I mentioned in an earlier post that Ted and I decided it’s time to give the interior of our house a fresh look. The interior designer we hired gave us some very good ideas, and we’ve been following up on them. If all the stars aligned, we hoped we could have at least 90 percent of the work finished before the kids and grandkids come for a December visit.

My assignment today was to call the carpet lady, the electrician, and the painter to set up appointments for walk-throughs and bids on the work. These are post-pandemic times and contractors have been unusually busy for the past three years, not to mention all the labor shortages we keep hearing about. I crossed my fingers and picked up my phone. Here’s how it went.

The carpet lady. She and her design partner will be here on Friday to get a feel for what kind of designs they should plan for us and to measure all the rooms for carpeting. They can install the master bedroom carpet and all the second floor carpeting next week. Yikes! I wasn’t ready for that. Ted and I are fully booked for the entire month of September and we have plenty to do in the remaining days of August. We scheduled carpet installation for early October.

The electrician. He can do a walk-through tomorrow, submit a bid within 24 hours, and finish the work by the end of next week. Yikes! again. It turns out that I called at a serendipitous time. The company had two electricians assigned to a total house gut and remodel–a job that took a year–and they finished it last week. Four other electricians were working on a huge commercial project which also took a year and also ended last week. This means that six electricians are available for new work. We need the electrical work completed before the painter can start, so Ted and I decided to drop everything we’d planned to do in August that wasn’t necessary to keep the world turning, and we scheduled the electrician for a walk-through and a bid tomorrow, with work to begin ASAP after that.

The painter. No problem. He can fit us in around other jobs and finish ours by next week. Now my jaw is dropping, my head is spinning, and I’m feeling a little giddy. The painter is happy to work with the carpet people so that we only need to move the furniture in and out of each room once while the carpeting and the painting are being done. He’ll be here tomorrow for a walk-through and will give us a bid on the spot. We scheduled him for early October with the carpet crew.

After three years of delays, delays, delays on outdoor house work and yard jobs, if we didn’t already have September completely filled, we could have had the entire interior of our house freshened up with new lighting, new carpeting, and new paint by the end of next week. This time, it’s the customer (us), not the contractor, who is delaying two-thirds of the project until October.

Unbelievably, all the stars aligned. 1-2-3, hat trick!