Ramblings...

2006-10-31T23:09:00.000-06:00

Jack-o-lantern evening

Neighbors yard was AWESOME!

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Ireland - Dublin to Galway

2006-10-18T19:55:00.000-05:00

YAY! Today I finished up my work stuff. Training is over! Woo hoo!
I was very pleased with how today went. I was teaching material that I am pretty vaguely familiar with, but I totally pulled it off. Class seemed interested and learned something. Very good.

So after that, I caught taxi with Dave and one of the customers, Robert, to the airport. From there I picked up my rental car. It's a tiny little bugger. I'll get some pictures tomorrow.
So, driving on the left hand side actually has turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. The hardest thing is when I walk up to the car to get in it, I still walk up the the left hand side.

Hehehe. The whole time I am driving I just keep thinking left left left left. It works :)
So I drove clear across Ireland today. Seriously. I drove from Dublin to Galway. It took me about 2.5-3 hours. Pretty uneventful drive and really nothing much to see either. But I got to Galway, and I set the GPS unit in the car (yeah, I HAD to have it. so glad I did) for Eyre Square in Galway. It is a REALLY cool area. Lots of shops (most were closed tonight) and bars and stuff.

I ended up walking into this record store called Red Light Records. Me and the owner, Des, totally hit it off. He just got back from a 6 week trip across the USA. New York to San Fransisco I believe he said. He went through Austin even! But didn't get much time to spare there. Too bad. Completely cool guy. We chatted for I dunno maybe close to two hours.

Turns out we have very similar music tastes and he played a ton of Irish acts for me. I ended up walking out with 9 CDs! HAHAHA it was a load of fun though. Shot the shit for a while.. then I was STARVING! I walked around trying to find an Italian place, but they were all closed. I ended up at this Chinese place and it was SOOOOOO good. They had this homemade hot chili sauce and I loaded up on it. I was running out of my nose and eyes. That is always a good sign.
After that I strolled around for a while, down the shop/bar district.

Very cool. I went to check out this one club where Ryan Adams is playing next week. Tonight there was no more music by the time I got there. Got a recommendation from the door guy and headed over to another place. The music there was eh.. it was traditional Irish, but the band was a bunch of old farts and quite honestly, not very good. I did enjoy a Guiness there though.
Finally grabbed my car and headed out to find a hotel. I just found one. It's 1am.
Tomorrow I will check out Galway in the daylight in the morning. Then I will head out for Doolin and the Cliffs of Moher. Hopefully make it out there by early afternoon. I will check that out tomorrow, and then possibly drive down to the Ring Of Kerry. Just playing it by ear.
I have a hotel booked in Dublin for Friday night. Then I fly back out for home on Saturday.

Lots to pack into a couple days. Should be fun!

Dave! My coworker that I did training with.

I saw this on my drive to Galway. Looked cool. I didn't have time to stop so I just took this quickly while I got stopped in traffic. It came out ok for a quick shot.

I ate dinner at this Chinese place and they had this cool painting on the wall.

The old fart band.

A bar.

Dublin - Day 2

2006-10-15T22:33:00.000-05:00

The day started off here at a nice coffeeshop called "LemonJellys". I had a great egg, cheddar, and tomato bagel for breakfast.

I was in the Temple Bar district...

And this is the famous Temple Bar.

Late that day it was off the Guiness

The brewery

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The toucan!

Labels

At the top is a bar, surrounded by 360 degrees of windows. The Gravity Bar. Here you get a free pint of Guiness.

Amazing views from up here

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And then on the walk home, I passed by Christchurch Cathedral.

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Really gorgeous.

Past a pub

I ate dinner at this place. It was very nice and homey feeling.

Some cool sculpture

And back to the hotel.

2006-10-14T19:45:00.000-05:00

Fresh shaven, in Dublin

These guys were jamming!

Cowboy in Dublin. This guy played "Blue Suede Shoes" both times I walked by. People were screaming for Johnny Cash.

You see the strangest things in Temple Bar.

Drumming on a box.

This guy would pope into scary poses whenever someone threw money in his jar, and then freeze in that position until the next person threw some change. Scary! I think his pointy ears are real (he had them made that way), and he was wearing freaky contacts.

There was this huge group of people dancing. The girls were dancing "Irish style" in heels! Crazy! The guy on the right approached me afterwards and told me "Don't take my photo, I'm Irish." I didn't even realize he was there!

More of the crazy dancing in the middle of the street. And yes, that is my crazy "friend" on the left that looks like he is about the throw a punch.

There were abut 5 girls who were all wearing mustaches.

done.

2006-10-11T12:04:00.000-05:00

What you lookin at?

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2006-10-11T00:04:00.000-05:00

2006-09-10T23:34:00.000-05:00

Stack of cut sheetrock

You can see the embedded fiberglass here. I got this all in my hands and arms. Yeowch!

The framing 1x2s I used. Screws ready to go.

Closeup 1

Closeup 2

Closeup 3

The finished boxes

Another shot

The framing 1x2 screwed to one side of the sheetrock

A finished box, look from up top

You can see the fiberglass sticking out here too

Side view of finished box

Another side

The hardware cloth cover I made to sit on top.

Folded down and they stay put very nicely

The roll of hardware cloth

The label from the hardware cloth.

2006-08-08T22:25:00.000-05:00

Andrea's China cabinet

Our rainchain... in action!

Rain rain rain

Furry friend

Big ol tail on that skunk!

The kitchen is back together.

To Prague

2006-04-15T08:42:00.000-05:00

I did a tour of Munich this morning. Pretty cool. Met a Canadian on the train last night and he recommended a good hostel to me so I stayed there. Caught a free 3 hour tour today. I normally would shy from tours but it was actually prettz decent. I didn't have time to research Munich myself so it worked out. I'll post more soon.
I missed my first train to Prague because it didn't say anything about Prague on the damn sign. So I am catching the next one in a few minutes here.
I just made a post about my day leading up to Zurich. I'll post more later.
All's well. Feet are hurting already and I want to save them for Prague which is why I'm spending my last hour here sitting in an internet cafe :)
More soon...

Munchen

2006-04-14T17:51:00.000-05:00

So my pictures are on Andreas'computer from the Zurich and castle trip. Iĺl post some of the others as soon as I get a chance and do a better journal entry. for now, in Munich, and headed to Prague late tomorrow I think. We shall see.
Having a blast.

Castles and countryside

2006-04-13T14:21:00.000-05:00

I woke up at 5am to give John the luggage. Slept until 7:45am when I got my wakeup call (in German, as I requested). I asked the front desk to not wake me up in English each day I was there, but in German instead so I get the full experience :) It´s kinda nice waking up to something you can´t understand.
I slept a bit more until 8:15am. Showered, packed up mz plastic bag´s worth of stuff and headed out. On my way to te train station, I stopped to buy a 34.99 Euro backpack. Kinda pricy, but I really needed it. Then to the train station to buy my tickets. Bought the just before the train and then headed out. The ride went through the forest and I started to see snow everywhere. Got to Hechingen and just missed the one bus that goes to the castle daily. I ended up grabbing a taxi for 12 E to the castle. Got to the castle and decided to hike up the trail instead of waiting for the shuttle bus. Ummmm, can you say COLD??? Only one set of footprints through the snow going up the stairs on the trail. Couldn't even see the stairs, just had to trust that they were where the footprints were. Not sure if it was the altitude (I have no idea how high I am), or if I'm just out of shape, but it winded me for sure.
At the top of the trail, I bought my ticket for the indoor tour. Hung around for a while until the tour started. It was all in German, so I didn't understand a word of it, but it was very coolen to see the inside. The present castle there really isn't all that old, but it is the 4th castle on the spot. The first from the 13th or 14th century. They all got torn down during sieges.
I decided to pony up the 1.30 E for the shuttle down. Had to wait for the shuttle to show and it was CRAZY cold. I was getting nervous because it didn't show until 14:00 and mz next train connection was at 14:27 and I still had to call a taxi, wait for it, and then a 10 minute ride into town. The taxi showed at 14:12. I asked him if he could make it in time and he assured me he could. I talked with him a bit. He didn't speak much English but I learned that he was born in the same small town (Hechingen) and he hadn't left. He sdai in the last 2 days they got over a foot and a half of snow (he showed me with his hands). So he got me there by about 14:19. Plenty of time :) I got on the train and that's where I am now. I'm hoping to get a chance to pick up a snow cap and gloves and a sweatshirt. Not sure I will have time until Zurich.
Off we go....

Stuttgart. And the adventure begins...

2006-04-12T16:11:00.000-05:00

YAY! The training is done!! It went extremely well.
We have eaten some really great food here. The first night, we ate at the brewery, and I had fresh gnocchi. Monday night we ate at this AMAZING Thai restaurant and I had some kind of pad thai with tofu. Tuesday night we ate at a really good Greek restaurant and I had these little feta cheese pies, and greek salad, and tzatziki. And tonight (Wednesday) we ate at a restaraunt where we had NO idea what kind of food they served. No English on the menu, waiters didn't speak English at all. I ended up with this kinda Noodles Romanoff/Mac n Cheese kinda thing, with a salad and french fries. The mystery meal!
We took a trip to Stuttgart today since we got out of class early. We walked around and saw some amazing sights. See below. Lots of cool stores and stuff. If you like shopping, that is the town for you!
So tomorrow I start the vacation part of my trip over here. I will leave in the morning via train to Zurich, Switzerland. There I will visit my friend Andreas. He stayed with us over the last summer in Austin for a couple days. It's so cool to be able to visit him over here. Never thought I'd have the chance. On the way to Zurich I may try to find a way to stop to go see the Hohenzollern Castle. Not sure if I will be able to or not though. We shall see. Tomorrow night I'll have dinner with Andreas and his girlfriend in Zurich and crash at his place. Friday we have some tentative plans to go to Rigi. Not sure on that either yet. We shall see if the weather holds. Oh yeah, Monday, during training it was snowing down cats and dogs outside! It was GREAT!
So we'll do that on Friday and then I believe I will leave Friday night to go to Munich. I will spend a half a day or so there on Saturday and then either stay in Munich that night or continue on to Prague. I will spend all day Sunday and Monday in Prague. Tuesday morning I fly back from Prague to Austin.
I'm ditching my luggage with my coworker John since he's been nice enough to take it back to Austin with him tomorrow. And I didn't have time to buy a backpack before I left. So I'll need to buy one. Only thing I'm taking with me is: an extra pair of jeans, boxers, socks, a jacket that I'll wear, my camera, a hairbrush that I bought over here, shampoo, my ipod, and that's about it. I need to pick up a cheap backpack because currently I just have everything stuffed in a plastic bag from the store.
Well I need to go do some research on potential hostels I might stay at in Munich and Prague, and I need to look at train schedules. SPONTANEOUS!

Crazy upturned trees and "giant deer feeders". Boeblingen.

The roofs are amazing. They're extremely steep and this one even has ladders on it permanently!

A pretty tree.

German architecture.

Fountain.

The "cobblestone" work here is so amazing. I really like how it follows every curve and hump in the road.

Schtreetzenznarrowen.

John sitting on some whacky German sculpture.

Ahhh das Brau hausen!

There we go. This is where everyone found us on the first night.

This picture TRULY expresses how Germans feel about their beer. Does that guy looked pleased or what!??!

A liquor that would NEVER make it in the US.

A view from Das Ticketbar.

Rohrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!

Flowers everywhere. It is so gorgeous. And it's still freezing outside. I can only imagine once it warms up.

More flowenzenheimers.

Flowerbed.

We took a daytrip to Stuttgart and saw some really great old architecture and plazas.

Ominous rainclouds in the background.

Another flowerbed with a pretty flowering tree.

Tower.

This is one of their main shopping areas. There are stores upon stores. LOTS of people walking around. And because they are gearing up for World Cup, you can see little soccerballs hanging from the trees.

Some old architecture. Let's take a closer look...

Amazing sculpture.

Look at that detail!

Up.

Smartcars are everywhere! This one was tricked out.

A delicious German meal. We had absolutely NO idea what we were getting here because the menu was in German and the waiter didn't speak any English. Mystery meal! It was good!

So funny. a Mexican restaurant with Mexican food with German descriptions!

Another courtyard.

Mighty.

Horseman.

This is just one of many churches. These are amazing. This one had dates on it from the year 1130.

Olympics

I LOVE these courtyards. Check out all that stonework!

Up.

Train station.

Deutscheland!

