I have been suffering from sleeping on the floor Saturday night, a move that I wouldn’t recommend to any of you back pain sufferers out there. I had always heard that was good for the back, but after sleeping on a salsa blanket for about six hours, I can tell you that I’m still not moving well.

I had been working on one of my places, trying to get it ready for sale. The work carried on into the evening and, rather than drive home, I decided to instead lay down in the floor and hit it again early the next morning.

Since I wasn’t sure what needed to be done to get it ready for home shoppers, I asked a friend in real estate to come by for a walk through. On her list was tearing out the ceiling and preparing to replace it with sheetrock. The existing ceiling, a square tile monstrosity, was sagging and swaying and falling in several places. “That doesn’t look so bad to me,” I said, to which she shook her head and went along on her tour.

As you might figure, the work started off much easier than it ended up. I had originally planned only to remove a few ceiling tiles and cover the remainder with sheetrock, but changed my mind part-way through after seeing what was up above. I ended up replacing the ceiling joists and insulation.

In the process, I also played electrician and wired in a new switch and overhead light, simultaneously removing two wall lights that made the place look rather cheesy. It must have been more cheesy than I thought, as was evidenced by the rodent calling cards that I removed from the old ceiling, with all due caution. The mouse problem was handled last fall by a large box of rat death, distributed liberally throughout the structure.

There is something about tearing out an old ceiling that makes it one of the worst construction remodeling jobs I’ve ever done. It runs very close with replacing drain lines under the house. Both are pretty hard to deal with and both of which needed to be done with this job. Go figure.

The ceiling problem is the dust and fiberglass refuse that tends to fill these spaces, bursting free into the air when their coverings are ripped away.

Even though I carefully removed each piece of insulation, rolling it up in plastic before taking it outside to load it on the truck, it still made a terrible breathing situation in the room.

Factoring that in with the fellow I had working with me smoking El-Cheapo 100s and you have a recipe for a sore throat at best and chronic bronchitis at worst. The fumes coming from the cigarette reminded me of a brush fire outside a chemical factory, while the insulation blended with mouse poop were also unwelcome additions. I needed to post a sign outside denoting “biohazard.” Every few minutes I had to go out of the room to get some fresh air, leaving the windows open to attempt to make things more pleasant. Luckily, my helper followed me with his cost-effective smoking habit, so by the end of the day, I was nearly immune. Even so, the truck had to be loaded with the refuse and unloaded at the dump before things really improved.

At least my helper spoke English this time, unlike once before when a friend suggested a fellow who he worked with who was looking to earn a little extra cash. He failed to mention that their boss was fluent in two languages and I failed to mention that I was stretching it when I said I could speak ‘a little’ Spanish. Since the only real things I could say with surety other than niceties were “work, work,” “hurry” and “what time is it,” the day was rather difficult, bordering on silly at times. I had to demonstrate what I wanted done to this man, who was obviously an intelligent and talented individual in building trades. He took it all in stride, even correcting my errors at least twice — once while I was demonstrating what I wanted him to do. At least I avoided the common misconception, that talking with more volume will some how make someone who speaks a foreign language magically understand. “He speaks Spanish, he’s not deaf,” I remember telling one friend who came up while we were working and tried to offer the fellow a pack of nabs and a Pepsi. “Nabs?” He said. “NABS?” The fellow was looking more and more confused by the moment. I took the crackers and Pepsi, handed them to him and sat down to enjoy my lunch. All the while I was thinking of the story of how GM executives couldn’t understand why the Chevy Nova sales were so flat in Central America. In Spanish, “no va” means “no go.”

He and I somehow got through the day with me trying to remember such simple Spanish words as “up” and “down,” words any two-year-old Dora the Explorer fan already knows by heart. If they ask me now if I know Spanish, I don’t even say, “a little.” I just shake my head.

Anyway, while the ceiling was the main accomplishment of the weekend, from start to finish, it was all work. I have a fairly long punch-out list to get the place ready for sale. Other problems the agent pointed out included cleaning up the yard, replacing a few boards on the porch, the aforementioned ceiling, paint in a couple places, a bathroom cabinet, a drain and some drywall repairs.

While this list might not seem so long, once you start working on one thing, I’ve found you end up needing to fix two more. For instance, in order to paint and patch a few places on the walls, I had to remove the trim from the floor, which had to be painted and dried before putting it back. The funny thing is, it never seems to fit as well when you put it back as it did when you took it up. It’s all the same size, but somehow it just doesn’t. It finally worked out.

I still need to fix a drain, tear out a bathroom cabinet front and replace the door, attach three new porch boards and stain the entire porch. Oh well, maybe next week.

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