even when it’s not very warm in there). As autumn’s rolled along it’s slowly got quite dark in there, so it’s a nice change to have lights.
Sadly, that was all that we did today, though. The frustration of having to move everything around the house to get the scaffolding into place continues to niggle at me, and while it’s (really really) frustrating that we won’t be in the house when we planned, that shift does mean that we might get the floor down in the bedroom before we actually move in. Which would be nice.
Anyhow, so that’s where we’re at. Frustrated, slow moving, but progressing.