2006-04-10T16:16:00.000-05:00

OK... so first of all... the house is done, and we moved in Monday before last. It was exactly 6 months, to the day from the fire. It is REALLY REALLY so much better than we ever imagined it would be. Just great. I will post some final pics and all soon.
The funny thing is, I only got to spend a few days there because I was scheduled to come to Germany for work to do some training. So I flew out that Saturday, the 8th. Austin to Chicago to London to Stuttgart, then a taxi to Boeblingen.
We got to the hotel and immediately went out to try to keep the momentum and not go to sleep. We ended up walking around the lakes in town, checking out some awesome architecture and ended up (where else but) at the local brewery. We ordered some Mai Bock beers (their newest brew) and the waitress asked if we wanted small or large. When we said large she said "but it is VERY strong beer!!". Well then, bring us two! hahaha not the thing to do. Challenging two Texans on beer. We drank a couple then in walk the customers that we will be training for the week. They sat down and ate with us and it was a really cool way to get to know them before the training. 30 minutes pass and in walks my father-in-law and his wife!! I had spoken with him just a little while before. He didn't mention that they were going to try to come meet up with me. Boy, was it great seeing them walk in! I had a really good time chatting it up with them and drinking beers. Nice to see family that we rarely get to see.
We asked if they had anything stronger and the waitress turned us on to their Bock beer. It literally said in big block letters on the bottle "REAL STRONG BEER". Not too bad!
After chatting and chatting we headed back to the hotel for the night and bid Bobby and Edith good night. And we were so exhausted and relaxed that we both passed out in our rooms around 6pm. Not a good move. I woke up at 11:30pm. Couldn't get back to sleep until 4:30am and up at 6am. Not a good night's sleep at all. The next day I was SOOOO tired. But the training went very well.

First day. Walk around the Boeblingen lakes.

There is art everywhere around Boeblingen.

It was some kind of fountain.

German pigeons. Also, German grass, and German concrete.

The church at the top of the hill in Boeblingen.

Closer picture of the towering church.

That looks VERY German, no?

Zee churchenzeinen.

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This roof just looked awesome. They looked like metal shingles. Had to take a picture. The satellite dishes are a trip.

2006-03-05T19:24:00.000-06:00

We upgraded the underlayment to some thicker, quieter stuff.

The floor is starting to get put back in!

Living room got completed on the first day.

Look at that curve! These guys are pros.

They even prepped the foundation by grinding down the high spots (see big whitish area) ...

... and filling in the low spots (see dark gray area).

We even got them to tear out the old tile in the entryway. Smart idea (Andrea's) to ask! Here is what we had them put in. It's travertine, not tumbled like in the kitchen though.

A shot of the new flooring in the master bedroom. Those are the new french doors where the old sliding glass door used to be.

They're kinda using the kitchen to store stuff. Well, that is the busted up pantry in the front there. STACKS and STACKS of laminate floowing.

See? STACKS, I tell you!

The kitchen breakfast area chandelier. Slightly different from the old one, but in the same series.

And there is the travertine tile getting laid down.

They LOST our old living room fan, so we had to buy it again and they are reimbursing us.

Tile going in. He's admiring his handiwork.

The new front doors! YAY! They look good, huh?

There's the new door handles. Very nice.

And here is the entryway tile from today. They grouted it this morning. Nice border!

Another shot.

And one more.

2006-02-27T23:03:00.000-06:00

There's the new wall and landscaping.

Came out pretty nicely. It needs a couple months to fill in.

And new sod to fill in the dead patches.

There's the new outdoor lights in the front. This one is by the garage.

And either side of the front door. Still the old front doors.

You can see the two new lights in the back too. And in the upper left corner you can see speaker wire hanging down.

Closeup of rear lights.

Our new Japanese Maple tree!!

Stacks and stacks of laminate. Boy does that look familiar.

New tile in the utility room.

And the hall bath tile.

And the new shower tile in the hall bath.

Tile in master bath

New vent for the master bath.

They got the fan up in the master.

And the shower tile in the master. grrr. not too happy about those corners.

Closet lights.

Hall bath light.

Hall bath linen thing.

Utility room light.

Breakfast area lights.

The kitchen begins to take shape again.

They took out the front tile! YAY!

Front landscaping.

Closeup. That's a Cast Iron plant in the front and a Variegated Aucuba/Ginger in the back.

Dwarf Yaupon Holly.

The hall bath, grouted.

Hall bath shower. Perfect!

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Master bath grouted.

Shower grouted. Corners. grr.

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Looks good.

Utility Room grouted.

Nice view of front landscaping from inside the garage.

2006-02-13T11:04:00.000-06:00

Big new A/C unit. Heat pump.

They cracked the cooktop! AGH!!!!

There's our ceiling fans. We bought the same ones that we had in the rooms before.

And this one is different. Guest room.

Twin garage door openers.

There's the vanity for the hall bath.

And the master vanities.

There's our new front doors. I gotta say, I think WE did a better job at staining them, though they still are pretty.

And there's the little wall they built in the front. The little pillar at the end kinda goes with the mailbox.

Getting closer

2006-02-05T02:04:00.000-06:00

Another long time no post. Theme?
SO anyway, they have really been making progress on the house. They've finished the exterior siding and limestone, installed doors, garage doors, new trim (baseboards, window sills, etc). They've painted the inside and out. They still need to finish touching that up, but the majority is done. Next big step is the flooring and the shower surrounds.
For now, jusst check out the pics and I'll write more soon. By the way, check out Andrea's page, link over there on the left of this page for more frequent updates of pictures.
Off to bed for now...

One of the 4 stacks of sheetrock

More sheetrock

A small stack

Anotgher stack of sheetrock in the back, and siding on the ground there.

They wrapped the house in Tyvek before they put the new siding on.

A messy kitchen

This is the FIRST day of them putting the limestone up. Those guys move fast!

More rock

They put the sheetrock up right over the door openings. I guess it's faster to just cut it out afterwards.

Hard at work

Funny shaped doorways on the left there.

Cutting stone

Another interesting doorway to the hall bathroom

The next day they had a lot more of the limestone done

Getting there

Those are the new doors for the inside. NICE!

And they decided to put rock all along the side here. It used to be just brick in the middle section (just past the fence) and siding on either side of that.

A view of the front. Sans garage doors. Check out our new mailbox!!!

The exterior paint. It was still wet and was REALLY yellow.

See all the trim? Very nice baseboard work

A shot of the new siding in the back.

Another shot. Yellow house. It's tamed down now and looks pretty darn good! The trim is not painted yet though.

A view from the front. Garage doors!!

Tamed down yellow.

New garage doors!

The new kitchen color

The living room color, next to the kitchen

Living room color on right wall.. and the other color on the left is what most of the rest of the house is. It's kinda coffee (with cream) colored.

Our new built-in bookshelf. We converted the closet to a built-in bookshelf. The GC built this himself. Came out nicely!

The interior doors are being painted.

The left wall is the color of the master bathroom.

And this is the color of the master bedroom

And this is the color of the hall bath

Another long time...

2006-01-08T14:06:00.000-06:00

It's been a long time again since the last post. Really things kinda slowed down during the holidays for a bit, which we expected. They've done a lot of work in the past week or so though.
The house is all insulated. The next step here really is the sheetrock and the siding and masonry on the outside. We've been really pleased with all of the work so far and things seem to have gotten into their groove again.
Not much else to say, I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Electrical work in the kitchen and a new window!

Another new window next to the master bath. With our new Jacuzzi tub.

The BIG window in the garage.

Shingled roof, and check out the ridge vent!

Another shot of the new shingles. They almost perfectly match what we had on there. They look great.

That's the new rear door to the garage. The old one was in bad shape, so it's nice to get that in there.

The house with a pile of NEW rubble in front.

Closer picture of the limestone we'll have. It's perfect!

Insulation is up in the walls.

They did some repair work over the front door where there was still some badly charred wood.

Another picture of the insulation in the walls.

That's the back of the master bath.

The new bathtub in the hall bath. We didn't know this was going to get replaced but the old one got damaged from the soot sitting on it.

And this is the master bath tub. With jets!

We changed out the window for glass blocks. Came out really nice.

They let in plenty of light.

The master bedroom wall all insulated.

And a huge gaping hole in the side of the master bedroom wall!

Same, from outside.

And the living room. These will have French doors installed in them instead of the sliding glass doors.

Ceiling in living room insulated.

And the siding on the house now. The GC says that they will put Tyvek right over this and then the new siding. Hardisiding.

Long time long post!

2005-12-14T20:42:00.000-06:00

Ok so it's been a LONG time since I posted last.
Here's a quick.... nah scratch that.... LONG recap of what's gone on....
Electrical is done.
Plumbing is a good ways along, if not done.
HVAC (Air conditioning) ducting is done.
Framing is all done.
Roof is ready for the shingles to be attached. The felt paper is down.

I've also wired the entire house for sound. We'll have speakers (or the capability of having them at least) in every single room of the house, including the garage and back porch! Pretty sweet. It took me quite a while to get it all wired. We'll have volume controls in each room, also we'll have the ability to control it via remote control with infrared! Pretty slick, huh?
All speakers used 12/2 wiring. Volume control used 14/4 wiring. CAT5 to each for IR.
I had the electrician run two CAT5 lines to every phone jack. Also we ran RG6 and CAT5 to every TV/cable jack. And all of that runs back to one distribution center which we will hide in the front hall closet. Awesome!

We had a BIG BIG BIG problem with our mortgage company. So the way it works is... Insurance cuts a check that has our names, the contractor's name, and the mortgage company's name on the check. The mortgage company owns the title of the house, so they have the final say. So we all sign it and send it to the mortgage company. Once they get it, they are supposed to send third of the money back immediately, to pay the contractor. The checks they send back to us have our names, and the contractors name. These checks will be mailed to us, signed by us, then turned over to the contractor and he can go cash it. The second third is sent when he is 50% done with the house. And then the final amount is sent when it is completed.
So anyway... The contractor's crew started probably the day after the fire. He's really been working hard and doing a great job. This has all been out of his pocket, b/c he will get reimbursed when he gets the checks. Wellllll he STILL hasn't been paid.
.... The mortgage company got the check and approved it on Nov 17. I gave them the address for our apartment at this time, since we are not getting mail at the house. They ran it through their channels and supposedly mailed it out on Nov 28 to the WRONG address. UGH!!!!!! I called at the end of that week to find out where the check was and they then told me it was sent to the wrong address. They said they would overnight me a replacement. Well I didn't get it the next week. Called several times that week. I was promised, I think TWO more times, on different days, that they were overnighting it that day. RIDICULOUS. Come to find out, the girl who was handling our account was out of the office for a week, she didn't change her voicemail to indicate she was out of the office. She didn't transfer any of the issues she was dealing with to a coworker. Nope. NO indication she was gone. So we wasted about a week, leaving this girl voicemails. Whenever we called, it would be a 45 minute hold, then you'd get someone, and then you'd get voicemail once they sent you to the people supposedly handling the issue. We got the girl's manager. Well.. His VOICEMAIL that is. Several weeks and we still had not actually TALKED to someone handling the case. The contractor was getting itchy, wondering where his check was, and with good reason! We'd been promised several times that it had been overnighted! SO yesterday I got a call from insurance and they said that the contractor was going to have to stop working b/c he had not been paid yet. He is also filing a complaint or suit or something against the mortgage company. The insurance company urged me to file against the mortgage company as well. So enough is enough, I had to take the afternoon off from work so I could deal with the (*&^*^&$ mortgage company. I called. On hold for WAY too long. I called the local office. They said they'd have to get me someone from the department I needed. Fine, I will hold. They finally got me someone. I think, b/c I was so irritated, they sent me to someone who handles pissed off customers. He said he was not in the department I needed (loss draft), but would help me. Well I told him I needed to SPEAK to someone in that department and I was not going to settle for voicemail. We started calling.....
He'd put me on hold while he tried the girl handling the case.
"Voicemail."
"Ok, call her manager"
"I'm sorry, sir, we got his voicemail"
"Ok, fine, call HIS manager NOW."
"Voicemail"
"Great! Let's call HIS manager!"
By this time, I could tell the guy was getting pretty high in the chain of command b/c he was actually having to go to some company directory to look up the names of the people we were calling. We must have gone to 4 or 5 levels of management. I was expecting to have the president of the mortgage company on the phone soon!
He finally told me that he would give me HIS manager. So I got the manager of the department that deals with angry customers.
THIS GUY PISSED ME OFF SOOOOOOOOOOO BAD!
He was not helpful at all. I told him that I don't care if I have to hold, I want to speak to someone in the correct department NOW! He started to say that all he could do is send me to voicemail. Oh HEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL NO.
No way in hell was I going to play voicemail again. Nope.
So I told him, not acceptable and I would hold as long as it took. He then told me that *HE* would not hold as long as it took. WHAT THE HELL?! All I wanted was to speak to someone in the right department that could tell me why it had taken over 2 weeks to get a check that they had OVERNIGHTED to me.
He said he was going to transfer me to voicemail of the manager of that department. I started screaming at him and told him that he had BETTER not send me there or I would be filing a complaint against him for not assisting a customer. I asked for HIS manager. He said his manager was gone for two days. I demanded to speak to his manager's manager. He said he would and put me on hold. I half suspected he would drop me into voicemail at this point and was ready to completely lose it. I was already so frickin angry I was shaking.
So then the guy comes back on the line, and he has the manager of the group that I needed to speak to on the other line. I dunno what happened while I was on hold shortly, but I think it dawned on him that he had better help me (or feel my wrath), or maybe his manager told him to deal with it.
Anyway, I get the manager who we have been leaving COUNTLESS voicemails for. He said that they had to issue a stop payment on the check that they sent out to the wrong address. Because it is such a large amount, their system requires 5 days after this to cancel the check out and allow them to cut a new check. He assured me that they would have a new check issued on Thursday and overnighted to me on Friday. He said he personally would call me with the tracking number. He said he would call my contractor as well.
I asked him if it was their policy for an employee to leave the office and not change voicemail or transfer active issues. Come to find out, the girl who was handling our case, her house burned down last week. It took everything in me to not say "Good! I hope she has y'all as a mortgage company!". Evil. I resisted.
I asked him why he had not called me, Andrea, or the contractor back and he denied getting any voicemails from the contractor. I know for fact that he had left 6 voicemails on Monday and 2 on Tuesday for this same manager. Absolute BS. Liars Liars Liars!
I don't think I have ever been so angry in my entire life as I was on that call.
Anyway... So today (Wednesday)... We get the check in the mail. It was dated Dec 12. It was shipped out on Dec 13. So.... Another proof that these guys are COMPLETE dumbasses. The new check had already been cut when he spoke to me yesterday. It was cut on the 12th. IDIOTS.
Ok.. Endive then get this. It's supposed to be a third of the TOTAL. The check we received is for $105,774.05!!!! The FULL check we mailed to them to begin with was for $114,000! There are also some holdbacks in there... Like $40,000 worth. So TOTAL is like $154,000. Or somewhere around there. Now, correct me if my math is wrong, but $105K is NOT a third of $154K. They are supposed to do a 50% inspection before issuing the second third. So I really do not understand how the check got this big. I have a call into insurance to ask them about this. To see if we need to hold any back, or just give it all to the contractor or what. It seems like an awful lot of money to give out. The contractor asked me to schedule the 50% inspection already b/c he thinks they are there. Personally, I don't think they are at all, but if it took this long for the first draw, I don't blame him for jumping the gun. They still have all the masonry to do, shingling the roof, sheetrocking the walls, texture and painting the entire house, laying laminate wood floors, putting up all trim (baseboards, window sills, etc), reinstalling the kitchen cabinets and appliances, installing finish trim like doorknobs, etc, installing bathtub, tiling shower surrounds, tiling in the bathroom and laundry room (potentially), finish installing the windows, install front doors, build workbench/shelving in garage, build bookshelf in office room, installing ceiling fans, thermostat, etc, insulating the attic and in walls, install hardi-siding on the outside of the house, hrmm. Probably a lot more that I haven't thought of. But needless to say... I think they are only about 25% done so far.
Anyway. That's where it stands. Our contractor will be paid. And they'll get back to moving through the work. They are still thinking March.

