Shop shop

Chatting with my buddy Q the other day at the office, he indicated that a _really_ critical purchase would be a rocking chair. Hey, great Idea Q!. I of course mention this to Wy, she agrees. We spent saturday driving about miramesa (the area of San Diego we live in, for the non locals) looking for a rocking chair or 'glider'. Now, MM is _KNOWN_ for the amount of furniture stores in the area, especially along MiraMar Road (Yes, the same MiraMar from Top Gun. Its like any other neighborhood next to a military base, lots of places for disposable income, and nudie bars)...but, we failed. Went to a ton of places, and did manage to get a nice 8x10' carpet remnant made into an area rug....but no rocking chairs. I think we stopped in 6 furniture stores total...nada. Well, not entirely true. At least one store had one for $2700. (Next to the area rugs that were, honest, $12k each). We left quickly, for fear that some of it would rub off on us.

Epic failure? Possibly, remains to be seen. We'll come back to this in a moment...

In the midst of looking for rocking chairs, we also swung through a couple of flooring stores. Now, a few years ago when we moved in, we had to do some work on the place. We did, I feel, a pretty damn good job on the downstairs. But, we sorta left the upstairs alone. Oh, we painted(which was an ordeal all its own), but the carpet and ceilings are still intact from the previous owners. The ceilings...we're not going to mess with. But, the carpet needs replacing. In a big way. Since Miramar road is also known for the sheer volume of flooring joints, we went browsing. We have some problems here though.

1: we have floating stairs. How do you put hardwood on floating stairs? "very carefully"...
2: Some of the subfloor needs to be replaced. You can tell because it creaks/pops a bit in certain areas. Not a huge deal, but it will need to be kept in mind.
3. Where does old carpet and 3"(!!!) pad go to die?

So, we found a place that had some very cool laminate options. http://www.simplefloors.com , check it out. We've ordered a few samples, and we'll see how it goes with them. Here's the fun part though, Wy really can't be around for this. (I also need to Killz/TSP and re-paint the bedroom, re-tile the bathroom(shower/toilet floor, not the 'washroom'), and probably a couple of other things). I don't really want her breathing any of the random crap that I'll be pushing into the air. Nor do I want her even thinking of lifting anything more than about 5lbs....So I'm sending her away to her Mom's for a week, to hopefully get all this done. I'm going to try for the week of thanksgiving to do this, so if anyone wants to come help (hint hint :) ), do let me know...I'll be soliciting some of you in the near future, heh.

Ok, the rocking chair. Epic failure? Naw....we put our collective IQ points together and remembered there is a 'Babies-R-US' down the street. Lo! Rocking chairs! More than one! And under $400! Quick, sit in one before it disappears! Yeah, so, long story being: we found a nice glider style chair that should fit our needs just fine. Costs like $400 with the ottoperson, but thats hip. Didn't buy it yet, as we need to get rid of a bunch of old and busted whatnot first, but at least we know we have real options now.