This cOld House 25

I'm happy to report that we've turned off the furnaces for a couple of days. It was 76 degrees here yesterday, which worked out wonderfully as the floor guys showed up to do the girls' bath floor, and the concrete cutter showed up to re-fit the flexicore panel and cut a hole through the front wall from the new garage into the old garage, for the entrance door between. When sanding floors and cutting concrete, it's best not to have a blower re-distributing the dust throughout the house. Yup, that sure is a big honkin' saw that guy's using to get through the 10 inch wall.

When the flexicore arrived, it was cut wrong for the angle next to the house, they re-cut it to fit better and after that was done they needed to shift it back 8 inches. Did I mention it weighs 6,000 pounds? Rob, Bob Sr. and Larry made like Egyptians and jacked, wedged and rolled the slab into the correct position. The first picture shows them jacking it up with a manual screw jack. You can see the temporary wall they rocked it back on. They also used steel rods as rollers. Clever. The second shot shows how much they lifted it. It didn't take much to get it going, although it got caught on the steel bracket on the other end so they had to move the jack and do it all over on the other side. Dan and I were pretty impressed (and pleased) that they were able to shift it without having to get the crane guy out again. Now that the lid is properly set, we can finally move on. They will get ready to pour the top, and then backfill around the walls. I'm a little nervous about the 8 foot drop with the girls wanting to get out and play in the yard.
The bathroom floor turned out better than Dan or I imagined possible. The commercial sander kicked butt up there and the resulting surface was near-new. 85 years of wear gone in 60 minutes. This bodes well and gives us great hope for whatever is underneath the painted linoleum tile in the master bath. We have two coats of urethane to go, and then the plumbers are back to re-set the fixtures, then one final coat of urethane and I think we'll actually be pretty well done in the bathroom. (Except for the window, of course.)

Still no news from the roofers. They did send a crew out a couple of weeks ago to dry us in. Unfortunately, they were unable to do so, leaving me to move the buckets around until we finally get the actual do-the-work crew out here. The good news is that we were moved on to the 'priority one' list. (Like that means something?)

Tommie has begun to venture out into the yard. Apparently he only goes out when it's above 60 degrees. He's still gaining weight. One of his favorite things to do is sit on the pedestal sink in the master bath when we are washing up for bed. He likes to drink from a small stream of water out of the tap. He's done this almost from day one, but lately he's been having a little trouble balancing his bigger butt on the side of the sink. He wobbles - not a very graceful sight!