Our Old House

crunch the numbers

2009-03-03T19:05:00.003-05:00

well, the results are in on our insulating efforts. compared to when we moved in, we are using roughly 25% less gas ... or, comparing the other way (depending on which usage you set as a base value) ... our gas usage when we moved was about 33% more than now. compared to the winter of 2007 (after some initial insulating/weatherproofing efforts ... and i don't have 2006 usage data), we are about 19% less (2007 use was 24% more). these are obviously appx numbers. they do not take into account variable usage in hot water use, dryer use, and cooking use or variations in indoor air temp (if we're here more or less, etc.). it's just a direct comparison of therms/heating-degree-day -- and trying to compare to months with similar total HDDs.

so, that's not too bad. still on the improvement list are repairing the windows (stop some major league drafts and possibly get more efficient glass), replace the water heater and furnace for more efficient models, and i'm considering another layer of batt insulation in the attic. rate of return so far isn't that great (i roughly guesstimate we're looking at a15 year payback period), but that's only part of the rationale.

ok, back to studying.

be well.

yeah yeah

2009-02-03T21:47:00.010-05:00

i know. i'm a terrible blogger. wanna fight about it? i can try to claim the holidays, being sick, being busy ... but frankly i've just been too lazy to blog. blogging hasn't hit priority level. but now that other things are done and it's either blog, study for my P.E., or do absolutely nothing ... i guess posting something isn't a bad idea. and i'm feeling a bit peckish after watching Purdue lose in OT, so this'll help occupy my riled up brain cells for a bit.

so anywho, the house is done! let's do a little time lapse ... except that you'll have do the lapsing mentally because i can't do it for you. here's what we had about 3.5 years ago:

nice. so we did some landscaping and stuff, and by last summer we had this:

getting better. still a bit Amish with all the white. so, now we're looking more like this -- in 3 flavors:

in the first one the gutters weren't quite done, but you get the idea. i think its interesting how different the colors look i various light and snow levels. oh, and we got a foot of snow the other day. that was neat, except for trying to drive through some unplowed streets with my snow pusher ... low ground clearance sucks in deep snow.

so the outside is done. they had some issues trying to get the edges of sloped roof at the back terminate correctly (it wasn't done right before) so i think we're just going to put a new roof on and get all the edges detailed correctly. we did get some leaks from time to time in the past and a poor gutter detail resulted in the gutterboard rotting away ... so some work was probably due. it's small too, so the cost isn't much -- just unplanned.

the downstairs bathroom isn't much different from before unfortunately. i finished framing the shower walls and got an exhaust fan installed and hooked up (and it works) ... but that's about it. lazy lazy Chris. about halfway thru framing for the shower i noticed that my level wasn't reading the same on both sides. the problem was, i didn't know which side was right ... or which side i was normally using. that my friends (ha, John Mccain) is a problem. so i got a new level. apparently NEITHER side of the old level was quite right, go figure. everything was surprisingly pretty close. i must have generally been using the most right side. luckyduck.

the new wall insulation is working well. by my calculations we're using about 20% less gas than when we moved in and about 14% less than last winter (the other improvements are from the attic insulation and other misc. weatherproofing/insulating we've done). not as big of gain as i may have hoped, but it's something. there was more wall insulation than i originally expected, so that dampened some of the potential savings. and, we still have very drafty windows (only a few of them wrapped right now) so have some more economizing to do.

since last post in brief -----

Christmas: short, but nice (got to see my aunt and uncle from KS)
being sick: sucks
movie recommendations: Slumdog Millionaire, Man on Wire, Gran Torino
Over the Rhine's 2 night Christmas show: excellent
cheap stuff found at Ikea: sweet
ultimate grocery store: Jungle Jim's
visits from Ben and Bradys/Rajcics and visiting Sarah & Jeremiah (and Nathaniel): fun
stimulus recommendation: no
snow driving ability of Indy-area residents: pathetic
over: and out

are we there yet?

2008-12-14T20:11:00.005-05:00

no. but getting close. with the outside work anyway. there's just a little bit of everything left: a little lap siding, a little shingle siding, a little trim, a little soffit work, a little painting ... and gutters. i imagine with some decent weather, we should be done in a few days. and trumpets shall sound and a chorus of angels will burst into song. winter will turn to spring. peace will unfold in the middle east. (pics from all 4 sides on Flickr).

on another note, the bathroom is officially gutted. the enchanted shell shower exited with a mere whimper. i bought some carbide tipped blades for the sawzall ... the phrase hot knife through butter would be appropriate. strangely enough, the shower enclosure was in no way fastened to anything. it just sat there. also, there was/is a large hole in the floor in one corner where some lovely plumber mangled the floor putting in the drain and water lines. this highly trained plumber also just bent the copper lines instead of installing fittings, supported the drain by letting it rest on the top of a partially removed floor joist (looks like a chainsaw got loose) and using a coat hanger, and has part of a drain running uphill. all in all, excellent work. the marks of a true craftsman.

there was more mold (and former mold) in the bathroom than expected--in one corner from an old roof leak which we saw from the outside and near the toilet from when it was not working right and the tank was slowly overflowing. so, i had a fun sanitizing session (glad we have our respirators from the asbestos project) ... so it's good we are doing this project to remove possible mold sources. and of course, in the midst of all this, i realized the upstairs toilet wasn't working right (the float wasn't shutting the water off) so had to scavange parts from the old toilet to fix it quickly (and replace the downstairs toilet shutoff). but, since remediation and emergency repairs i've gotten things all cleaned up and on the dry, strengthened the existing tub/shower enclosure and bulkhead, framed in for a shower ceiling and began putting in some new framing for the rear shower wall. i need to get to a 32"x60" enclosure for the Kerdi kit. i won't get there perfectly (without major reworking of what's already there) so am getting it "practically" close so that only minor changes will be needed to the kit (hopefully changes i can easily work out in the tiling).

Mr. Toby had some more antics the other day. the painters were inside the sunroom again. suddenly one of the painters came and asked me to (in broken english) put Toby in another room ... and he showed me the little white pawprints on the floor leaving the sunroom. apparently Toby jumped into a freshly painted windowsill. luckily it came off the floor easy ... not so much off Toby -- he still wears his badges of shame.

no turning back

2008-12-10T21:06:00.006-05:00

started tearing up the downstairs bathroom today. pretty much no turning back now. especially considering i managed to take a chunk out of the toilet tank lid while trying to remove a stubborn corner bead. whoopsidaisy. good thing we were going to get another one anyway. looking at a Vitra Evergreen dual flush.

we donated another chunk of change to Lowe's, this time for our tile. we're going with a multi-colored slate (browns, greens, coppery reds, grays, etc). very earthy looking ... which is fitting for our planned decorating scheme (WPA/WPA style posters of National Parks we've been to). 12" on the floor, 2" on the shower floor, 6" on the shower wall (with 3 rows of 1" x 3" tile as an accent). we kind of wanted to to the 2" on the shower walls ... but too pricey. ended up buying a "disposable wet saw" (as the Lowe's guy called it). it was only $58 (with a blade) which is cheaper than renting one and less work then running back and forth to Lowe's to have them do cuts in their spare time. can probably get a couple bucks for it on Craigslist when i'm done too. looking at getting a Kerdi shower kit to waterproof the shower (kit includes a presloped base and a drain). now, just have to do the work. crap.

Contractor was back out today ... did some work on the north side -- shingle siding and soffits. slow and steady. as long as "steady" is included.

back in the game

2008-12-08T12:51:00.001-05:00

last week was fairly hectic as we worked to get some things finished up for the first of two Christmas parties we are hosting this year (on consecutive weekends). the first was Chrissy's girls Bible study group (and alumni) and this coming weekend is the one we host each year. hosting large groups of people is good motivation to get some stuff done! Chrissy got our house all Christmasy ... we got our tree Sat morning. got a type of blue spruce this year. it's a bit prickly, but looks nice and smells great ... mmm. so far only minimal batting at ornaments by the cats.

so the kitchen is 99.99% done now. yes, miracles do happen. i'll probably tinker on a few touch-ups and want to repaint/restain the door jamb going into the dining room sometime ... but it's essentially done. so, soooooo nice to have it done finally. we love the results. Chrissy finished a bunch of touch-ups and the repainting of the door jambs and the little shelves. i got the blank drawer front to cover the sink installed as well as the new pantry door. the old pantry doors were configured with 2 sets of 2 doors. we came back with a single large door with 2 recessed panels. and we decided it would be fun to make the recesses chalkboards ... and so it is.

the upstairs bathroom is a totally different world now also. installed the exhaust fan/light last ... well ... sometime (a week ago Friday?). i'm too old to remember that stuff anymore i guess. it went fairly well. it's always a little scary cutting holes in walls (for a larger elec box to put switches beside the outlet i was pulling power from) and ceilings (for fan) of plastered walls. i was a tad concerned that the whole ceiling would end up on the floor. but alas, the hole went marvelously. running the wire went ok. even working in the attic a few minutes wasn't terrible for once (except for the bat that scared the crap out of me when it crawled out of a pile of insulation beside me). saturday (i can remember that far back) i got to the overhead shower. today (i'm off this week again to use up vacation time) i did some adjusting of the support hangers, riser piping (one connection was annoyingly leaky), and the gigantically huge long inner shower curtain (180") with two outer curtains. i may make the inaugural shower shortly (just got the drain running well enough to handle it ... i think). sorry the pics aren't great ... it's hard to take overall pictures in small rooms. oh, and Toby is a big fan of the new setup ... he loves roaming around the tub between the curtains.

also today i finished a basement reorganization project i started a few weeks back. removed a bunch of junk (some ours, some old debris from who knows when) from the old coal room so that i could move a lot of boxes into there (stays drier in there and the space was otherwise wasted). added 3 more shelving units to the big room so that now pretty much everything is off the floor and actually accessible. de-spiderweb'd again too. no pictures, so you'll have to take my word for it that it's great improvement. maybe i'll throw some on flickr sometime.

outside progress has been S.L.O.W. i will say that the contractor warned us ... but its still annoying. the crew seems to use any excuse to not come work. HOPEFULLY this week they'll wrap up the siding, trim and maybe soffits and gutters. please please please please. looks great so far!

escape kitty escaped two more times ... these times by just shooting out the door while it's open. then last night he slipped between the screen/storm door and main door without me noticing. i was checking to make sure the outer door was latched right before going to bed. thought i heard him scratching at something when i was upstairs a few mins later but it wasn't until the second time i heard it while laying in bed that i realized he could have done what he did. he's so sneaky. almost cost him a very very cold night stuck between doors. this is getting out of hand. maybe we can tie him up on a 100' leash in the house?

being productive rocks.
fin.

pause

2008-11-29T01:02:00.015-05:00

this evening we went into a 2 day pause as we've left town to spend the weekend with Chrissy's family. managed to get some time in the upstairs bathroom and on a few misc. items (basement doorknob, cleanup, putting cab doors back on, etc.) before leaving though. and got to see Purdue get hosed against Oklahoma. argh.

here's the new and improved shiny white sink with superduper new faucet from Signature Hardware (and new drain, trap, shut off-valves, and supply lines .... which may be replaced for slighly shorter ones) . the tub got it's new faucet permanantly installed and drain put in ... but didn't get to the overhead shower rod yet (see bemoaning of Purdue loss above):

added crown (yesterday) to the top of the upper kitchen cabs. note that you are only seeing one of the cabinet tops. i bought one (1) 8' length of crown only to end up literally 1.5" short. had i realized how close i'd be cutting it i probably could have been really careful cleaning up the ends and squaring up after bevels (when doing 2 sets of outside corners you end up cutting off a chunk of unusable material to get back to a squared end) and have had exactly enough -- maybe. bummer. amazing how much excess you use up making only outside corners. ran to Menards this morning (whoa busy!) and got the extra 1.5" ... err ... 28 9/16" ... err ... 8'-0". will get that up whence we returneth. ignore patching of crack from siding install and tape not yet removed (caulk-line).

i was describing to the painter the pattern we wanted (what got red/white) for the porch this morning and i realized that the old soffits were off around the porch ... and was quite pleased with what i saw. i think we'll not put soffits back up. we'll leave the rafter tails exposed and just repaint/repair as needed. the profile of the header over the open part of the porch is so much nicer than before. turns out there was an old "1050" hidden behind the old soffits too ... keeper! sadly, this is probably the nicest surprise we've had with this house. we're easily amused by this point.

oh, and Mr. Great Escape Toby made his second dash for freedom today (first version was a similar escape plan a few months back). the painters have been working in the sunroom since not all the windows are accessible from the outside (due to non-opening storms, etc.). apparently they left for lunch and Toby found and open window where the storm DID operate. they are hinged at the top so he just pushed his way out i suppose. i was upstairs working and thought it odd i hadn't seen/heard him for a while (if you knew him you'd know what i mean). i searched the house up and down twice and knew he had to have gone out. on my second lap around the outside i saw him casually strolling along the neighbors porch (to the east). i went up to him and he just meowed and let me take him in. he was pretty wound up after that ... i think he was quite proud of himself. little felon. methinks we should have him microchipped. if i start finding little piles of dirt or improvised tools i'm going to start getting really worried.

let there be bathing

2008-11-27T00:44:00.010-05:00

took a while, but the tub and sink are done! the guy came late due to some scheduling issues but offered to stay late to finish up (didn't leave til after 9). the results are no less than amazing. the sink is ... white. real, honest to goodness white. the tub is ... white. and smooth. they really did a nice job. we'll let it cure tomorrow and reinstall all the hardware on Friday. which works well considering it is literally hard to breathe in there now ... them's some serious fumes. wow. here's some shots (including the Toby-proofing of the bathroom ... which reminds me, the blog world has never been introduced to Tobias the cat, maybe in the next post).

i didn't get as far as hoped in the kitchen today, but making progress and thank goodness i'm done caulking (hopefully). since i can't get into the bathroom yet it works out ok. i did get stocked up on supplies this morning (switches, wire, etc.) so Friday should be a productive day up there.

siding work continued also, north side today. 3 painters were out too. i think they're getting close to done on the windows except for some caulking and touch-up of the trim.

tomorrow (later today technically), there will be turkey. and there will be much rejoicing.

east side + new inside projects

2008-11-26T00:44:00.006-05:00

well, our contractor had a slow stretch again ... weather (cold, rain, blah blah). back at it again today. working on getting the east caught up. here's where that is at along with a new shot of the west side in better lighting. hopefully they take advantage of the upcoming good weather ... we want it done!

i'm off this week and the week of Dec. 8 (needed to use some vacation time) so am working on some projects around the house. first task is finally finishing the kitchen. kind of burned out/procrastinated on it and didn't finish up that last ~5% last winter. so, the first part of the week has been dedicated to that. mostly little stuff like touch-up painting (incl. some cracks from the work going on outside), caulking trim/wainscotting (about 3 tubes worth), finishing door jambs, installing crown moulding, putting on the new pantry door and the false front over the sink, etc. my first crown moulding experience went ok (did that this afternoon). after i figured out how to accurately set my crown stops things went nicely. some corners are slightly off which i blame on non-square corners (i checked, they aren't square). the walls are actually miraculously not straight or square. i don't know how a wall gets to have so many ridges and valleys in it ... i don't care how old it is. but hey ... caulk! i hope to get the kitchen done (except the panty door which isn't out of the basement paint shop yet) tomorrow.

after the kitchen is done, on to bathrooms. the upstairs tub and pedestal sink are being reglazed (should be done tomorrow) and will get purdy new hardware after thats done, including adding an overhead shower (hanging curtain rod). the refinisher described the bottom of the tub as "looks like Mars". it appears that the wonderful past owners (or their tenants) dumped a bucket full of drain cleaner in there with a drain totally clogged, so the gigantic puddle of powerful chemicals just sat there and ate deep grooves into the surface. then (oh yes, it gets better), they painted over it. love them. love. them. anyway, it'll be fixed properly and be all smooth and shiny soon. in order to use that shower long term, i'll need to add an exhaust fan up there as we aren't fans of mold. we'll also do some misc. repairs (including some cracks and a hole from the siding project) and repaint, but come back later for the full workover (trim, reconfigured closet, floors, toilet, etc.). instead i'll move down to the downstairs bath and completely gut that room and start over (yeah, it's that bad there). had to wait for a functional upstairs shower to start ... and boy can we not wait to be rid of our "enchanted" shower. if you've had the pleasure of using it, you understand. we're planning on a small tiled walk-in shower ... new vanity, toilet, tile floor, trim, etc. we will in no way miss the old bathroom ... it was a poster-child of poor craftsmanship. i sum it up with "ugh".

so that's the plan ... i'll try to keep pictures and updates coming. for now, here's a pic of the kitchen crown. disregard the many nail holes in the upper right. the chimney is behind there and the ceiling very poor ... so couldn't get any nails to grab. again, "yeah caulk!"

west side almost done

2008-11-20T19:05:00.003-05:00

... they just need to do the soffits to finish trimming out the top few rows. east side is about 1/2 done. north side is done to the soffits also. red accent on the window sashes is starting to show up. yippee!

shingle siding begins

2008-11-19T19:14:00.005-05:00

the west side lap siding is all up now. the new accent band is in and the first few pieces of the shingle siding are up. our first chance to see the colors in real life ... and we are not disappointed. painters started too. a bunch of the sashes were prepped and primed. as usual, more pics on flickr.

siding update (let there be color)

2008-11-18T22:00:00.003-05:00

last week the contractor was really slow ... a couple rain days didn't help either. they finished some misc sheathing/building wrap items (e.g. behind the electric panel) and got about a dozen pieces of trim up. today finally we had a good burst of work ... some more trim and a decent amout of actual siding! good to see some color hit the walls.

pictures are on flickr

speaking of color, here's an "artist's" rendition of the finished product:

something pretty big is happening

2008-11-05T22:11:00.003-05:00

look at the last few pictures here

(oh, and the kitchen was worked on in the last year also ... pics on flickr also ... not very current, but newer than before)

i have no excuses for not posting

2007-08-07T23:28:00.000-04:00

... but i'll give it a shot: cat ate keyboard. busy training to be Peyton Manning's backup. abducted by aliens. been holding breath waiting for a verdict in the Landis hearings. recruited to star in new sitcom staring Chuck Norris and the caveman guy from the TV commercials. walking across America. ok, so maybe you don't buy into any of those. i'll mainly claim "too busy" followed by "too tired to catch up on the blog". it's that old catch 22 ... the longer you wait to update, the longer it takes. but, let's give it a shot. it's gonna be a big one -- so hold on to your mouse. since the last post we:

- went to Abid' & Daniah's valima (groom's wedding reception) in Cleveland

- getting home just in time (3am-ish) to fly out for our vacation in Florida over our anniversary (Fort Myers),

& spent some time with Chrissy's grandparents who live near Ocala (who also came up north in June to celebrate their 50th anniversary with the family--see picture 2 --- Michael and I do our best Uncle Rico)

& saw manatees

& squirrels

& strange mysterious creatures (this is a tribute to a similar photo Jim's kids took a while back ... i am playing the part of Seth--different photo, but similar hilarity to the one in question, just imagine Seth in the same pose as me)

- participated in the Indy area "Canstruction" competition - folks in the construction/design industry design & build large "things" out of cans to benefit local food charities and raise hunger awareness (it's a shopping cart containing a milk carton, bananas, asparagus, an apple, and a blue thing we decided to call blueberry yogurt)

- went to my first (and probably last considering the contract w/ IMS wasn't renewed) US Grand Prix with Ben (and Ben, Dan, & Debbie from Detroit)

- Andy got some new diggs (he's in the upper left, chillin' on one of the food dishes)

- Hazel has remained lazy (surprise)

- Chrissy finished the "Family" wall with marvelous results

- put a ceiling fan in the living room (bloody knuckles? why yes. when we re-did the electric we screwed the ceiling box for the light into the joists. that box wasn't made for a fan. thus, bloody knuckles getting that sucker out)

- installed a new outlet in the basement for the small freezer we got from my mom (new 20A circuit so i can use it for amp-sucking tools also). methinks me's an electrician.

