Flooring – Part 1

I’m reading a book on writing essays called Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction where the authors say the essay writer “can have the most mundane of experiences and make something that surpasses them. Some essays prove that you are free in fact to make a great deal out of nothing.”

So here is a fairly long essay where I attempt to make a great deal out of nothing – the flooring in the basement of the lake house.

This mundane adventure started over a year ago when I couldn’t take the state of the carpeting down there any more. The carpet is a light beige, and there are stains everywhere. Stains from kids running in and out through the sliders tracking in dirt, grass, and sand. (I can hear the clanging of the screen door.) Stains from my grandfather dropping food while eating at the kitchen table when he stayed there one summer a couple years ago. Stains from the young adults spilling their White Claws, Bud Lights, and other beverages of choice. Stains from the dogs finding a spot to pee or getting sick from something they had gotten into.

I’m all for having carpets professionally cleaned, but this carpet is beyond hope.

In the fairly early part of COVID, I ventured out to a flooring store in Salem. With masked faces, I explained our living environment to the salesperson, Lynn. She recommended a luxury vinyl and told me, yes, the installers were willing to travel to Moultonborough. She sent me a quote. I was pleased with how smoothly everything was going.

Then I shared the quote with my brothers Dave and Matt and my sister Sue (all contributors to the lake operations fund) for their opinions.

Dave agreed the carpet was disgusting and needed to be replaced. Given the behavior of the crowds, he was vehemently opposed to replacing it with carpet – even in the bedrooms. (“If we are pulling up carpet, we are pulling it up everywhere.”) But he wondered if we could do it cheaper ourselves. (We??? I could just see a pile of vinyl sitting in a corner for years.)

Matt was vehemently opposed to luxury vinyl. He feels the subfloor has to be perfect, you have to worry about moisture, it is loud, and it isn’t comfortable. And he didn’t like the color I picked. He took the position that carpet was the way to go. It was cheap and could be replaced every few years. (Do I want to be doing this every few years? Or finding and scheduling someone to clean the carpets on a regular basis?)

Sue vehemently objected to tile planks when she thought Matt was recommending that as an option.  She had problems with tile planks at the Cape. She was leaning to the carpet solution until I screamed bloody murder. Then she sided with me.

So no carpet, no luxury vinyl, and no tile. Maybe we should just go with concrete.

With their input, I went back to Lynn with questions. She was a bit of a flake. The revised quotes, when she remembered to include them in her emails, were never quite right. She meant to include one in her last email to me, and I responded back saying she hadn’t included the attachement. I never heard back from her, so I gave up on that store.

During this time, I also made some purchases from The Company Store to refresh the bedding downstairs since that was also in rough shape from our various guests (both two footed and four footed). I bought light weight coverlets that we can throw in the washing machine. Of course that also required the purchase of shams and bedskirts. As accountant for the lake fund, Matt sent me a text saying “The Company Store???” I’m not sure if he was just looking for info for record keeping, or if he was questioning my sanity. He is big on “needs” versus “wants”. And now I need (want) new pillow inserts for those shams, because the existing inserts (from the 70’s, maybe 80’s) look pretty flimsy.

While I was getting pretty shams and coverlets, Dave drove back from Iowa with a truck containing a Harley, a deer head, an extensive beer can collection, and a dog. The Harley is in the garage with a 2015 registration sticker on a MA license plate. The deer head is hanging in the front entrance of the house. The beer can collection (he says putting it up is non-negotiable) is sitting in boxes in a corner of the basement on top of the carpet that needs to be pulled up. And the dog is a dog. Maybe shams and coverlets weren’t the best idea. 