This is NOT our house :) It's a house that we like the limestone on.

Another shot of the limestone. We're going to get similar limestone for our place.

The house is coming along. The roof is ready for shingles.

THAT is our old pergola.

That is the dryer vent ducting.

Why I haven't been posting, Because it would ALL be pictures of this. Notice the wiring. Not really too exciting eh?

And more wiring. That is the CAT5 line.

One of our splurges. A Jacuzzi jet tub for the master bath.

And the master bathroom is now missing a bathtub.

A big giant window for the big giant hole in the front of the garage.

These are the windows not yet installed.

And these will be the "French doors" in the back, instead of sliding glass.

The old windows.

Shingles atop the roof...not installed yet though.

Another shot of the stack of shingles.

New windows installed. Pretty sharp, eh? They're gonna make a big difference in appearance (and hopefully in energy BILLS!)

The old bath tub.

Far away shot.

The new electrical, where it enters the house.

Not something you see everyday. A check, with our names on it, for over $100K!

Bush be gone

2005-11-11T22:01:00.000-06:00

The landscape guys removed all the burned shrubs in the front. We'll put new ones in once more of the rebuild is completed. The framing is pretty much done. Looks great and they really busted through it and got it done.
Yesterday we signed a check for $114,000 that had OUR names on it. Unfortunately, it also had our mortgage company's name on it and the contractor's name :) But it's good to see that insurance is taking care of that so the GC gets paid. He's really been doing great.
The GC said I can go ahead and start wiring for sound whenever I'm ready.
Tomorrow I'm going racing with some friends. Should be fun. Then on Sunday, my friend Victor is helping me do the brakes on the trucks. Busy weekend. It's sposed to rain too, which may change it up.
TGIF!!!!!

No more bushes!

Closeup. You can see where the bushes were.

The windows are MORE fixed. but not quite done.

New garage.

Side view.

BRAND new garage. Look at the new lumber.

Dancing workers

2005-11-11T00:31:00.000-06:00

Ok. I was bored.... but ya gotta admit, it's funny.

Click here....

Travolta!

Viva el garaje!!!

2005-11-09T23:14:00.000-06:00

So I went over there and this is what I saw. They are cruising! Pretty crazy.
Starting to look like a house again!

Coming back to life!

All of this in a DAY!

There's the new front of the house.

And the side (neighbor's side)

Blair Witch Construction company

Still not quite done.

Blue skies ahead!

Spooky. I took this the night before.

Still some burned parts.

Rebuild begins!

2005-11-07T18:29:00.000-06:00

So I went over at lunch today and this is what I saw....
SWEET! They started the rebuild. And it looks like it's moving along very nicely.
Garage is starting to take shape and they got the roof started as well.
The electrician was inside, getting set up to start rewiring. He basically just snipped the wires from every receptacle inside and left the receptacles and switches in place. One thing that I remembered, while I was talking to him is to have him wire the fans so there are two wire runs to the fans so that we can have one switch on the wall for the fan, and one for the light. That's always nice, so that you don't have to pull the cord to turn one of them on.
He's also set to wire 5 TV and 5 phone connections and just needs to know where to put them. He'll also center the ceiling fan in the living room if we want. He has a HUGE drill bit that will go through the beam there very easily.
There were about 5 guys working on the framing and rebuilding. This is moving along great. I'm pretty impressed.

Say cheese!

And the rebuild begins. Pretty sweet!

Strike a pose.

Update

2005-11-06T23:24:00.000-06:00

If you haven't checked in a few days, I've posted a TON of pics. Go back to October 3, and check out between now and today.

Ok, so I thought that I would keep up with this blog day-to-day through the rebuild, but I've just not had the time nor the wherewithal to do so. Anyway... what I've done is posted a picture or two from each of the days that I took pictures. I may switch this up to just posting pics, and then the occasional update. I dunno yet. Incidentally, hop on over to Andrea's page to see more pics. http://www.jedi.net/~reign
So the BIG update I've been meaning to put on here is that the cause of the fire was found NOT to be chemicals... it was ELECTRICAL. We actually found that out the day after the fire when a fire investigator came out. It was really cool getting to watch him work. It was all like a scene out of CSI. He found this pile of wood that had been knocked around the garage and he rebuilt the pile. It had been stacked against the wall in the garage. That wall had an electrical outlet on it and THAT was what caused the fire. We had aluminum wiring in the house. If you have aluminum wiring, I would HIGHLY recommend you convert it to copper. At the very least, hire an electrician to pigtail copper onto the ends of each run. It may just save your home!
Our insurance company has given us exemplary service. Really really top notch.
We're now in an apartment, after having stayed with Andrea's brother, Rob for a couple weeks. It was super nice to have family in town, not just for the fact that we had somewhere to stay, but it was nice to stay with family while all of this was going on. BIG thanks to Rob and Alev for letting us stay with them!
We got some of our stuff delivered to the apartment. The first load included EVERY SINGLE THING from our kitchen. I mean EVERYTHING. Probably 30 boxes worth of kitchen stuff. Needless to say, we had to pare it down and get just what we'd need, and what would fit in the apartment kitchen. They also delivered our mattress, but no box spring. Then they delivered the box spring, but it had not been cleaned at all. Smelled like a fireplace! The mattress also was dingy looking, so they took both back. The box spring was better off for the cleaning, but the mattress somehow became even worse and the cleaners are talking to the insurance company about totaling it out. It's usable, but we JUST bought it when we moved into the house... and now it looks like a 12 year old mattress.
Work has been very busy for me. We hired two folks though. One of them Chris, from my old job. That is really turning things around and the workload is going to become much more bearable in the next few months.
A few weeks ago we went down to help Mom and Dad lay Pergo in their new house. That went pretty smooth. I am a professional, after all.
Hrmmm what else? dunno. I just applied for a credit card that gives cash back since we will be buying so much stuff to replace what we lost. Might as well get a free vacation or something out of it.
Our general contractor has been really good. They have pretty much finished the demolition of the house. The house is essentially down to framing and foundation. The building materials got her on Thursday and Friday and they will start re-framing the burned part on Monday. The final cost (so far) for JUST the rebuild of the house is $150K+! Pretty insane. Especially considering that we paid only $185K for the house AND land. When all is said and done, the house will probably be worth around $270K after the rebuild. There is a bright side in everything. Don't get me wrong, it's not all roses and I'm CERTAINLY not saying I would have wished for this for us or for ANYONE. We lost a lot of stuff we can't replace, and the hassle of having to find everything and rebuy can be pretty grating at times. Not to mention the stress and shock of waking up to a freakin FIRE in our home.
We are actually finishing up the inventory list still. LOTS of stuff got trashed.
We met with the GC (general contractor) and talked about stuff we will want to change and some stuff we had planned on upgrading anyway. We're probably going to go back with limestone instead of brick, replacing some (if not all) windows - (side note: our electric bill has been nearly $400 for the past 3 months! can someone say inefficient!?), going back with paneled doors instead of flat doors... probably a jet bath tub, new vanity for the hall bath (which we almost bought just a a few weeks before all this happened!), and a few other things.
Oh, and I'm also wiring the entire house for sound while it's down to the frame. Pretty cool.
Evan says I write novels for my posts. Hopefully y'all still enjoy reading em :-P
OK. some pictures...
(funny note: I just ran spell check on this and the spell checker brought up "foreskin" as a suggested replacement/misspelling of "freakin" HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!)

2005-11-05T00:59:00.000-06:00

These are the engineered trusses for the new roof. 29 feet long!!

Long suckers!

There they are next to my truck for comparison.

This is a house that has some limestone that we kind like.

More building materials. All ready for Monday.

2005-11-01T00:56:00.000-06:00

They've sprayed the attic with Kilz to seal in the smoke smell.

Everything is white.

From master bedroom.

Living room, before they tore down the ceiling for me.

Now the ceiling is gone! Makes for easy wiring of speakers.

Even the kitchen ceiling came down.

And that's the master bedroom ceiling.

This is behind our house. This lot is usually all overgrown and more importantly, EMPTY. They are building condos back here. Hopefully they will be small and short.

2005-10-23T00:51:00.000-05:00

A spooky spider from Mom and Dad's house.

2005-10-21T00:50:00.000-05:00

Now the house is really looking bare.

Looks more like a new house being built than an old house being torn down.

There goes the rest of the walls and insulation.

Funky plumbing. Hall Bath.

That's the hall bathtub. Weird looking, right?

That's the laundry room. See the tile?

Donde esta mi garaje?

2005-10-19T13:25:00.000-05:00

2005-10-18T00:47:00.000-05:00

This is the first dumpster being taken away.

From the garage, even more stripped down.

Still some red to be taken down.

Master bedroom, stripped.

Pretty bare.

The punk-ass dumpster driver broke off one of our branches!!! UGH!

2005-10-17T00:44:00.000-05:00

Down comes the sheetrock.

That is the back of the chimney, in our master bedroom.

From the master bedroom, through the hall bath, into the office.

Thats the master bathtub on the lower left, from the futon room.

From the front hall, looking all the way back to the master bedroom (through the hall bath).

This guy looks pissed!

At least it's cleaned up some.

2005-10-11T00:41:00.000-05:00

ALL of the brick is coming off!

This is AFTER the first two truckloads left.

Stripped.

Amazingly enough, these suckers stuck around!

Just a shell.

Poop!