- put in the new countertop in the kitchen (plus sink and new faucet). thanks for the help Dave!

- removed the trim from the kitchen. was gonna strip/repaint. but decided it wasn't worth the effort. it's just plain 1x lumber anyway (no detail) so i don't feel bad not re-using it. replacing it with similar 1x poplar. the new trim is about 1/3 primed/painted. been working on scraping the door off for about 3 weeks now (as we have time). the upper 3+ layers came off with paint stripper ... but it did nothing to the lower 2 for some reason. so, been diligently scraping them all off. what a HUGE pain.

- when we're done scraping (provided i don't slit my wrists with the paint scraper) we'll go ahead and re-do the walls (probably a chocolatey venetian plaster). and add white wainscotting. new crown moulding. and ... the order is officially placed for new cabinet doors and drawer fronts! ordered via Mica Shop and their suppliers. we'll pick them up later this month and get them installed ... well, when we get to that point in the kitchen process. need to do some repair work on some of the drawers and strip/repaint the cabinet frames first too. here's sorta what it will look like (courtesy of Dave):

- and of course, lots of activity outdoors. with the really dry weather, i've spent WAY too much time watering to keep things alive. and lots of weeding. but, for the most part things have done well. here's the front (new additions -- white alyssums along the edge, red/white/green coleus, angelface & white liatris along the walk, multicolored gazania and mexican feather grass in the containers)

- along the side, salvaged dusty millers from last years front beds, replacement cherry parfait rose (last years died this spring) and another one that i can't remember the name of (has a deep red--almost brownish or orangish. i think the name has to do with chocolate or mocha). gallardia from last year (very tiny last year, no blooms). and a black eyed susan that didn't do anything last year (i think it was from seed from mom's plantings)

- we added random flowers/wildflowers beside the garage slab, the compost heap/wood pile, and on the alley side of the big grass bed. these have really surprised us. lots of flowers! the hardest part is knowing which are weeds and which are flowers. still not sure on some of them. but, green amongst flowers usually still looks ok when it's all random anyway. the one's by the grasses were planted probably 2 months later so they just now started blooming (along with 3 or 4 random unknown melon or squash plants we have yet to ID ... left 2 of them growing). on the opposite side of the grasses are mixed dahlias (some doing great, others not ... a few pics at the bottom).

- the veggie garden is doing fairly well (after installing multi level fencing to keep out the 10 rabbits that were born next door). was doing AMAZING until early July. not sure exactly what happened, but our cucumbers that we going gangbusters (4 or 5 ripe ones a day) went droopy. most are still alive, but not doing much (a few fruit a week). the zucchini plants went downhill, then recovered, now are dying again. i think it's poor drainage in their corner of the garden. have to fix that next year. chrissy's fall gourds in the back are on 'roids or something. seriously, those 2 plants would have covered the whole garden if we didn't keep trimming them back. we've planted another round of lettuce. planted another round of green beans too (already froze a dozen or so 2 person servings for later). kohlrabi has been good. 2 types of peppers ... doing so-so. some herbs. 3 types of tomatoes (cherry, lemon boy, roma) ... all of which are producing insanely. we've frozen probably 20 bags for sauce already ... and they're still going. in the front, random dahlias (sorta old picture, more are now in bloom).

- in addition to the 3 tomatoes we planted, we had about a dozen-ish volunteer tomatoes that grew out of the compost heap (from last years scraps apparently). i left most of them that weren't in they way of the wildflower plantings ... and they are just now ripening. who wants tomatoes?!!

- and the butterfly bushes. they were doing great, growing and blooming like crazy. for some reason though, the one in the back recently started going downhill. whole stems just keep dying. i'm wondering if there is a lot of condensation from the condenser keeping it too wet or something (i noticed the soil was really damp recently). hmm. yeah, i think it's a moisture issue somehow.

- some things with no pictures include the 17th annual Shakespeare in the park (that being Seminary Park about 5 blocks south of the house). this year was "The Tempest". it wasn't bad ... a few good players, a few not so good. one guy looked like "the king" from the Burger King commercials. mainly it's just pretty cool that they even do this ... and for 17 years, wow. Chrissy also went to the "art fair on the square" showcasing local artists with a friend of hers. we've enjoyed several other evenings downtown eating good food (e.g. beer and ice cream), hanging out with friends, looking at the old cars at the weekly Saturday evening cruise-ins, etc. and we found out we have a decent walk score of 77 ... how about you?

let's see. that's about it i suppose. sure we forgot something. hopefully i'll be able to keep up better now that i've caught up. upcoming events will be -- continuing the kitchen work, seeing Jim, Roxane and the kids!, going to my family reunion in Ohio ... and football season starting! to close, here are some random floral shots (including one that includes a japanese beetle ... i've picked several thousand off the rose of sharon and butterfly bushes already ... ugh).

i'm a lumberjack (and i'm ok)

2007-04-14T23:10:00.000-04:00

it's April 14 (yeah yeah, long time since last post) ... and there is snow on my car. snow on the ground. snow on the roof. yes, SNOW. the white fluffy stuff. yeah. i officially protest. i wish that global warming would hurry up, i'm freezing my butt off here. a whole Saturday of potential outdoor work ... gone.

so a lot has happened since last time. first, fun things ... my friend Luke set up an Over The Rhine concert at the Goshen Theater. so, we ventured north for the weekend. the concert was fantastic. one of the best shows we've seen them do. coincidentally, we also had front row seats. aren't we lucky?! i wonder who did the seating arrangements? we hung around after the show to help Luke clean up and got to meet the band! they were all really nice and happily endured our questioning. we got a picture with Linford and Karin, but it turned out really dark so i didn't think it was worth posting. after everything was closed up we got to hang a bit with Luke and Gretchen which was great. wish we could do that more often.

the weekend happened to also be over of my youngest nephew Benjamin's 2nd birthday. wow, i cannot believe how old they are all becoming (Bryce recently turned 13)! we had a great time hanging out with my mom, Dave & Agne and the boys. Agne's grandma just arrived in the US for a visit, so we got to see her and Agne's mom (who is living in Chicago) too! Dave & I also took the opportunity to build our new kitchen counter. Dave did most of the work of course. it was fun being back at the old Mica Shop (i worked there in high school). brought back a lot of memories. we can't wait for the new sink and top to get put in (we'll wait for Dave or Dad to come down sometime since it won't fit in the car).

we've been doing all sorts of stuff around the house of course. Chrissy was going to repaint the inside of the built-in cabinet in the dining room. that is until she realized there was old painted-over wallpaper in there ... which was coming loose. so instead, she has started removing the old wallpaper -- one of the layers came off cleanly giving us a glimpse of some of the old patterns. i wonder if she's noticed that i haven't offered to help remove it? (not a big fan of wallpaper removal.)

i did finally get all the shoe moulding in. well, the oak pieces that is. the white pieces just got painted and should go in in the next week or so. the oak turned out pretty good. i wish it would have matched the trim a bit better, but its ok (matches the floor). i included some pics of some of the more challenging areas. i'm not sure if the radius at the bottom of the stairs will stay this way (segmented). Dave suggested maybe cutting a radiused piece out of a solid piece of wood ... so maybe someday i'll do that. i had tried bending pieces of the regular qtr round to no avail (including kerfing out the back ... soaking in water ... etc.). unless my goal was trying to break wet qtr round into 2 pieces, because i did achieve that nicely. and i nearly went deaf kerfing out the back with the miter saw. super fun.

i've been tinkering on the upstairs bathtub also to get it ready for it's transformation into a shower. after much consternation i managed to get the old rusty drain basket out. after doing so, i stupidly kept working on a second project -- unplugging the drain line. you see, when the water is standing in the tub without the drain basket, it leaks out and onto your kitchen ceiling, ending up on your kitchen floor, appliances, etc. Hazel actually did her first useful thing since we've had her ... she heard the dripping, thought it was rain, and started to hide like she normally does when it rains (we're still confused about that). Chrissy saw this and then heard the dripping and got me to realize what was happening. whoops. no harm though, thankfully ... except to my plumbing ego. i think i did figure out where the clog is -- in the old drum trap. tried getting into there today with no luck. i think i'll wait til Dad is here sometime to get into that, i don't want to break anything (myself included). the third project was to clean up the old water supply lines and the overflow drain. they looked so bad i thought i would need to replace them, but a good couple hours of elbow grease, steel wool, and "barkeepers friend" got them all nice and shiny looking again. the overflow coating came off a bit at the top, but the improvement overall was really shocking.

the week or two of nice weather that we had was quite lovely. we got all the plants outside ready for spring ... the 43 ornamental grasses got haircuts, the shrubs pruned, grass mowed. the grass looks ok ... i'm not totally happy with it. the new stuff i seeded last fall looks much better than the areas i didn't totally replace. hopefully they'll even out in color when it gets warm again. we also cut down the random trees in the back yard (hence, "i'm a lumberjack" if you missed that). i originally thought they were all black walnut (with 1 random little maple). but my dad was here one evening and immediately noticed a difference in some of them ... they were a mix of butternut and walnut. never really heard of butternut before, but it's a fairly similar to walnut. the old man was right, again. i'll have some before and after pictures next time ... we still need to chop up one last tree and have the stumps ground out. assuming the weather gets better, we'll do that next week. we hope to pick out a tree or two, a nice tree or two, to replace them with. walnuts/butternuts are not a good tree for a small lawn. especially with a garden under them.

on the horizon -- continued work on the bathrooms, planting an expanded veggie garden, more trim work, and hopefully sink and counter installation. we're also working on planning the next set of projects for maybe this fall (siding and wall insulation). maybe we should finish the current projects first?

who needs a truck ...?

2007-03-11T22:50:00.000-04:00

... when you have Dodge Stratus (coupe)? Seriously, what can this car not do? The poor thing, i've put it through so much pain these past 2 years. It doesn't deserve this kind of treatment. Latest on the list of abuses -- a multitude of trim. Let's do the totals here: 18 pcs. oak quarter-round (8'), 4 - 2x4s (8'), 6 pcs. 4" (roughly) oak crown moulding (10'), 29 pcs. 3" (roughly) pre-primed pine crown moulding (some 10', some 8'), a set of sawhorses, 50' of air hose ... and me. The only thing missing was the 13 pcs. of white quarter-round because Menards was out of it (got 'em at Lowe's yesterday).

The process of installing has begun, sort of. I stained the oak qtr round/shoe moulding last week and gave it it's 2 coats of shellac on Saturday. I also made a quick work-station for the miter saw out of the 2x4s. It sits on a set of sawhorses and gives the long pieces of trim some support while cutting. Hopefully the first piece will hit the wall this week. Only about a year late ... hmph. I'll claim "dog ate miter saw" as my excuse.

We've begun accumulating materials for the kitchen and downstairs bath projects also: new faucets for both, a shower head and controls, a kitchen sink, and a bathroom vanity. We're actually gonna try to cancel our bathroom vanity order ... we saw almost the same one at Lowe's, but in a slightly better finish (cherry vs. "dark chocolate" a.k.a. black). I'm also contemplating switching sinks, we'll see about that (me being picky). Purchasing these items was a friendly reminder that good kitchen/bath hardware is expensive! yikes. We've also started looking at colors for the kitchen ... comtemplating a brownish venetian plaster. We'll see how ambitious we feel when that time comes.

Chrissy's Valentine's present finally arrived on Friday ... we went to see Cirque du Soleil's Delirium at Conseco. It was really impressive. Weird, very weird, but impressive nonetheless. Hard to describe, but a mixure of music/singing, dance, acrobatics, and interesting imagery. The stage was long and narrow with huge screens on each end. The actual stage had semi-transparent retractable screens that showed corresponding visuals also at times. Again, hard to describe. If you go to Youtube there are some short videos of it (don't watch the one called "Cirque du Soleil - Delirium, Madison Square Garden NYC", it's mixed with some weird other music). We had some great seats at the right edge of the stage 2 rows from the floor (just a bit above stage level) that i found on Ebay. Kind of a funny story actually ... the guy i got them from had 2 sets of 2 right beside each other. The auctions were about 45 seconds apart. I bid up the first set and ditched at the last second to grab the other ones. Ended up getting them for $30 less. I forgot that i'd be sitting next to the other bidder. We got there first, but after a minute or two the guy beside me asked about it. Luckily, he was really nice and we got a good laugh out of it. After some past concert experiences, we were very thankful to have good people beside us.

Since the last post (yeah yeah, it's been a while) we celebrated a mass of birthdays ... Chrissy's dad hit the big 5-0, my dad 59, my mom & aunt (ages withheld to protect the innocent), and i even hit 22 for the 7th time (that's 28 if you don't want to do the math). We be old.

One of my favorite times of the year has also begun ... the first warm days of the year just in time for the NCAA tourney. Purdue is finally back in this year. That alone is a huge victory for Purdue after the teams they had the past few years (bad, terrible, worse, worser, worstest). Looks like Coach Painter is getting that program back where it should be. I have a feeling that productivity will be near an all-time low at the end of this week. Oh, and i realized that my old high school's basketball team is doing really well. They play in semi-state this coming Saturday! Pretty amazing.

Anywho, here's to continued nice weather ...

i believe ... in miracles

2007-02-15T22:57:00.000-05:00

a miracle has happened friends. yes. in our very home. some thought it might never happen (some might = me, some might also = Chrissy, Hazel claims she always believed but i have my doubts). i hope you are sitting down to read this, since i know so many people read blogs standing up like me. this past Saturday afternoon/evening our disbelief, and maybe yours, was proved unfounded ... the stairs are actually done! (much applause, cheers).

for dramatic effect ... here is the route we took to get there. first, how they looked when we moved in, with brand new builders beige carpet:
with the carpet gone:
after removing tack strips and such (note paint blobs e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e):

and after sanding:

after staining:
and finally, after 2 coats of clear shellac ... i present ... the stairs (cue hallelujah chorus) -- sorry about the glare, not much light so had to use flash:

the shellacing was a bit ... odiforous. picture yourself stuck inside a bottle of vodka for about 4 hours. it's gotta be something like that (if you remember from our past experiences with shellac, you'll know it's in solution with denatured alcohol). i think the 2nd picture (the landing) is interesting. look at the strips of wood on the landing from right to left (skipping the first piece because that was the nosing piece) and pay attention to the grain in the wood. whoever installed that area obviously did not care that the 4 boards he bought had radically different grain patterns. didn't even care enough to mix them up much before he put them down. but maybe it's just perfectionists like me who notice stuff like that.

all told, i think we spent roughly 60 hours refinishing ... not including removing the carpet and associated random nails, tack strips, and ample staples from at least 2 generations of carpet (i'm guessing another 6-10 hrs). i wonder how a carpet runner would look on the stairs? hahahaha. ok. not. i think i'd have to shoot myself if we covered them up after all that work. we're really happy with the results (despite a few imperfections and the stain looking darker than the floors), almost as happy as we are about the fact that it's done! done. done. as a bonus, we (and by we, i mean Chrissy because i was sick and lazy) were finally able to really clean up all the dust (and take down the dusty garland on the rails).

and for more pictures, the new furniture. we've had it for probably a month now i think. it's finally getting nicely broken in ... you don't feel like you're sitting on big flat rocks anymore. we're really happy with it, especially for the supercheap Ashley furniture price :-). sorry, again our house doesn't photograph well at night.

we moved the old couch upstairs into the office, along with the old TV (so i can watch basketball when Grey's Anatomy is on or something). the other chair is in the guest bedroom now.
not pictured among the multitude of pictures in this post ... is all the freakin snow we got. i think we ended up with about 15" of new stuff. i got some pics, but they need some tweaking before posting, so maybe next time. might try to get some more too.

ok, so what's next ... the exciting world of shoe moulding! i know, edge of your seat excitement. it does mean i can bust out the new miter saw and brad nailer. the fun never ends.

