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Month: August 2022

average weekday

average weekday

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megan recently asked me what i do on the weekends, which i realize might be different than those watching small children and making sure they don’t kill themselves.

to which i responded that the last month’s worth of weekends have revolved around the whole floor project – ripping up carpet, cleaning, laying the new floor – and it’s been tough to find time to just relax on the weekend. but this made me think about my average weekday; they are simultaneously full of nothing and everything.

so i wake up, get ready for work, leave for work with a half hour commute in. spend 8 hours at work doing worky work. i drive home (half hour), and i try to get home between 5-5:30. i make some food, and this is usually something quick. no one has time for slow meals anymore. by the time i get home, i’m ravenous and i want to eat and digest a bit before i go for a run. so the food is usually something quick and easy. i try to get done eating by 5:30. (while i eat supper, i am watching a netflix or disney+ or whatever show).

then i take a nap. yep. i am so tired when i get home. work just drains me and allergies are no help, so i rest my eyes at the very least. this also is a good time to digest.

and these days the sun is just dropping too quickly into the horizon, so i try to be out on the road running by 7 p.m. running takes about 20-30 mins of prep work: the getting dressed, taking ibuprofin, putting on the shoes, getting hyped up, figuring out how long, getting the gear ready, stretching, lining up the playlist. the getting hyped is the real time suck.

then i’m out for a run, and these days i’m done by 8:15 at the latest. gotta get in by dark. sometimes it’s earlier, depending on how far i go.

stretch out when i get back and then spend maybe 10 mins on the patio with the cats. then it’s inside for a shower and cooldown.

then yoga time! now that i’m in earlier from my runs, my yoga time is a little bit extended. i’m on the mat before 9 p.m. and usually do yoga for 20-30 mins. at that point, nate is up, so i am dutiful wife and be present with him, get stuff ready for work the next day, and get ready for bed.

at 10:30, nate leaves for work, and if i’m on top of things, i’ll have brushed my teeth and gotten ready for bed by this point. after he’s gone, i hop into bed and read for a bit before i hit the hay. on a good night, i’m asleep by 11:30. if the book is riveting, it’ll be midnight.

i don’t know why my day is so packed; i feel like this should not be so regimented, but it is what it is!

floors floors floors

floors floors floors

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all that work paid off! well, hopefully moreso down the road when installation is a distant memory.

it was a lot of work.

but the floors look so much better, and my kitchen is now close to peak kitchen (though nothing will top the kitchen in the st. charles house).

all the appliances were disconnected, concrete was mopped, rinsed, swept, and swiffered. and it was still very dirty – i don’t think you can ever have sparkling-clean concrete that’s not shellacked or something.

liz arrived on friday afternoon on a muggy, 90-ish degree day and informed me that the planks needed to be inside to acclimate. UGH i wish i had known that – i would have brought them in a few days ago and had them ready to go. so we did not start laying floor til saturday.

liz in her DIY element. i let liz lay the first few rows since she knew what she was doing, and when we got to a spot where we were able to split off, i took on a section and she took on a section. unfortunately, this meant i got the kitchen – yikes! we ended up having a lot of happy accidents where the width of the plank exactly equaled the width we needed, and we were able to use up a lot of the waste pieces in different spots.

with plank vinyl, you’re able to score it with a utility knife and snap them in half, but for the little wonky cuts, we ended up using the table saw that my dad lent to me. the table saw ended up being faster 60% of the times for the long, single cuts, too, so we used that quite a bit! and little pieces of plastic are still coating my entire garage.

i may have complained about the kitchen cuts, but LOOK AT THIS GLORIOUSNESS!

this was a lot of cuts, sure, but the part that just about put me over the edge was when the copper tubing behind my dishwasher bent 😩 so a trip to menards was in order, where i got a copper tubing cutter thingie, a compression fitting, and the assurance from the plumbing dude that the fitting would work. i hooked up a flexi-hose and no bending.

after i fixed the plumbing issue, which actually fixed a few more dishwasher issues we were having prior to this project, i got to do the hard-wiring in of the electrical, and let me tell you – i’d rather do plumbing than electrical any day of the week.

but the dishwasher finally got hooked up and still runs!

after a 8-hour day on saturday and probably a 10-hour day on sunday, we laid the last planks at about 11 p.m. on sunday.

throughout the past week i’ve been putting the trim back up and placing the thresholds. i was spending way too much time drilling into concrete when i realized that i could just gorilla glue the thresholds on. what a difference. so much easier! and yes, i know the trim doesn’t match, but whatever. maybe i’ll get ambitious someday and paint everything. until then, mismatched trim. oh well.

yeah, that’s still gross laminate in the bathroom, but that’s next on the DIY list. that’s a major project, so we’ll see how that pans out. yikes.

for now, i’ve just got a couple thresholds to finish up – the bedrooms and the small board by the garage door. doug is working on a big threshold for the living room to dining/weird area, which is 7″ wide. until then, there’s a rug over that so i don’t have to look at the grossness.

the majority of the furniture is back in today, which is good because it’s now canning season. another project!