2005-10-10T00:25:00.000-05:00

Pretty darn funny!

2005-10-09T00:39:00.000-05:00

Our beloved kitchen.

Stuff that is trashed, and a red X (meaning that wall will go).

X's everywhere.

Water heater gone.

Shower surrounds gone.

Check out that smoke damage!

Mess.

More mess.

Up inside the attic.

This was the first indication that the brick was gonna go.

The start of the brick teardown.

Fire pics - Day 1

2005-10-03T23:33:00.000-05:00

The spacemen at our house.

These guys are true heroes.

Hose it down!

Blech!

Everything is wet.

Clear through the garage.

.

You can see where the smoke was just pouring out of every crack.

The doors that I had JUST finished!!

That is the indistinguishable mess in the garage.

They tore out the ceilings to get to the attic fire.

Charred.

What a mess! About an inch of water throughout the house.

Yes, that mess is the office and my computer.

Look at the soot in the hallway!

Fire - Day One

2005-10-03T22:49:00.000-05:00

Ok so here's the recap of the past few days....

Monday morning, sometime just before 5:30am, I woke up and heard all kinds of racket going on in our garage. At first I thought someone was breaking in and throwing stuff around or had knocked something over. So I got out of bed, ready to kick some tail and as I walked down the hallway the noises kept up. Then I started thinking maybe one of the cats had gotten stuck in the laundry room (between the living quarters and the garage), or that a possum had gotten in or something bizarre (hey don't laugh at that one! In our condo, a bird flew down our vent pipe for the furnace once and was stuck in a closet!!).
So I opened the door to the laundry room, and right away saw the door to the garage (from the house) had flames all behind it, could see an orange glow around the door, and smoke started pouring in. There was no smoke coming in before. I could tell from how much light was coming in, and how much smoke that the fire was already too big for me to mess with. I ran back to yell and get Andrea up. "Fire! There's a fire in the garage!". This was one of the most surreal moments of my whole life. One of those moments where you TRULY cannot believe what your eyes are seeing, and the words coming out of your mouth. Hard to explain what a weird feeling it was. I grabbed my cell phone and dialed 911. I saw that Sundae (one of our cats) was in the bedroom. I told Andrea to get Sundae and get out. I ran to the front to look out the window at the garage and could see it was a pretty good sized fire, lots of light from behind the garage door. I told the 911 folks that we had a big house fire and the address. They tried to keep me talking on the phone, but as they were talking, I saw Toe (our other cat) run by and into one of the spare bedrooms. I opened the front door to set the house alarm off so it would also dial 911. I told the 911 people I had on the phone that I could put the phone in my pocket and could check it again, but I had to get my cat!
I then ran into the other bedroom to grab Toe. She was wedged in tight between a box and our futon and was trying to climb all the way under the futon. I grabbed her by the base of the tail and pulled her out. I grabbed her tight to my chest and went to go grab the keys to the car so I could put her in there. Checked the fireplace mantle (where I put my keys every night) and they were not there! So I started running through the house, trying to find my keys, Toe clutched to my chest, smoke starting to come into the house. I had my hand on her heart and could just feel it going a million miles an hour. I ran all around the house, looking for the keys, in the office, back to the bedroom (and noticed that Andrea was already out of the house). I finally found the keys on the kitchen countertop, ran out, and put Toe into the Pathfinder. Andrea had already gone out the back bedroom sliding glass door and had Sundae. I grabbed Sundae, put her in the Pathfinder, and then drove it wayyy down the street to the far side of our neighbor's house. If I hadn't moved it then, there would have definitely been a lot of heat damage as it was parked up next to the garage door and the flames were starting to come out from underneath the garage door where it had melted. I got in my truck and moved the truck. Some guy said that he was on his way to the corner store to get cigarettes when he saw the smoke. He was out in the yard, shortly after I came out of the house the first time. He was on the phone with 911 and said he was about ready to bust down our front door if he needed to, to let us know about the fire. So Andrea stayed with him while I moved the truck. At that point we could start to hear the sirens in the distance. It took the fire dept between 5 and 6 minutes to get there. Pretty quick, but was one of the longest 5 minutes of my life. The fire had gone from just barely visible at the bottom of the garage door to about 6-10 feet off the top of the roof! It was scary as hell. Nothing to do but sit and wait.
The fire dept showed up and strung out their hoses and it seemed like forever before they turned them on and got to work. It was probably only about a minute, but it sure seemed like forever. They went in the front door with the hose, through the house and sprayed back INTO the garage. Really smart. That kept the fire contained and minimized the water damage. The fire had spread into the attic though and started moving into the rest of the house. They had to tear down the ceiling in the front hall, the office, the guest bedroom, and the spare bedroom so that they could spray the fire in the attic. They also tore open the gable on the side of the house so they could spray in there.
We had 5 fullsize fire trucks, one or two ambulances, and four police cars. All the neighbors came out.
It took them a good while to get the fire under control, it kept starting back up in the attic and leaping out the roof. It had caught a tree on fire in our front yard and torched some bushes. Also where they tore out the gable, it burned the grass on the side of the house.
Our neighbors were moving their cars, spraying their trees and roofs with water... if it had caught more of the trees on fire it really would have spread quickly to the neighbors houses since there are so many trees.
Finally they got the fire put out. The fire chief came over and told me that it was the result of improperly stored chemicals. We had paint thinner in our garage, and Miracle Gro for flowers, and had gas tanks for the lawnmowers.... ok... WHO DOESN'T!? He told me I shouldn't store that stuff in the garage and so I asked him where we should be storing it. He said in a storage shed in the back yard. News to me. After this, we WILL be buying a storage shed, but c'mon, how many people have paint and Miracle Gro or fertilizer in their garages? Don't get me wrong, he was very nice, it just seemed odd. So his diagnosis was that some chemicals in the garage had spontaneously combusted and caught everything on fire. Possible? Sure. Probable? ehhhh didn't rest well with me.
Anyway... so this whole time, I had run outside just wearing jeans. No shirt, and more importantly, no shoes! Also our wallets were inside still. Our neighbor brought me out a shirt which was nice b/c the mosquitos were eating me alive. One of the firefighters took me into the house so I could grab shoes and anything else we needed right away. They were still trying to get the attic completely under control, and assess the damage and structural integrity. So we could only go into the maaster bedroom (from the back) and I couldn't get a good look at everything, but it was messy as hell. An inch of water in the master bedroom. So we went back out and waited.
They finally got it all under control and the chief came over to give me a walkthrough. So our house is TRASHED from the water everywhere and ceilings being pulled down, etc... we get to the front door and I stopped him and asked if he'd mind wiping his feet before he came inside. hahaha for half a second he thought I was serious. Hey, humor pulls ya through some tough times. He had a good laugh, then showed me all the damage. Pretty bad. Sheetrock and insulation from the ceilings EVERYWHERE, water EVERYWHERE, smoke damage EVERYWHERE. But they really did do an excellent job of containing the fire. It could have been SO much worse.
While we were still watching them put out the fire, this guy showed up from a fire damage recovery company, Blackmon Mooring (they do LOTS of other things too)... it seemed really shady at first... he was telling us he can get a water extraction crew in there in a couple of hours and they can get to work right away. My house is still in flames and we're talking about this. Rob put it right... ambulance chaser. So it seemed really shady at first but then we talked to him more, they are one of our insurance company's preferred companies to deal with this stuff. He had a document he and we signed that said that if our insurance company refused to pay for their services IN FULL, that we would not be charged a dime. I asked why he could do that, what happens if our insurance didn't pay, how are they not out of pocket? He said b/c he knew without a doubt that our insurance company would. He was the first person, of many, to tell us how good our insurance company is.
So the water extraction/cleanup crew arrived, they cleaned out all the sheetrock and the water. Oh yeah... no power in the house... and there probably will not be power for a week or more. Too much of the wiring got burned to make it safe to turn back on.
Andrea took the cats back to Rob's place to get them out of the heat, and to buy some clothes for us for the next day.
So they got to work. Our insurance company called and said they would send the contents adjuster up that day. So that afternoon, I went through the garage with the contents adjuster and we tried to identify stuff. It was really hard because the fire was the worst in there. Most of it was piles of char or melted plastic. So we made a preliminary list. We were over there until it started getting dark. Oh, I also had to give a 30 minute audio interview for insurance.
The dry cleaners place came and took away all of our clothes, blankets, bedding, curtains, etc... they take it and "ozone" it... this process changes the chemical composition of soot, and takes away the smoke smell. Most of the contents in our house will be put into an ozone chamber to get rid of the smell. After they do that to clothing, they dry clean it and deoderize it. So we were told to pick out 2 weeks worth of clothing and put it on the bed. This would be rush ordered for us.
The insurance adjuster for structure was going to come out first thing tomorrow.
Ok and I'll close this entry with a plea to anyone who reads this. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE check your smoke detectors, make sure you keep the batteries in them fresh and that they are working. My confession of ignorance is that we didn't have any hooked up in our house yet. In reality, that should have been the FIRST thing we did as part of our remodeling. We were VERY VERY lucky. Lucky I am a light sleeper, lucky it made noises and woke me up, and lucky that we got out safely. PLEASE check your smoke detectors. You always hear about this stuff happening to other people and think it will never happen to you, but it does. We're proof. Do it.
At the end of the day, it definitely put everything in perspective. All that really matters is your loved ones. All I cared about was that Andrea and I got out of the house and that we had our pets. Everything else is just stuff. Replaceable. It didn't even cross my mind to grab anything else, or to go back in for anything. All that mattered is we were safe.

House

2005-10-03T22:00:00.000-05:00

Latest update on the house:

It burned down.

No kidding! No, I'm really serious. Well, not down, but we had a major garage fire. It spread throughout the attic. Good news is, everyone is ok. We are dealing with insurance, who has so far been great. I have a feeling this blog will switch to an update of the rebuilding of our house. (This time not by us).
The house itself wasn't burned too badly, but the garage is gone. They had to tear the ceiling out in a few rooms to put out the fire in the attic. The majority of the house was drenched. About an inch of water in the master bedroom even. Smoke damage throughout. I'll post a more detailed entry with pictures soon.

Lawdy lawdy! I'm on fire!

2005-09-19T00:24:00.000-05:00

UGH! I am SO sunburned. I ache like crazy.
Today I worked on the yard almost all day. Alas, the sunburn. I mowed, trimmed, edged, used the leaf blower and leaf vac. It came out nice. Then I set to work moving the mulchpile from in front of our front fence to the back garden areas. It was wet, and heavy and wore me out. I got about halfway done. Andrea had gone out to grab lunch and run some errands and when she got back, she couldn't believe how burned I was. I didnt even know I was. I just itched everywhere. So I ate lunch, hauled a few more wheel barrows of mulch to the back and then called it a day. YEOWIE! I am burned. I took some Advil and that helps, but I still feel really bad.
Oh, the doors are done being stained. Now I have to tung oil them. It should ALL be done by the end of this week. I installed a new threshold for the garage door. I also took the grill off the air intake for the air conditioner which is in the laundry room (next to the garage), I cut a piece of cardboard to cover it, then re-installed the grill. We have two more intakes, no need to be pulling air from that room.
The end of this week is ACL Fest! I'm psyched. An old friend of mine who I haven't seen in probably 10 years is coming to town and staying with us for the weekend. Should be a lot of fun.
And I got a new camera! Sweet huh? My brother got it in exchange for a job he did and sent it to me as it was too much camera for him. It's awesome. 8 Megapixels! I've gotta learn how to use it still. I took all the pics below with it.
I need a haircut.
Welp. it's late. gonna get some rest.

Red lobster!

See the heat radiating off?

Nice tanline

Doors ready for oil

Last coat

Double doors

The mulch pile

Wet and heavy

And a freshly cut yard. nice eh?

Doesn't look like I did much damage, but I did.

