The Pless People: April 2010

Pictures from our visit to the denver Zoo today

Spring has sprung

Wood Floors are finally done!

On Saturday afternoon, the last piece of floor was installed! Today I put the baseboard back up and hope to move the furniture back into the foyer! While the experience sucked, the finished product is beautiful and it already feels like we have had them forever. Above is a before and after (or after and before, depending on how the pictures load) of our stairs, the "reason" the project took so long:

Lilliane's Party

I went a little crazy celebrating Lily's first birthday!

I bought her four dresses...this is the one that made the cut. I also got her a professionally done flower headband from Cherry Blossoms, my local florist.

When ordering the headband, I thought, "WTH let's get a table decoration too."

My friend Deb agreed to make the cake!

It was totally worth it because Lily had a blast! She knew it was all for her. She loved the flowers, loved the dress, spent some time preening in front of the mirror and the rest playing.

Then she ate cake!

After the celebration, she did a little gardening and then took a nap.

It is good to make a fuss, you only turn one year, one month, and three days once!

Hard wood floors still not done.

Despite assurances that the floors would be finished for my party tomorrow...they are not. In fact I haven't heard from them. In fact when I called them yesterday they were confused that the job wasn't complete. So here is the last two paragraphs of the email I am sending them. To summarize...don't use Carpet Exchange. They are overbooked, mismanaged, and not concerned with Customer Service.

excerpt from Letter from Andrea

"So, here I am. It is 2.5 months since I made a $2500 deposit. It is 1 month past authorizing an additional 1000$. It is 1.5 weeks from authorizing an additional $2000 dollars. And it is one day until my party. It may seem shallow to you to be disappointed that my guests will now have to walk into my house on a floor with exposed plywood. There are boxes of wood sitting in the corners and my furniture is still in the garage that I can’t park in. They will need to climb unfinished stairs. There is a one inch step up at the top of the stairs that young children could trip on, so I can’t let kids play down stairs.

But don’t worry about it. I’m sure that Carpet Exchange’s complete incompetence at finishing a job in 2 months will be a interesting conversation point. I’ll be sure to mention that this job, though fantastically expensive for me, was not a priority for the company, that they didn’t seem to care that they finished it and didn’t seem to be able to problem solve solutions that would have allowed me to open my house in a reasonable time. I don’t blame the installers. They did an amazing job, but they have obviously been overscheduled and not given guidance on prioritization. I used to recommend Carpet Exchange to people as a company that was service oriented and convenient. I’ll be sure to tell my guests and my blog readers that I would recommend them trying a different company and I’ll be sure to pick a different company when finishing the last two rooms downstairs.

But don’t worry about it. I will pay my remaining bill of about $5500 on time. After all, being prompt and complete is the respectful, honest thing to do. You should probably make a note of that."

Emory & Lily

Some pictures of Emory & Lily over the past few days:

the positive thing in these 2 pictures is that they are playing together, not trying to take toys from eachother

Gabe's pics

My camera does still work for taking pictures of stuff other than floors...below are some recent shots i've taken...

Moon setting over flatirons on my way to work

Sunset by Stanley Lake

Stanley lake sunset again

okay, so I still take pictures of floors...patterns on our carpet

patterns on our new floor

Moon picture at work

Hardwood floors IV

The wood is done upstairs!!! We worked hard last night to get out house back into living order. The bedrooms are done; I have to put a few pieces of baseboard and quarter-round back up, but other than that, the upstairs is done. The stairs and foyer should be done mid-next week, and by the weekend, our house will be ready for guests! Andrea also worked very hard getting the basement done. We had our carpets professionally cleaned, which meant she took apart and stored our entire basement, and then put it back together again.

Close-up of what the wood looks like