August 2014 Continuing towards painting

The night before we left on vacation, we got a little bad news from the "Mitchell Boys" -  who really aren't boys but rather a father and son team that Mark has done rehab jobs with when he was working with DH Homes.  The father is in his 60's and the son is a bit younger than Mark.  It took a bit of effort for Mark to get in touch with them as they were on vacation in Florida for a wedding.  But he did manage to schedule them to come out to see the house and give us an estimate on Wednesday July 30th (we left for vacation on the 31st).  They took a look and told Mark they would call later that night with the estimate.  Well, they called later that night but instead of giving us an estimate, they told Mark that they didn't want to take the job on.  It was too much up and down - work on all 3 levels - and would require scaffolding - high ceilings in living room, office and foyer so they just weren't interested.

As we drove to NY the following morning, Mark told me about the conversation (he kept it to himself Wednesday night!) and we were lamenting that nothing would get done while we were gone and thus we would be home the entire time that nasty work was being done.  I came up with a possible compromise.  I asked Mark to call Mr. Mitchell back and ask them what they WOULD do.  We had them cherry pick the job and do as much as they would like.  They said "OK we will do the basement and kitchen walls and put on a knock-down ceiling in those two areas."  We weren't quite sure when they would be working but we left them a way to get into the house.  We didn't hear from them at all while we were on vacation so we weren't sure what we would encounter when we got back.

I wish I had pictures but I guess I forgot to take them.  However, we came home to a basement completely taped and mudded with a beautiful knocked-down ceiling.  The kitchen was all done as well.  But now what do we do.  There was a lot of hard work left to do -- Living Room with the giant ceiling, office, foyer, master bedroom.  Plus there were ceilings that still needed to be scraped.

Mark talked to Tim (my brother) and Tim suggested Matt V.  Unfortunately Tim didn't have a phone number but he knew that Matt worked at Sherwin Williams in Chanhassen.  Mark called SW and they had a Matt V. that worked there 5 or 6 years ago.  Nope they didn't have a phone number for him but they could tell us that his last name was "Vavrecheck" but no idea how to spell it. Good thing we live in the age of the internet.  We got on Facebook, LinkedIn and dexonline.  On Facebook we found a guy in Virginia, nothing on LinkedIn but we hit the jackpot on dexonline.  We found Matt Vavrichek but he had no phone number listed.  Dang.  Next step.  Look at all the people he is "associated with" on dexonline and we found "Karen" who happened to be his Mom.  Moms are always there when you need them.  She took Mark's name and number and passed the info to Matt.  Such a good mom.  She wouldn't give out her son's info to some stranger.  Lucky for us, Matt was happy to take on our job with his buddy Randy.   And they could start in a week or so.

While we waited for Matt and Randy to get started, I scraped the ceilings that I could comfortably reach - Master bedroom, part of upstairs hallway and a bit in the main level hall way.

Getting started with scraping in the master bedroom

Little bit of water and it comes right off

One afternoon and the job was done

While I worked on ceilings, Mark removed the track lighting, centered the fixture and added a new housing for the ceiling fan we were planning for the living room.

Good thing Mark had a skinny arm that can fit up in the ceiling to find the wire and pull it out.

Is it safe to stand on that step?  Wait that isn't even a step! 

Now it's time to bring in the pros.