Super Bowl Champs!!

2007-02-07T21:49:00.000-05:00

Colts win!! Colts win!! Wooooohooo! Yes indeed, the Colts have won the Super Bowl. It was somewhat of a win-win situation for me as they were playing my 2nd favorite team, but I just couldn't cheer much for a team with Rex Grossman as their QB. Plus, the Colts are just so gosh darn lovable. I mean, how can anyone cheer against such good guys?? The leadup to the game (and after of course) have been a lot of fun. The town is just Colts crazy. Banners and signs everywhere, buildings lit up blue, tailgate parties (inside of course due to the icebox outside). Of course the game was just amazing. I was hoarse for about a day after. Don't tell the NFL, but the screen we were watching on was larger than 55" (seriously, what's the deal with that crazy rule).

Monday was the welcome home celebration for the team. It started with a freezing cold parade through downtown (orginally scheduled for 4pm). This was delayed about 2 hours because of their plane getting in late and some last minute plan changes. The parade ended in the RCA Dome for a big rally. We (me and some friends, Chrissy had some last minute orders come in at work so couldn't go ... bummer) skipped the parade part so we could forsure get a seat in the Dome. Good thing we did, we got there about 4:30 and the upper deck was almost full already. We managed to find some seats near the 50 yard line about 15 rows from the top. Not too shabby. They ended up letting about 45,000 in. There was more room, but at some point i guess the fire marshall said they didn't want any more people in there despite some open seats. It looked like there was a pretty amazing turnout for the parade, despite the bitterly cold weather and long delay. The rally was a lot of fun. They replayed the game while we waited. Eventually, the team arrived to quite a reception. That place definitely gets loud! There was a short program where some of the team and few others spoke ... here are some highlights (sorry for the quality, remember i was in the nosebleeds):

The crowd (waiting patiently):

Coach Dungy, Jim Irsay (Owner) and Bill Polian (President) ... and a certain Vince Lombari trophy:

Some of the team (incl. Manning, Wayne, Mathis, etc.):

the defense:

Here are some videos i uploaded to Youtube (some of the audio got out of sync when i uploaded, not sure why ... i'm a Youtube newbie):
--- the trophy enters
--- the team enters
--- Coach Dungy
--- Peyton Manning
--- The Defense
--- Marvin Harrison & Reggie Wayne
--- Dallas Clark/Tight Ends
--- Dominic Rhodes/RBs & Hunter Smith/Special Teams

In other news, Hazel had some dental work done today. a recent vet check up found the reason for her bad (really really bad) breath -- some rotting teeth. we think it's meth mouth from when she was on the streets. she must have been quite the wild one in her day. she basically need a good cleaning and have 2 of her "tiny" molars removed (i guess there are large and tiny molars or something). she seems a bit out of it, but has been seeming to get better steadily. the vet thinks she'll be totally back to normal in a day or so.

The stair project is almost done! i finished the sanding last weekend and got them stained. that was a lot of staining ... 4 hours i think. my wrist was killing me the next day from all the rubbing. i'll work on getting 2 coats of shellac down this weekend -- then done! i'm fairly happy with how it's turning out. the stain is a bit darker looking than the floors (the soft pine stairs took more stain the harder oak floors), but not too bad. a lot of the imperfections that i couldn't sand out were decently hidden by the stain too. it's so fun to see how they look now compared to when we got here! that was a lot o' freakin' work though. so ... much ... sanding. glad that's done. it's also nice to not have the plastic sheeting hanging from the ceiling anymore -- the living room looks so much nicer without that, although it gave it a modern, industrial feel if you like that sorta thing. i'll try to get updated pics soon.

and you know what i forgot to mention ... we got new living room furniture about a month ago. i'll try to get pics of this soon also.

ok, done for now. stay warm (we got about 7" of snow yesterday, how bout you?).

COLTS WIN!!!!!!!

2007-01-21T23:15:00.000-05:00

i can see clearly now OR it's a high def world

2007-01-08T21:41:00.000-05:00

well, it's the new year ... and the sanding isn't done yet -- despite the hopes of the last post. i haven't had as much time as i thought to work on it ... and it's not much fun, so i don't work too hard at making time either. but, we have made progress. we are done through the landing and about 1.5 steps past it. the landing took quite some time as you might guess. most steps (1 set: tread, riser, stringers) take between 2 and 3 hours ... and there was probably 3+ hours each for Chrissy and I to do the landing. luckily, we're getting toward the end finally. maybe by the end of the week we'll get there. we look forward to not having a fine layer of dust over the entire house.

the TV has arrived and is all set up! ahh, wonderous HDTV. as i type, i'm enjoying the BCS championship game in crystal-clear gloriousness! it's real purdy ... mmmhuh. it only got average reviews, so i was a bit afraid i wouldn't be happy with it (bought it because of the bang-for-the-buck factor) ... but so far that is not the case ... we love it (even Chrissy admitted it was pretty nice). we're getting all the local networks in high def along with a few other digital (but no HD shows) channels (including a good music video channel very unlike MTV). we're amazed that the crazy old antenna up there can pick up and transfer that much data (HD video, Dolby Digital surround sound, program data/time). all this and the preamp isn't even here yet ... that should hopefully open up a few more programming choices. i'm very impressed with PBS's HD programming so far ... interesting programs with stunny scenery. very cool. also cool ... i commented to my brother that the TV was even cheaper now (on Amazon) than when i got it. he sent me a link to this article about the unpublished Amazon 30-day price guarantee policy. i tested it ... it's true ... $28 extra dollars refunded off the already amazing price i got it for! Amazon, you are my hero. you had me at sale, you had me at sale. DVD's look pretty amazing also. we got a new DVD player with some gift cards we had. our old one was pretty vintage (over 5 yrs old) ... not even progressive scan. quite the electronics upgrade for us this week!

upgrade for this week ... 2 pieces of living room furniture (coming Weds)!

in other news, we headed up north for the Miller Christmas this past weekend. my mom just got back from Arizona visiting my bro out there, so we delayed our get-together til now. we had a lot of fun, but of course it was a bit sad to be minus another brother this year (hard to believe Nate's moved over 2.5 years go ... Jim's already about 6 mos.). while up there we stopped in to check on Dave's new herd of hens ... they are growing quite nicely (at an amazing 148/150 survival rate!). in a blast from the past ... the A-frame supporting the water cooler in the picture is made from one of the lofts i made while in college! glad to see my loft-building legacy lives on ... albeit in a chicken coop. enjoy, my fine feathered friends. may my loft inspire you to lay the finest tasting eggs in all the land. (oh, and the other picture is Dave and Agne wearing the animal towels we got Daniel and Benjamin. we're not sure who's going to use them more ...).

oh, and here's a pic from one of Hazel's latest "expeditions". what setting do you use for cats?? permanent press?

2 days black, 1 day brown

2006-12-27T00:47:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope that you all had great ones!

Since last time, the insulation project has been completed! And it was just as nasty (if not worse) as expected. Yup, 2 days of black boogers. Rummaging around to find all the wall cavities was just plain awful. The end of day 2 finally brought some good luck ... the batts were the exact length of house! you would have thought i planned that. if anyone asks, lets pretend i did. i only had to cut about 4 rolls when i encountered some obstructions (chimney, etc.). that was very nice ... made finishing up quite a bit easier on the mind (i was getting really sick of being up there). in the end, it looks like a layer of new-fallen snow has descended on the attic. ahhhhhh. no snowball fights please.

The running of the coax cable was unsuccessful those days, so i moved on to refinishing the stairs. I started this a long time ago, but only got part of the first step done and never got around to working on it again. This also was a very dusty dirty project. 1 full day of brown boogers to be exact (several more to come). It was pretty tedious ... probably about 2 hours per step. But decent progress was made in my last day off and in some evenings since. In the picture you'll see a stain sample on the left side of one of the steps. I'm off all of this week so hopefully i can get this one done. One bad thing about this project ... it left most of the house (especially upstaris) coated in dust. Way way more than expected. I had tarped around the stairs, but it rose up and found its way everywhere. Everywhere. Since then, I've been working with the shop vac running trying to grab the dust before it floats away. That seemed to help quite a bit. I'm also having some concerns about some of the staining and nail-holes in the stairs. I hope they aren't very noticable. I think the stain is dark enough to hide a lot of it. Plus, not a whole lot of light hits the stairs ... so that will help too. We'll just wait and see.

Last Friday (after much cleanup and cooking by Chrissy) we had our annual Christmas party. Good times had by all. It was really great to see a lot of our friends (even 2 drove up from Louisville!). We'd been so busy so much of this year that time with our friends was pretty limited. It was nice to finally reconnect ... and drink lots of eggnog. After that, we headed north to spend Christmas weekend with Chrissy's family. Again, good times all around. Lots of good food of course too. I'm thinking it was a 4 - 5 lb. weekend.

I made a small purchase over the weekend also ... it's about 30" (diagonal) and made by Toshiba. Yes, we are entering the world of HDTV. Amazon had/has a great deal on this tv (even free shipping) so we decided to go for it. It should be here early next week. So, today i ventured back up to the attic for a bit. I had another idea for getting my coax up there (10' segments of 1/4" all-thread rod joined with couplers) and it finally worked. I also cleaned up, leveled, and oriented the antenna to hopefully the right direction (about 227 degrees). I was having some issues with the RG6 connectors, so i may need to re-do the connection to the matching transformer. Hopefully it will work for now though. I'll have to re-enter the attic in a couple weeks when the pre-amp arrives (its on back order) so i could fix it then i guess. Tomorrow i'm gonna try to install a wall plate downstairs to run the antenna wire. I got one that will hook up 2 cables, so i'll clean up the cable tv installation while i'm at it (currently just comes out of a hole in the gap between the hardwood and the trim).

As for the rest of the week ... more stair sanding ... and if that gets done i'll move on to getting some shoe moulding up. Maybe by New Year's Day we'll have pretty shiny new (but old) stairs!

Happy New Year!

a mighty wind (a.k.a. free "used" shed to good home)

2006-12-04T22:47:00.000-05:00

it's been busy round here, with the holiday season(s) getting underway and all. Thanksgiving was a nice break, but busy. we actually made it to both families this year, so there was a bit more travel ... but not too bad. during our stay in Goshen we made a stop at my brother Dave's to see the latest development in his chicken operation -- 150 new hens (i believe a variety of Rhode Island Red)! he had an offer to buy several dozen eggs a day by a local grocery store, so he is ramping up operations to take advantage. in only a few months these little ladies will be cranking out 100 or so eggs a day. gooooooood eggs too. mmmmm.

about the wind. well, i'm not sure what the weather was like last Friday where you were at ... but it was a tad bit windy here. i got a call at work Friday afternoon from Tony (neighbor). i thought, oh, maybe they want to do something tonight ... that'd be fun. no, that's not what he wanted. no, he happened to notice that it appeared as though a couple of our windows had blown open (in the sunroom). he went over and 2 of them had indeed blown open, leaving a mess (and cold) inside. luckily Hazel decided to stay inside and no roaming thieves came in. great. oh, but it gets better. it went something like this ...

Tony: looks like the neighbor's shed is flipped over.
Chris: really? (confused)
T: yeah, it's up against the garage along the alley.
C: really? (more confused)
T: wait, don't you guys have a shed?
C: yes. (panic, less confusion)
T: ooooooooh. i think your shed is flipped over in the alley.
C: sweet.
T: it doesn't look good, i don't think it's salvageable.
C: sweet.
C: i'll be home in a few minutes ...

so indeed, our lovely shed was flipped, turned, and crushed into the alley/the neighbors fence. luckily we mainly had only yard tools and the grill in the shed and nothing was lost. i moved what i could into the basement (had to leave the grill and wheelbarrow up by the house). i left the random doors, windows, wood, etc. out there covered with some tarps. lots of fun. so now we need to decide what to do. it's not really in the budget to build our eventual garage this year, so we'll likely just get another cheap-o metal shed to house our things. they're fairly inexpensive ($239 for 8x10 or $339 for 10x12). but, i think it'll take the good part of a day to build one ... and it's friggin cold out ... so i don't know when that will happen. Tony (isn't he a great neighbor??) helped me drag the old one out of the alley and onto the old slab. i'll just need to break it down into pieces and run it to the dump. yippee! it's sort of ironic. this week i was finishing up a project where most of the building is designed to resist an F4 tornado. seeing the magnitude of some calculations of wind loads i made the amazing pun "this uplift really sucks". well ... it does.

in less annoying news, we have a lot of our Christmas decorating done (mostly Chrissy). i think the outside is done. i managed to sneak away from work early one night last week (well, 8:30 isn't normally "early" except for weeks like last) to take advantage of the warmth before the freeze to get the front tree wrapped in lights (1000, count 'em 1000, lights). we couldn't locate enough of the snowflake lights yet to do that in the warmth ... so we waited until the next most opportune time: 10:30 - midnight on Friday. yeah, so we have strange schedules sometimes. we're pretty happy with how it turned out. first time we've really had an "exterior" to illuminate, so it was kinda fun to do.

oh remember all those projects i listed last time? well, i've started accumulating tools to do those. mmm, tools. tools are the best part of most home improvement projects. i'm pretty pleased that my stable of tools is looking quite nice. first, Menards had an amazing deal on a Delta 36-412 miter saw (12" dual bevel -- aww yeaaah). it's essentially the same as the Delta 36-422L, minus the laser and new part #. it's a roughly $400 saw ... got it for $250 (saw--eeeeet). also picked up a pancake air compressor w/ a 2" brad nailer ... the combo Bostitch CPACK1850. another awesome deal at Menards. wooooooooo Menards! that crazy old white haired dude is right "save big money at Menards." i hadn't really intended on buying a brad nailer, but you can get a good deal on the combo packages, so it worked nicely. i think i'll use it for the shoe moulding. in a good deal from Amazon, i picked up a finish nailer ... the lovely and talented Dewalt D51275K. i did quite a bit of research into all of these purchases and was very lucky with some timely sales. gotta love that. now, just need to get those projects arranged so i can use them!

in an unmentioned additional project, we're going to add some insulation to the attic. there is about 6-8" of blown-in there now, which really should be supplemented. i don't feel like hiring- someone to blow more in ... so (again at Menards) found a great deal (saved about $100) on some unface R-25 batts. i can only take about 8 batts at a time, so i paid for all 28 i need while they were on sale and am picking them up a couple at a time on my way home from work. i'm taking Mon-Weds off next week (need to use vacation days or lose them) and this will be one of my projects. before the batts go down, i'll be sealing up any penetrations into the attic (e.g. light boxes, wire holes, etc.) and the tops of wall cavities that open to the attic. it's going to be a nasty project ... working in all that old blown-in insulation is just bad news. i'll have muddy black boogers for a week. while i'm up there, i'll also be running some RG-6 (coax cable) from the antenna in our attic down to the entertainment center area. i'm hoping to pick up a cheap 30" HDTV in the near future, so i'll want to use the antenna for over-the-air HD (don't want to pay the outrageous amount Insight wants to get HD channels).

the cold has also motivated us to make a draft stopper thingee for the front door. the addition of the storm door last year helped, but there is still some draftiness there. so, last night we threw this thing together (a little fabric, batting, and cat litter for weight).

oh, and Noblesville got another "award" ... top 25 affordable suburb by Newsweek.

well. this turned into a really long post. congratulations if you made it this far. you are my favorite reader. you win a prize. i'll tell you next time what it is.

and the award for the worst blogger goes to ...

2006-11-20T23:45:00.000-05:00

ME!! oh, there are so many people to thank ... where do i start? wow, i'm terrible eh? a month ... again. sheesh. it's one of those things, when you get too far behind, the thought of trying to catch up is so imposing ... so you just don't. i've had a bad case of that.

well, we have been doing ... things. life and work has been busy. we've been camping, visited family and old friends, saw a high school football game (my old high school was having the best year in school history ... so we went up and watched them play in the sectional finals ... losing to the 2A juggernaut -- Jimtown, grrr), among other things. busy busy busy.

and the house. here are a few things we've done of late:

- Chrissy painted the upstairs hallway/landing! that's a nice one to have done, it really looks sharp up there. it's the same color as the "upper" color of the living room (follows up the stairs and wraps the whole landing area).

- continued working on the grass. since last time, i've done the final 2 fertilizings of the year. one of those included a weed killing component (broadleaf). i think some of the grass wasn't ready for it as there are a few spots that have some brown shoots after that. i think it will recover fine though. in general, the grass is looking pretty good. it looks so much more like, well, grass than before ... check out this old shot from when we moved in.

- also outside, we've gone through and pulled dead stuff out (veggies, annuals, etc.). i did a thorough raking this past weekend, hopefully a final one at that. i also played roofer a little bit. there is a slight leak in the roof over the downstairs bathroom ... only shows up on heavy/lengthy rains. there is a low spot in that corner and i think a small pond forms and a little trickles in a loose edge seam. i smeared a bunch of polyurethane caulk in there, hopefully that stopped it.

- i finally got the upstairs hallway light to work properly! what i thought was a bad light was really a bad fake-electrician (me). i wasn't getting the wirenuts tight enough apparently ... they were coming loose. the junction box there is really crammed so they seem to have worked loose when connecting the light before. not this time ...