Pensive Toe

Big huge green eyes

Doorway to the future

2005-09-07T23:39:00.000-05:00

Wow, it has been a long time since the last post. And even longer since the last post with house stuff and pics! So back with some more fun this time.
Tonight I stained the first door. It went pretty easy and actually came out quite well. At first I wasn't sure if it would come out too unnatural looking or what, but it really looks awesome! I can't wait to see these doors on the outside of our house. Definitely worth it.
Soo... probably a lot of stuff has happened since my last post but I can't think of it all right now. Maybe the fumes from staining got to me :)
We cleaned up the garage somewhat. Yes, I know it still looks messy... but it's much LESS of a mess now. We put some stuff in the attic, threw away a bunch, and we took a truckload to these apartments near us where some of the Katrina victims are staying.
Did some more stuff in the kitchen, but nothign significant enough to take a picture of.
Last weekend we went to see my new GREAT nephew. Yes, it is insane. I am now a great uncle, and my sister is a grandma! He's a cutie. He peed on me too! That's good luck!! (or did I make that up?)
I got new tires on my truck. Did I tell you that? Hrm. I'll have to take pictures. I don't think I have any pictures of my truck at all in fact.
OK... probably post more soon b/c I'll finish the doors up. I still have to do the other side of the one I started tonight. Then do the other door, side 1, and then 2. And then we start Tung oiling them. This will take several days, oil, let sit overnight, flip. oil in the morning, let sit all day, flip after work, oil, sit overnight, repeat repeat repeat. We do this until the oil no longer soaks in after sitting. I've been told this could be between 4 and 8 coats of Tung Oil. That's like a week's worth of just oiling. It's worth it though!
Ok shower and then bed.
Oh, I'm reading "Long Way Around" by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, right now. It's the book to go along with their TV series. They did a round the world trip on motorcycles and had a film crew document it and they wrote a journal type book. It RULES! If you get a chance to check out the TV series, do it. It makes me want to learn how to ride a motorcycle and do a road trip!!!
Bed.

Stained door left, raw door right

Another view of both doors. after, and before.

A closer view

Another angle

Closeup of the grain

Another view of different grain

You can see that the grain varies quite a bit. Darker on left and lighter on right

A raw door's grain

This one gets done tomorrow!

Quick bytes

2005-08-21T00:39:00.000-05:00

So... just another quick update...
Last weekend the skunk attacked! Mama got sprayed. Poor thing. I ended up bathing her in this hydrogen peroxide/baking soda mixture that is sposed to be better than tomato juice for getting rid of the smell. It worked pretty well, but she took off running when I tried to rinse it off her. So she has some soap and stuff in her fur, but at least she doesn't stink and is pretty clean!
I also mixed up this other stuff made with castor oil and soap and I sprayed the perimeter of the yard with it. It's sposed to repel skunks and other wildlife. Not sure if it worked. Haven't seen too many animals this week, but they aren't out there every night.

The condo is SOLD and CLOSED!!! Woo hooo!!! Everything went smoothly and it's all take care of now. So nice to be done with it. We didn't make a lot of money off of it, but we made some, and now we have extra money every month from the mortgage payment we don't have to make anymore :) YAYYYYYY!

Thursday I went to see The Killers b/c Brian graciously sold me one of his extra tickets. I was psyched. So awesome! I had a great time and the show was really good.

Oh, did I mention that I got to go to another Austin City Limits taping? Yup! Amos Lee, last week! Man it was awesome! Be sure to check for it when it airs this fall.

Today I helped Rob install hardibacker in his shower. We got most of it cut, but the drill I had was too powerful and was breaking the drywall dimplers. So I gave him another drill after dinner tonight and he's gonna drill the stuff up.

I have to do some work tomorrow b/c we have a big business deal at work that I'm helping out with. Still enjoying work. LOTS of work though. Definitely not a dull moment.

Well.. I'm off to bed. Hopefully I'll post something interesting enough to warrant pictures soon!

Not much new...

2005-08-06T22:03:00.000-05:00

Not much new. I've been SUPER busy with work, so we haven't done much on the house. Been relaxing a little bit.
I didn't make it out there to take a picture in time, but I looked out the window, and on top of our hot tub (covered) our outdoor cat (Mama) was sitting up there, and a MONSTROUSLY huge raccoon was up there eating out of her food bowl. I turned the outdoor light on to show Andrea and the raccoon knew something was up. I opened the back door to yell at it to go away, and it started to walk off... then Mama started hissing at it and bitch-slapped the thing! It was AWESOME! I was so proud of her hahahaha. It was like 3 times her size, but she let it know who's boss and told it to get the hell out of her yard. HA!!!

I ordered tires for my truck today. But I think I may go get a price from somewhere else. Hopefully Costco will give me my deposit ($40) back if I don't buy them from them. Jason bought his from the Firestone dealer for about $140 cheaper than mine will be. So I'm going to see if they can give me a good price or if that was a limited time promotional price.

I picked up scrap wood from our door place today. We're going to go this week to the hardware store to get them to put some different color stains on it so we can see what we like. Nice to be able to see what it will look like on a scrap before doing the whole door. The door place told me I need to rub the doors down with "4 ought" steel wool before staining. I'm putting that in here so I don't forget :)

I borrowed Jason's mower today and have proof now that my mower sucks. I have to go over each section of grass twice with mine (once in each direction). With his, one pass and it was done. I'm not sure if it's just the blade on mine or if I need a new mower. I've sharpened the blade on mine with a Dremel and it's pretty sharp, a LOT sharper than the new one at the store even, and sharper than the blade on Jason's. But I started reading on the internet and a sharp blade is actually not what you want. It's the angle on the blade that is the key. So I don't know. New blade for like $30 or new mower for like $300. I'd hate to spend $30 on a blade and find out that my mower still sucks. But then I can't imagine that there is that much newer "technology" in a new mower. It spins the blade, right? I'm just not sure. I'll probably opt for the blade first and see what happens. It's gotta help it somewhat I would think.

OK. Pizza just got here. time to eat!

Quick update..

2005-07-23T22:09:00.000-05:00

Ok, I haven't posted in too long. So here's a quick one. As far as the house goes, we have done a few things. The trees in the front are done. I'll have to take some pictures and post them. Maybe tomorrow. A new neighbor was moving in and asked me to come help him move his piano inside... So I did. And he said he wanted to pay me with a cold beer... I said, well how about y'all come help me move my fridge back into the kitchen. So we lucked out. 3 guys came over and helped me. It was SO much easier with more help. So the fridge is in the kitchen. Well, actually, all the appliances are now. As far as the kitchen goes, We ran into a little snag with the thresholds because the railing which they set into was set down too far. So I had to pull up the old railing, then had to find something to put down so I could put new railing on top. So I found some 1/4" x 3/4" strips at Lowe's. I glued them down today and tomorrow I will glue down the thresholds with the railings. After that, the next big thing to do is the recessed lights in the kitchen. I may take a stab at that tomorrow. Also, we need to stain the front doors still. We didn't have enough room in the garage to lay them flat.. I reorganized a little bit, and now there's some room.. so we'll probably get started with that either tomorrow, or early in the week.
We have a few more projects to do to finish up the house. Soon enough we'll be done.
We got some new art for the house too. There's another one that we haven't put up yet, but I will take a picture when we do. This frame/art place that we have used for years, is going out of business. So, great sales on everything. Andrea got this piece of art, that we got in Paris, framed. Pictures below.. The story behind that one is, we were in Paris, and walking around the Eiffel Tower. We saw an artist who had his stand set up and we were looking at his drawings. Well, we asked how much for that one, and it was too much.. I thought it was just a print, and I wasn't about to pay that much for just a print. So we said no, and started walking underneath the Tower, so we could go up in it. The artist followed us for a while, trying to get us to buy it, and I bargaiend with him, throwing out lower prices... he came back with the drawing, and said deal, and gave it to us for the price we said. Then we got back to the hotel later that night and we saw that it was an original drawing! Ok, so I felt kinda bad because if we'd known that it was an original, and not just a print, I'd have paid more for it. hahha oh well. so now we have an original drawing by a Parisian, framed in our master bathroom :) And the trapeze lights we installed earlier are awesome. We have one directed right on it. Looks like it's on display :)
Mom and Dad visited today and we went to Carraba's. Mmmmm but I'm too stuffed.
Oh yeah, and last weekend, Chris helped me change the starter in my truck. I got stuck at work Thursday before last... I came out to get in thr truck to go meet the gang for a movie... and the truck wouldn't start! Damn. So Jason gave me a ride home.. and then Chris and I came back Friday night and finished changing the starter out. Good as new! Cheap too! Saturday, I replaced the spark plugs, wires, distributor rotor and cap. All tuned up.
Hopefully we'll get a gutter quote this week.
Oh, I saw Ray LaMontagne last night. Awesome show. That guy has an incredible voice. He's definitely the real deal. They had some technical difficulties with the speakers, but overall, it was really good.
This past week I've been listening to Jay Nash's CD "A Stream Up North"... that track "Anyway" is infectious. Also been digging on The Shins "Chutes Too Narrow".

Sundae, being silly...

Parapluie

The Paris picture

New duvet cover

Curtains a la Andrea

Paris on the wall

Our new print

Haircut. Ok, so it's not that much shorter.

Shaggy!

Getting closer!

2005-07-12T00:47:00.000-05:00

Ok quick post because I am tirrrred.
So Andrea has been doing some great design around the house, I wanted to share. Check out our bathrooms! I'll show you the bed stuff later.
Last night we installed the over-the-range microwave.
This morning Andrea sealed the tile twice. And then tonight I finished the wood flooring by the kitchen while Andrea put the handles on some more of the cabinets. Then we moved the oven into place. Our kitchen is really coming together.
Still need to put the hood vent ducting through the cabinet above the microwave, into the attic (and through the roof). Will tackle that a little later.
Tomorrow we'll hook up the dishwasher, and put the panels in place so we can move the fridge back into the kitchen. Also need to cut the thresholds for both sides of the tile.
Ok. tired. Must sleep.

Design by Andrea (tm).

Matching hand towels.

The hall bath by Andrea.

The kitchen tile and wood floor is done!

Oven/range and over the range microwave are installed!

These are the knobs that Andrea installed.

And the handles.

2 day old flowers that I bought Andrea.

Sprinklers and cabinet

2005-07-10T00:23:00.000-05:00

So today I mowed the one section of our yard that is growing (absorption field for septic). Then I raked up a ton of leaves and mulched them with the gas leaf vac.

Then Chris came over and we tackled the sprinklers. We replaced the main valve on the system and lo and behold, the whole system started working. So this has to be the main main valve. It seems like the valve wasn't opening all the way, so none of the zones was getting enough water pressure to operate. I was worried that we didn't have enough water pressure from our water supply. But we measured that and it was actually extremely high. About 70 PSI!

So we got the zones all working, but then we found out that zone 1 had a broken piece of pipe in it (just a riser though - a very short piece). We had to dig up the yard a bit to get to it, and then a couple trips to the hardware store, and voila! Everything is working.

It was great, when we got the system to work, sprinkler heads were popping up all over the place, ones we didn't even know we had. A lot of them were buried under a bunch of grass, and you could hear them bubbling, so you had to tear the grass away and then they would pop up and start spraying. Before, I had counted 6 sprinkler heads total, for the whole yard. Well, after we fixed it, we found out that we have probably 6 heads in each zone! Probably 30 or so for the whole yard. AWESOME! This is going to make our lawn maintenance SO much easier. Green yard here we come!

And then after that I got a haircut. I'll post a picture tomorrow. It's the shortest my hair's been in like 2 years. So far I like it.

This evening, we replaced one of the cabinets in the kitchen. The one over the stove. So now the microwave we mount there will not be so high. We're going to mount it tomorrow. And probably going to cut a hole in the cabinet so we can exhaust the microwave/hood vent through the roof. The one we replaced already vented out there, so there is already a vent in the roof.

Then we will seal the tile and grout tomorrow evening, and move all of the stuff back into the kitchen. Dishwasher, fridge, oven/stove. THEN our kitchen will finally be taking shape. One more cabinet to hang in there. Recessed lights to install. Knobs to put on cabinet doors. That's pretty much all of it. It is the last major project of the house.

We're also going to be staining the new front doors so we can get them installed finally. Oh, and the tree guy came to size up the project again. He is going to take all of the ball moss out of the front trees, take off all of the dead wood, trim the bushes, take a couple trees out, take the limb that hangs over the driveway off, and trim everything back several feet off the roof. He will mulch all of that and leave us the mulch for flower gardens. $600 for all of that. That's not too bad considering the amount of work he has to get all of that done. It's a two day job. He starts Monday, finishes Tuesday.

Ok. off to bed. CIAO!

Tile done.

