The dust settles

This weekend was a big one with the addition. It was drywall time. Nick and Paul, two Italian, round, and very, very sweaty gentlemen spent the weekend hanging all seventy-six sheets of drywall in the entire space. They arrived Saturday, 8am, did the mudroom and workshop in about ninety minutes, and promptly left for the day because Nick had a leaky toilet emergency back home. They swore they'd come back on Sunday to finish. The next morning arrived, and there they were. They spent the next ten hours working, sweating, and sweating some more, and did the whole danged thing. Now our kids love to run around the new space yelling at the top of their lungs, to see how loud they can make the echo sound.

Speaking of kids, Nick and Paul got a good kick out of them Saturday morning as the kids ate breakfast. Natalie and Jessica were playing the "I love you" game. This is when They say, "I love you sissy" back and forth to each other over and over again, and throw in a few for mommy and daddy. Something tells me they watch too much Barney. So Nick and Paul, the Sweaty Italian Drywall Hangers, got in on the game with lots of, "I love you Nick! No, I love you Paul! You complete me Nick! You make me love myself, Paul" for the next hour.

Or maybe the kids had nothing to do with that. who knows. I've never met these guys before.

So as the dust settles (literally), we prepare for more dust. The next stage of the game is taping the drywall. For those who don't know, taping involves spreading the white goop (that's a real term) on all the screw holes and joints, sanding it down, and repeating twice more over a period of a week until the walls are ready for priming and painting. This process creates an unbelievable amount of dust. Can't wait.

On another note, it seems I'm a regular with the Ladies Of Home Depot. In the past two months I've been to HD virtually every day. Yesterday I passed by the kitchen and bath section, and one of the ladies at the design counter yelled, "Hey Mr. Daninhirsch, what's it gonna be today?". A few minutes later at the special services counter, a woman looked at the address on my paperwork and said, "oh, you're doing the big addition!"

I once read an article, in Business Week I think, that stated part of Home Depot's business model is that they expect to get $21,000 of each customer's money in the customer's lifetime. I think I'm starting to see why.