- we put window film on almost all the windows. basically shrinkwrapped them. hopefully that cuts down on drafts and heat loss. it's pretty amazing, you don't really notice it even with the shades up (upstairs). downstairs you don't see it at all since there are shears over all the windows. wow, now this is some great blogging ... a photo of something virtually invisible. i rule.

some projects we hope to do this winter:

- crown moulding upstairs (hallway and bedrooms)
- crown moulding in dining room
- shoe moulding throughout (where we put hardwood)
- finish the stairs
- totally gut the downstairs bathroom (new tub, walls, floor, vanity -- keeping the light and toilet, if anyone wants the seashell shower just let us know)
- re-do a bunch of the kitchen (new counter, sink, drawer/door fronts & hardware, tin ceiling & crown moulding & backsplash, new paint---probably will go ahead and skim out the walls and refinish the trim while we're there).

the bathroom project will include some new plumbing and adding a shower head to the upstairs bathtub via a ceiling mounted rectangular rod (so we can rip out the downstairs ... and not have to wait a couple weeks between showers ... unless you WANT us to do that). overall pretty ambitious i guess, but i'm hopeful. some of those projects will come together pretty quick ... or in nice rewarding chunks.

i'll close with some pics of Hazel. first she seems to enjoy reading slashdot with me ... then i think she starts not liking the whole computer thing (especially Craigslist apparently). i think she also believes we keep the thermostat too low.

sweet frostiness delight

2006-10-19T23:05:00.000-04:00

i think, just maybe ... the recent frost/freezes are killing/killed my mystery weeds! sweetness. more at 10 (not really, its 10 now and i don't have more).

fert-lizin'

2006-10-12T20:17:00.000-04:00

sorry about the lack of postage (as in "posts", not stamps). we've been partially busy, partially not much to report. but, here goes ...

the biggest house related item is that i put down the first round of fertilizer (post-starter fertilizer of course). the goal was 1 lb Nitrogen/1000 SF (along with some phosphates and potash) ... i think i ended up at more like 1.25#s N/1000 due to not knowing the right setting for my spreader (no calibration settings for our model listed--so i guessed). i used a 32-5-7 from Lesco, although i think i may have bought one with a bit too much slow release nitrogen for this application. but, it'll work i think. this is the first of 3 rounds i want to get in before December (1 every 4 weeks). i don't have enough bought for all 3 rounds, so i'll get more fast release product for application 2 ... ending with another mix of slow/quick release for the winter months.

in general the grass is doing decent. grow in is pretty good in some spots, but pretty so-so in others. i'm still concerned about the weeds. Purdue guy still can't ID it. still hoping it's an annual ... has ruled out bermudagrass, but orchardgrass is still a (very bad) possibility. we shall see. broadleaf weeds are kicking into overdrive, so it's time to do the fall application of broadleaf control. recent Purdue studies show better increased effectiveness in treating tougher broadleafs (i.e. ground ivy) if you wait til Oct. - Nov. after the first frosts. we just had ours ... so time to hit 'em.

emptied the garden also because of the freeze. our 2 freakishly large tomato plants had continued growing and producing tomatoes like mad. we just pulled all remaining tomatoes (probably 40 or so of various sizes) off and will ripen them inside and can them or something. green tomatoes anyone?

oh, and some of our ornamental grasses started blooming (the miscanthuses and the fountain grasses)! i'll have to post pictures next time. totally didn't expect blooms this year. cool.

we went apple picking the other weekend also. went over to Stuckey Farms in Sheridan. went overboard. yeah, at 49 cents a lb. you kind of just keep picking and picking. i think we ended up with 14 lbs. and a big pumpkin. so, we've been eating lots of apples. even made (from scratch) caramel and dipped some. mmm ... healthy (not!).

apart from that i've been intently following the Floyd Landis case. today was the big document release. check out Trust But Verify for excellent coverage of the lastest news and developments. tune into the Daily Peleton Forums for some lively discussion on the subject ... some extremely scientific and over my head, plus lots of talk about roosters and ferrets (guess you have to be there for that to make sense) :-) viva la Floyd!

Old House Delusion Disease

2006-09-29T11:10:00.000-04:00

Maybe we have this ...?

diary of a madman (1 year gone)

2006-09-26T00:55:00.000-04:00

well, Saturday marked the our 1 year houseiversary! yes, we've been homeowners for an entire year. wow, that is truly hard to believe. it feels more like it's been 5 years. just kidding. sort of. sometimes it feels like we've been here for ages, the next minute like we've only just moved in.

it has certainly been an interesting year. we've learned a lot to say the least ... about what to do living in an old house (turn the heat down and use lots of blankets in the winter, squint when looking at old plaster walls and ceilings during the day, look close before you buy, use lots of expanding foam insulation, etc.) ... and what NOT to do (try to refinish pee-stained oak floors, put non-waterproof items on the floor of the basement, eat paint off the walls, let expanding foam insulation get on your hands, try to make it all perfect, finish it all at once, etc.) ... what to expect of your house (the worst) ... what NOT to expect (that previous owners knew what they were doing or were as anal as you are). we've had highs (seeing the hardwood floors after they were finished) and some pretty extreme lows (learning about the aforementioned pee-stained oak). i'm learning how to be a handyman. Chrissy has learned that she is a lot handier than she first thought.

so, would we do it all over again? well ... hmm. knowing what i know now ... that is a pretty tough question (speaking for myself anyway). probably? maybe? i don't regret the decision, i'm just not sure it's something i'd want to go through again ... those tough times were pretty darn, well, tough. i know that if/when we get "finished" with all we want to do here (if that's even possible) it's gonna be awesome! Noblesville is great so far ... and has limitless potential to be even better. we lucked into moving across the street from some folks we'll likely be friends with for a long time to come. a friendly face across the street has gone a long way to helping us get through those tough spots. so thanks to them. thanks to all of you who have helped us work on projects (and there has been lots of that) and those who have helped by praying for us and keeping our spirits up when we got down and didn't know what to do. so there it is, thoughts about life here ... 1 year gone. i wonder what year 2 will bring?

as they say, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. i'm not sure that saying means anything right now. i suppose it could if you wanted to wax philosophic, and i'm sure it's true in the literal sense that our neighbors grass is greener ... mainly that was just a transition into an update on the lawn. green grass is growing. that is good. green weeds are also growing. that is bad. lets hope more grass than weeds grow. i did go through and re-seed a few areas where it seemed a bit thin, especially the crest of the hill in front where water (and ants) were leaving uneven coverage. we've had decent rain the past 2 weeks so i haven't had to water which is very nice. the jury is still out on whether or not this was a successful endeavor. it's all gonna depend no what comes of those vile weeds. keep those fingers crossed.

in an unusual development, we seem to have a serial fall decorator stalking the streets of Noblesville. we came home from work on friday to some mums sitting on the front porch and a bundle of corn stalks in the garden. sunday evening we came home to pumpkins on the porch. we are quite confused at this point. we have a few suspects ... but no solid evidence at this point. does anyone know if Matlock is still doing work?

speaking of evidence. well, not evidence ... trash cans (i'm the master of the seamless transition). while looking for a compost rake i stumbled across our new kitchen trash can (i know, exciting!). for whatever reason, Lowe's had a couple really nice simplehuman stainless steel trash cans (40L, step can) on clearance for $25. sweet bargain! i guess the nasty green trash can i've had since junior year of college gets demoted to the basement now. dirty wet nasty basement ... my nemesis (i just may have cussed the house/basement out the other week after a long horrid evening of cleaning up after a major water issue).

well, that's the news from Lake Wobegon.

ok go ...

2006-09-13T20:10:00.000-04:00

i keep forgetting to post a link to this. if you haven't seen this before ... try to watch it without smiling. now this is how you make a music video ... rent 8 treadmills and buy a big gray tarp.

update on the weeds/grass. purdue guy thinks the wide ones are weeds. CRAP. probably annual grassy weeds. if they're summer annuals they'll die when frost comes. if they're winter annuals they'll die next summer when it gets hot. i'm going to let some of them grow tall so he can positively ID them. they do appear to have started from seed ... so maybe my good seed had more weed seeds then expected. the worst of it is in an area of the backyard where there are a bunch of them. otherwise there are only a few here and there around the yard. he says to not panic, it's probably not going to be a big deal. the real grass is really starting to take off. there are little sprigs of green everywhere. the dead areas are starting to have a greenish hue to them. in a couple days i'll go out and spread some seed in areas that don't look like they are taking very well.

over.

confusion

2006-09-11T21:25:00.000-04:00

ok, now i'm not so sure those little green things were the new grass. i'm now noticing what i really thought baby grass would look like ... lots of thin whispy sprigs of green. ok, so what are the other things? i'm really hoping it's not the weeds coming back. seems like too many for that to make sense. i'm not sure if it's the different cultivars of KY bluegrass looking different?? that seems odd too ... i've emailed the experts at Purdue to get an explanation. i'll keep you posted.

oh, and it rained today! woohoo, no watering tonight!

its gotta get worse before it gets better ...

2006-09-10T20:24:00.000-04:00

we were actually in town over labor day weekend with no major plans (mainly because Chrissy had to work). it felt like an odd thing. i looked at the calendar ... turns out, it was an odd thing. prior to that, 19 of the past 20 weekends we were either out of town or had weekend visitors. now not all were full weekend visits and one of those weekends only Chrissy was gone ... but dang. that's just plain ridiculous. what happened to this summer??

i took the opportunity to move on the yard project. the weeds had sufficiently curled up and died, so i went to the local Nations Rent to get some necessary equipment: an aerator (Ryan Lawnair IV) and a power rake (Ryan Ren-O-Thin). here's the tools of the day:

Pass #1: mow again. i'd been slowly lowering the mowings to reduce competition for the new grass and hopefully stress out some of the existing grass and weeds so that maybe it would die. i think i was around 1 - 1.5".

Passes #2 and 3: aerate. i was shooting for about 20-40 holes (2"-3" deep plugs) per square foot (most of my strategies i cannot claim as my own ... i get my info from Purdue's Turfgrass Program). the aerator specs say it only gets 9 holes/SF. so, i overlapped the 2nd pass to hopefully put me in the 20-25 holes/SF range. it looked like a small dog had pooped all over the yard.

Passes #4 and 5: dethatch. i wanted to really to bust things up here. the power rake came with the flail blades i was hoping for and i set them to cut into the ground about 1/8" - 1/4". this would remove the thatch, break up the aerator plugs, and stir up the top of the soil a bit, hopefully improving soil-seed contact later. it would also really hack up any root structures lurking near the surface ... again hopefully reducing competition for the new grass. what surprised me was how much thatch was actually out there. wow. 2 passes with this sucker and we had a mountain of thatch to rake up. our new compost heap was a bit overwhelmed to say the least. and wow, it looks like we're dirt farmers.

Pass #6: ok, the massive dethatching effort worked up enough dirt to pretty much obscure most of the aeration holes. i figured some would open up later with some rain/watering, but decided another pass with the aerator would be in order. more turds. by my calculations, something like 220,000 turds in total.

Pass #7 (next day): starter fertilizer. 44 lbs of 18-24-12 gets the 1.5 lbs of P205 / 1000 SF we're shooting for. pretty little dots of white, black and yellow fertilizing goodness.

Passes #8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13: seed. 21 lbs of Lesco's "Quality Blue Blend". cultivars are Shamrock (49.32%), Total Eclipse (24.91%) and Hallmark (24.72%) ... all from the lovely Pacific northwest (WA). these all did decent in Purdue's most recent KY bluegrass tests. and Lesco gave me a good deal on it (Contractor's rate). the goal here is to spread the 3#/1000 SF as evenly as possible. thus, i set my drop seeder so that it was barely dropping seed. i did a couple passes and realized it would take 10 years to complete, so cranked it up a bit to finish out. 45,717,000 seeds total ... plus or minus (i lost count a few times). i've got about 29 pounds left if anyone would like some good seed.

Pass #14: water.

Pass #15: pass out (on the couch). manuevering that equipment around the yard, up and down the hills, plus raking, in the sun all day totally wiped me out. i was so sore. felt like the aerator had run over me. definitely several days to recover from that.

Now, more watering. Lots and lots of watering. Not much water at at time, but frequently. they generally say 2-4 times a day, but mainly just trying to keep the surface from totally drying out. so far we've been doing 1-2 times a day. just in the past few days we're starting to see our little babies starting to grow! awww ... aren't they just adorable?

there are some stupid ants along the front hill that keep stealing seeds that are making me mad. as if it's not hard enough to start grass on a slope, these little jerks keep piling it up by their holes. what are they doing with it?? selling it on the seed black market?? hopefully in a week or two i'll have a nice green picture for you!

shock and awe

2006-08-24T00:04:00.000-04:00

August 19, 2006 ... D-Day for perennial grassy weeds in our yard. they didn't even see it coming. bombing for Operation Enduring GreenLawn commenced at 1430 hours with a sneak attack on a large stand of bentgrass (i think it was bentgrass. who knows? as they say, kick ... err ... butt ... and take names later) on the east-central sector near the house, moving next to bermudagrass, goosegrass and an assortment of other nasty characters infiltrating the southwest flank of the property. after a refueling run, bombing raids continued throughout the property. this wasn't a "warning shot". no "economic sanctions". no "UN peacekeeping force". no, this was shock and awe baby. none of that wussy 2, 4-D or dicamba crap either. no, no, i broke out the nukes (maybe in this case, VX or sarin would be the more appropriate analogy) ... glyphosate (or "the stuff that's in Roundup" for you civies). yeah, we'll lose a few good guys that way ... but it's the price you pay for freedom, i mean, greenlawn. you say, "but Chris, that's genocide." yeah? big whoop, wanna fight about it? (sorry, Family Guy reference).

subsequent recon runs have shown a few insurgent strongholds remaining. don't tell ... but i may be calling in another airstrike for tomorrow night. hopefully i'll post some pictures of the carnage in a couple days.

in the aftermath, i'm going to be doing some serious reconstruction. this will take the form of aeration and a really good dethatching/tear stuff up so hopefully more stuff dies ... followed by a heavy overseeding (3# / 1000 SF) with a high quality kentucky bluegrass blend. still looking for good sources of seed. i've located one good source, but would need to buy more than i need. after the appropriate watering and fertilizing rounds to get the new turf started, the broadleaf weeds will get their day in the sun also. they may think they are safe ... it's just not their time yet.

in less insane news ... we've found a new use for those old concrete blocks i've been lugging around all these years: compost bin. we started constructing tonight ... will hopefully finish loading in the clippings and topsoil we've collected thus far tomorrow night. it's kind of a dual use project. the compost will be nice ... but it also cleans up the shed area. makes the dirt/compost pile look organized and gets the blocks put to use, not sitting around like an old rusted out car. pictures to come. maybe some of the neighbors will take the hint.

hoo-rah.

monday evening video ...

2006-08-14T23:36:00.000-04:00

I can take credit for finding this ... but this is great. And i'm not really much of a Star Wars fan. apparently episode 3 comes out soon ... keep watching youtube.

