August 9 - A Chinese fire drill at Menards today

Took a bunch of car siding back to Menards this morning. What a paperwork nightmare! If they hadn't tried to pawn off some crap material on us, we wouldn't have been wasting time doing a Chinese fire drill inside their store and then again out in the yard. After we left the yard we still had to park, walk back inside and take one more pink copy of our return to the service desk. We picked up a few other things while we were there but never expected all this to take three hours.

We had planned to stop at two other places In Ottumwa but there was no time left. We had a 1 pm appointment back at the lake with a man from Philips Floors in Indianola to measure for our flooring installation. All the measuring is done for carpet and hardwood. We expect a new quote from him tomorrow.

Tomorrow...we are back in Ottumwa to finalize our countertop decision and pay them some money. Then to Sherwin Williams to get some paint for the garage doors and some stain for the exterior cedar trim. We're going to try to match the color of both with the color of the front door or exterior window trim. Tom Lenig found a small bottle of touch up paint that came from the entry door manufacturer. This might be just the ticket to tie the exterior color combination together.

We are thinking now that we will be short on siding and will have to order some more shakes. They got more shakes installed today. Here are some pics.

We ran into the heating & cooling contractor at Menards. It seems we always run into someone we know when we walk in that store. He had been to the house this morning and met briefly with Tom. They plan to be on site now to start some of their installation of the Geo system on Monday, August 20 before the insulation work starts.

AND......they plan to install our Eagle French slider on the back of the garage soon. I bought two 10 foot 2x12's for the door header at Menards this morning.