Seriously...

It's been an eventful 2 weeks since my last real post.  If you don't want to read my tale of woe feel free to skip to the end for a stitching update.  Also, I just want to say that I am not sharing my tale of woe with you to get sympathy or pats on the back.  In the grand scheme of things my daily troubles are of little consequence.  Annoying yes, but there are others out there with real problems.  Right now my prayers are with the victims of the shooting in Colorado and with the 2 little girls missing in Iowa. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

In my last post the kitchen floor replacement was just getting under way.  It was not an easy process let me tell you.  Let me back up a bit so the whole thing makes sense.  After it was determined that our floor was defective, Dan and I decided that we did not want to have the same floor installed again as we had lost confidence in it's durability.  We decided to have hardwood floors installed instead.  the Mart sent a man out to remeasure and check all the tolerances, ie:  will the doors all still open and close, will the refrigerator still fit, etc...as far as he was concerned all was fine.   The day arrived that the wood floor was to be installed and the installers came in, took 5 minutes and informed me that they would not be able to install the floor.  There were 2 main reasons for this.  The first being that the front door would not be able to open and close much less have a rug in front of it and did you know that if you have a wood floor and do not have a rug in front of your exterior doors that it voids your warranty?  Well it does.  The second reason was the floor was not level enough.  If your floor is not level within certain tolerances, it also voids your warranty.  And different floors have different tolerances.  Going back to the original defective floors installation, I distinctly remember a fee involved to level the floor.  Now they are telling me my floor is not level enough.  And here is where I have a problem.  I understand the concept behind tolerances, but IMO, if you tell a person there is a fee involved in leveling your floor before your chosen flooring can be installed, one should explain that "level" is not really level.  It's only sort of level.  So when they "leveled" my floor last year apparently it was not up to snuff for a wood floor installation.  This is all stuff I have learned in this process.  I'm hoping it will help some of you out there in the future.  After the wood floor installers left, the Mart sent out their flooring installation manager to re-check the tolerances and in the course of our conversation he remarked that he was surprised they hadn't done a better job leveling the floor last year.  So during my negotiations with the Mart on what we would and would not pay for this time around I was sure to mention the leveling issues and the customer service gal assured me that they would level the floor this time at no charge.  Flash forward to 2 weeks ago when the lone guy shows up to tear out and install the new/old floor (we had to go with the same flooring due to costs) and he asked me what we were doing I stressed to him that I wanted the floor more  level than they did it the last time.  I knew I was in trouble when I saw a slight frown appear on his face and he left the house.   He came back and informed me that he wasn't being paid to level the floor more and that I would need to pay another $250.00   To say I was unhappy with this would be an understatement.  Now imagine if you were to take a cross stitch picture or any picture for that matter, into a frame shop for framing and the framer tells you it will be X amount of money to frame your picture.  You okay that price and come back in 2 weeks when it's done.  When you pick it up you see that the picture is is hung slightly crooked and you ask to have it straightened.  You are then informed that you didn't pay to have it put in the frame straight, only sort of straight but for another $50.00 they will put it in perfectly straight.  How would you feel?  You'd be upset I'm sure.  And I told the man so. I was raised to believe if you are going to do a job you do it right and you do it right the first time.  Now if they had explained all the tolerance rules waaaay back when I was buying the flooring originally and after being educated by the salesman on it and if I chose not to pay the extra that would be one thing.  But none of it was explained until the wood floor problem.  The installer agreed with me that I should not have to pay for the leveling so he called customer service again.  They told him to do whatever he needed to do to get rid of me!  Should I be offended by that??  LOL!! Is it level enough for a wood floor?  No.  But at least my table no longer rocks and you don't feel like you are standing in  a hole in some parts and on a hill in others.   I wish that was the end of my rant regarding this install but it's not.  After adjusting the legs on the dishwasher to get the floor under them, my dishwasher no longer worked. We discovered this after the installer left for the day.  Dan tried to figure out what the problem was but was unable to do so.  The next day I pointed out the problem and was informed that aside from adjusting the legs, he didn't do anything so it couldn't be his fault.  Nonetheless, he got down and messed with the legs and lo and behold I had power to the dishwasher again.  And I was happy.  And ran the dishwasher.  Friday at noon, the day he was supposed to finished he informed me that he would not be able to finish and he would be back on Monday and then he left.  And I was unhappy.  This was day 3, it was only supposed to take 3 days.  Dan had already taken a day of vacation, Abby and Amy were not going to be here on Monday so I had to take a day off of work.  When I don't work, I don't get paid.  Plus I was not able to cook since the stove was sitting in the dining room.  By this time I just wanted it finished and I wanted him out of my house.  It took him all day Monday but finally at 6:30p.m. he announced that he was done.  He did some final cleanup, adjusted the legs on the dishwasher to level it and was ready to leave when I thought to check and see if the dishwasher still had power to it.  That would be a big negative.  No.Power.  This time when he re-adjusted the legs, it didn't help,  he tried everything he could think of to get it to work.  Dan did the same.  Nothing worked.  Finally he said he would tell the Mart and they would call me.  By Wednesday I had not heard from them.  When I called they knew nothing about.  Said I would need to call an appliance repair place and when they determined what the problem was I should let them know and they would decide whether they would pay for it or not. The appliance people were scheduled to come out Saturday.  Friday, for  some reason I decided to hit a button on the dishwasher and damn if it didn't work!!   I still had the appliance guys out but they could find nothing wrong with it.  I think it has to be a pinched wire but they found no evidence of one.  So now we hope for the best.  The floor is in, the dishwasher is working, but wait!! My troubles are not over yet.  Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.  Friday night I get home from work and notice that it feels a bit warm in here.  I sat down at the computer and as I am sitting there I notice a noise that I shouldn't be hearing.  Getting up to investigate I discover that the blower on the furnace that blows the cool air throughout the house is not working...again.  We had the same problem in June.  That time it was the capacitor.  We were not so lucky this time.  This time it was the blower motor.  An expensive fix.  And it gets better.  The repair guy, after taking the furnace apart to replace the blower informed us that we will be lucky to make it through the winter with the furnace.  A few years back we had water leaking inside the unit and it did major damage.  So today they came out to give us an estimate on a new furnace. And finally, Sunday my computer went POP and died, leaving behind a very strong odor of something burning.  Lucky for us it turned out to only be the power supply.  Thank God for small favors!!  I'm not sure I could have handled a complete computer replacement at this time!   So there you have it.  The further misadventures of Julie.  I'm hoping at this point we have paid our dues and things will start to calm down.  But I'm not holding my breath.

I think I mentioned that we are going to be doing a Halloween display at the shop during the month of September.  I decided this weekend that I should maybe stitch something for the display as I really don't have any Halloween type things stitched up.  I chose A Wicked Accident designed by AuryTM.  This one always makes me chuckle.  I've had a piece of PTP 36 ct Swamp linen in my stash for several years now and thought it might be perfect for this piece.  I used the DMC colors called for with the exception of the green (936).  It was too dark so I lightened it up to 907.  I have some thoughts about how I want to frame it but I'm still mulling them over.

As this is another mini-novel I will call it good and try to give you an update on my parrot in a few days.  Or maybe I'll start something else Halloween.  Or maybe I'll work on one of my other WIP's.  Until then...

Take care till next time!

Julie