Chad Vader - Episode 1
Chad Vader - Episode 2

back from the dead

2006-08-10T23:15:00.000-04:00

hello?? hello? is this thing on? (tap tap) ok, my apologies for dropping off the face of the earth for a month there. i have a habit of doing that from time to time don't i? promise it won't happen again, until the next time. i'll make this a big one full of pictures to make up for it.

so what have we been doing? well. since the last post ... we started with a our annual July weekend visit from my old friend Ben (see Detroit Rock City for the return annual trip to see him). GM has "forced vacations" for summer shutdown so it usually works out well for Ben to come say hi. we had a lot of fun as usual. among other things we visited the Indy Zoo & White River Gardens. it was pretty packed, but still enjoyable. maybe someday we'll con Ben into moving here.

the next week was packed with a very busy times at work, Chrissy throwing a wedding shower, and getting ready for what was to come ... VACATION!! July 18 we flew out to the Pacific Northwest (Portland specifically) to hang with my bro Nate & his wife Deb for a while. it worked out that we were able to coordinate our trip with friends Sarah & Jeremiah (& their 5 mo. old Nathaniel). you may know of them from our Grand Canyon hike last summer. only that time Nathaniel was unknowningly residing inside Sarah. we had an amazingly awesome time! where to begin? well ...

we started with a couple days at the coast. let me tell you, the Pacific coast is gorgeous. we spent 2 nights in Oceanside, OR at a house on a hill overlooking the ocean. we did a little hike out at Cape Lookout, roamed the beaches, eating good local grub, and ... one of my highlights of the trip ... crab fishing! while the girls went shopping or somesuch nonsense, us manly men went to catch dinner. crabbing was really a ton of fun. we managed to get 5 good sized dungeness crabs (and one crab caught me back pretty good) which was more than enough for the crabcakes we made later. man, those were some good crabcakes. we also picked up some fresh scallops and clams (for chowder) ... and had the ultimate fresh seafood feast that night.

when we got back to Portland ... it was super hot ... so we went east this time to explore and hike in the Columbia River gorge and take a trip up to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. the scenery at both of these places was just fantastic. moss hanging over all the trees, ferns growing everywhere, giant waterfalls ... very nice. very nice indeed.

back in Portland, Nate & Deb showed us some of their favorite spots. places like Powells, Vindaloo, the rose garden (during the day and at night), shopping along Hawthorne and several other neighborhoods, lots of good coffee drinking, running the dogs at Powell Butte, Sauvie Island, Rejuvenation, the Joinery, Eric Butler's studio, etc. generally eating lots and lots of good food & drink, seeing a lot of really neat things, and having a great time. it is such a unique city. so many unique shops and restaurants. if you're familiar with Broadripple in Indianapolis, there are like 10 of those areas (with less bars) in Portland. it's obviously scenic, with daily views of Mt. Hood and often Mt. St. Helens. lots of trees and landscaping really bring the downtown down to a human scale. a great great vacation, thanks N&D!

alas, good things must come to an end. we came back to insanity at work and lots of catching up to do. followed by a weekend up north at Chrissy's parents with them heading this way for Chrissy's best friend Kristi's wedding this past weekend. big congrats to Kristi & Cary! the wedding was beautiful. their reception was held at a Conner Prairie which was very neat. we had a lot of fun catching up with some college friends we don't see often. again, we need to somehow persuade some folks to move this way.

somewhere in that same time period, some work was done around here. mostly just mowing and pulling weeds, but i did manage to put edger blocks along the grass bed and the new bed around the a/c condenser. i've also been battling the japanese beetles that have been feasting on our rose of sharon bush. the garden is in a new phase of activity. we trimmed the lettuce heavily before vacation and it hasn't come back well. we picked and froze some green beans. we've started getting cucumbers, although some of the plants have died ... i think the walnut tree above them is killing them. we pulled carrots ... didn't get a lot of them but they were good. and, tomatoes have started. lots and lots of tomatoes. i've had to stake and tie up the plants as they've considerably outgrown their cages. Chrissy has probably picked almost 2 dozen already with a ton still growing and ripening.

coming up on the schedule, we head north to see my brother Jim and his family as they move to Arizona to do mission work on an Indian reservation. that will be a sad event. the following weekend, our last wedding of the year. after that ... nothing! woohoo! we might finally have a weekend free! upcoming on the home fix-up schedule include some lawn improvement projects (for next year's lawn) and beginning to fix up the downstairs bath.

ok, well ... that's what's been happening here ... seeya in a month :-)

it were a busy time

2006-07-05T13:15:00.000-04:00

sorry about the lack of posts lately, it's been a bit on the hectic side here. this will be a long post to try to catch up. lets begin 3 weeks ago. we spent the first half of the weekend up north for Michael & Kim's respective bachelor/bachelorette parties. much fun was had by all ... not much sleep was had by us though. we headed by to Indy/N'ville early Sunday morning to meet my family. Nate & Deb had flown in from Portland for a visit so we decided to have mom and the other brothers over for lunch/hang out time. again, much fun was had by all. it was great to have all the brothers & families together again ... finally. it had been about a year and a half. and, we just found out yesterday that it will be getting harder to all be together ... Jim & Roxane have finalized their plans to move to an Indian reservation in Arizona to do missions work for a while (leaving late summer). we are definitely going to miss having them around ... but respect their following through with what they feel God is calling them to. what a strange thought, none of the brothers living within 2 hours of each other. sigh.

2 weekends ago was the big wedding. congrats to Michael & Kim! we had a lot of fun hanging out with Chrissy's family, especially those we don't see that often (out-of-town aunt, uncle, and grandparents). the wedding went off great ... and they are successfully married folks now. i think they are also successfully sunburned married folks now that they have returned from their week in Cancun. i'll remind them that we were in Indiana the whole time they were gone. after the wedding, Chrissy's grandparents spent a few days here in Noblesville checking out our house, the town, Chrissy's cooking, etc. again, good times had by all. have i said that already? it sounds familiar.

in the few spare moments in between all those other activities we were working on the landscaping or, well, working at, you know, work. we had 6 yards of mulch (AA hardwood for those curious) delivered and got that put down on the grasses bed and the flower garden at the back of the house. we wanted to wait on the front beds until we had the dogwoods. on that subject, we got them! almost didn't though. the place we were waiting for re-stocking said they hadn't been able to locate more at their wholesalers so thought it could be fall until they had more. yikes. so, we were waiting for some free time to call around to track down what we could at other places (2 here, 2 there). by chance Chrissy glanced at the nursery when driving by last Friday and thought she saw some sitting there . she called and indeed her eyes did not deceive (they had 16 of them)! so, this past Saturday morning we went and picked up our 7 missing children. there was much hugging and kissing. good times were had by all. by the end of the day those were in and the beds were mulched. we tossed out some grass seed to fill in some dirt spots around the new beds and i added another layer of bricks to my little drainage system. finishing touches are nice. especially because the word "finish" is part of them. i like finish. maybe we move to finland, ja?

some updates on the other various landscaping projects .... the grasses bed is starting to look better. all the plants are definitely growing, yeah! since this picture was taken we've gone through all the plants and trimmed out the dead/broken stems. it had a remarkable effect really ... they look ... alive. that's a novel thought. we didn't put edgers on this bed. not sure yet if we will. probably eventually. they are slowly doing work on the ugly adjacent property. either they need to work faster or these karl foersters need to grow faster. another couch and shopping cart appeared the other day. i think the tenants of the one house got evicted, hopefully marking the beginning of repairs to that place. hopefully they are tasteful renovations.

the garden is doing well. we've had much lettuce. MUCH lettuce. with more coming. most people that visit here leave with lettuce (can we send you some?). is that incentive to visit or what? the peas have come and gone. they grew well, but you need lots of pea plants to get reasonable quantities of peas. the tomatoes are growing like Barry Bonds on steroids (hi-yo!). in about a week Chrissy will have more tomatoes than she can possibly eat. i think people will soon be leaving with lettuce and tomatoes after they visit. we're a bit disappointed with the number of carrots that grew. i think we must have planted too deep so most of them never germinated. dang. the green beans are up and starting to, well, make beans. maybe a week til the first beans? mmm, fresh squeaky beans. i think we're only a few days from picking some small tasty cucumbers. a couple of the plants aren't looking great (less sun? bad vibes from the adjacent walnut tree? in a low spot so get too wet?), but still have flowers. go figure. even if they don't make it i'm sure we'll have more than enough to eat.

the back flower bed is also doing really well. when we planted the rose bush it was looking a bit rough (had lost some leaves, others were yellowing). it lost a few more after planting and was just kinda hanging in there. then about the middle of last week i noticed just an explosion of new leaf growth, followed by over 20 buds! today the first one started opening up. there rest of the plants are doing good too. it's amazing to think that everything else was just starts from mom's flower beds. the blanket flower has been blooming off and on for a couple weeks. the shasta daisy is about to open up. salvias are starting to send up their shoots. looking good, looking good. especially nice when it's free -- thanks Mom!

today we put in a little bed of butterfly bushes around the a/c condenser... to hide it from view and hide it from the sun. not sure how long they'll take to fill in/up. we also bought a few geraniums to fill in the front beds, just didn't get a chance to put them in. sometime in the next few days i think. we also have some mulch left, so we'll be able to top the beds off in a few weeks after the initial covering settles a bit. i also got to play electrician today and put in a new porch light (old one was rusty to nothingness) and a security light at the back door (old one didn't work). sorry, the pictures of the porch light didn't turn out well and the security light isn't a very interesting picture. especially because i'm afraid the amount of caulk i used would show :-) the original light never had a junction box for it. the wire just kind of poked out the wall and to the light (wire connections out in the open, nice). i didn't feel the desire to tear the wall open to put in a box so i just kind of dealt with what was there (don't tell my dad or brother). i did hide all the connections behind the light so that is good. the attachment method i employed was somewhat shady, but it worked. because it sits on top of the siding, it's not all flush ... so i filled some major gaps with caulk. i think i did a pretty good job of making the whole works watertight so i think we're good. can't be worse than what was there before. oh, and the porch swing is at a more sittable level now.

we have decided that our fellow Noblesvillians really like fireworks. it's been virtually non-stop fireworks for the past 2 days. not just little stuff either. its crazy. we watched the city's fireworks display from an upstairs window. much drier, mosquito & crowd free than the real thing. they were close enough to rattle things in our house though. it's midnight and the neighborhood is still a war zone of bottle rockets and such. sheesh. i'm going to bed. later all.

Monday morning video

2006-06-26T10:08:00.000-04:00

i can't take credit for finding this ... but i love it.

will try to get a "real" post up soon.

the end is in sight

2006-06-11T22:41:00.000-04:00

last week involved more of the landscaping project as you might have expected. we planted the remaining boxwoods and started edging the beds with some brick edgers from Menards (when you say "Menards", you have to say it like that crazy old white-haired guy from their TV commercials ... go ahead, say it ... we're all waiting). actually, they are concrete not brick, but look like brick. we've bought 2 loads thus far (90 edgers total) ... my car must feel like a truck these days hauling loads like that (and all that soil from the other weekend). i think i owe it a wash and wax to make up for what i've put it through. i finished edging front beds this evening, for now at least. i might do a little bit of leveling here and there yet. overall the edging has gone well. making a curve while going up the slope was a bit trying at times, but getting to flat land makes up for it. i'm trying hard to not get too anal with their placement because i know after a winter or two they'll be all shifted and half sunk anyway. but i am still me, so things have to be pretty near perfect for me to be satisfied.

we had a really fun weekend ... not working on the house (except tonight as mentioned) ... as Luke and Gretchen came to visit (giving them a break from working on their place also). it's been a long time since we've hung out. way too long. we goofed around downtown (State Museum, etc.), ate a bunch of good food, saw some movies. can't beat that! would have been nice if the weather had cooperated a bit better ... can't win em all.

hopefully on next week's schedule will be dogwood installation. we were told an order of them should be coming in soon ... hopefully really soon. i'll edge the small bed on the northwest side and get started on the big grass bed tomorrow. i'll have to pick up one more load of edgers after i see exactly how many more we'll need, so that will probably be done Tuesday. we will also likely get a load of mulch delivered sometime this week. once those dogwoods are in it should wrap up quickly, just a little bit of grading, mulching and we're pretty much done. we'll add in some perennials, but that will just be the icing on this cake. we can't wait to see how it will look! it's amazing how much better it looks already. it seems like all of the plantings thus far have gotten thru their initial transplating shock and are back to growing ... grow my pretties ... grow.

i threw in a good Hazel picture. cats sleep a lot. i'm jealous.

Monday morning video

2006-06-05T09:13:00.000-04:00

this is pretty fun.

WANTED: Ivory Halo Dogwood

2006-06-05T00:58:00.000-04:00

the landscaping saga continued this weekend. my Mom was nice enough to come down and help out. we spent quite a few hours Saturday looking for our plants ... a few hours longer than expected. we only know of 2 local nurseries that carry Ivory Halo Dogwood (Cornus alba 'Bailhalo') ... and we need 7 of them to fill the plan we came up with. the place that had probably 30 plants about 2 weeks ago now had 1. the other place had 2 sorta miserable looking specimens. so, we'll have to wait a few days until they get a new shipment in. for such a great plant, it's surprising more places don't stock them.

in other misadventures, i bought the wrong boxwoods on the first try ... so that was fun dragging them all over the place. we got Wintergreen Boxwood (Buxus microphylla koreana 'wintergreen'). we were struggling a bit with an ornamental grass selection for along the front steps. we found some Black Fountain Grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Moudry') at Lowe's so decided to try it. sounds like we need to be careful that it doesn't get invasive, but we'll give it a shot. if it doesn't work well, we can always dig them up ... maybe replace with it's cousin 'Hameln'. holding up the corners, we got Henry's Garnet Virginia Sweetspire (Itea virginica 'Henry's Garnet'). we think we're gonna really like this shrub.

Chrissy and Mom also planted in the small bed on the northwest corner of the house. this included the rose i bought Chrissy a while back- -- Cherry Parfait -- and an assortment of starts from Mom's flower beds (salvia, shasta daisy, blanket flower, etc.). i think it's going to turn out really nice. Mom also brought along starts of my beloved applemint (planted by the shed)... so hopefully soon we'll be brewing up the world's best iced tea whenever we like!

here's my version of a runoff/erosion control system for the sloped portion of the bed ... some random bricks i've accumulated, a bunch of little rocks, and a couple big rocks we've found around the property (there's a ditch/hole under the big rocks). i hadn't really planned on doing anything like this ... it just kind of happened. not sure if it will work ... the next big rain will tell. if it doesn't work, i think having the rocks there still looks nice. once those grasses grow in, erosion shouldn't be a big problem anyway.

in other news, we got a new grill! (to replace our rusted out old mini-grill). found it on sale at my new favorite home supply store ... Menards (sorry Lowe's, you're just too expensive sometimes). grilled some nice tasty pork tenderloin on Sat night. mmm. some "progress" was made on the neighboring houses ... the guy had a ton of trees cut down. bad news about losing those trees ... it makes the ugly houses more visible. hopefully he moves quick in fixing things up.

the plan for this week is to get the last 4 boxwoods in the ground, get those dogwoods bought and put in ... and get a load of mulch delivered and put down. sounds like a bunch of work to me. have a good week everyone!

remove grass, insert grass

2006-05-30T00:30:00.000-04:00

the past week has been pretty busy preparing a new flower bed in the back yard along the alley. it’s actually more of a “fence” than a flower bed. for now, the main reason for it is to hide the ugly backyard of the house next door. we are really tired of looking at the random trash (currently an old broken futon, 2 shopping carts, and chunks of styrofoam) along the fenceline. the owner of the house (he owns all 3 houses at the corner) told me he plans on cleaning up and turning the house into an office and putting a parking lot in the backyard. but, from what we hear he is notorious for not following through on what he says and, well, a parking lot is pretty freakin ugly too. so, we'll hide it with 29 Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' (aka Feather Reed Grass) ... a nice sorta-tall ornamental grass. eventually (next year?) we'll add flowers and such to the bed and have the grasses serve as a nice background.

i started with layout and turf removal on Tuesday night. more removal on Weds. and Thurs. and Fri. and Sat. turf removal stinks. i did salvage some strips to try to fill in some bad spots in the back yard. we’ll wait and see if that works. i think i have unfortunately contributed to robin obesity in the northwest Old Town Noblesville area. as i removed turf i found lots of little grubs. a lot of them. something like 5,200,483 of them (plus or minus, depending on if you count dead ones or not). as i came across one, i would grab it and toss it in the alley. not for any particular reason, just something to do to help pass the time. at some point a few of the local robins caught on to this and began feasting on these suckers. i think i must be some sort of robin superhero or something now. grubman.

finally on saturday afternoon the last of the grass was finally gone (gone as in piled behind the shed). i amended the soil with a little new topsoil and manure and began the hole digging process. of course, i found out that the soil is really rocky so it, like every other project out there, took forever. plus it was stinkin hot (today too). we were gone all day Sunday, so we were back at it today. finally by late this afternoon the last of the holes were dug, the grasses were bought (Chrissy cleaned out 2 Wal-marts). several hundred pounds of manure and topsoil later they were planted! hopefully these guys spruce up and fill in nicely (Wal-mart plants are cheaper than they are nice). after a year or so they should be a few feet in diameter and the plumes should top out around 6'. that should hide the alley junk nicely. not sure what to expect out of them this first year. we shall see. hopefully this week we'll get a load of mulch in, maybe edge it with bricks and call it good.

speaking of filling in nicely, the veggie garden is looking great. last weekend we planted green beans, cucumbers and tomatoes. everything is now up except for the lavendar and we have it on good sources that it takes forever. the peas are growing up the bamboo and jute trellis nicely. the beans are growing almost in front of your eyes. we actually had our first homegrown lettuce salad tonight. tasty.

oh, and Tony found this huge turtle roaming down our street.

ka-blewie

2006-05-20T10:12:00.000-04:00

i found this video that i think its probably pretty close to what happened here the other night. pretty amazing.

i also forgot about the near break-in that we head last weekend. we were in the kitchen and heard scratching on the back door. we figured it was a stray cat or something. i went to the door and looked out the window only to see a squirrel ... on the doorknob. i swear it was trying to open the door. it kind of looked at me ... realized i caught him in the act ... then took off across the alley. so all you fellow Noblesville residents beware, there are some thievin' squirrels lurking about.

celebrating 2 and 26!

2006-05-18T01:50:00.000-04:00

yup, it's that birthday/anniversary time of year again! Chrissy has managed to survive 2 years with me! brave woman she is. we decided to celebrate by spending the weekend in Cincinnati since we were in the area for a wedding on Saturday. my good friend Carl from college went and got himself all married up! we felt so bad for them though. last week was so miserably rainy and it continued into the weekend. the wedding was held out at her parent's land near Brookville Reservoir. the area is beautiful ... a pond, several old barns and houses/cabins, lots of trees, large open expanses of grass ... just gorgeous ... but add lots of water to that and you get mud. lots of mud. georgeous mud, but still mud. they moved the ceremony into one of the barns (which turned out really neat) and had the reception in a big tent. but you still had to get there and the tent was just over grass ... so everyone got pretty muddy. everyone seemed to take it well though and still had a good time ... and they'll have some fun stories about their muddy wedding to tell their grandkiddies. upon leaving, the valets managed to get our car stuck. there were wheels spinning and mud was flying everywhere. it was kind of humorous really. the car was unbelievable coated with mud. so we tracked down a carwash in town before heading into Cincy. unfortunately this picture barely does the mud justice.

we spent the night downtown at the Westin (yeah Hotwire!). very nice. Sunday we got lunch at the world's best rib place ... Montgomery Inn! oh yeah. that is some good stuff. way good. from there we headed to the Cincinnati Zoo/Botanical Garden. in the 2 summers i lived there, i never went ... not sure why. turns out it's really a great zoo. i think they say it's in the top 5 nationally or something. lucky for us, the weather cleared up and we even a few minutes of sunshine! here are a few photo highlights ... everyone loves pictures of animals!

baby flamingo.

baby cheetah being lazy.

about 2 minutes after that picture was taken ... ATTACK! funny kitties. i think Hazel could take them, unless it's thundering outside (she's a wuss when it comes to storms).

these guys totally cracked us up. these are ring-tailed lemurs. we walked up and here these 4 sat on this log like 15 feet up in the air. all lined up, arms out (almost in that meditative finger-pinching stance). i love the sequence of these pictures ... let's all look away ... ok now let's all look back. seeing them there ... i just had to think: Dave, Jim, Nate, Chris (me and my brothers).

not necessarily a "zoo" animal, but there were sure a lot of them there. we wonder what native animals think about these weird creatures they live amongst. hmm.

we encountered this strange bird also. we went into the first room of the bird exhibit and there was this bird standing inside. he was trying to figure out how to get through the automatic doors. after a few minutes we noticed he was gone ... must have got out when the next people came in. we didn't see his little picture in that room, so figured he didn't belong in there anyway. when we went to the next room ... there he was again. hmm. picture not in there either, and he was gone almost right away. the next exhibit wasn't in a separate room, just a little cave-like thing off the hallway. there was a crazy dancing parrot in there ... and that same bird had crawled in and was munching on some food in the back. when we left, he was attempting to leave that exhibit also. we still aren't sure where he was supposed to be. maybe it's just some native Ohio bird that roams in there from time to time?

and of course, lions, tigers and bears ...

we followed up our zoo visit with more great food ... Graeters ice cream. some scoops of black raspberry chip (nothing finer) and mint chip later, we headed home. thus endeth our Cincy trip.

