You never know what you're gonna find

Memorial Day.  Harley owners are out riding their noisy Hogs.  Others are in the mountains getting their cabins ready for summer.  Families gather and fire up the barbeque.  Children are playing in the yard and blowing soap bubbles, watching them float with the breezes.

You can guess where we were.  Last weekend Diego put a new subfloor down in the kitchen of #102.  A scant 1/4 inch of plywood to give the new floor a nice level place to live.  Then on Saturday we put leveler on the seams.  Later, while Diego was working in the bathroom upstairs, I sanded the leveler down.  Sunday we got a late start at 3:00 and cleaned and vacuumed the floor and then painted the floor with a primer in prep for tile.

Today, Memorial Day, we started at 9:00 a.m.  We decided to use self stick vinyl tiles, thinking that when the inevitable gouges occur, we can pull and replace individual tiles instead of replacing the whole floor.  The field tiles went down really fast.  The border tiles each had to be cut, and although not difficult, did take quite a bit of time.

Meanwhile upstairs....Diego was fixing the walls in the bathroom.  It became apparent that a part of the drywall was damaged and would actually have to be replaced.  When he had the wall opened up there was something back there.  Diego came downstairs with - no kidding - a pair of dirty mens underwear hanging from a screwdriver. Eeew!  I can only imagine how they got there.

Sold but not over

Monday was a "key" day -  the day we turned over the keys of the 8 plex to the new owner and the day passed without drama.  Frankly I was ready to walk out of the closing if needed.  The buyer(s) are a family; mom, dad, and son.  Son is local but mom and dad are several hours away.  This is a good thing since the dad is a bully and tried to pick at least two fights with me the first day I met him.  Fortunately, the son had a power of attorney which meant he signed everything and mom and dad didn't have to be here. 

When it was all over Diego's question was, "so if I go over there now am I officially trespassing?"  Ha! 

So after closing I went over to the other building to work on that apartment.  Like I've said before, my knowledge of electricity can be summed up pretty fast: white to white; black to black.  So when I decided to replace the back porch light switch this is what I found: black to black to black, but the white and ground wires were just bundled up together.  Yikes.  The amateur in me says don't touch this one.

That didn't stop me completely, however.  There was still the dark bathroom to address.  Sunday I hung the medicine cabinet and Monday I tackled the light bar.  The wire was coming out of the wall in the wrong place.  Diego gave me a few pointers on how to pull the wires and said he was confident I could do it.  What could I do?  I had to prove him right. 

White to white - black to black.  With only one finger bandaged in sacrifice (utility knife cut both the sheathing on the wires and the sheathing on my finger), I finally pronounced "let there be light," and there was!  (and I only had two light bulbs, thank you very much!)