2005-07-08T22:02:00.000-05:00

OK... sooo our latest update... And some other pics below...
We decided that we didn't wanna grout the kitchen ourselves. So we hired that out. What a great decision. My tile guy grouts for $0.60/sq ft. Our kitchen is only about 84 sq ft of tile (since we didn't tile under the cabinets. So that is cheap cheap cheap, when you consider how fast a pro can do it. I called my tile guy yesterday and he was out here this morning. He finished the job in about an hour and a half, pretty much working by himself. I paid him $100. He made out like a bandit, but he does good work, and I didn't have to pay him that much, just felt like being nice. He works hard, works quickly, and he showed up within 24 hours of me calling him.
So he did that.. then he went to start his van, and it wouldn't start. So he messes around with it, I get in my truck to go get him money for the job... and MY truck wouldn't start! but I jumpstarted my truck with a battery charger and it worked. Then we went to AutoZone to get my battery checked, and get some part he needed. He worked on it for a while, then his cousin showed up to help him, but I had to run to work. The grout looks great!
We saw "War Of The Worlds" last night... and in the middle of the movie, the power to the whole theater died. Pretty crazy!! (especially if you've seen the movie) Freaky.
My friend Chris came over earlier this week to help me look at my sprinkler system. We figured out a part that need to replace. He's gonna help me out tomorrow or the next day.
Today we toured an ISP for my company. It was pretty impressive. CRAZY backup power and stuff. They have backup power upon backup power. They have these HUGE generators and a 6,000 gallon tank full of diesel fuel to power them. The only way they lose power is if the city of Austin runs out of electricity, AND diesel fuel. It was impressive.
Tomorrow we are going to replace a cabinet in the kitchen, possibly hang the microwave (or maybe on Sunday), wet the grout (you're supposed to wet it for two days, to make it dry more slowly, so it doesn't crack), get a haircut, the tree trimmer guy is going to come look at our trees again, and I dunno if he's coming tomorrow, but I am talking to the door guy about installing our front doors (FINALLY!). Da's all folks.

In case ya didn't believe me about our kitty always sleeping on her back.

Sundae on her Pillar.

This is the part that we're going to replace.

Anti-siphon.

This thing has had it. It leaks water like crazy.

The tile, completed, not grouted yet.

All done. Grout coming.

You can see how we zigzagged the tile through the room.

See the zigzag along the edge?

AAAANNNNNNDDDD..... GROUTED!

All grouted.

.

Loungin'

2005-07-03T01:10:00.000-05:00

HAHA I just snapped some pictures while we were watching a movie. Toe was conked out on her back (her preferred position to sleep in) and I tried to get a picture of her like that, but she woke up.
Just some funny pictures hehehehe
We watched The Final Cut. Pretty good movie. I liked it. Scary concept, but kinda cool too.

Toe waking up from a snooze.

Sundae pissy that I woke her up.

ALL snout.

Alright alright alright

2005-07-02T22:35:00.000-05:00

Back with mo'.
So we have tiled all of the kitchen with the whole pieces now. Next we have to do all the cut pieces around the perimeter, which we'll do tomorrow (Sunday)... and then we grout on Monday, and then we are done done done with the kitchen tiling!!
I can't believe how awesome the floor looks. It just looks GREAT! Once we get the stove and dishwasher back in there, it's really going to look awesome, and then we'll get the stainless fridge in a little while and it will all come together.
The floor was Andrea's "splurge" for the remodel and it was a damn good one. It really makes the kitchen. Everything in the kitchen looks better with that tile. The cabinets, the countertops, everything just goes with it. SWEET!!
Ok what else.. I finished my first week at work. I'm really liking this company. It's a helluva lot of work though. They're in that phase of having been a small company and now taking on more customers/companies, and so they are revamping all their procedures and everything in order to be more scalable. There is a LOT of work to do to get to that point. But it's an exciting time to be part of the company. SO much different than the IBM gigs I've had in the past few years. It's a lot like when I was in support there though and that's my favorite place to be. The owner is entrusting a lot of the direction to me. It's pretty sweet. I'm going to be automating a lot of their procedures, helping with I/T, coming up with my own suggestions for how they should do things, etc. It's very cool. The people are cool too.
It was a strange first week though. Their main support guy that I replaced left on Thursday, so now he's gone. And my manager was let go this same week (unexpectedly). I thought it was very cool that the CEO called me into his office to let me know before he told the company, he was scared that I'd get spooked with so many people leaving but assured me that everything was ok. That was cool.
We had a party for the going-away of the guy above. Pretty awesome. Beer, foosball, dominos (which apparently I need to learn how to play), darts. They called our support guy in the UK in what would be the middle of the night in the UK, and sang a song for him on a voicemail. Pretty funny. There are a lot of folks into music there too. And there is even a company band, which I may play some guitar in! It feels like a really good fit to me.
Oh, I got to play with the gas leaf vacuum tonight too! It's awesome! I still have a lot of the yard to do, but it works really well. It mulches the leaves too. I have a feeling it will be getting a lot of use with all the trees we have. Oh! HAHA last week this guy knocked on our door and I went to see who it was. He's a tree trimmer guy and noticed that our trees need some work. He wanted to give me his card, so I got him to walk around with me, show me what he'd do, and give me a quote. I think we'll definitely use him. He knew what he was talking about, showed me all the things we should do. For the ENTIRE yard (every single tree in our yard), it would cost $1500. That's a LOT! So I asked what we could do to just get started, and so he suggested that we take care of all the trees in the front yard, take off the branch that hangs over the driveway (at HEAD level for a tall person!), trim back from the roof, trim off all the dead branches, and remove all of the ball moss (which apparently is bad for trees and kills branches).... so for all of that, $400. That sounds like a good deal to me. We'll hire him. Going to give him a call in a week or so.
Today Habitat for Humanity showed up to take the old dishwasher and range from the "old" kitchen here. Andrea said that the guy was getting all loaded up when she realized that he had taken our NEW dishwasher. So she chased him down before they left and they swapped it for the old one. HAHAHA pretty funny. Someone would have been getting a brand spankin new stainless dishwasher!
Also on the agenda still... get front doors installed, and get gutters. Also, my truck needs a brake job and new tires.

Songs I cannot get enough of lately:
"Good People" - Jack Johnson
"If I Was A Stranger" - Ryan Adams

For that matter, almost the entire new Jack Johnson album is awesome!! And I haven't made it too far into the Ryan Adams one yet but I like everything on it so far. A couple months ago I couldn't get enough of the Keane album. It's another great album. Oh, and the new Coldplay is really good too. My favorite track on there is "Talk".

I think that's about all to fill you in on for now. 10:30pm. It's dinner time!

It's coming together!

AWESOME!!!

The dishwasher is pulled out right now, so we can tile underneath.

The dining room entrance to the kitchen.

Closeup.

Piece by piece

2005-06-28T23:30:00.000-05:00

Long time no post.
Sooo... let's see... we put the condo under contract on Sunday. Everything looks like a go for that, so that's nice to have taken care of. We close tenatively on August 15. They had their inspection done today, I assume I will hear something from them tomorrow, though I don't see what the inspector could say is wrong with the condo. Er.. I should say.. nothing wrong with it that we are going to fix. *crosses fingers*
I started my job this week! So far so good. The guy I am replacing is their resident bad-ass, so I have some shoes to fill. I should do fine. But the thing is, he leaves this Thursday, and I have to learn a LOT of stuff from him before then. He's the only one that knows a lot of the stuff. It's definitely a challenge. Definitely has a small company feel. It kinda feels like if I don't learn his stuff and get up to speed quickly, the company could be in jeopardy. That's probably taking it a little too far, but they would definitely feel an impact if I don't come up to speed fast. That's kinda cool though, in a way. Like I said, a small company feel, for sure.
We started tiling the kitchen floor tonight. It is looking really good. Ignore the white in the pictures below. That's the thinset and you won't see that when it's done. It's going to look awesome!
We still have no kitchen faucet! We've had to order 4 different pieces for it now. We bought it on eBay. We bought 4 others on eBay and they were all fine, but this one definitely has had its issues. This is the last replaceable part though. This one we have on order now has GOT to be it. Should be here very soon. That said, Kohler has EXCELLENT warranty and support. They ship replacement parts without any questions. I've been very pleased with them.
Oh, and we hooked up VoIP at home now too. So we have a home phone again. We did it really b/c it's cheaper than having to rent a cell phone from the home alarm company. Plus we get free long distance with the VoIP line. We used VoicePulse. They are supposed to have a lot of features. I haven't had a cance to mess with it yet though.
Oh, and I bought a leaf blower/vac. I haven't had a chance to mess with that yet either, but it'll be cool. I mowed the yard a few days ago and there are still clippings in the driveway. It'll be nice to be able to vac all that right after I mow next time.
OK.... off to bed. Some of us have jobs around here. Just kidding :)
G'night.

The stack of tile is getting smaller.

The beginning of the kitchen.

Lots of color variance.

The end of night one.

More big news!

2005-06-22T22:52:00.000-05:00

More exciting stuff!! (Disclaimer: "exciting" in terms of ummm what's going on in my life right now ;-) )
Ok.. so I put up some lights at the house, pictures below. Knocked out a ton of electrical work, a lot of it was pretty challenging (incorrectly sized boxes and such).
OK.. so the other big news is... I think we've sold the condo! We met with some buyers last night and they are on board to buy it from us. They originally wanted to close on October 1st, but we got them down to mid-August, which really is only a couple weeks longer than it would normally take to close. SWEET! We offered a lower price since they do not have a realtor, which means that we are saving money. I will post more info when I know it.
Lay'ahs.

The new lights for the hall bath.

New electrical. The 3 switch thing was a bear because it was a normal depth box. I had to use some electrician tricks to get it to work.

Hard to see, but the light switches in the hallways are illuminated, so they're easy to see at night.

Master bedroom trapeze lights.

On.

Ambiance.

The big news!!

2005-06-20T23:56:00.001-05:00

Well Saturday we had an open house, but I didn't plan it very well so basically nobody came. One lady stopped in with her realtor right before we left. We'll probably do another next weekend, but plan this one properly. We've had good interest in the condo, just no offers yet. I take that back! HAHAHAHAHA this guy calls me up and says in his best redneck voice, "I'll offer $65,000." I almost burst into laughter. No tact at all, didn't lead up to that amazing offer. He just came right out and said it. I thought it was pretty funny.
So yesterday (Monday) I showed the condo to a couple folks. They liked it, but no bites, as I said. I also installed the living room ceiling fan (see below). It's pretty awesome. The lights on it are awesome. I also worked in the attic for a bit and installed the ceiling box for the lights in the master bath vanity. Well there is a pic below, but I had to redo it a bit. It hung down past the drywall about 3/4" and just looked pretty bad when I got the base for the lights up there. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to fix it, b/c there isn't a lot of room on the ceiling joists to play with, but I made it work. It's all set now. I don't have a picture yet, but I'll post one once we get the lights all up tomorrow.
I was setting the lights up.. they are "trapeze lights" from IKEA and they are suspended on these wires that are supposed to be stretched tight. Well the mounts that you put on the side just were not feeling right when I installed them. When I went to stretch the wires tight, the screw pulled right out of the wall (the anchor stayed in the wall). So tomorrow I am going to have to buy new anchors that are smaller, so the hook/screws actually grab hold of them.
But the biggest and best news of today is...... I got a job offer!!!! Awesome! I got a call from the CEO of the new company this morning and he pitched me an offer. It's pretty much what I was making before (before as in, before my hella-high-paying-contract) but it's good. They make commissions on some things, bonuses, etc. So base salary isn't everything there. I'm really excited to work at this company. They only have 45 people worldwide, 17 in Austin. They've been in business since 1993 though, so it's not like a startup. I'm excited. I think it'll offer some good challenges to me and I think I'm going to bring a lot to the company. He said I can start whenever. I may start next Monday because we are hoping to get the last projects done at the house. The last big one being the tile for the kitchen. If we can get that done, there really is just small stuff to do after that. We need to get the front door installed, and get gutters installed, but we're hiring both of those things out, so that's not too bad.
Anyway... off to bed now. I'm tired. Long day. Exciting day.

The new living room ceiling fan.

The ceiling box for the master bathroom vanity lights.

Showing

2005-06-17T21:32:00.000-05:00

Today was eventful. I finally got our tax return from our CPA. Not too bad. cha-ching!
Then right after that I got two calls for people wanting to see the condo. I showed it to a guy who used to coach football for UT, and then showed it to a girl and her mom. They both liked it a lot. Waiting to hear back.
The condo is officially done done done as far as repairs, touchups, etc. I did paitn touchup throught from all the scratches on the walls from carpet guys, etc.
I picked up our extra bedroom at the house, did some threshold stuff, and now about to set up the bed and do some more thresholds.
Yesterday I showed the condo to another person, but I think he wanted a garage.
In any case... if you know someone who might want to buy a condo, PLEASE send them this link... it's well priced and it's gorgeous! Here's the link!
http://austin.craigslist.org/rfs/79486344.html

Not a great pic, but you can see the new flowerbed.

Pain, gain thats my name.

