TWO WEEKS!

Just when you think the worst has happened and it can't get much worse... Yep, it does. Folks, we have indeed bought the 'Money Pit'.

Dave called me yesterday and left a very cryptic message, telling me 'the hits keep coming'. This started the butterflies in my stomach to start flying at mach speed. My call back confirmed the worst: the parquet floor has to go. The wood floor that we had gone through so much to salvage and refinish was finally removed from life support, and in a way, I was relieved.

Turns out that when the floor was originally laid years ago, the people who installed it didn't properly prep the floor underneath. This caused the glue that they used for the wood tiles to crystallize over time, meaning that the tiles were no longer sticking to the foundation, but instead, only to each other. And this meant that the floor was just a floating plank over the foundation. As the guys started to prep the floor to get it ready to be sanded, they noticed that some of the tiles were loose. Very loose. The more they 'dug' around, the quicker the tiles started to lift.

The bottom line is that it would have taken more $$ and a lot of time to re-stick the tiles, sand and then refinish them. We were at the point where we needed to let it go. I'm honest when I tell you that I really felt like we had just taken a friend off of life support! Sounds dramatic, but for the past 2 months it's been a fight to keep the parquet. Time after time we had some bad things happen, yet we powered on, determined to keep this floor and make it gorgeous.

Luckily I was able to leave work early, so we met at Ability Wood Flooring in Orlando to pick out new wood. Very helpful folks and we quickly and easily came to a decision. We're still spending more than we thought we would for flooring, but, this is where the rubber meets the road. We've got no choice.

So, timing. The flooring folks (who also happen to be the people who are installing our carpet) seem to think they can get carpet done for sure this week. They're currently working on moving some other jobs around to try to accommodate our job. Luckily, the wood we chose is in stock locally, so that should help speed up the process too. Maybe the tides are turning?

And our cabinets got delivered yesterday! CABS ARE HERE! The garage is filled with the sweet smell of fresh wood and it's beautiful. We had a little gathering of some friends last night at Camelot, and some of the new neighbors even stopped by, seeing the flurry of people activity. It's going to be great living in that neighborhood! I only hope we've put the worst past us and we have nothing but smooth sailing to the finish.