Now For the Glazing.

Oh, I love glazing, I put a lovely cream cheese glaze on my cinnamon rolls on Sunday…

No, not frosting or icing.  Glazing.  It is the clear stuff, if you will, that is on a green house or in this case, hot house.  So yes, like the shiny coat of a sugary substance for donuts, the green house, hot house, gets a shiny coating of poly carbonate aka glazing. 

The first panel went on easily.  The outer edge gets an end cap which is then drilled to the two-by-four.  The end cap gives the poly-carbonate extra strength.  The inner edge takes a joiner strip, the next panel must be fed into the joiner strip.  Not an easy task.

I want to say that the second sheet took three hours to put on, but that would be an exaggeration according to the time stamp on the camera.  However, our hands and nerves and patience sure felt it was more like three than the one hour that it actually took. 

The rafters went up one at a time because not only did the joiner strips make putting the panels up very difficult, they also threw off where the two-by-four needed to be placed for center.  The stuff is easy to cut, but uck, one more step, no thanks. 

And Now For the Hazing  ala Charley’s Greenhouse Supply

It began to look as if we were just going to twiddle our thumbs on Sunday with only two more panels to go to finish the glazing on the mostly south-facing side of Hot Hippy Hut.

For you see it goes like this:

We realized too late on Saturday that not only did Charley’s neglect to tell us the trick to getting the sheets into the joiner strips, but that they did indeed short us two of those very joiner strips (two strips are used on each joint as the strips are only six feet long and the panels are twelve). 

Back when we made our purchase and picked it up in person we added one more panel to our order. We indeed carefully asked the fellow in the pick-up bay if the two joiner strips which we had added to the order after we arrived in person were indeed included and he emphatically said that they were.  And in a rather sneering gesture of goodwill, offered to re-wrap them if we wanted to un-wrap them to count them.  “Nah.  We’ll trust you, since clearly we can see that the extra panel is here,”  the gullible nice idiots from Roy say to the cool fellow who works in the warehouse at Charley’s Greenhouse Supply.

Around one thirty on Saturday, after hearing my relatively non-cussing husband hold a personal cussing* storm, I went to the house in hopes to call Charley’s and get the low down from a real person on how to get the succeeding sheets into the preceding joiner strips.

The recorded voice that I reached on the one-eight-hundred number said that they were closed after one p.m. on Saturday and closed on Sunday. 

It wasn’t until much later when we realized that we were actually short the joiner strips that we needed to put up the last panel, that I realized that the store had been open until five on Saturday.  And sure enough, both the Call Center and the store were closed on Sunday.  Much too late at that point to salvage the day from the cuss storm or to go get the joiner strips.

But at V F&G when the construction project threatens to slow down and phone calls are being made there is always something to do, like weed a flower bed.

Or note the mackerel sky that indicates that the next day will be a wet one.

And sure ’nuff Sunday was a wet one, slightly windy too, just right for twiddling thumbs or pretending you are in a kayak on a raging river (the raging river effect comes from the person in back of you willing to shake the saw horse you are perched on).

“Oh no girls, I wasn’t implying that there might be better things to be doing.”

Out of the planned sequence of work perhaps, but still a viable and significant thing to do, the day was spent installing the door and less expensive hardware store clear glazing on the southwest end.

Butcha know, this man’s wife could spend a day shopping and purchasing him some new sweat shirts to work in instead of allowing him to wear this type of clothing that makes him look homeless. 

Nah, way more fun to help with the door and such. And plan the strategy for racing up north Monday morning, grabbing the joiner strips, saying a quick hello to our  eggcellent yet nearly eggasperated egg-farmers and distributors during the height of their eggstravaganzic season, quickly catch a glimpse of the tulips as we race out of the flowerific valley and back home to finish up the glazing job.

That was the plan any way.

But another plan superseded Dirt and Lanny’s plan.

Charley’s Call Center, CCC, opens at 7 a.m. weekdays,  the store itself opens at 9a.m. weekdays.  Perfect.  We’ll call at seven, find out that they have what we need for sure and then head up and be there nearly as the store opens.

Hazing Perfected by Charley’s Greenhouse Supply

We call. At 7a.m.