Sunday night Tony came over and we finished off the stumps! and the natives rejoiced (yeah). they provided more of a challenge than we expected considering all the rain we'd had. but, they met their doom nonetheless. Monday we had Chrissy's "birthday dinner" and cleaned up from the stump pulling (dirt and roots were everywhere). Tuesday we had dinner w/ one of Chrissy's college roomates. after that i sharpened the lawn mower blades (got the kit in the mail on Monday) and sort of mowed the yard. i say sort of because it didn't go so well. with all the rain it had grown quite tall ... and it was still wet so the tires would slip which means the blades aren't getting power. i managed to get through it, but it doesn't look good. i'll have to try to trim up tomorrow.

tonight we worked in the garden a while. then things got interesting. just after the hippies won Amazing Race (woohoo, way to go guys!) the power suddenly went out. not the usual dimming, trying to come back on type of outage ... just gone. we were stunned for a second then started to look around to try to figure out what happened. we were looking outside and noticed a flash down the street. we also heard this humming noise, like some sort of motor trying to start. we went outside to see what was going on only to see the light from what obviously was a fire down the street about 3 blocks. it got brighter ... and brighter ... then we saw flames over the buildings .... then a fireball ... then a bigger fireball. i bet it was about 150 feet in the air! Tony and i decided to go check it out. it was a transformer of some sort that blew we heard. by the time we got down there the fire was pretty small and there were already some electrical-type guys looking around. so, we don't have power. i'm typing by laptop-light and candlelight. the fire is still going after almost 2 hours (i just went and checked on it). that probably means we won't have power anytime soon and this post won't actually get posted tonight.

well, sorry this post got so long. what else is a guy to do but blog when there is no power? how did people ever live without electricity? update: just as i finished, the power came back on. good work by the fellas over at Cinergy (or are they Duke Energy now?).

reasons #34, 35, 36 & 37 to live in noblesville

2006-05-09T23:25:00.000-04:00

i guess we have to compete with Nate & Deb about reasons to live where we do ... so here are a few from the last couple days.

- trash week. well, maybe that's not the official name of it, but that's what it's about. this week everyone is allowed double trash pickup and, more importantly, several 30 cy dumpsters are spread about for dumping junk in. conveniently, one of those is about just around the corner. last night, i took this opportunity to dispose of some trash we've been wanting to get rid of. first, 14 trash cans full of pee-stained oak. yes, it's finally gone. no more pile of nastiness in the shed. second, 3 loads of laminate flooring (formerly in sunroom). again, finally gone from shed. 1 load of random sheets of plastic (from the shed). 4 trash cans full of junk from the basement. most of it was found when i worked in the crawlspace this winter, some of it was debris from various projects down there. 3 loads of dirt, leaves, and trash from along the curb. not sure how that much stuff accumulated up there. i guess it has probably been many years since it was cleaned. after that, i was tired. there are still some chunks of brick and piles of coal dust in the old coal storage room, but that will have to wait for some other time.

- top 10 place to raise a family. a recent book has ranked Noblesville as one of the top 10 places to raise a family. so that's good.

- e85. i just realized there is an E85 fueling station down the street. another one just opened up in Carmel also. while i'm not sure ethanol is THE answer to the oil drama, but it's a start i think. if they can improve the efficiency of producing it with corn, it will be a lot closer to an answer (maybe one of several answers). that would also be very good for Indiana seeing as how we have boatloads of corn (and the gov't is still paying some farmers to NOT grow corn).

- May. May in the Indy area means one thing ... racing season. the Indy 500 isn't a one or two day event like most races or sporting events. it's a full month of interest here. rookie orientation/practice began Sunday with full practice sessions opening today. the next 2 weekends have qualifying and more practice. after that, practice, carb day ... and the race. a big client of ours had a suite for the day, so i spent the afternoon out there. nice. dem der cars go real fast, make lots o noise. i'll be out there at least one more time for practice. it's a fun spring tradition. it's always interesting just how many people show up at the track, during the week, just to watch practice sessions. i guess it's a good excuse to not work. i like those. this relates to the previous issue also ... the IRL is switching to ethanol (ethanol/methanol mix this year, ethanol only next year).

in other news, we bought and planted some pots for the font porch and 2 hanging plants. i'll try to post a picture next time.

ok, i think i'm done for now.

spring springeth (like a sprung spring)

2006-05-04T22:10:00.000-04:00

hello again. sorry it's been a while ... things have been on the busy side here. it's been amazing how quickly spring has arrived the past few weeks. trees have leaves, many have had flowers and lost them already, tulips and daffodils have come and mostly gone, grass is growing like mad ... unfortunately dandelions are too. Hazel is loving spring ... mainly sitting in the sunroom, especially when we open the windows. she'll sit out there gazing at ... something, for hours and hours. even after it gets dark.

where do i start? first, the lawn. there has obviously been much mowing to be done. i'm learning that the reel mower gets a bit tough to use in thick, long grass. partially my fault that i'm not mowing frequently enough. it was especially tough tonight as the grass is starting to go into seed... and those little seedheads are tougher to mow through. i probably also need to sharpen the blade on the mower. we've also done a spring fertilizing, crabgrass pre-emergent, and sprayed for weeds. as much as last fall's herbicide did, quite a few weeds survived (dandelions, wild violets, etc.). hopefully they start to thin out as the grass improves. the big dead spots have begun to fill in decently. all-in-all, despite some weediness here and there, the yard isn't in too bad of shape (compared to what it looked like last year).

here is a picture that will warm the hearts of all you poison ivy sufferers out there ... some poison ivy in the throes of death!! mmmwahahahahahaha (evil laugh). finally, we have our vengence! i may have gone a little overboard when i was spraying it with weed killer, but hey ... it deserves it for all the pain and itching it has brought me in my life. this plant got to suffer for all of his nasty bretheren's work. this particular little joy has (hopefully, "had") a pretty well developed structure on the walnut trees by the old garage. i could see it's vine growing about 12 feet off the ground. i located small bits in other locations around the garage and in one small spot alongside the house. i'll have to keep an eye out and keep that stuff away. evil, vile, nasty plant.

in nicer plant news, we also started a garden! from front to back we will have lavender, dill & tomatoes, lettuce (2 rows), carrots, green beans (2 rows, yet to be planted), peas, and cucumbers (on right side, yet to be planted). what you probably can't see is that the lettuce, dill, and peas are peeking through. the peas especially are really hitting it hard. i'll need to build a little trellis for it to grow on soon. mmm, fresh garden veggies (except tomatoes ... yuck). we'll probably do some more planting soon so we get some staggered crops this summer.

we also bought and installed a porch swing. found a really nice one on, of all places, walmart.com. it's made of an indonesian hardwood which is very similar in composition to teak ... yet WAYYY cheaper. i'm sure it's because of some sort of poor farming practices and/or slave labor ... so i apologize for that factor. it should handle the weather very nicely with just yearly oiling with teak oil. and yes, it is a bit high still. we got some extra chain to drop it a little lower ... but it was too low, so need to have a couple links taken off the extensions to get to the sweet spot sitting height.

we've continued planning for our landscaping project. we're getting pretty close to buying plants i think. we got a bit of a head start the other day actually. i was driving home from work and noticed a sign "free ornamental grasses" at a house about 1/2 block from my office. so i stopped in. the very nice lady who lives there was thinning some of her grasses so was giving away the clumps of excess. she showed me around the rest of the things she and her husband had planted around their place and gave me some good hints and tips on our upcoming planting. she offered starts of just about any and every plant she had on the property! it's really nice to find good people like that these days ... too bad it seems to be the exception not the rule. i believe the grasses are "maiden grass" (miscanthus sinensis "gracillimus") based on what she knew about them (miscanthus family, grow to about 5-6 feet with plumes over that). she gave enough clumps for probably 6 good sized (about a foot or so in diameter) starts or more. i think we have a spot for them in our master plan, so hopefully we'll get those in the ground soon.

the stumps are mostly still there at this point. Tony backed his truck over one night and we pulled at them for a while. two of the smaller ones came out, but the bigger two weren't coming. it had been somewhat dry the week or so prior, so they were pretty locked in the ground. one of these days i'll soak the ground around there and we'll finish the job. oh, and Tony decided to make a career change and re-start a lawn care service he had in school. so, if anyone in the Indy area needs someone to mow, just call Tony's Lawn Care (TLC)!

we almost had our own truck to pull out the stumps with ... almost. there was one for sale down the street that i think would have been perfect. but, the guy sold it over the weekend before i had a chance to test drive and make an offer. dang! back to the hunt. so if anyone knows of a 1998 or 2000 Ford F150, 2wd, ext. cab for sale ... let me know.

a few weeks back, we discovered Forest Park across the river. it's really a great park with a lot of neat things to do ... Ross and I especially enjoyed the funky modern teeter-totter. it's nice to see our little town come alive in our first spring here.

i'm sure i'm missing something since it's been so long, but i think that's probably it for now. over and out.

digging out these stumps ... well, it sucks

2006-04-10T23:33:00.000-04:00

if anyone has any hint of ambition to help dig out these stumps, please let me know. applications are now being accepted for any and all shifts. i managed to dig up around about 2 1/2 of the remaining stumps, but it was painful. i have to believe it's just about the most frustrating digging known to mankind. here is a typical digging sequence. (1) insert shovel (2) hit rock (3) insert shovel (4) hit roots (5) repeat steps 1 through 4 approximately 10 times (6) insert shovel (7) dig out dirt (8) go to step 1. occasionally you have the joy of chopping out some roots just to mix things up. Chrissy was a bit confused why i was so frustrated with it ... so i let her dig for a few minutes. it took one shovel for her to understand. i'm gonna try to get the next 2 dug out partially over the next few days then let Tony yank the suckers out. a note to all who ever do landscaping at their house. please, dig out your stumps after you cut down shrubs to save the next homeowners the surprise task of doing it.

ok, so we did some other stuff also. we got the stairway walls primed! finally. this is one we've put off too long. we decided to go ahead and paint the whole upstairs landing area the same color (top color from the living room). we talked about finding a place to transition to something slightly different, but decided it'd be easier to just use the same color everywhere. we have enough leftover anyway and the color will look great up there. painting the stairwell is an interesting task with the height involved, but the amazing Swiss Army ladder made it very do-able. i only almost fell once. Hazel only got primer on her once also, still not sure how. hopefully some evening this week we'll finish the final coat on the areas we've primed. sorry, no pictures of this work yet ... i'll get one when it's done. painting here is frustrating also (thankfully for me, Chrissy did the rest of the house when i was doing the floors), as we find more of the endless poor previous painting and patching work. we just can't understand the thought process that lets someone leave enormous runs in a paint job ... or hideous patching. i know i'm pretty much a perfectionist, but seriously folks. i complain about their work a lot don't i? hmm.

let's see ... we also did some yard clean-up (it seems to be some sort of trash magnet) and pruned the rose of sharon bush in the backyard -- the only piece of landscaping we really have at the moment. we've also been working on planning what we'll do with the rest of the landscaping ... and probably sometime this week our expert will show up to give us some ideas (a friend from college who does landscaping). i've been playing with the house in CAD to help planning. i spent most of the time getting the house looking right (what i could reach is to scale), but threw in a couple quick plants to see what things would look like with some greenery.looks like just about anything up front will help. hopefully in the next week or two we'll have a plan in place and can get started planting.

oh, remember Project #4 "Green me up, Scottie"? well, let's see what weed-n-feed does to a yard with more weeds than grass. pretty nice eh? i thought i should take this picture soon because the seeding i did a few weeks ago i starting to grow ... so hopefully these bare spots will start to disappear. the plan is still to tear out the whole thing this fall and start over (and do some needed grading along the house at the same time). we'll see what the ambition level is come August/Sept.

we toured 2 other houses this weekend ... one older, one newer than ours. we chatted with Tony and Allison from across the street for a while on Sunday and they showed us around their old house (and we gave them the updated tour of ours). they've got a great place there. Saturday we went over to Brad and Rachel's (Chrissy's friend from college) for dinner. they are now in their nice new house. it's so weird to be in a new house where things aren't crooked, cracked, creaky, etc. ... someday.

diggin holes, cutting doors

2006-04-02T19:23:00.000-04:00

it's been a hectic couple of weeks, so sorry about the lack of posts. last saturday (2 saturday's ago) we went to pick up our storm door at Lowe's. i checked some measurements and we crossed our fingers that it would fit in the car (on an angle through the trunk to the back seat). we picked it up ... no good with it in the box. took it out of the box ... no good. dang. hmm. we need a truck! i'm sure many people in the parking lot wondered what crazy people thought they would fit a storm door in a Saturn anyway. we felt pretty dumb out there. in my defense, it was pretty close ... the problem was the sides of the trunk screwing up the angle into the back seat, something i didn't notice when checking measurements. i tried calling a local friend with a truck, but he was gone. so, we took the door back inside, went to Home Depot, rented a truck and came back. annoying. this delay put me behind a bit, but i did get a good start on putting it in before we had to head north for my cousin's wedding. we spent the rest of the weekend around Goshen. we got to hang out with Ross and Sarah for a while which was really nice. we just don't get to see them as much as we'd like. it was also nice to have the Sunday lunch get-together with the fam. those are always good times.

when we got home Sunday night, i went back to working on the door. this is when the problems started. after much diagnosis (a.k.a. confusion, swearing, head-scratching), i determined that the door was just a bit too big (maybe 1/2") for our opening. i think we were kind of in-between sizes, so we got stuck with the size slightly too big (the next one down would probably have been way too small). i don't quite understand how a "custom size" door still comes in standard sizes that you just get to charge more for. hmm. anyway, the problem this caused was at the top of door. there is a piece that trims out the top/provides weatherstripping. because the frame was so "high up" in the opening, there wasn't enough room to slip this piece in properly. i worked on modifying the trim piece in 2 areas and the frame section at the top. by modifying, i mean using a tin snips and cutting off much excess metal. after much laboring, the door was still binding on the trim. arghhhhh. it was getting late, so i just installed the door hardware so the door would latch shut and would wait til another day to finish the rest. bah humbug.

this past week was a work nightmare. i had a big deadline that other prior deadlines had caused to be a big big problem. i worked ... a lot. i was stressed ... a lot. luckily, when i got home Friday i still had a wife.

somewhat spontaneously, we met Michael, Kim, and Steve (Michael's friend) at Turkey Run for some hiking Saturay noon/afternoon. we had a really good time, despite some muddy conditions (muddier for some than others, i'll let those involved tell those stories). the leaves aren't out yet, but it was still nice to get outdoors and get some exercise with some friends/family. i also got to start breaking in my new hiking boots which was nice. this is the pair of shoes i exchanged for after returning from the Grand Canyon (i rid myself of those demon, achilles-killing, death shoes). i think i'm gonna really like these. they are probably a bit heavy for everyday hiking, but not too bad. i really wish the first pair i got would have agreed with my feet, they would have been the perfect hiking/backpacking combo shoe. oh well.

when we got home, i moved back to the frustrating storm door project. i refined my "modifications" to the best they could be ... then did some extreme "bang-to-fit" action on the top frame piece. whatever i did, it seemed to work, just barely! i put an extra screw in the trim piece to hold it ... a slight shift in that piece and we're back to square one. the "too tall" issue struck again when installing the closers. the top closer would bind up on the frame piece, leaving the door stuck closed. that's no good. so, i drilled some new holes and shifted the closer down about 1/2". all good. we have a fully functional storm door! the 1-hour estimated install time advertised didn't quite play out.

today was outside work day. it was going to be "go downtown and watch the Final Four festivities/concerts" but the weather wasn't so hot. we picked up an axe at Menard's on the way home from church and i went to town trying to remove one of five shrub stumps in the front of our house. our lovely previous owners just cut them off and shuffled some mulch over the stumps to try to hide them. after about 2-3 hours of digging (for some reason the hole doesn't look as impressive in the picture as it did in real life) and chopping i managed to rid the yard of one of these beasts. sweet. 4 to go. not sweet. i may not take them as far next time ... Tony from across the street offered to help yank them out with his truck after i get them started. that will save me some time and energy. we also did some yard clean-up and cleaned the porch. our favorite previous owners also managed to splatter paint on just about every surface out there. the cleaner we got didn't work on paint though, so we have to find something else. anyway, that's what's happenin' here in N'ville (along with storms-a-brewin'). have a good week y'all.

hazel orchids

2006-03-23T20:46:00.000-05:00

ok, maybe not "hazel orchids" but Hazel and orchids are sort of the subject here. not a whole lot of house related stuff to discuss ... too much NCAA tourney and too busy at work (and a bit lazy at times). our storm door has arrived at Lowe's, so i might try to get that installed Saturday morning before we head north for my cousin's wedding.

i mentioned a while back that i got a new orchid for my birthday ... so here it is. it's purdy-like. i also included a pic of one of our other orchids that is blooming.

i also included some new pics of Hazel for you cat-curious readers. she has some strange facination with sitting in the laundry basket ... we don't quite understand it. she also likes to be lazy and lay around ... i can understand that. funny story ... i was playing with her the other day. we have what is basically a stick with some feathers on the end that she loves to chase after. for some reason the other night, she was chasing it really intently ... and i started her running in a really tight circle. she just kept chasing and chasing. after probably 7-8 very quick loops she gave up and walked away ... then started to fall over. she had gotten herself so dizzy she could barely walk. it was mighy humorous ... for me anyway. i think she has a growing hatred of me for reasons such as this.

in other birthday related news ... i must share about some other exciting gifts i received. from Chrissy, i got that awesome Far Side collection (i love the Far Side) that has every cartoon Larson ever published. a very cool, very nicely done collection (it must weigh 30 lbs)! this past weekend, Michael & Kim were down and brought my birthday present/our housewarming gift ... TIVO! also very cool. we can be so much more efficient in our TV watching now :-)

well, i think that's about it for now. looks like Duke is turning it around vs LSU. Ben will be happy.

