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Your friendly neighborhood carpet people.
Feb. 5th, 2004 12:47 amWhen M and I were dating (which is the phrase I'm going to start using for that time when we were utterly miserable and living on different continents.. hey, as far as I can tell, dating is never fun, might as well have a reason for it) he would listen to my stories of things that were going on with people I knew and be utterly apalled at the sheer amount of stupidity in my life. He would swear that he was going to take me away from this place and all of the craziness. Granted, I had some spectacularly weird things going on at that time (including the mother of my ex-boyfriend's child contacting me to ask my advice on his family, the affair that my cousin had had very publicly and her subsequent divorce and doomed relationship with the seriously and scarily psychotic in-need-of-medication-and-extensive-therapy-for-his-uncontrollable-rages-around-her-and-her-two-children ex-Marine she met on the internet and the breakup of my entire set of friends in such a way as to make all communication with any of them extremely awkward) but still. It's been a pretty calm three years, with nothing extremely out of the ordinary going on. We were beginning to relax and put down roots. Suddenly tonight I remembered all of those conversations where I would tell him a story, he would express his disbelief and then vow that we were living as far from here as possible. Errr.. I might have gotten just a little too much into the swing of things with this paragraph--now the actual story is going to be a bit of a letdown, since it doesn't actually make me think that we should move, or that this is really something that's specific about Morehead or its residents. Sometimes I just start typing and I don't know what's going to come out. Anyway. Moving right along to the actual topic of conversation for the evening; please disregard the excessive introduction.
My cousin (different one than previously mentioned) Rae* recently got a divorce and has been in the process of moving into a place of her own for.. well, since October. She bought the place then but she's been extremely slow with getting it fixed up enough to move into. There were significant problems with it (hence the very affordable price that she paid for it) but I think I would have found a way to have been in by Thanksgiving at the latest. They started painting at around the same time they replaced bits of rotten floor, for example--I would have been living there before I worried about paint, I think. In any case, she didn't, and has been trying to get everything perfect before she moves in. She's really been hit by a series of Unfortunate Events, though. Actually, I guess you can't really call it Unfortunate Events so much as Major Incompetence. My mom was telling M and me the latest tonight, and we just could not believe that this actually happened--this is right up there with the baby-buying business.
She got new carpet a couple of months ago, first of all. I haven't seen it myself, but apparently, the carpet-layers (and we're talking about an actual store with actual professional installers, not just some random Joe off the street) cut the carpet in her living room in a large patch to get it in. I know that this happens sometimes, but apparently when he put in the patched piece, he didn't even come close to lining it up with what was already there. The carpet has a strong pattern, so it was glaringly obvious. She had to throw a little fit to get it fixed properly, and of course, it's still been cut when it shouldn't have been so it's not perfect still. She also had trouble with electrical breakers and cabinets with water damage in the back and mice.. basically, anything that could go wrong has. She's felt a little sorry for herself, I think, but I doubt she could possibly have predicted what happened next.
So she gets ready to have linoleum put down in her kitchen and orders it from someone else--having realized that the first place couldn't be trusted. Sensible, no? In hindsight, not so much. They came as scheduled, laid it down--and there were huge bubbles all over the place. These were apparently not just tiny little bubbles, but large gaping ones--the sort that move around when you walk across the floor. That was not a problem for the braniacs doing the installation, though--they pretended not to notice. When she began questioning them about it, they relunctantly pulled out their tools and started working on it again--and promptly cut the linoleum in lots of different places to let the air out.
This was enough in itself for M and me to roll our eyes over. You just don't make cuts like that! Even if you can't see them now, you'll probably be able to later. It's ridiculous! We have vinyl tile in our kitchen, and after just two years, it's starting to shift in places. They promised that they would come back to try to fix it further after it had had a chance to settle. I guess they also agreed that they might have to pay to replace it if it was ruined. Rae was not amused.
The story doesn't end there, though. We heard that part last week, and it certainly wasn't enough to warrant an entire journal entry about. I mean, it's not our linoleum. Here's the thing. They did indeed come back to fix it today, and they broke in to do it. WTF? They forced the door open, breaking the lock, to get in to work on the floor. "No one was home," they said. Rae's dad apparently showed up after they did, because he is quoted as saying, "Eh, I should have made them fix it while they were still here." Ummm, yeah? No kidding! Who in the world breaks into someone's home to work on their floor? That's just crazy. I wonder if this attention to detail is part of the package price or if she has to pay extra to get the sort of help that will go so far out of his way to help that he actually comes in (literally) to work when she's not even there?! Good grief. That's the dumbest thing I've heard all year. Well. Almost the dumbest thing, but I'm not going to write about politics.
