David Gray – The Other Side
It’s over. Over schedule, over budget, but done.
The paint is still drying and I’ve gone around and redone all the light switches and power jacks (I only got zapped twice!) We moved most everything back to their general locale – I would have liked to have had time to get some sort of layout going but I’ve been working on this job since Thursday and I’m exhausted. I’ll go back this weekend and help my parents move things around. Maybe. Maybe I’ll sleep instead, maybe I’ll chug down this last bottle of whiskey before Detox Day… we’ll see.
This morning I woke up to find that Duke had been biffing all night, all over the kitchen floor. He’d also taken a dump – not on the newspaper that I’d *just in case* set down for him to take a dump on, oh no – just to the side of it. Apparently humans are the masters of canines – we’re the ones picking up their excrement! Throughout this whole time, the most frustrating thing for me has been the dogs – having to constantly yell at them to get lost, having to put up with their disobedience because they’re spoilt, and having to waste time toileting them – especially the special needs blind/deaf old pug, Pepper. I wasted more time on those dogs than I did on smoko breaks, and the two days that my Aunty dogsat them was bliss for me. So screw dogs, they suck as pets.
My cat in comparison self cleans, self toilets, stays out of the way, can figure out when it’s appropriate to hang out with me and only gives the occasional meow to remind me that it’s food time. Also, he once beat up a pit bull, no lie. So my cat rules. In saying that though, when I get a house with a back yard, I’m getting a Border Collie. Border Collies rule. Discussion end.
So after cleaning up that mess, I figured I may as well clean elsewhere. There is plaster powder everywhere, honestly.. that stuff gets EVERYWHERE. So I cleaned the toilet, the bathroom, I gave a few cursory sweeps around the lounge, kitchen and laundry, and then I started scrubbing the plaster that had been trodden into the hallway floor. Ladies, it’s not just that I’m domesticated, it’s also that when you clean a butcher shop for several years to a level that gets you high praise from a MAF inspector nazi (read: “better than a lot of supermarket butcheries I’ve seen, it’s practically spotless”), then you can clean anything.
Matt and Luke showed up while I was scrubbing, it turned out their job today got rained out so they came up to The LV early and immediately started complaining about the heat. Maybe I’d adjusted or something because I thought it was just nice, it wasnt until later that I found out it was 26c – not bad! They got stuck in and finished prepping the walls, then decided to go and get the top coat paint tinted. Spanish White was the order of the day. Initially I thought a brown tint would be naff, but after seeing it in action I immediately liked it – it blends well with the wood skirting, door frames and floors as well as the white sills and doors. And even though Mum and myself had discussed yellow in one room and a greeny colour in the other room, I got the feeling that Spanish White catered for both quite well. On top of that, it has a coffee-esque aspect to it that I think Dad might find pleasing.
We went and got a second 10L of it but disaster struck again! The paint shop guy mixed based on the wrong reference, so we had to go back and get it remixed *sigh* More time killed that could have been used on useful things. Richie arrived and got stuck in, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank him. He and Mum have butted heads a lot over the years, so for him to offer his time and expertise on this means a lot. I’d finished cleaning up around the place, I’d done a couple loads of laundry and restacked the dishwasher, and so I got out of the way of the painters and had a break. I started reading a book, I don’t know what it was, but I thought the author was a pompous and arrogant fool, he’s so opinionated he should get himself a blog – http://www.firstnamelastname.com which is something only narcissistic losers do.
Riki arrived home after work and we got stuck in and ripped up the underlay in the back bedroom. Riki focused on the staples and I dealt with the tackboards and nails. A quick sweep and vacuum and his room was ready to be occupied with his stuff, and so we started moving his bed and dresser in while the hallway and front room got a chance to dry. Then we dealt with the underlay, staples, tackboards and nails in the front room. Me and Riki, we’ve got that down to an art.
With sunlight disappearing fast, the final push was on – we moved as much stuff as we could from Mum and Dad’s room to wherever it needed to go, we moved as much stuff back from the garage and sleepout as we could, but we were all very weary and eventually just placed things in whichever room they needed to be in for later sorting.
So meh, Mum and Dad won’t be arriving home to a fully functioning palace, this isn’t Extreme Makeover Home Edition, and even though it was my nickname the whole time – I am not Ty. But they’ll be arriving home to something at least – no asbestos in the Kitchen, no shoddy carpet, no crappy wallpaper, no holes in the bedroom walls, no crappy cupboards in the laundry… Just a labour of love, or something like that.
My hands are nicked, cut, knuckle skinned, cuticle ruined, scuffed and rough. My face is making like Foo Fighters and breaking out, my hair is waxy and messy, and my torso muscles scream for mercy at the simplest tasks like reaching for a tumbler. I also can’t seem to get the smell of timber smoke out of my pores. But you know what? It sure beats sitting in an office dealing with locked accounts. Fuckin A.
