e-mail snippets - part 2

Tue 3/4/2008 8:18AM

From: ME
To: my renovation consultant

RE: the black's toilet disaster

We had quite the time just picking out a new carpet today at lunch. We decided on one colour and then while the carpet man was in the bathroom my mom had completely changed her mind and was trying to get us to weigh in on her new choice even though we had all already said that the other one would be perfect… And then she wants to paint while we’re at it too… I can only imagine how hard it’s going to be to pick from the bajillion colours of taupe paint chips she’s brought home. At night, I think my dad just goes down into the basement, curls up into a little ball and rocks back and forth.

I don’t know why we went and picked the floors first seeing as we have to paint first… And even before that we have to get the ceiling ripped out… But then there’s the conundrum of picking the paint to match the floor or picking the floor to match the paint… Even though we’ve only been browsing paint colours, I’m pretty sure we picked the new carpet to match the paint. So it’ll be carpet in the living room (No more pastel rose! Ugh… We finally moved the console TV to the basement this weekend and the carpet underneath it was the proper colour and was still all fluffy and not beaten down. We never had any expectations of keeping that other carpet clean when we moved in almost 17 years ago!!!), new linoleum (?) in both the leaky bathroom and the closet bathroom, hardwood in the front hall, and new carpet on both sets of stairs, the upstairs hall, and Arran’s and my bedrooms. So all that stuff in all those places has to go.

As my mom likes to say, the workmen that usually come to work for us have the Gizeppi complex. Little old Italian men… We had Gizeppi & Co. come and do our roof, Gizeppi & Friends did the roof & windows at my grandparent’s house… Even when people are having work done across the street there is no eye candy… Unless of course you’re into septuagenarian Italians… Maybe some good fortune will come out of all this and Gizeppi will send his grandsons.