Anyway. I guess the moral of the story is.. if you need carpet, give me a call. I can hook you up with some really swell fellows. As long as you didn't really want to keep the silver stashed in the cupboard or the lock on your door, that is.
*Name changed.. well, not to protect the innocent. I just call her Rae. No one but us have ever understood this, but it's very simple, really. I call her Rae because she calls me Lou.
My cousin (different one than previously mentioned) Rae* recently got a divorce and has been in the process of moving into a place of her own for.. well, since October. She bought the place then but she's been extremely slow with getting it fixed up enough to move into. There were significant problems with it (hence the very affordable price that she paid for it) but I think I would have found a way to have been in by Thanksgiving at the latest. They started painting at around the same time they replaced bits of rotten floor, for example--I would have been living there before I worried about paint, I think. In any case, she didn't, and has been trying to get everything perfect before she moves in. She's really been hit by a series of Unfortunate Events, though. Actually, I guess you can't really call it Unfortunate Events so much as Major Incompetence. My mom was telling M and me the latest tonight, and we just could not believe that this actually happened--this is right up there with the baby-buying business.
She got new carpet a couple of months ago, first of all. I haven't seen it myself, but apparently, the carpet-layers (and we're talking about an actual store with actual professional installers, not just some random Joe off the street) cut the carpet in her living room in a large patch to get it in. I know that this happens sometimes, but apparently when he put in the patched piece, he didn't even come close to lining it up with what was already there. The carpet has a strong pattern, so it was glaringly obvious. She had to throw a little fit to get it fixed properly, and of course, it's still been cut when it shouldn't have been so it's not perfect still. She also had trouble with electrical breakers and cabinets with water damage in the back and mice.. basically, anything that could go wrong has. She's felt a little sorry for herself, I think, but I doubt she could possibly have predicted what happened next.
So she gets ready to have linoleum put down in her kitchen and orders it from someone else--having realized that the first place couldn't be trusted. Sensible, no? In hindsight, not so much. They came as scheduled, laid it down--and there were huge bubbles all over the place. These were apparently not just tiny little bubbles, but large gaping ones--the sort that move around when you walk across the floor. That was not a problem for the braniacs doing the installation, though--they pretended not to notice. When she began questioning them about it, they relunctantly pulled out their tools and started working on it again--and promptly cut the linoleum in lots of different places to let the air out.
This was enough in itself for M and me to roll our eyes over. You just don't make cuts like that! Even if you can't see them now, you'll probably be able to later. It's ridiculous! We have vinyl tile in our kitchen, and after just two years, it's starting to shift in places. They promised that they would come back to try to fix it further after it had had a chance to settle. I guess they also agreed that they might have to pay to replace it if it was ruined. Rae was not amused.
The story doesn't end there, though. We heard that part last week, and it certainly wasn't enough to warrant an entire journal entry about. I mean, it's not our linoleum. Here's the thing. They did indeed come back to fix it today, and they broke in to do it. WTF? They forced the door open, breaking the lock, to get in to work on the floor. "No one was home," they said. Rae's dad apparently showed up after they did, because he is quoted as saying, "Eh, I should have made them fix it while they were still here." Ummm, yeah? No kidding! Who in the world breaks into someone's home to work on their floor? That's just crazy. I wonder if this attention to detail is part of the package price or if she has to pay extra to get the sort of help that will go so far out of his way to help that he actually comes in (literally) to work when she's not even there?! Good grief. That's the dumbest thing I've heard all year. Well. Almost the dumbest thing, but I'm not going to write about politics.
Anyway. I guess the moral of the story is.. if you need carpet, give me a call. I can hook you up with some really swell fellows. As long as you didn't really want to keep the silver stashed in the cupboard or the lock on your door, that is.
*Name changed.. well, not to protect the innocent. I just call her Rae. No one but us have ever understood this, but it's very simple, really. I call her Rae because she calls me Lou.
