As the museum nears completion, we see more things that need doing. Currently we are on a hunt for the glass shelves that need to go into the Kallax boxes. I have 282 of them coming in at the end of June. I have 26 coming on Monday. We just picked up 48 last Friday, and am hoping to convince George to let me travel to Tampa to pick up another 90. Why is this an issue? I need a total of 1800! These seem to be rarer than many of the Berrocal's that I am hunting down. We have gone through the house and drilled all of the holes for when we finally do get the pieces in. At least we don't have that bit to do.
On Thursday, I finally got the phone number for the shipping company here in the US. As it turns out, the puzzles were sitting in a warehouse in Miami waiting. Why? Customs issues! Apparently the packed boxes got all mixed up at the warehouse in the UK and the manifestos didn't match the contents of the containers. This could have been disastrous. Rather than let me suffer through that, they just kept me in the dark while it was sorted. Thankfully there was no Duty to pay, and no fines. Add to that the clubs rule on no semi's and drivers who refuse to head north out of Ft. Lauderdale and you can now see why our puzzles are still not here almost 2 weeks after they were expected.
The very nice gentleman who was working on this knew who I was even before I got my name out. Why? Because our last overseas residence was Hong Kong and he too had lived there. After a bit of bonding over past experiences (or was that lamenting?) he mentioned that he could get me the first truck here on Saturday! Talk about exciting! I was ready to shout it from the rooftops. I kicked the guys into gear and got all but the essential items removed from the museum. I enlisted them to work the weekend to do some painting of cabinets as they come in and then eagerly awaited verification from the company of the Saturday delivery.
By Friday noon, I had no verification so I had to give a call. Again I was told he would call back in a few minutes with a definitive reply. At 1 I left for my weekly card game and by 3:30 he finally called to tell me the boxes were so buried in the warehouse that they wouldn't be able to deliver until next week. I just wanted to cry! Well, I guess it gives us more time to find more shelves and install them. But now both containers are in that warehouse and my greatest fear has come true. ALL of the boxes will arrive at one time! No big deal, the garage is empty, I have a system set up to move boxes around to different areas of the house, George has built a new ramp for the back entry and we have 6 dollies here. This will all work for us.
And having said that, I want to thank my beautiful lover. Without him and his craziness, this would have never happened. We now realize that we really didn't think this museum thing through. We just dove in head first and waited to see what would happen. We are both as loony as the other. He has been a great source of inspiration for the workmen. With his experience, he's taught them a few new tricks for their work. He's kept me calm, and has given in to (almost) all of my crazy requests for additional items or last minute changes. We couldn't have done this without each other. I finally get what a dear friend once told me. "We are a team." I never understood that before.
Another of our fanciful purchases was a set of carpets. We ordered three 3D carpets of various designs from Nhala home and had them mounted on the garage doors. This helps to soften the room a bit. Surprisingly, by adding grommets to the carpets and mounting them directly to the metal on the garage door, it works. The doors are able to open and close without interference, and it softens the harsh look of the metal on the garage doors. This was one of George's ideas that I tweaked. I like the 3D effect. The small garage door carpet reminds me of a tunnel I used to walk through on my way to the man house from the grocery store in Hong Kong. Now it leads to a much nicer putting green. I wouldn't recommend getting carpets from this place for your home decoration, but they are just perfect for use in a garage.
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And to add insult to injury, we did go to Tampa and they were 6 shelves short. I then had my order for Monday canceled. Why? Because they sold out the pieces that I paid for! It was more expensive to have the shelves delivered to us than the shelves cost. When I checked online at 4 am on Monday, the glass shelves that were cancelled-were now back on the shelves in Miami. I can't seem to win with these. George wrote a letter to Ikea corporate and we are hopeful that they can get us the extra shelves that we need. It will be a massive order of 1600 shelves if we can get them. He has worked out that it will take 2 months to install all of them. Which of course means the Museum will take longer to unpack and shelve. Can you tell I am frustrated by the need for shelves?
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