We continued this afternoon and evening on our efforts to be builders. Some things we can do well but other things are those DIY stories you see on television. One consistent thing for DIY’ers is never having food breaks for healthy food. We have done more take out in the past few weeks than the past few months.

Today we got a mid-day start after spending time sleeping and sorting what we needed to do to complete our DIY weekend tasks before the real workers came back Monday. Sleeping was not on the list but really should have been. I am not sure we could get some at Lowes but if they sold it we would. It is good, I guess, that I accidentally shut my alarm off rather than putting it on snooze.

Once we got going it was another trip to Lowes and then to the warehouses to look for the missing 3 1/2 inch sink drain. We never did find it. As we shuffled through boxes and avoided toppling towers of building materials, evening clothes and food we were like magpies. We would spot something that seemed immediately useful and drag it out of the pile and pass it forward to the person closest to the warehouse door.

We found a  door knob that was missing its partner. Now we have one door handle on the french doors that lead to our basement apartment. You can exit the apartment without having to hook a finger under the bottom of the door. On the outside of the door, which swings the other way, I put some painters tape and wrote on it with a sharpie “Push to Open”

Simple enough, “Push to Open,” but for us now it is a pretty big deal. We have doors that can be opened. We have doors.

One of the things I worked on this weekend was trying to reduce the dust in the apartment. The entry doors are immediately off the garage which is a staging area for a lot of work. It is also the place where people tromp in and out to go from the place they are cutting wood to the place where the wood goes. Between the cutting spot and the going spot is the trail by our doors, doors that did not exist last week.

Doors or not, there is a lot of dust. It permeates everything. I vacuumed with a shop vac so strong you have to hold on to pets and small children when I turn it on. Otherwise they could be sucked right in. I thought I had gotten the dust off the floor and now only needed to clean the floors. How wrong I was.

Even though we needed to do more cleaning, I decided we should bring some stuff in from the overstuffed cars just so we were there in a manner of speaking. Late last night I tried to haul in one of the cheap chest of drawers I painted and if broke down just feet before the garage door. It was late and I was tired so I unceremoniously dumped it right by the door and left. It was there when we arrived today.

We finished off the kitchen all but taking the wheels off the portable dishwasher so it will fit under the counter.  We had taken a bag of dog food over so we would have food for Sophie if we were caught by working late. Knowing construction dogs wold be back Monday, I picked the bag of food up off the floor and put it on the highest shelf of our new kitchen cabinet. It kinda gave me a quiver.

After wrestling to the ground a hanging pot rack that had the audacity to need to fit out of alignment with the studs, we were both so frustrated I decreed that we should take a brake and eat something. A full break includes going several hundred feet below the house to use “PeeWee’s” Port-a-potty. When I returned my spouse had put the door handles on the doors. It was a thrilling sight.

While he finished off the door handles I went to the car and got the “drop off at the store and grab some food, food.” I thought to make it a nice picnic but was befuddled as to how to do it. I surveyed the construction chaos that is our garage an espied a 5 gallon bucket of paint primer. I lugged that into our tiny semi-clean living room. I saw there we had brought in a bistro table from a deck furniture set. I went in search of another seat an brought back a 5 gallon bucket of construction staples. Sophie even had a china bowl.

We tipped cans of Pelligrino lemon drink and counted it an appropriate toast since it sparkled. We enjoyed our dinner. It was good to eat in.