Travels with The Rayman

Our life is full of dust.  White dust.  Dust is everywhere because Stevie Wonder, an alias for our contractor so named because he works fast and can do just about everything.  Oh, I could have called the White Tornado but that is trademarked, I think.

But I digress.

His work has resulted in dust galore and this spurred me to action and that action resulted in searching for a vacuum cleaner hose for our Electrolux Renaissance vintage vacuum cleaner which was given to me by my mom back in the 70s.  It took an hour or more but I finally found a website that sells new stuff for old shit.  So, for $74, we now have a brand new hose which we are now putting to almost daily use picking up  that dreaded dust.

Remodeling, refurbishing, redoing a bathroom includes the opportunity to make so many decisions it will make a head spin.  It’s a bit frightening, really, because if you mess up, you get to live with it forever unless you have unlimited funds to start over, rip out, or demolish which in our case is to live with it forever.  There are cabinets, tile, flooring, towel racks, skylights, higher ceiling, special toilet seat, niches in the shower, niches outside the shower, make-up mirror (lighted), ceiling fans, bank of drawers to choose.  Lighting must be planned.  Where to put the electricity?  The old bath had one electrical plug.  Now we have one for the toilette, one for the lighted mirror, one for the toothbrush and waterpic, one for heated towel rack, one for skylight that opens and closes and has a shade that blocks out the sun and I’m probably forgetting some outlets.  Then there are the overhead lights and it is all fairly amazing.  Our PG&E bill will soar.

We’re getting to the place where color of paint is required, a new door must be ordered, shutters for the window, glass for the shower.  The list just goes on and on.   And what kind of art work must grace the walls of the new bath that has no bath.  That’s right.  We eliminated the tub.  We’re thinking we’ll just get a 2 person hot tub for outside our bedroom door.  And because of that and the doggie, we added a hot water spigot while things were torn up and a new light for the backyard.

All of this results in dust.  If you come over to visit, please don’t mention the dust which we know you will notice.  It’s everywhere, even in my pantry which I keep closed.

None of this has improved anyones’ mood around here.   Exclamations of “look at the dust” pierce the air on a regular basis.  There are more emphatic exclamations but this is a family blog so I’ll refrain repeating Rayman’s exultations.

We have big plans at the end of this process.  It involves hiring dusterbusters.  Some cleaners to do nothing but dust.  We plan to send our bed spreads and drapes to the cleaners.  Rayman envisions an air filter.  With our new hose, we will vacuum the carpets and furniture.  Never thought dusting would be such a “waiting with baited breath” kind of moment.  But it has come to this.

But I digress.

We will have two new bathrooms.

Then we turn our sights on the yard with a definite plan to keep all the doors and windows closed…to keep out the dust.