2005-06-15T23:22:00.000-05:00

Ok today I finished the condo. There are a couple things left that I will do, but they are nothing big (like new caulk along the tiles, painting the shelf in the laundry room, etc).
It took a LOOOONG time to finish it, but I'm happy with how it looks now. I show it tomorrow morning. Cross your fingers!
I also worked on the garden. I tore out what was in there, put some new dirt, and placed the new stuff, but I ran out of daylight so didn't plant it yet.
Then I cleaned, cleaned, cleaned.
I took pictures of the whole condo, see below. They are for a craigslist ad actually, but I figured I'd post them here too.
Ok. so now it's 3:23am. Back on my "work" schedule. My pain is your gain. Better blog entries happen when I get no sleep.
G'nite.

The "garden" before. Yes, that's a tomato plant gone out of control.

What's going into the new flowerbed.

Here is how it is right now, it got too dark to plant them. But that's how it will lay out.

The kitchen.

Downstairs half-bathroom.

Same shot.

Dining area.

Living room.

Again.

The living room and fireplace.

Wide open floor plan.

Vaulted ceilings in the master bedrooms.

Vaulted ceilings AND a bay window in this one.

Closeup of the bay window.

Double doors to this closet.

One of the master bedrooms' bathrooms.

Different angle.

And a shower (and me).

A shower (with less of me.)

Builtin shelves in the other master bedroom closet.

And the other master bedroom's bathroom.

Ketchup

2005-06-15T10:53:00.000-05:00

Ok.. a few days since my last update... let's see what's happened...
On Saturday Andrea got home, FINALLY! It's good to have her back :)
So I cleaned the house on Saturday morning. My parents and sister came into town and wanted to check out the house... but I was going to be picking Andrea up at the airport. So I picked Andrea up and then we drove AGAIN to Houston to go to IKEA. We had one last cabinet to pick up there. We also picked up a light for our hall bathroom. IKEA is a lot of fun! We got back pretty late Saturday night.
Then Sunday we went to the condo to pick it up. It still needs cleaning, but most of my tools and stuff are out of there now.
Speaking of the condo, we have ads running right now and we've received about 8-10 calls on it. Only one where they scheduled to come take a look at it though. I show it tomorrow. Probably will do an open house sometime this weekend.
Monday I studied all day for my home inspection test. I made these black bean burger veggie tacos that were pretty good!
Tuesday I took the test *grumblegrumble* and missed a passing score by 3 questions :( I was pretty bummed. I plan to take it again. I should have studied more and not put it off so long. I have to take a few more classes as the requirements went up, but it is something that I want to do. On the other hand, I had my second interview at that company from last week, and it went SUPER well. I really like the folks there. Small company. It just has a much different feel than a massive corporation. So I'm hoping to hear something from them soon. It was nice to have a great interview to balance out the test from the morning.
Last night we worked on clearing out one of the rooms where we just stashed boxes when we moved in. We got it almost done, will finish up probably tonight.
And today, I am buying a couple more parts for our kitchen sink since the plumber somes tomorrow. I'm also finishing the cleaning in the condo. And I think we're having lunch at Mangia!
Below are some pics from the drive to Houston. There were haystacks EVERYWHERE in this one field.

Rolls and rolls...

.

Interview and wrapping up the condo

2005-06-10T23:27:00.000-05:00

Today I had an interview! I don't want to jinx it, but I think it went pretty well. It was for a small company (45 employees worldwide!) here in Austin. I'll post more details if I get the job :) So I did the interview and they called me later this afternoon to schedule me to come in for a second interview (I made it through the first screening!) Pretty awesome :) And the cool thing? They found me!
So I went to the condo, I finished the last bathroom faucet. Then I fixed one of the thresholds (see pics from yesterday). Then I painted the hinges on the downstairs doors, then painted the railing (which came out AWESOME!), then taped off and painted the other hinges on the upstairs doors, then finished painting some unpainted trim and did trim touchup. And that kept me there until about 2:30am. And now it's 3:20am and I'm hitting the hay. Andrea gets back in like 11 hours! CRAZY!!! Can't wait to see her!
Left to do at condo: Touchup some wall paint, put the doors back on their hinges, install kitchen faucet, clean and then install the A/C vents, get all my stuff out of there, vacuum floors throughout condo, clean bathrooms and kitchen, clean floors, plant flowers in the backyard. Done! Oh yeah, and we already got a call on the condo! I'm running ads in a couple papers right now! AWESOME!

Me, looking unemployed, and scruffy.

But happy because I have a job interview today!

Carpeted stairs.

I painted the edges of the A/C vents because when the painters taped them off, the paint chipped.

And I painted the hinges of all the doors.

Is that what I think it is?

Yes! It is the railing, all finished and painted! Looks GREAT!

The master carpet.

Another angle.

Hall carpet.

And the final view.

Plumbing and thresholds

2005-06-09T23:09:00.000-05:00

Today Ben came over and helped me with some stuff at the condo. He installed faucets, while I finished the thresholds. Then we went to a party that my realtor put on. Lots of fun!

A wild tape ball!

The downstairs bathroom faucet.

A faucet and the tape battleground.

The last faucet. (I actually installed this the following day)

Here are the thresholds!

The entryway threshold.

I goofed on a piece and cut the wrong angle for this one, then I found a scrap that was within a half inch of the length I needed. If I hadn't found that, I'd have had to piece this together.

Getting a good start

2005-06-09T10:38:00.000-05:00

Well the thermostat guy was supposed to come by today to install a free programmable thermostat. They didn't say he was going to come by at 8:15am though. So he came by, and got that installed. So now I'm going to head over to the condo to get stuff DONE!

Damage control

2005-06-08T22:31:00.000-05:00

This morning, Thomas came over and we cut a section of the flooring out at the house (just a sliver) where it was rubbing against the wall. Then we bolted over to the condo and gave it a good scrubbing. Unfortunately, that was cut short because I had to come back to meet the flooring folks. I called after we had left the condo, and they were running about 90 minutes late. Well time is not something I have a lot of, so I went back to the condo and Liquid-Nailed the tracks in for the thresholds. Then back to the house to meet the flooring folks.

These guys were ABSOLUTELY outstanding. I couldn't believe what a good job they did. When they came in, I asked them if they could fix the damage. He said "Well, we're sure going to try." And I said, "No, I need to know if you have repaired damage like this before." He got pretty offended that I was doubting him I guess. "Sir, this is what we do every day, for a living." I knew then and there that we had the right guys. I want someone that takes pride in their work and gets offended if you doubt it. Perfect! So the floor guy, and his assistant got to work. I watched them and learned tricks here and there and asked for tips. Really nice guys and very knowledgable. That said, it took two experts, who do this every day, 6 HOURS to repair the damage. So I'm really glad that we got it done by pros. It would have taken me longer and I don't think I could have done as good of a job. I'm really happy with the work they did.

Since it took so long, I didn't get to go back to the condo (though I did contemplate starting my workday at the condo at 10pm, reason won and I didn't go over there). I worked on electrical at the house all day, and transferring numbers off my old cell phone. I switched to Sprint, with Andrea. SO much cheaper and Cingular's service has just out and out sucked here in Austin. Cingular would have been cheaper for the both of us, but just not worth the crappy service. I'm glad to be back with Sprint.

The boxes they went through.

DONE!!!!!

Perfect!

Inside the closet.

This was the toughest spot.

This is the MOST you can see of the whole thing, and this is only when you are right up on it. They filled the crack with some tinted putty. When you're standing, you can't even see this.

Closet fixed. Done and done!

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2005-06-07T22:18:00.000-05:00

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I must like my own jokes, because I keep kidding myself. Taking the faucets out of the house took pretty much the rest of the day. Credit that to it being an old house. The valves are not working for the individual sinks, so every time I had to pull one, I had to go shut off the water main outside, come back in, tackle out the old faucet, install the new ones, go back outside, turn on the water, come back in, check for leaks, go back out, shut off the water and then rinse and repeat (pun intended).
When I was finishing up plumbing, this MASSIVE moth flew into the house. Even the cats were scared, though Sundae did swat it out of the air a couple times. Silence of the Lambs style moth! HUGE! I ended up catching it inside a bowl and letting it go outside.
So anyway, I finished the faucets for the house. At 10pm, I decided not to go start on the condo.

Hall sink.

One of the master sinks.

Immense!

Gargantuan!

Was trying to show how big the moth was, but it's on the other side of two layers of glass, and the other side of the door's screen, so it's about 3 inches behind my finger. Not too good for showing the size.

The smell of a fresh cut yard

2005-06-07T13:42:00.000-05:00

So today has been busy so far. So far, I moved stuff out of the way in the garage so the recycle folks could come pick up the old fridge. They give you $35 for it! Not bad!
After that, I mowed the yard, and then the alarm company guy came over to discuss our options for an alarm at the new house.
All this, and I haven't even eaten yet! (1:40pm). I'm going to eat, pull the rest of the faucets, then head to the condo to install faucets, install thresholds, and finish what little painting is left. Tomorrow, Thomas and I are going to scrub the condo clean and then it's done done done. And hopefully it will sell sell sell.
I'm off.. work to be done!

A freshly mowed front yard.

Other side. We have a few brown patches there.

Head on.

Backyard. The shady area is hard to grow grass in!

And the vast expanse.

This is where Mama hides when I mow the yard. See her ears?

Uh oh, now she knows I found her hiding spot.

Some new visitors to our yard (the roses).

A big rose.

Carpeting

2005-06-06T23:28:00.000-05:00

Today was pretty uneventful. For me, at least. The condo however got a makeover. The carpet guys got it all installed. I really couldn't get much done with them there, so I worked on getting the faucets out of the house, but discovered that some of the valves are bad. Then *gasp* I took a nap. I was exhausted. Then had a drink with Tausha and Chris to talk about Peru. Then BACK to the condo to check out the completed carpet (I didn't have the camera) and to pull the tape off the trim. The trim came out really nice. I'm really happy with it.
That's all folks.

The carpet guys are working.

Padding is on the stairs.

Trying to show the color difference on the doors.

Closeup. We're just gonna live with it.

As fun as watching paint dry...

2005-06-05T23:16:00.000-05:00

Today was one of those days where you never know when it's going to end. I had no idea that finishing the trim would take all day. Now I see why it took the painters so long to finish the trim at OUR house. Tedious. Oh well. Done done done. Well not really. I still have the railing to paint, which I need to buy a small artists paintbrush to do I think, otherwise I'm going to have paint drips all over the place. And I didn't paint the puttied nail holes yet. Frankly, I couldn't even see them. But maybe that was just the fumes gettin to me :) Either way, I'll do those with the small brush I buy for the railing.
Not a lot of pictures because pictures of painted trim are about as exciting as ... watching paint dry.
So here's a possible dilemma. The paintshop matched the paint of the old trim really poorly. So we ended up with much brighter, whiter paint. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing since we had been wanting to do that anyway. The problem is that the doors are still the old color. So now they look kinda yellowish next to the new trim. I'm not sure if having the doors a different color than the trim is necessarily a bad thing though. You can see below, the difference. It's pretty slight. (Though it's more different in real life than those pictures below show.) So the plan is to give the doors a good scrubbing with Windex to get all the dust and dirt off of them, and then see if it's going to be acceptable. I'm voting that it'll be fine. If, for some reason, it looks odd... I'll just remove the knobs and hinges, and hire my painters to come spray them because a) they were sprayed originally, so there are no brush strokes on them, and b) I don't wanna brush them. If I got all the hardware off of them, it wouldn't take the painters maybe 30 minutes to spray them all. Anyway, hopefully we don't need to do that, but we shall see.
Tomorrow the carpet gets installed!!! Woo hoo. That's pretty much it for the condo. I need to install the new faucets there, which I may do while the carpet guys are installing the carpet.
Despite today feeling long, I actually got home before midnight which was a real treat! My hand hurts from painting. I'm going to take a bath and relaaaaax.
G'night.

See the difference in color?

The daunting railing.

And again, color difference.

Thomas' floors done

2005-06-04T23:31:00.000-05:00

WHEW!!!!! Another LOOONG day. It's now 1:32am! (by the way, I change the post times on these postings so it shows the correct date, otherwise it gets goofy.) Started over at Thomas' place about noon. We knocked out his entire upstairs flooring in one day. This was pretty difficult because there were a lot of strange angles. We learned that making a quick template is about 100 times faster than sitting there trying to figure out the angles for all the strange cuts. Saves TONS of time. So we knocked it out. All done. All he really has left to do is the stairs and that's down the line after he's moved in.
My knees are KILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLING me. sore sore sore sore sore.
Tomorrow I am knocking out the painting in the condo. Really not that much left to do. So hoping to finish painting the trim, glue down the railings for the thresholds, and hope to cut the thresholds tomorrow. After that, the carpet is installed on Monday, and then it's a matter of putting in the faucets, and then just general cleanup. I will put a for sale sign up on Monday night and put up a craigslist ad, and get the ads scheduled for the Statesman and the Chronicle. And tell my realtor that it's ready to go, even though we're gonna try to FSBO.
Well I still gotta shower and eat, so I'm signing off now at 1:37am. See? So many people are telling me, "oh you have so much time on your hands to do a blog". This took me 5 minutes. It's a piece of cake. Anyone can do it.
Have I mentioned that I MISS Andrea!?!?! She's been gone over a week.
Thanks for reading. G'nite!

