Verdammt Noch Mal!

Starting Friday afternoon, our plan of action for the weekend went straight to hell. About two weeks ago, I called RSC in Russellville to ask if they rented out floor sanders. They did. I got the price, hours, etc from them. Friday afternoon at 3 PM, I get a call from my wife. RSC didn’t have a sander. They told her that they SOLD their old sander and hadn’t replaced it yet. So, either they lied to me when I called, which may be why they were so interested in renting me a buffer/sander instead of a drum sander because, "all the contractors are using it." Right, we all know that means, absolutely nothing. Or, they sold it since then which seems a little wierd. In either case, I was pissed. So, I called the RSC in Little Rock and asked them if they had a sander. They did and they agreed to hold it for me. I used an hour and fifteen minutes of vacation time and left work early to pick it up.

I knew something was wrong when I pulled up in front of the store. The gate was locked and the place looked deserted. There was huge “For Lease” sign hanging on the fence. I’m think, “What in the seven hells?!”

I circle the block and stop at a gas station pay phone. I call them back. It turns out they moved to a new location in January. They give me directions. The new place is on the other side of town. I get there and rent the drum sander & the edger. I load up and get out of there just in time for rush hour. It takes for freaking ever to get home. Three wrecks block the highway and they bring traffic to a stand still. By the time I get home, I’ve been in my car for three hours. I'm tired and still a little pissed. My wife comes home from work. She’s tired and feeling a little sick, so we decide to scrap our plans of sanding all night long.

Saturday morning we get up early (for us), have breakfast, and head to Russellville. Our plan is to cruise some pawnshops, drop off some photos at Express Foto, and go to Lowe’s. The first pawnshop we walk into has my miter saw. The bastards who stole it put our gallon of denatured alcohol to good use. I haven’t seen the saw that clean since I took it out of its box. I didn’t say anything to the store owners. The police told us not to confront them, so we didn’t. We wrote down a detailed description of the saw, took one of pawn shop’s business cards, and left.

Saturday was one of those rare days when I wish that I had a cell phone. If I had one of those cool camera phones, I could have taken a picture of our saw for the police. And, if I had a cell phone, I could have called the police from outside the store. As it was, we hadn’t brought the police investigator’s phone number with us (duh), so we had to go back home, call the police, and then come back to Russellville to finish our errands.

In hindsight, I probably didn’t need to hurry home to call the police. I guess I was secretly hoping that they’d send out the SWAT team to kick some ass, but things are moving at a slower pace. We still haven’t heard from the police. I’m curious to see what they come up with.

By the time we were finished with everything, it was nearly 6 PM. None the less, we went on up to the Queen with the grand idea of sanding down the master bedroom and bathroom floor.


[Here is a photo of the master bedroom after we spent over an hour hauling a mountain of junk out of it.]

The master bathroom floor is “new” so it didn’t require any additional prep-work for sanding. The master bedroom was an entirely different story. At some point, the master bedroom floor was covered with linoleum. A twelve-t0-eighteen-some-odd-inch wide ring of sticky black gunk circled the room, the remains of the glue used to lay the floor. There is also a wide assortment of tacks, finishing nails, and framing nails driven into the floor. The best part was the tin patch though.

[A couple of pictures of Ms. Scarlet scraping the hell out of the floor. In case you're wondering about that hat, it was really cold that night.]

[It's a little hard to see, but this is the patch after I'd pulled up one corner of it. I was only minutes away from finding the Black Hole of Calcutta.]

A few months back I was pondering a similar patch in the living room (to read the original post and comments, click here). According to Gary, the “patch” was used to level out a depression in the floor so they could lay rolled linoleum. I pulled up the living room patch, and everything beneath it was intact. So, the moron that I am, I assumed that the patch in the master bedroom was the same. Nope. It covered a big hole and about 18 inches of dry rot. YES! It was my lucky day. Since my wife was there and we had the camera, we have a lot of before, during, and after photos of the repair. I’ll post those separately later this week.

[Another not so great photo. The two stubs of floor board between the vent (taped shut to keep dust out) and the base board, are hanging down about an inch.]

Oh, but it gets better. We also found a one inch diameter hole we believe was for a natural gas line (we’re thinking it was for a space heater). Not too bad of a problem, but a pain none the less. And, then there is the two sagging floor boards the heating/air guys left us. It probably isn’t all their fault since they used the existing air vent cutouts. However, they had to enlarge the holes by and inch or two to make the new air vents fit (they are slightly larger than the old ones). They had to notice that these two boards were sagging down into the crawlspaces, but, of course, they didn't mention it. The only thing holding them in place was the baseboard. Why didn’t we notice it earlier? We had too much shit piled in this room to get a good look at it.

After 10 PM, we called it quits. There was too much to repair, and we were getting tired. We decided that a good night’s sleep would do us some good, and then we’d give it another go Sunday.

Sunday was a big day, but I’ll post more on it later.

As a final note on RSC rentals, I'm pretty pleased with them - the branch in Little Rock that is. The equipement was in good working order, they only charge you for one day if you rent over the weekend, and they'll buy back the sanding paper you didn't use. The branch in Russellville can suck big hairy moose butt crack for all I care. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. They're a national chain, so if you need a drum sander, check them out. Maybe you'll get lucky.