Pumpkin Pie and the Cousins

Good Monday morning everyone. I hope all is going well this fine day. This will not be a post related in any way, shape, or form to writing. Just so you know.

I'm recuperating. From what you may ask -- well, I'll tell you.

My cousins are coming in this afternoon for the holiday week. I was supposed to make the pumpkin pies over the weekend. (From real pumpkins -- how much fun...)

Buuuuttttt.....my mother got it in her head to rip up the hallway rug Thursday night. 3 feet wide, 20 feet long. She's not supposed to be doing heavy physical labor. My father is a mess. Guess who had to help.

Fast track to Friday afternoon, where we spent almost 2 hours finding a rug to lay down in the hallway so the cousins wouldn't have to look at the subfloor. I told my mother we could paint the subfloor brown, so you wouldn't really notice it under the new rug. That was the plan. Simple Easy Quick. Right?

Saturday morning my father said he would go get the paint. (He felt a little better.) He came back with cheap laminate to lay down on the subfloor. Huh? Okay, I'll go with it. How hard can it be? Problem is, they have door frames. So we had to cut grooves in the laminate. Which, for most normal people, wouldn't have been that much of a problem. My father (who is a master caprenter and can't do anything without a ruler, level and square) took almost 3 hours to cut grooves in the laminate. Guess who had to do the rest?

I have been on my hands and knees for two days (because even though most normal people can lay a laminate floor in 4 hours, my father was looking over my shoulder.) I had to pull up the staples from the carpet, fill in holes with wood filler, sand those, vaccuum twice with the shop vac (that I had to drag upstairs from the basement) and then I had to cut the bottom of the door frames off so the laminate would fit UNDER the door frames. How much fun was that? Sawdust, grit, my mother bitching about the shop vac making more dust, how was she supposed to cook.) Then my father sat and dictated how I should lay the laminate, carefully, perfectly, because we couldn't afford any mistakes. (He'd made so many mistakes cutting the door frames he didn't think there would be enough to finish the floor and was damned if he'd go back and buy more. He forgot I could get down on my hands and knees to cut the door frames, so he was thinking maybe they should put in a real floor now. Argh!)

Needless to say, I didn't make the pies.

Do you do stuff like this? Have you ever taken on a DIY project that was supposed to be simple and it turns into Godzilla meets This Old House?

*** I did get to make the pumpkin pies this morning -- although, I dropped the mixing bowl into the other already poured pie, and it erupted like Mt. Vesuvius. All OVER the kitchen counter, the cabinet on the other side, the canisters and ALL the utensils in the pitcher. Down the counter cabinets and onto the floor. Luckily the dogs were in the house and they ate that. My cousins are arriving at ten.