In September, I called a store in Nashua I had previously used on the off chance they were willing to come up to Moultonborough. I was also looking for another opinion as to material since we weren’t getting too far in that regard. I had a lengthy conversation with the owner about alternatives for the basement, and I sent him a bunch of photos. He said he would get back to me in a couple days to schedule a time to come up. He never did, and I headed to Florida. I heard from him a few weeks later saying he never got the photos from me. While we were on the phone, he checked and he found them. He said he would get back to me in a couple days. At that point, I was willing to give him the code to the house and let him start the rip up. But I heard nothing from him. I gave up on the flooring for the season. It’s hard to think about a basement in New Hampshire while you are in the Florida sun.

As the time approached for us to return north, I added the NH basement flooring back to my near-term to do list. I called the Nashua place one more time. He said he would get back to me. I crossed him off the list.

I called another place closer to the lake in Belmont and scheduled a time for a designer to come out to see the space on the first day we were going to be back. Because I was still open to carpets in the two bedrooms, she suggested I stop in on the way up to look at carpet samples. 

She didn’t strike me as a designer. Her name was PJ, and she had a bit of a goth feel about her. The top half of her hair was a different color than the bottom half, a tattoo covered her calf, and she wore 4” heels. But I liked her. Within a few minutes, she talked me out of carpet and suggested a less expensive vinyl. She told me she would meet me at the house with some vinyl samples. 

While she measured, my niece Amber showed up. PJ suggested a color that she thought went well with the furniture we had down there and that would bring out the grey in the soon-to-be painted wainscoting (see below). Amber and I agreed to the color choice, and PJ sent me a quote later that day. As I said, I like PJ.

Now, I have to admit, I don’t have the best memory for details. It could be wishful thinking on my part, but, at the end of last season, I seem to recall Dave saying “I don’t care,” Matt saying “Do what you think is best (even though you are wrong),” and Sue saying “Mich is right.” So, when I sent the quote to Matt (as accountant) and Dave (as owner), I told them I would need funds in the lake operations account and asked one question – should we pay up front to get a discount?

I was surprised when they came back with all kinds of questions, concerns, and suggestions.

In addition to the concerns Matt had previously voiced, a big hiccup this time around was the use of quarter rounds in front of the baseboards. They both considered this a sign of shoddy workmanship, and Dave suggested I meet with the installation crew. I have no interest in meeting with an installation crew. On top of that, for the past 40 years, we’ve had work done by various New Hampshire contractors as well as a couple of Canuck contractors (my grandfather and uncle) who tend to go for functional and cheap over aesthetic but expensive. I took pictures of several examples of quarter rounds sprinkled throughout the house that I sent off to them. To no avail.

And Matt doesn’t like the color choice.

They suggested that I get a sample size of material to see how we like it and see how easy it is to install ourselves. What do you suppose we will do with all the carpet we rip up given my car is the only car with a dump sticker on it? And they might not realize that the rug pad looks like it is pretty securely glued down. And will they be able to patch the imperfections in the subfloor that Matt is rightfully worried about?

At this point, Matt is ordering up enough material for one room so Dave can get started on the install in June. I didn’t tell Matt what color to get. Let’s hope he orders the right color.

So flooring is back off my list for the moment. 

In the meantime, I painted the wainscoting that is along one wall of the basement living area over this past cold and rainy Memorial Day weekend. I was prompted to do so when I was cleaning out Phil’s closet where my mother had a filing cabinet filled with paperwork. I found a folder with design ideas from a designer my mother had brought in years ago. One suggestion was to paint the wainscoting a gray (Benjamin Moore Chelsea Gray HC-168) because the current red color clashed with the red of the brick. After I read that, I couldn’t stop seeing the clashing. 

I love the way it came out. The Chelsea Gray wainscoting brings out the red brick, the black and gray wood stove, and the white trim. It also brings out the black and white family prints and the gray of the clouds in the print of the kids jumping hay bales in Wisconsin. I shared before and afters with Amber, but I’m not going to share with anyone else. We’ll see if anyone notices. I’m sure Matt won’t like the color.

To be continued. Maybe.

(How am I doing with making something out of nothing?)