Update: sorry Ben, Duke sputtered out after all. my NCAA bracket takes yet another big hit. ouch.

progress is good

2006-03-12T21:40:00.000-05:00

hello again. it seems i forgot to mention a fairly big event 2 posts ago ... Chrissy started her new job about a month ago! she's over at Community Hospital now, splitting between the East and North campus. so far, it's going well ... she has met some very nice people and enjoys a somewhat different caseload. she really misses her old friends at St. E's, but the drive and unknown direction/future of the hospital were wearing on her. Community calling her out of the blue turned out to be an amazing blessing.

things have been pretty good the past week. i'm feeling quite a bit better, in all regards. so that is good. i do appreciate the nice calls and emails i have received. thank you! i did manage to get what i believe is poison ivy or poison oak from doing that outside cleanup the other week. it's not too bad, but i wouldn't mind just being done with it. i'm reacting a bit different than i typically do with poison ivy, that's why i wonder if it's poison oak ... although i kind of thought they did the same thing. it does seem to be getting better, so that's all i care about. i think humanity needs to hire someone to go out and kill ALL poison ivy/oak/sumac. it can't possibly do any good. seriously.

in other progress, Saturday we did quite a few errands/cleaning around the house. we hung up some more things, including a neat shelf thing over the range (maybe a picture when we get the camera back). i "built" a mini entertainment center in the office ... and if you know me and building entertainment centers, you know it involves some concrete blocks. only 4 this time, so rest assured for those who help us move next ... it won't be as bad as previous moves! we also bought a dead bolt for the back door, but the locksmith up the street couldn't make it out to install it yet. hopefully next week sometime, providing some surgery goes well for him. he's a nice old man, so i hope all goes well for him. i also put a few "final" light/outlet covers on. i THINK i've found them all now. i think. i'm sure somewhere there is an outlet laughing at me, thinking it has won. mark my words, i will find you ... and put a cover on you.

Saturday evening we had a good portion of the "Indy folks" over for a game night. after lots of the usual hanging out and chatting and giving the tour to first-timers to the house, we had 2 entertaining games of the classic, Clue! it's really funny to watch a room full of post-college, think-we-are-all-very-smart, competitive people discussing winning Clue strategies as quietly as possible with their teammates. the various "systems" people had were quite interesting. the whole evening was a great time, it's something we've wanted to do for a while, just hadn't had the chance.

today was a bit of a lazy day ... i was enthralled with some good sports, much to Chrissy's enjoyment. did anyone see that BC/Duke game?? wow, that was great ... JJ Redick is an unreal shooter. and it was nice to see the US pull out the bottom of the 9th win against Japan in the WBC. go team. i'm quite pumped for March Madness time again ... gotta love hours and hours and hours of non-stop college basketball. funny, no one ever says that about NBA basketball. Chrissy is really looking forward to it as you might guess.

oh, and it's raining a lot ... you'd think we were in Portland. which, by the way, we are currently making plans to visit in July (to visit Nate & Deb --- my bro and his wife). we are very excited about this trip ... we really miss spending time w/ N&D. so, if anyone sees or talks to them, make every attempt to persuade them to move back to Indiana. i know, its probably a lost cause, but you never know.

old man?

2006-03-07T23:44:00.000-05:00

wow, i turned 27 today. 30 sure is creeping up quickly. that is pretty unbelievable. shouldn't i only be like 18 or something?

PS: i saw my first new (C6) Corvette Z06 on the road today (see "off road" picture a few posts down), in Carmel of course. i thought at first it was my birthday present, but the guy just drove past me. maybe the guy was just tricking me and will give it to me tomorrow when i'm not expecting it? yeah, i bet that's it.

ok, finally a post

2006-03-06T22:13:00.000-05:00

welllll. sorry everyone. i'm back. i apologize for the delay. i didn't mean to leave you all hanging like that. i've been sick (more on that later) so just haven't had it in me to get anything posted. not all that much has happened in the past month anyway, so you haven't missed out on all that much.

there was one thing as was hinted at on that last post, we did indeed get a cat. i know, shocking, a Miller got an indoor cat! i think it was on Saturday, Feb 11. the cat we had thought we wanted (Lily from the last post) was adopted during the week, so she wasn't available. we visited several pet stores who offered adoptions, as well as the humane society. as i was just typing, the cat just climbed across my laptop only to sit on top of my right arm of all places (guess her ears were burning). ok, that's better. we were close to taking a younger cat from the human society, but we just weren't sure. it seemed just a tad on the over-energetic/mischievous side. the last place we checked was the Petsmart here in Noblesville. the first cat we played with was pretty much not interested in people. so, we played with this older cat a couple cages down. Chrissy was hooked in just a few minutes. the cat instantly took to us and was climbing all over Chrissy. we decided to go for it! so, Hazel entered our home.

Hazel is roughly 5 years old ... and fairly small (about 9 lbs). that's about all we know. she seems to have been part of a good home before, she definitely enjoys being around people. after only an hour or so of exploring her new home, she was comfortable with us and had found her litterbox! she loves to climb up on Chrissy's lap (she's definitely her favorite human) in the evening and just nap. if she's not around, even I will do (as in she is now leaning up against me and sleeping). all in all, she's a very laid back cat. she loves to nap on top of the air vents (i think she is hinting that i keep it too cold in here). she goes into crazy, psychotic play mode when given a "hit" of catnip. i always thought that was some urban legend ... NOT TRUE. she goes completely nuts for that stuff. i think we let her OD a little bit yesterday afternoon ... she took a LONG nap after the high wore off. she has gotten into a little mischief, mostly being in places where she shouldn't (on top of the stair rail, in the basement, counters, etc.). she also ate most of one of our orchids (grrrrr...). Chrissy has been doing a good job of keeping her and her litterbox clean (no bad smells except her breath after eating; only one or two episodes of me feeling allergic to her; minimal hair around the house). so, we have cat. Andy seems suspicious, but they haven't met yet ... and hopefully they won't.

in other news, we got a fun visit from my mom yesterday afternoon. we ate a great meal at The Cheesecake Factory (mmm, fish tacos and cheesecake) and strolled through the new Crate & Barrel at Keystone. she brought some great cake along, which reminds me, i need to get another piece in a few minutes. for my birthday she got me this awesome orchid (no pic yet) as well as ... get this ... Porta-pit chicken (not to be confused with the Porta-nailer that i used to install the hardwood floors)! for those of you who are unfamiliar with this ... you would be confused as to why this is a good present. it's only the best tasting chicken you've ever tasted! i've only ever seen it in northern Indiana, so it's always a treat for me to have it again. i can't wait to eat it tomorrow night.

apart from the above, not all that much is new around here. we watched a lot of Olympics. we were happy to see Crash and Reese Witherspoon win Oscars last night (but still think Joaquin Phoenix should have won, although we didn't see Capote to compare). we went out of town a couple weekends: for Chrissy's dad's birthday and my mom's birthday (left our camera at Chrissy's parents ... thus some of the better pics of Hazel are "unavailable" for posting). i was going to put a storm door on the house on Saturday, but it turns out our old house needs a custom door (custom = opportunity to charge twice the price). that should be here in about 1.5 weeks and supposedly will take less than 1 hour to install (thus saith the display model). that should help us with draftiness at our door ... something i should have done months ago. i also did a little outdoor cleanup to get a jump-start on spring and tossed down some grass seed in the areas where last fall's weed-n-feed showed us where exactly we had that weed part. so, that should help our lawn look a little more decent this year.

ok, regarding the sickness thing. this is a little more personal than i like to go on a blog ... but i know mostly friends and family look at this (if you don't know me, feel free to skip the rest of this posting) ... and frankly, i have a selfish reason for writing about it: i want your help (plus it will do me good to write about it). the sickness has really been two-fold. first, i got a pretty annoying sinus infection in late Jan/early Feb. mainly i was dealing with a lot of sinus pressure, congestion and tiredness. i finally gave in and went to urgent care about 2 weeks ago when i started feeling worse (you know it is bad when i go to a Doctor). i've been on an antibiotic since (1 more day). the actual worst part of the sinus infection turned out to be ... me. i was getting overly stressed about symptoms and thinking i was way sicker than i was (i went from "having" cancer to diabetes and menengitis, i might as well have been Mr. Burns -- having every disease known to man, but they were working in equilibrium, mysteriously keeping him alive) ... thus ending up making myself sicker (getting worked up, anxious, etc.). i went to our family doctor about a week ago to check the progress of the sinus infection and he decided to make sure nothing else was wrong with some blood tests, more for my peace of mind (blood tests all came back good).

i think the sinus infection part is pretty much done, but part two of the sickness is still there ... and this is where i want your help. i think that the the extreme stress of the rush to get things ready to move in, then an intense move-in day and "moving in"... plus the normal stresses in my life (work, etc.) left me physically, mentally, and emotionally spent ... empty ... gone ... toast. i found myself constantly tired and generally disinterested and unmotivated. yeah, probably a bit of that scary sounding "D" word snuck in on me (not officially diagnosed though, but the Doc said getting myself talking about my stresses would be advisable). i think that probably weakened my immune system, leading to the sinus infection. from there, my weakened mental/emotional state took me down a rough road. my lack of appetite during the worst times took me to a weight i haven't seen since high school. i don't recommend it as a diet plan.

the good news is (thank God there IS good news), i do think i am getting better. i've been generally feeling more like myself for about the past week now. moreso the last few days, but i still have moments of relapse. Chrissy has been doing a good job of getting me to talk about things ... something that is not exactly my strength. i'm not totally there yet, but the start is there. here is where i want your help. i really would appreciate your prayers for my physical and mental/emotional state. i have really felt God's presence through these tough times, comforting me when i really need it. it can only help to get some more of those requests lifted up to Him on my behalf. you can trust that they are truly appreciated. these next few weeks look to be very busy/stressful at work, so i'll need any help i can get to help me through.

i'm a firm believer that good can come from everything and i think my lesson from this situation became apparent about a week ago: i need to work much harder on my relationship with God and my relationship with Chrissy. its amazing what God and my wife can do for me, if i only open up my life and let them. i can't stress this enough. don't learn it the hard way like i am.

anyway, sorry about the "heavy" content of this post. since most of you i don't get to see regularly, i felt you deserved to know what was happening. plus, like i said, i think it is a positive step for me just to share what is going on. i'm trying hard to keep "unstressed", keeping a positive attitude, praying a lot, and getting lots of hugs from my wife. oh, and i think Hazel is trying to help ... she's still laying beside me, obviously, Chrissy isn't home from her Bible study yet :-). i promise, it won't be a month until the next post. adios.

meow?

2006-02-06T20:41:00.000-05:00

hello again. we managed some productivity on the house this weekend, horray for us! saturday we moved the old hardwood floor wood remains off the old garage slab and into the little shed (after some clean-up/reorganizing inside the shed). it had been sitting there waiting for room in the garbage to get disposed of slowly. but, we've had too much junk from inside that we haven't gotten to that wood. long story short, there was a "request" that we expedite the process. the annoying trash service hasn't been helping, as they don't always take everything we leave out, even if we're within our 4 bag/can limit. we're confused about that deal. so, we'll slowly remove the old hardwood from the shed instead of the old slab. oh, and of course it was cold and snowy for the first time in a month on saturday. wheeee!

we also made a good Lowe's run for some other weekend projects. other things completed include: towel bars in downstairs bathroom, re-install of upstairs towel bar, new shower head in downstairs bath, smoke detector in basement, pipe insulation on hot water pipes in basement, new lights in upstairs bathroom (see pic), new kitchen light (see pic), and new hallway light upstairs (no pic, same roundish light as in bedrooms). i also made and updated the "official" to do list (electronic version ... not misc. scribblings on 3 scattered pieces of paper). not bad.

all this and we still managed to see Walk The Line on Friday night (thanks for the giftcard Traci) and rented Hotel Rwanda on Saturday (thanks for the giftcard Steve & Lori). both were excellent, excellent movies. Reese & Joaquin both deserve Oscars for their performances ... wow, to think neither one was a singer/musician at all before that movie. Don Cheadle was also amazing in Hotel Rwanda. great movie, it's surreal/maddening how the world treated that event. granted i was only 15 at the time and didn't follow world events like i do now, but how do i not even remember an event where nearly 1 million people were murdered? did anyone remember this prior to seeing the film? did it even hit the front pages of American media? was i asleep in 1994? sheesh.

in other news, the past two weeks or so, we've been noticing some "guests" off and on in the backyard. we've noticed quite a few stray cats roaming around, but there were 2 somewhat young cats who've kept hanging around (see pic). the white one has been very friendly. the black/gray one seems fairly scared of people but is getting more daring. we've gotten a kick out of watching them play in the back yard (the white one thinks it's some fierce hunter ... stalking and pouncing on blades of grass, dirt, leaves, us, etc.). this got us thinking. Chrissy, as i'm sure most of you know, really has wanted a dog for a long time. i, on the other hand, have really really not wanted a dog. i generally don't like most cats, but cats with the right personality i have found to be fun. however, cats as pets don't have some of the annoyances of dogs as pets = the reasons i don't want a dog (they go to the bathroom in a box--not in the lawn, go to the bathroom on their own time--not yours, no walking, no training, can be left alone longer, don't have that doggie smell, are generally cleaner animals, less likely to chew up your house, cheaper, etc.). thus, we have been exploring the possibility of a cat as a pet (Andy is voting "no" to dogs and cats). it gets us a pet that is "easier" to play with (no offense Andy) which is what Chrissy has been wanting, but provides less annoyance for me. maybe a good compromise. we toyed with the idea of seeing if our stray cat friends would get tame enough to keep as pets, but are leaning toward adoption instead. sooo ... maybe we'll have a cat soon??? maybe this one?

here's a question for the viewers ... what should we do about getting a truck? we should have got one a while back to haul materials and help with moving (you'd be amazed at the things i shoved in my car), but with the expenses at the time it wasn't feasible. we still have lots of upcoming uses for a truck (lots of landscaping to do, etc.) so it would be very helpful to have one (it would also be my daily driver to get to work). my car is getting up there in mileage, so is due for a round of more costly maintenance items (brakes, tires again, tune-up, etc.). so, it should probably happen soon (esp. before spring landscaping season -- i don't want to haul mulch in my trunk). i toyed with keeping the car and getting a junker truck for hauling, but having 3 vehicles doesn't sound fun. i'm leaning towards a full-size, long bed hopefully with an extended cab of some sort. i've studied Edmunds.com a lot, but nothing has come up as a good option. i'm thinking something 1-4 years old to keep mileage down, but miss out on the worst of the depreciation years (and less cost). reliability is a big factor. a basic assortment of features is all i'd want (CD, cruise control, power locks, etc.). what do you think out there? what is the truck for me? should i go full size? anyone have a good, reliable truck they want to sell us?

detroit rock city

2006-01-26T20:33:00.000-05:00

well, we survived another outing to Detroit, although it was iffy at times. ok, not really. Detroit isn't really as bad as people make it out to be (esp. now that it is all cleaned up for the Super Bowl). it does have its moments though. if you're in the market for a neat, old burned-out or abandoned house, it's your city. that place is a house-fixer-upper's dream (or nightmare depending on how you look at it).

we had a great time there though. as usual, we went to the auto show. the highlight was of course the new Corvette Z06. saweeeeeet! we saw it at the show (i sat in it ... niceeee) and at the Renaissance Center (where we ate lunch - see picture). the next coolest car was the concept for the new Camaro. very nicely executed by the folks at GM (way to be Ben). apart from cars, we saw famous people too! aren't we cool!? at the Ren-Center, we arrived just as some event was ending where country stars Big & Rich performed and Cal Ripken Jr. (famous baseball player), Jimmie Johnson (NASCAR star), and Ron Fellows (Corvette Racing driver) were signing autographs (we were too hungry to wait).