Starting off the upstairs.

A little further along.

An hour later.

That's all thats left.

Thomas with one of the more interesting cuts we ended up having to make.

DONE!!!!

Que bueno!

Too late too late!

2005-06-03T00:22:00.000-05:00

So today I had wonderful lunch with Amy (www.amyrtw.com) and her boyfriend Greg. They're going to Peru at the end of the month and I filled em in on some details about Peru and South America. We also checked out some photos from each other's travels. Ended up being a really long lunch. I'm a sucker for talking travel and it's hard to stop :) It was cool to sit down and chat with Amy after having followed her travel journal for a year. Some great stories. She and Greg seem psyched about Peru. Good times guaranteed!
So I started the trim today at the condo. Well... I damn well near finished it, but at 2:30am I had to call it a night. I'm helping Thomas with his floors tomorrow morning so I gotta get some shuteye. Basically I finished painting almost all of the upstairs. I still have to paint the master closet and bathroom trim, as well as the stairs, and the infamous railings from yesterday's post. And response to the comments... I am using oil based enamel, so I can't just wipe it up. And cutting the half-circles may save tape, but I don't think it would save time. Taping piece after piece in a circle like a did is tedious, but you can do it fairly quickly. I'm still convinced there is a trick there to learn though.
So tomorrow.. helping Thomas with floors. Hopefully we will knock it out tomorrow. I gotta finish the painting on the condo by Sunday afternoon because it needs time to dry before the carpet people get there on Monday. I'm pretty sure I like how it came out, but I left the tape there just in case it needs a second coat. I may be regretting that when I try to pull the tape off, but it's a chance I'm going to take. I don't want to pull the tape off and then decide I need another coat and have to repaint.
Whew. ok. I'm beat. 3:21am. Shower then bed. G'nite.

Whiter!

Shiny new ledge

New sill

Taping the walls

2005-06-02T23:14:00.000-05:00

So today I got a lot done, but I was kidding myself when I thought I could paint all the trim in one day. I had no idea that taping off all the trim could take so long. Well I went through about 360 feet of tape! Insane, huh? I thought I had WAY overbought on tape, but it was just about right. So I spent all day taping up the condo. Well, I had lunch with some old coworkers first, at Chuy's (thanks for lunch, Brad!) Mmmmm enchiladas. How does Chuy's manage to hit the spot every time?
So anyway, yes.. LOTS of time spent on taping. And then I tore up the carpet. Why did I do that? Well I decided to go ahead with the carpet. At $1247? NO! at $667! Yes, I got my other quote today :) Awesome! Much more reasonable. Maybe not quite as nice carpet, but who's being picky?
So all is taped off, carpet is pulled... tomorrow all I have to do is shopvac, and paint. Oh, and I bought another 14 ft baseboard for the downstairs closet. I'm just going to paint that on the wall. That way I don't have to wait for it to dry, I can paint it when I paint everything else, and it's in the closet, so doesn't need to be perfect.
Tomorrow: Shopvac, install closet baseboard, wipe everything down with Windex, wipe everything down with deglosser/liquid sandpaper, paint. While paint dries, clean the doors with Windex, install the thresholds.
Also tomorrow.. I think I am going to grab lunch with Amy Hughes from http://www.amyrtw.com I ran into Amy at SXSW here 2 years ago, right before she headed out on her round the world journey, and I've been reading her journal from the trip over the past year. She is going to be going to Peru in a few weeks and I'm going to try to answer any questions she has about it. I'm also meeting with another friend NEXT week to talk about Peru because her and her husband are going there. AWESOME!
Ok. that's all for now folks. Er... there are folks out there reading this, right? AHHAHA I haven't told anyone. Maybe I'll send out an email.

Pulling apart the stairs. They're melting!

Dali stairs

Carpetless stairs.

Carpet stack #1 in master bedroom

No more carpet in here!

All gone

THIS is what took so long. Look at all that taping in the closet!

Details details details

Like the pinstriped look?

Carpet stack #2, and closet nightmare #2

Blue frames white

Ok, I put this in here as a joke for any painters looking at this.

See, this took a LOT of time.

And I am SURE there is a painter trick to doing this, but I couldn't figure it out, so here you go. Laugh away painters!

Finishing... finishing...

2005-06-01T23:20:00.000-05:00

So today was kinda a bummer. I had to go over to meet the carpet people at the condo. The quote? $1247 for 525 sq ft. I think that's insane, personally. I am getting another quote tomorrow. Then after meeting her, I had to go back to the house to meet the plumber so we could work on the kitchen faucet. So I didn't get to work at the condo all day like I wanted to. BUT... we found out that the kitchen faucet is not working (leaking) because it is missing a part. I called Kohler and they are shipping it to me for free. Should be here next week. So I have to get that part, buy a slimmer nut for the water purifier spout, and try to find a longer stem for the sprayer. Pain. Thick countertops. They definitely limit you. They look good though.
So I FINALLY got over to the condo. Thomas helped me and we knocked out the baseboards. I caulked them too, using the caulking tricks that the painter taught us the other night. And I puttied the nail holes. All ready to paint tomorrow.
When I got home, I wanted to get the dryer working so I could FINALLY FINALLY do laundry. I took the old 4 prong cord out, and put in a 3 prong. VOILA! Laundry! Woo hooo!! I did two loads tonight before bed.
So... tomorrow.. finish touching up the baseboards. Buy another baseboard (we forgot to measure the closet so we need another 14 feet). Tape off all the trim, remove the doors, wipe down the trim with liquid sandpaper. Paint the trim. If you look at the last pic down there.. you will see that they didn't color match the trim very well. The original trim is more yellow. But too late now. Going to paint the trim the new color.. and the doors may be a shade off. We'll see how that looks and if it's too bad, I will have to paint the doors or get the painter to spray them.
Also have lunch with my old team from work at Chuy's!

This is the plug in the wall

This is the plug...

Notice a difference between the plug, and the wall outlet?

Baseboards are finished!

Looks sharp huh?

The finished look

Notice the difference in color between the baseboard to the rigth and the trim around the door frame. We'll see how this resolves.

Electrical sparks and condo

2005-06-01T00:57:00.000-05:00

So on Sunday night I got home, and I was going to put the washer in so I can get some clothes done. Well it had an old switch and so I wanted to replace it with a new one, and put copper wiring in, etc. I turned the circuit off, pulled the hot (black) wire. And then I was pulling the neutral (white) wire off and it started sparking like crazy and glowing orange like it was about to catch on fire. It scared the crap outta me. I decided to call it a night since it was like 1am. I shut the circuit down for the night.
Monday morning I got up, to fix that electrical and found a smorgasbord of problems. I dismantled a circuit and found that there were wires that were hot that should not be. Something was definitely WRONG. My friend, Ben came over to help out since he's done a lot of electrical work at his house. We ended up spening almost all day on this. Thomas came over mid-day because we were going to go put the baseboards up at the condo. Well we never made it over there on Monday because the electrical took too long. We DID figure it out though. Check out the picture of the one box that was causing the problem!
Today I wanted to finish replacing two switches that we didnt get to on Monday, wanted to get the baseboards put up at the condo, get the faucets pulled, and hook up the washer and dryer. Well I got two and a half out of three done. I did the electrical work on the switches. It wasn't too bad. Had to fix 2 sets of three-way switches, and got a timer switch installed for the front light. I got the washer hooked up, but when I went to hook up the dryer, I found that the outlet in the wall is a 3-prong 240 volt, and the plug from the dryer is a newer 4 prong. I have to buy either an adapter, or a new cord for the dryer. Bummer.
Then I went to work on the condo baseboards. I started doing them and got a couple done and then Ben came over and we went to a seminar by a real estate attorney. It was pretty good. All about how to protect your assets. Good info. Need to do that eventually/soon.
The seminar lasted longer than I thought and it was too late to run the saw. I had wanted to finish the baseboards tonight but no luck. I decided to pull the faucets instead since that was quiet. Not too bad.
I stopped to buy some claw clippers for the cats since their claws are out of control!! I bought some and apparently Sundae doesn't like them because she was hissing up a fit! I finally got her to lay still and I finished her claws. And NO it wasn't because I was cutting them too short. I cut them all the time. She was just being pissy.
So tomorrow... I have a doctor appt at 10am. Then team lunch at 11:45ish... and then it's KNOCK OUT THE CONDO time. I am going to finish the baseboards, install the thresholds, wipe down and paint the trim throughout the condo. That should leave just general cleanup over there. Oh, and I need to buy that dryer cord. Yeah, being able to do laundry would be nice!
I'm out! It's LATE!

This is what we dealt with Monday. This one box had like 24 wires inside it. It took some figuring out to get it right, that's for sure.

The baseboards!

A wider shot.

The sink, without the fancy faucets.

The new bulbs I put in the chandelier. They are the natural light kind. They make the whole place look brighter.

I replaced the showerhead and took our fancy one for the house.

And a shot of the other sink sans faucet.

Smell the flowers

2005-05-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

I took a few minutes to take some pictures of things around the house. Non-work related this time.

Our outdoor cat, Mama, eating on top of the hot tub. We feed her up there now because we used to feed her on the ground and a damn SKUNK started to frequent our yard, to eat her food. Well I am smarter than a skunk, and I found out that skunks can't jump. But cats can ;-)

The hibiscus plant is going bonkers!!

Look at all those blooms? Gorgeous, huh?

And we have these other tropical plants growing. This one is cool!

A closer shot of it's bloom.

Tried for a closer shot but the camera misfocused. Funny, but cool.

There we go. It got it right that time.

This is a bloom on one of our MANY Wandering Jews.

A closeup of one of those hibiscus blooms.

Another.

This one shows the true color of most of the blooms. Kinda purple, kinda pink.

And finally, the kitties. Can you spot Sundae?

Sunday Sunday Sunday!

2005-05-29T22:40:00.000-05:00

So Sunday I was TIRED from the night before. We worked til like 12 or 1 at Thomas'. I got a late start, went to buy the baseboards from Lowe's, and went over to the condo to paint them. Oh yeah, last night, our painter stopped by and showed us a bunch of tricks, like how to caulk the baseboards properly, without having to smear it with your finger. He rocks.
I called my brother to get some tips on how to PAINT them. I used the semigloss paint, and then added a little bit of thinner to it and then some Penetrol. That's what Mark said to use and they came out PERFECT. Well, perfect enough for a first-timer.
I was bummed because I was supposed to go to my friend Richard's BBQ today but I was in the middle of painting when he called and I just couldn't break away. Sucks. Definitely wanted to go. Sometimes this house stuff gets in the way. Well, it will soon all be done!
After I finished painting, I went to Thomas' to help him with the floors.

There they are, all painted and drying...

Pretty smooth finish. I got this finish by rolling them with a roller designed for ultra smooth surfaces, and then taking a paintbrush and doing one stroke ALLLLL the way down each board.

Shiny!

They take up the whole room because they are 14 feet long each.

94 feet of baseboards

And then over to Thomas' where we wrapped up the bottom floor of his house.

The LAST piece! Thomas is cutting it right now.

Man! They look GREAT! (Ignore the dust particles. My camera sucks.)

All the way around the stairs, to the front door

Scraps.

View from the front area.

Start of the weekend

2005-05-28T00:32:00.000-05:00

So, I decided to start a blog of the last things I am doing to the house. Quick update for those that don't know. My contract with IBM was cut short due to budget cuts. So I am currently seeking employment. Know anyone who is hiring?

In the meantime, Andrea is on vacation in Virginia for 2 weeks, and I am working on the house and the condo while working on finding a job. So I decided to kinda chronicle it here with pictures....
Saturday I promised our friend Thomas that I would help him install his laminate flooring at his new house. He's trying to get it ready to move in by next week, so we tried to knock out a bunch of it. His brother was there installing baseboards, and my friend ben came by and helped for most of the day too. Needless to say, we got a lot done. We did almost his whole downstairs. Here are some before/after pictures...

Here we are, about to start for the day...

Everything is cleared away

..and vacuumed. The Shopvac is the fixer-upper's best friend...

We knocked it out! View from the kitchen...

Another..

You gotta clean it AFTER your done too...

View back towards the kitchen

And this shows where we stopped for day one.

We didn't make it all the way around the stairs, see?