It’s been a while since regular posts have gone up, and even though we’re under a shelter-in-place order, we’ve been incredibly busy with projects. From readying posts for stega.org to installing sculptures, to working on the new racercar, to lots of small projects I will eventually post about here, we’ve been really busy.
That said, it’s been a while since the last real post, and while I’m “only” 18 months behind, more stories are being slowly documented–like this small saga about the floors which starts with a headache and Craigslist, and ended happily ever after thanks to a friend.
The downside to replacing a forced-air furnace with a ductless system is you end up with a lot of holes in the floors and walls. While the wall holes are pretty easy to patch up, the ones in the floors are bit more problematic. This is especially true if the flooring you had installed just two and a half years prior has since been discontinued. Yep that’s right, the lovely flooring I had installed right after we moved in to the house is no longer available. When I found out, I was perturbed–especially since I had returned 7 unopened boxes. (This would also be item number 11 on the 10 Reasons to Never Buy From Lumber Liquidators list.) This meant the holes in my office and the blue room were possibly going to stay around for a long while.
I did not like such an idea. So what’s a geek-girl to do? I started scouring Craiglist. Did you know you can search all of Craiglist in one go? There are several sites that help you with this sort of thing, but I found SearchTempest to be the best.
A month after I met with uber flooring guy Scott Leslie of Leslie Flooring and sorted out what would be done with the teak floors and the click-lock (if I could find more boards to match my office and the blue room), I got incredibly lucky. Someone in Chicago posted an unopened box plus about 70 sq/ft of used boards for the exact stuff I was trying to find. So I sent the guy a message and asked if he’d be willing to ship if I handled all costs. He said no.
So then I asked a friend who lives in the Chicago area if he could assist and sure enough, the seller was happy to deliver the boards to my friend. Then it was simply a matter of my friend using my UPS account and finding some spare cardboard to get things shipped to to me.
By the end of May, four boxes were in the studio building, ready for use. And they were a perfect match.