“Oh that was too bad that we shorted you those joiner strips, if we sold them to you but you didn’t take them they should still be here, but yes, before you drive up here let me check and make sure we have them, I call you back in a half hour.”

Phone rings at ten to eight.

“We’ve had a little electrical problem, I went into the warehouse to see if your strips were there, and I couldn’t see them, I don’t really know what they look like or where they would be, so I don’t know if we don’t have them or if I just missed them.  The warehouse guy gets in at eight-thirty, I’ll have him call you then.”

Ten after nine.

“Dirt? Can I call them?  They haven’t called us.”

“Yah, call em”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I told Charley twice that you needed to know, but I guess he got sidetracked.  Some other customers came into the store… . Lemme just set the phone down and go ask him now.”

“Yes, we have the two six foot joiner strips that you need and the two opti-vents your husband said he wanted to buy today.”

So we load up the dog and her puppies, make sure that all the day chores are done and head out at nine-thirty.

The bright side?  Dear overworked friends, who reside in near proximity to Charley’s Greenhouse, were better equipped to meeting us for lunch (we will now arrive at Chuck’s close to noon, instead of nine-thirtyish) and one member of the family would not have arrived back in town from his early morning egg deliveries until noon and would have been very sad to have missed an opportunity to say howdy to us zingy Vicks, one and all. 

So really it all worked out for the best, but the Chuck saga continues.

The Chuck Saga Continues

Dirt and I figure, not being retail store owners just the customers of such establishments for the last um forty or so years, that we will whip into Charley’s Greenhouse, grab and purchase those things we told them we were coming for and be on our way.  Certainly with more than two hours forewarning that would give them plenty of time to have said items up on the front counter with an explanatory note attached.

We arrive, one customer ahead of us, three clerks helping them, no eye contact with us, heck it could be a tough situation, we’ll hang back and wait, they certainly see us.

Finally, we are acknowledged, yet when we explain who we are, no one keys into or displays any sort of recognition of our story. Odd.

“Oh, not sure we have six foot joiner strips in back we’ll see, and you want what else? Not sure we have two opti-vents. We’ll go look.”

While others look, Dirt asks an apparently intelligent looking older fellow what the trick was to using the joiner strips.  Said fellow smiles, says, yes, they are hard to work with. 

Dirt becomes engaged with another customer who is there getting materials and they discuss ways to get around using the hard to use joiner strips that Dirt was not talked out of purchasing on our first visit up.

Dirt says several times how he would not ever try using the joiner strips again and would do something else or use the aluminum cap cover which were actually more expensive but obviously worth it.

Older gentleman just nods and smiles, clearly disinterested in helping with any hints on how to use this stuff we had already purchased and committed to use. Yet, he did seem rather annoyed with Dirt’s criticism of one of their products.

Counter Girl returns:

“Yes, I see your order on the computer but it says those have been shipped.” Said after ten minutes of Keystone cop like antics to figure out what we were there for and to locate the joiner strips, which clearly early morning girl had not bothered to set aside or even make note of and has indeed left for the day.

“Uh no, we picked those up, increased the order when we got here and were shorted part of what we added. Here, I’ll go out to my truck and get the receipt.”

After five minutes of back and forth on what happened two weeks prior, “Oh, I guess we do owe you two joiner strips. But it appears that you don’t need to pay for these two opti-vents”

No, I haven’t paid for them yet.

“Yes, you have, it shows them paid for right here.  But it does show that they were shipped, so you’re picking them up instead?”

My brain is fried at this point so I wonder if a female voice will make things clear and as I try to explain, my dear Dirt who has had his fill of female voices at this point asks me not so nicely, but at least without cussing, to be quiet and go away. 

Okie Doke.

Ahhh finally.  “Oh… you ordered two opti-vents and now you want to buy two more, okay.”

Purchase made, purchase firmly in hand and out the door just as our friends drive up to take us to lunch.

Yay! We survived the hazing.

Next Post:  Gifts from God: Our Northerly Friends, a Great Lunch and Tour of the Lovely Valley of Tulips aka the Silver Lining to Doing Business With Charley’s Greenhouse.

* Dear Reader, in reality, Dirt did not cuss (that much) while putting up the glazing, I just like saying cuss now after watching The Fantastic Mr. Fox.  A great movie.  And it makes the whole story a bit more spicey.