If you were ever wondering what a day in the life of a stager is like, I’ll let you in on what happened to me today. It all started with a horrendous rain storm which kept my painter and design assistant at bay until the storm let up enough to allow them to arrive at my home to start the day.

Rachel came in first. We went to my office, which is in the basement, and found a flood. During the night the electricity went out and so did the sump pump. It, however, did not reset when the electricity went on, so Rachel and I had to stand in a few inches of water to get our work, laptop, etc. to take upstairs. The only good that came of this trip is that I had just earlier installed a new gas fireplace in the dining room which we really appreciated on such a cold, stormy day. We set up shop at the dining room table, lit the fire, had some tea, and proceeded with our workload.

We were updating the database to send Christmas postcards. We found many addresses omitted (which is always a pet peeve of mine when business cards do not include an address, hint, hint.) No one realized how much time is spent behind the scenes in looking up all three NE Ohio phone books for addresses. We completed this task in great time, and went onto the next project which included a field trip to the local lumberyard.

In my quest to showcase my own home as a “staged” set, I had hired the painter to paint all of my medium oak woodwork (a 90’s stigma) a bone white – a very creamy color. Anyway I am painting all my six-panel doors as well, replacing a door with a french door. I carefully measured the door at 32″x80″ and headed to Lowe’s with the measurements. I asked the gentleman to give me a 32×80. He put a french door on my cart, I proceeded to the checkout, paid for the door and headed home. Of course at home was the painter waiting patiently for the door and painted it promptly. When my installation guy came he realized that we had purchased and painted (three coats no less of oil-based paint) a 30″x80″ door.

OK, I went around my home measuring all my doors to see where I could replace the 30″. I toyed with the idea of putting it on the bathroom but my assistant, Rachel, said that some peoplel might be concerned about privacy. My 16 yearold daughter, Maria, said, “Mom, that’s just gross.” Well, I kept on measuring and found the library door the same size. So that’s where it will go as opposed to eBay.

Back to today’s door story. Rachel and I headed to Terry’s Lumber in Penninsula, Ohio, a very vintage “general store” which I love to give the business. I ordered another French door, this time 32″x80″ and not to take any chances, I did a special order so it will come in specifically for me and won’t be mixed up in a big box store where mistakes can happen.

While at the store, after my careful measuring, the saleman asked what type of hardware I’d be putting on the door. If course, I had just ordered a new set and didn’t have the info at hand. I called my painter to ask him to read the new box, but he was out to lunch. I had to drive back to my office in Hudson, Ohio to read the box for the exact size and call the salesman so he could then, finally, place the order.

My faithful ServiceMaster had arrived before I returned from Terry’s Lumberyard but he was not too shy to just go right in and start bailing water out of my flooded basement. He could not, however, bail water and wet vac water out faster than it was coming in from the sump pump.

Minutes later my computer repair guy, a funny Italian dude from Cleveland, showed up to fix several things on my computer. I mentioned that he probably didn’t want to check my computer while standing in water and he quickly got a friend on the phone who could come out to start pumping the water out. While I had the sump pump friend on the phone he had me check to make sure the pump did not trip the circuit breaker. When I opened the closet door to check the breaker box, there at my feet was a dead mouse in a mouse trap. I bent down to pick up the mouse, checked the breaker with the mouse in my hand, and reported to the pump guy on the phone that the breaker was not tripped.

With mouse still in hand, he instructed me to go to the GFI outlet to see if the pump tripped that. No it didn’t. With mouse still in hand he told me to unplug the pump from the outlet, plug in a lamp that works, and see what happened with the outlet. The lamp worked, the pump plugged back ini did not.

The guy said he would send out someone with a pump and hose to get the water out. However, his plumber was on another appointment in Cleveland and could not be available for quite some time to replace my sump pump.

I will be getting a commercial-grade sump pump installed today with a back-up in case the electricity goes off in the future. That’s actually why I got the gas fireplace in the first place since our electricity goes off all the time and I wanted to use it as a heat source.

My computer guy and assistant Rachel said that I’m writing a book, not a blog, and should stop at any time. Rachel stood up for me by stating, “It’s been that kind of day.” The pump guy is here so that’s a good start to the rest of this crazy day. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I did get a call from one of my realtors to schedule a staging, so something good has happened and I cannot complain because that pays the bills. See you again soon.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2006 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.