Yet here we are. For exactly one week, my husband and I have been hunched over our floors, scraping what seems like miles of endless adhesive off of the concrete.
Okay, we haven't been on our hands and knees the whole time. We've had the help of some expensive machines (for rent, of course).
We have spent well over 50 man hours on these floors so far and we cannot even see the light at the end of the tunnel yet. So, how did we get here, you may be wondering. About a month ago I posted about how it takes us forever to finish things because we end up doing all the work ourselves due to outrageous bids or anxiety about letting go of control. I forgot about another very important reason why we might end up doing all the work ourselves: sometimes the workers just don't show up.
I mentioned before that we were saying goodbye to all our flooring. We took up the carpet, linoleum and tile from about 1200 square feet of the original church building (also back-breaking work but totally worth saving the labor cost. The simplest way to save money while renovating is by doing any work yourself that doesn't require skill). Simultaneously, we moved all our furniture, kitchen appliances, toilet and anything else that might be sitting on top of the floors, into "the back," as we call it.
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| A drawing of the area of flooring to be finished. |
All this was to make way for the guys at Surface Prep Technologies to come over and grind, stain and seal our concrete floors. This is one job we were willing and excited about hiring out, mostly because of how miserable it seemed and how quickly we knew we wanted to get it over with. So they were all set to come work but never came. They broke up with us via text message, citing one excuse after another, which is totally unprofessional, any way you look at it. And we were stuck living out of this makeshift studio apartment in the back of our house-- the part that doesn't have any heat-- with all the cats and dogs. Even Nathan was starting to get really cranky and uncomfortable.
At that point we wasted no time in calling up the tool rental place. Once you are all moved out of your living space, there isn't a lot of time (or patience) to line up new workers. And we've since made more than a couple trips to the hardware store.
That brings us to today. I am so tired, sore and hungry and just trying to ignore the voices in the back of my mind that keep telling me we'll never be finished. Today I totally get why those guys didn't show up last week. I never want to show up to work on this place. Showing up is hard to do.
My husband is amazing and even though he is also tired, sore and hungry he continues to work with a supernatural strength, even as I sit and write this. That's how it is a lot of the time here. It generally works out that when one of us is down, the other is up. Thank God for that. Thank God that relationships and partnerships are rarely 50/50. That they are, more often than not, 90/10 or 60/40. That we can carry each other.
We will be finished, though. And soon. Every step we take shows us a glimpse of what it might be and we keep chasing that vision. We can see it. Can you?
