As I mentioned in last week’s blog, the HVAC people had dropped off a big fancy furnace and a big fancy air conditioner as well as a huge pile of their tools last week.  So we decided to wait to start the tiling in the main hallway, living room, dining room and kitchen until after they were done.  We had some busy-work to do anyway, so it was not a huge setback.

Last Thursday, we went to the house with the first of 4 loads of tile and associated supplies expecting the HVAC would be installed and working, or at least the register vents in our work area would be installed.

The HVAC guys had obviously been there because all of their tools were gone.  But absolutely nothing had been accomplished.  I called our builder to find out what was going on with them and he told me they would be by on Friday.

Since we bought the tile in Tucson, which is about a 3 hour round trip, plus loading and unloading time, I spend the day Friday picking up loads of tile and driving them to the house.  (I only have a Ford F150 so I really do not want to carry more than about 1300 pounds at a time on it.)

By noon on Friday, the HVAC guys still had not arrived so Tina called the builder to ask the status.  At about 2:30PM Friday, I was on my way back to Tucson to pick up the next load of tile and Tina called me to tell me the HVAC guys finally showed up.  But all they did was pick up the furnace and air conditioner they had left the previous week and drop off a smaller crappier unit.  They informed her they would be back today (Saturday) between 7:30 and 8:00AM to work on it.

They finally showed up about 9:30AM.  The first thing I noticed is they both looked and acted like a couple of strung out, dope-smokin’ hippies.  The skinny one, who I think is the son of the owner of the HVAC company, had every excuse in the book why they had not accomplished anything, from his father being in hospital, to somehow having 4 kids that were not his suddenly living with him, to being sick…  The fat one was just hired help, I think.  His purpose in life seemed to be just taking up space that could otherwise be used for more productive purposes.

After about 30 minutes of observing these two morons at work, Tina could tell I was pretty much at my breaking point and she sent me back to rental house to pick up the replacement interior door that Menards had shipped which had also arrived Friday.  By installing the door, we could at least claim we accomplished something useful this weekend.  I was gone about 2 hours and when I got back, the HVAC guys had left already, promising to come back and finish this week.  In the hour or so they were actually stumbling around working, they managed to install only the register vents that were in the way of our tiling.

I will be having a “Come to Jesus” talk with our builder Sunday night about these morons.

But here are a few of the vents they did manage to get installed:

Beyond that noise, we did get the final interior door installed and I think it looks pretty sharp with the other doors.

Tina visited the paint store again and got the final coat of paint on the exterior doors.

I have been a Minnesota Vikings fan my whole life and Tina has been for the Pittsburgh Steelers as long as I have known her.  But I guess now we are “Go Broncos”!

Finally, I moved a boatload of tile.  Each box is roughly 60 pounds.  That does not sound like much, but at my advanced age (50 last week), I am definitely feeling it.

Work has me traveling for the next 3 weeks, so progress will be slow.  But I have 4th of July week off so I am hoping we can get the gain share of the tile done in the main part of the house by then.