Winter week in Review

Some weeks are easier than others. Some are weirder than others. This one was a little of both. Most unusual for me, each day found me at a different location! After doing two large bathroom remodels, the daily change of scenery was refreshing, I suppose. As for weird, that award goes to the weather. What a strange winter this is so far! Last Friday was a true winter-golf day, with the thermometer pushing tantalizingly close to SEVENTY degrees. Today, one week later, we're back in the sixties again. Yesterday was okay, but typically cold. The day before saw rain, sleet, snow, wailing winds, and a plenitude of auto accidents. Tuesday, however, was only chilly with a dribble of midday rain. Monday was bitter winter straight from Central Casting. Bizarre, truly bizarre. That's the weather, then--here's the work week:

Monday Mike and I worked together to install an extraordinarily heavy exterior French door unit from Anderson. I've never seen this specific door unit before, and I hope to never have to lift one again. Fortunately, we had help. The homeowner and his varsity-football son each chipped in to help us move this monstrosity. With weight, though, comes quality. The actual installation, after the move, was a breeze. Everybody was happy, on both sides of that door!

Tuesday I finally found a way to schedule an old and loyal customer's new replacement windows. I'd hoped to have Mike's help with these originally, but our calendars never seemed to mesh. I'm not really a "window guy," although I've done enough of them over the years. But I don't have Mike's confidence or speed with them. It was only six windows, so even I was able to comfortably install them all in one day. They fed me lunch, too. Yum! The rain arrived by afternoon, so I deferred removing the old storm windows 'till another day.

Wednesday was the final day for the Rush (Town of, not speed of) bathroom job, which I've written about recently. In remodeling, there's no feeling quite so satisfying as finishing a job in style. All the painting was done while I was gone. Pete Zury put in the new floor on Monday, and it's perfect. When I got there that morning, my job was to install anything not yet in place, to do a bit of caulking, and to add the trim (which needed to follow the flooring). When I left a few hours later, everything was complete and ready for the owners' use. It's not often that a job works out that way, so I rarely see the finished product. One more, "everybody happy."

Thursday I covered a lot of territory. Back to the upper east side to pull of those pesky storm windows and caulk all around. Done. Back to outer east Mongolia (alright, Walworth) to finish my all-day-bathroom-floor. It didn't go well at first, because I had to reset the toilet (my fault) and fix the fill valve (just bad luck); but that one is done and ended up okay. From there I hustled off to my side of the city, upper west side, to meet a referral customer regarding new countertops. That's a "new" experience for me, after years of working from sold-leads with Chase-Pitkin. Nothing I haven't done a hundred times before, years past. It's like riding a bike, after all. Home in time for dinner, so that was a winner.

Today, of course, was Friday. Since I'm not working Saturday (yea!), it's the final workday of this week. All day long the temperature climbed, so I was able to set-up for cutting outside, and to work without a coat. What a nice change! The job was tricky enough: adding crown molding all the way around a new kitchen, in which some of the crown had already been installed. In addition, the customer had provided two different sizes of moldings, which had to meet in one spot. (Not a mistake, but rather a choice, based on different wall finishes.) Some of the existing crown had to come back out, be re-cut, then re-installed. All in all, challenging enough to keep me on my toes. But not so much that it was frustrating or discouraging. And when it was done, it sure looked fine! That's exactly the right way to end the week. Until Monday, then...