Besides the show, we did the usual touring around Detroit with master-Detroit-tour-guide Ben. we found out he knows more about the city than people who have lived there their whole lives :-) we visited the John K. King Used and Rare Books store which was really cool. and to the
Plymouth Ice Spectacular, which wasn't quite as spectacular as advertised (and some of the sculptures broke in the sun). Ben also gave us a neat tour of his office/building at GM. we also ate lots of good food ... thai, deep-dish pizza, good breakfast, etc.

we spent friday evening with our friends Dan & Julie (i met Julie at Purdue). we had dinner and had a good time catching up on what was going on with each other. i think we scared them a bit with tales of our Grand Canyon trip! it was fun hanging out with them, we only wish we got to do it more often than once a year.

sunday we visited Genesis church with Ben, Dan & Julie, and our friends Steve & Alyssa. also a good time and a neat church.

since then, been caught up with other things so nothing really new at the house. we hope to knock a few things off the list this saturday though. ok, i think that sentence counts as "house related" to make this post legal for a blog about our house. i also think i went a bit crazy with the links on this post. maybe?

i'm a slacker

2006-01-18T20:34:00.000-05:00

sorry, i did it again. i've been meaning to post more, we've just been busy with random things (out of town, friends in town, etc.) and haven't done all that much with the house lately (post-Colts/Bears loss depression). we've downshifted a bit, i guess you'd say. but, some things have been done since i last posted. for some reason it seems harder to post now when i'm here all night compared to going back to the apartment after working here. i think there is a greater laziness factor involved somewhere.

well, i got started refinishing the stairs. it's going to be a slow process, slower than anticipated anway. the treads are really aged and have some sort of deep grooves in them. i don't plan on sanding the grooves out, it would take too long, but trying to make it look nice will take some time. also, when the previous owners did the last painting of the walls/ceiling around there, they did it to their usual quality standard -- (crap) -- and dripped and splashed all over the stairs. getting that paint off takes some time. i'll be using a mix of 50, 60, and 120-grit sandpaper to accomplish the task on a combo of two sanders. first, a Porter Cable 333K 5" random orbit sander ... for the majority of the sanding. for edges and corners, i'll be using a Black & Decker FS540K 1/4 sheet palm sander (a nice Christmas present from Lydia that i work with -- company gift exchange). i got a better quality filter for the shop vac to use while sanding to hopefully limit the carryover to the rest of the house. i think it helped the suction power also ... watch out, you'll lose your arm in there (i accidentally sucked up a 1" wood chisel all the way through the hose -- and that's not a light tool). i'll be staining them the same stain as the floors (leftovers). instead of polyurethane though, i think i will use shellac (leftover from sealing in potential urine remnants in subfloors). it's kind of an old-fashioned product, but really is still one of the best wood sealers there is (and cures much faster than poly, so we won't have to crawl in through the windows or anything to get around the stairs while they dry -- unlike a certain brother of mine who shall remain nameless ... well, he has a name, it might start with "D" and end in "ave" - i only wish i was there to have watched that -- makes me very glad we had the option of doing most of the hardwoods before we were moved in). i'm sure they'll look different than the floors (different wood species, different finish), but i think it will look nice when done. i hope to knock a chunk of that out in 2 saturdays (we'll be making our annual Detroit visit this weekend -- visiting my friend Ben and going to the auto show).

last night, i added to the home theater, sort of. we have really odd power fluctuations here ... we have since we bought the place. after the electric service upgrade, my brother (Jim) put a voltmeter to the line and was able to watch considerable spikes and surges. i have had Cinergy out to look at it 3 times, but still no resolution. the last time, they installed a recording voltmeter for several days to see if they can figure out what is going on. it is frustrating, but i feel they are making a real attempt to solve it. i plan to call tomorrow to see what they have found. apart from the annoying light flickerings every 15 mins or so, the real problem is that those sudden peaks and valleys are really rough on electronics. they won't damage it per-say, but they will degrade their output and lessen their life over time. so, the addition was a nice power conditioner, the APC H15. this slick unit provides isolated noise filtering (improve performance), high level surge protection (no more lightning worries) and automatic voltage regulation (boosts power during valleys, trims power during peaks). Monster Power (and others) makes many power conditioning units, but their only voltage regulating product costs around $2000 (wayyyyy too much ... overpriced, like everything they make/sell). for the APC unit, i spent about 10% of that through a great internet special. i'm sure some of the filters and such aren't as good and i know that it isn't regulating voltage to as precise of levels, but for the price i couldn't beat it. and i know that APC knows a thing or two about power management. plus, thanks to my mad fantasy football skills this year ... i guess you could say it was free :-) (the rest of my "skills" will go toward the future tool fund i think).

the other completed items weren't as interesting (they didn't involve power tools or electronics, as much anyway). i installed some wireless doorbells and two smoke detectors (still need to get one for the basement though, dunno why i forgot that). we put a shade on the front door and have the office mostly organized. we got the old apartment cleaned and the rest of our stuff out of there also, so that part of our life is over. our friend Aaron picked up the leftover carpeting to use in his basement, so the mudroom was reorganized to better use the space. i also finally got the ductwork fixed (for now) at the sunroom. we were up north helping Jim's family move the other weekend, so i had him pick up the needed 90 at his supply house. while putting it in, i realized the piece of ductwork prior to the 90 was in much worse shape than i thought (surface rust was deeper than thought), so i put the 90 in sort of temporarily (foil tape, no screws) until i replace the other piece (low priority, when i'm bored some day ... maybe in 3 years). we also got the spare bedroom cleaned-up/organized and are working the carpet padding remants out with the trash. we also had our recycling bin delivered, so we can finally be good stewards of re-usable products.

well, i think that's it for today. i'm not sure what the next project will be ... but i'll try to keep this more up to date.

PS: if anyone in the central Indiana area would have a home for one or two nice dogs, please check out my friend Pervis's blog. he is leaving for the Peace Corps before long and needs to find homes for these guys.

yes, we are alive

2005-12-29T22:22:00.000-05:00

ok, sorry about leaving you all hanging. we just have been really busy so haven't had time to post anything. yes, so we did move. it was a rough weekend but we survived. although, it was a bit iffy for me on the Monday after. since then, it's been a flurry of activity trying to actually move IN.

our applicances arrived the Sunday after we moved, so that was nice. they all are functioning nicely. we are especially impressed with how well the washer washes and how quiet it is doing it. we got one of those new high-efficiency front-loaders (by Kenmore) ... we highly recommend it. the range (here it is in white, also Kenmore) and fridge (Kenmore Elite Trio) are doing well, although we still haven't officially "moved-in" to the fridge. we brought a few essentials, but still haven't moved the rest of the stuff from the apartment. one thing we are realizing about stainless steel appliances .... DON'T TOUCH!

the first few nights were spent unpacking and situating things. next, we hung curtains and roman shades ... lots and lots of them. they turned out nice, except the lady at JC Penny didn't know what she was talking about with the curtain panel widths ... 2 of the windows we can't totally "close". so, we'll need to exchange for longer panels or add another set of small ones.

once things were mostly in order, it was on to finishing up the "construction" projects (most of which happened this week since i took the week off). i trimmed the hardwoods around the vents so that the covers could go on ... well, almost. i hit a snag on the one in the sunroom ... the elbow in the ductwork that turns up to the vent pretty much broke apart in my hands when i tried to adjust it. so, i'm still trying to hunt down a 12" round 90-degree elbow (PS: they don't carry it at Lowe's, HD, or Menards). a local HVAC contractor was supposed to call me back ... but hasn't. i also still need to do the return air covers, but will finish those when i get back to the sunroom one.

i also did some more insulating. first, foam in the gaps between the hardwoods and exterior walls (stop drafts). next, some R-30 over the downstairs bathroom (another example of the poor previous construction -- no insulation over the ceiling). i think that we could tell a difference there immediately ... the bathroom stays much warmer during a shower (and we might add, it's a wonderful mystical experience showering in our "shell shower"). then today, i put some R-19 under the sunroom floor and up the walls of the crawlspace, along with a vapor barrier (plastic sheeting) on the ground. now there is a lovely time, working in a crawlspace. i couldn't help but wonder how many dead hobos were buried in there ... and what their names might be (i like "Guesstimate Jones"). now i bet your thinking, that sounds like fun (putting fiberglass insulation in a crawlspace, not burying hobos silly). well ... you'd be wrong. eventually, i'd like to get some insulation under more of the floors to hopefully make them feel warmer, maybe some other time.

lots of other miscellaneous items were also done: new switch and light bulbs (60W-ers on a dimmer instead of 100W-ers = much better) in dining room, more switch/outlet covers, hanging pictures, re-working the dryer vent (temporary fixes, total re-do later), misc. decorating, re-keying the locks, organizing our box "collection" in the basement, etc. i also got a new toolbox to hold most of my tools (except power tools) and got a storage box with little drawers to hold and sort all the misc. nails, screws, etc. we have (both using Christmas giftcards ... thanks Mom and Michael & Kim!). that and the toolbox made for some fun sorting/organizing projects. i also got (also using giftcards) a nice collection of tips/bits for the drill ... suh-weeeeeet! oh, and we got a Christmas tree! if you go 2 days before Christmas, you can get them for super cheap (we got an "expensive" one ... for $8.75).

upcoming, i need to put in new doorbells (wireless--easy project), add some weatherstripping to the front door, refinish the stairs (pulled staples tonight), get shoe molding put in, some final painting, and picture hanging among other things. we also need to get out of the apartment by the end of Saturday. i went and did most of the cleaning today, but we have a couple loads of random stuff to bring back still.

oh, and in the meantime, we left for about 2 days to visit Chrissy's uncle in southern Illinois. it had been quite a while since we'd seen them. we had a lot of fun there, well worth the drive.

i've sprinkled some current pictures throughout this post and have put some more on the flickr page (along with some old ones that i never uploaded - i recommend looking at the "During" set ).

quick update

2005-12-22T12:37:00.000-05:00

alright, sorry i've left you all hanging. here's a quick lunchtime update:

we did move. i was sick (Fri-Mon). then i was really tired and sick (Sat. - Tues.). we ARE living in the new house! we are mostly unpacked, mainly just need to hang pictures and organize the office more. the computer hasn't been hooked up to the internet yet (need a longer cable for temporary use while i wait on the wireless products to arrive -- no cable jack in office), thus no updates (in addition to no time). we've managed to hang most of the curtains/shades, but that's about the extent of the "home projects" since the move. there are some smaller ones that need to be done soon though (refinish stairs, trim out hardwoods at vents, install shoe molding, more insulating, more faceplates, etc.).

we will be out of state (southern Illinois) for most of the weekend, so don't expect any major updates (or pictures) until next week -- unless something weird happens, like a rip in the time-space continuum giving me more time to do stuff each day. i think that would qualify as weird? yes?

hope everyone has a great Christmas! we've been so busy, it hardly even feels like that time of year for us :-(

presenting ...

2005-12-16T00:05:00.000-05:00

... our new floors (cue "Hallelujah Chorus"):
they are done! we peeked in at two points in the process (Monday night after sanding and staining, Weds night after 2nd coat of poly) but didn't really see the finished product til tonight. we are very very happy with the results! the stain turned out great - a nice overall tone with a nice variety of colors. it really brought out some of the very unique grain patterns in the different pieces. it's fun to just walk around and look at how neat some of them look. it definitely turned out great. definitely worth all the effort we put in. unfortunately, due to the wacko lighting situation we still have (either not enough light or way too much) the pictures don't quite do it justice. you'll just have to come visit to experience them for yourselves.

apart from admiring the floors, we did a lot of cleanup tonight. the carpet guy is coming tomorrow to re-lay the carpet in the bedrooms. so, we had to remove all the sawdust, tools and leftover wood so that could happen. we cleaned up the mudroom and kitchen also, moving a lot of the tools and random things to the mudroom. some stuff went to the basement, where i laid out a big sheet of heavy-duty plastic sheeting for protection from potential water seepage (the walls are a bit leaky at times ... that's a springtime project). Chrissy also got a lot of the switch and outlet covers put on. all in all, it looks so much better now that it's somewhat cleaned up and organized (the finished floors don't hurt either). you know me, can't go 5 feet without organizing something.

prior to tonight, we mostly worked on packing up. we have most things ready to go. we also did a little shopping for some last minute house needs (and got Andy some much needed new food) and finally ordered some rug pads. we still plan on moving on Saturday. so, if anyone (especially if you are skilled at lifting and carrying heavy things) is in the area, feel free to stop by. we could use the help. we'll let you touch and smell the new floors for 30 seconds for every box/item you carry. heck, i'm feeling generous ... i'll make it 45 seconds.

Project #1 (our work): Done -- Project #3: Almost done

2005-12-12T23:25:00.000-05:00

well, much has happened since the last real update. most of it involved painting and laying floor. we worked really late Tues, Weds and Thurs night. i finished trimming out the end rows of the living and dining rooms, and created the transition into the kitchen. by Thurs night, the difficult portion of the kitchen was done (transition and starting rows) and i was a few feet into the main field. Chrissy moved steadily through the painting and had the living room primed and painted up to the stairs (we think the colors are turning out great). Friday night was my company Christmas party so we got the night off. we had a great dinner and saw a wonderful performance of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". it was another late night though, so no extra sleep to be had.

Saturday, we spent the first part of the morning at Sears buying all our appliances (special morning sale). they'll be delivered this coming Sunday. then straight to the house for more work. my dad came down yet again to make some progress on the few remaining electrical items. he relocated an outlet for the fridge in the kitchen (into the wall instead of a surface mount). then the major project was the mudroom. he ran new power for an existing outlet plus one new one for the washer/dryer. he also put a new outlet in the bathroom and put up the new light we bought. he rewired the mudroom light (put up a new one) and made it a 3-way switch so we can turn it on at the back door also. he also spent considerable time sitting on top of the shower (yes, on top of the shower and i'm kicking myself for not taking a picture of that) cleaning up the awful mess that is the old wiring. basically, much of the wiring before came out of the old electrical panel as modern wiring (very deceptive by the previous owners if you ask us ... the appearances of modern wiring when in fact 95% of the house used some knob-and-tube wiring still). the modern wire ended for several circuits above the shower where they simply tied into old knob-and-tube wiring. we had previously gotten everything off the old wiring circuits, but he was able to clean things up and utilize the existing modern wire portions for our new mudroom circuits. very tricky he is. again, my theory of the addition (mudroom & bathroom) being horidly constructed holds true. my list of prime examples grows with every project - just ask me sometime and i'll be happy to rant about it for you. so, the electric stuff is pretty much done except for the sunroom light and installing some undercounter lights in the kitchen (plus putting on switch covers and hanging a light or two ... small things). that's very good.

meanwhile, Chrissy worked on the final coat of paint in the bedroom and some misc. touch-ups. her parents stopped in on their way home from Florida so she was able to spend some time with them and show them the progress which was nice. her dad also helped me with a few flooring tasks. i spent all day working on finishing up the kitchen and getting started on the upstairs hallway. the kitchen only went so-so, as i started having issues with the floor nailer. more on that later. i was fortunate to have help from my friends Chad and Brad in getting the upstairs landings prepped. they did the annoying task of getting the door frames cut down and getting the floor ready for the new hardwood. later, Brad and Sara (his wife) managed to get knots/chips/gaps in the hardwood filled in the entire living room. big help! we worked until around 11:30 or so.

then there was Sunday. Sunday didn't go so smooth for me -- everything took 3x longer than it should. Chrissy painted the sunroom and did some touchups. she also did wood filling in the dining room, kitchen, sunroom and hallway. i spent the day battling the stupid floor nailer among other things. the ratcheting mechanism is messed. due to the hallway layout, it was tough to always get a good solid hit on the nailer. normally, the ratcheting device would allow you to just hit it again to drive it home. not so anymore it seems. instead, any slight little mis-hit would end up requiring setting the nail -- which can be a really time consuming process with those flooring nails. also, i was battling some out-of-squareness of the walls, resulting in some gaps i wasn't so happy with. all in all, not going smoothly. Chrissy finished with everything else and came up to help me. slowly, but surely we got it finished (right about midnight - would have been about 5 a.m. had we not had that help on Saturday) including holes filled and a quick vacuuming. this included a scary moment of me hitting my wrist with the hammer really hard. not pleasant. one pleasant thing about Sunday (besides getting the floors done and the Colts winning), we bought what we'll call my Christmas present for this year ... a cordless drill! i needed one for installing the nosing piece at the top of the stairs, so it was a good time to make the investment. i'll do a little blogging about what i got later on. i'm quite pumped.

as you could expect, we were extremely exhausted today (and i hurt just about everywhere ... either from injury or just plain soreness) but i met the guys from Griffith Hardwoods this morning to start them on the finishing. same good guys from before. they were very complimentary of the results, which made me feel good. we both stopped in tonight to check on the progress and were very excited about the results! they had it all sanded and stained like they thought they would! it turned out great (sorry, didn't have the camera along for pictures)! they will put a coat of poly on tomorrow and Weds ... and it's done! it's going to be so exciting to see the final results of such a long and oftentimes painful project. NOT including the first day of work with my uncle and cousin ... i used roughly 6500 flooring nails and roughly 1200 finish nails. way more than you would normally expect, but so often you needed to use a lot to get the warping out of the boards ... or you'd have misfires to re-do. no wonder my hand was hurting so much ... that is a lot of impacts of a 2.5 lb. mallet hitting the nailer. it was a good experience though and it will be rewarding to look back over the years and see the results of the hard work. thank you so much to all of you that helped.

tonight we "relaxed". we got a lot of the upstairs stuff packed and i caught up on a ton of bills. tomorrow, more of the same ... get packed up. Friday we have someone coming out to re-lay the carpeting in the bedrooms. Saturday ... we move! holy crap Batman. can that day really be that close? are we really actually going to live there?

finally

2005-12-12T00:32:00.000-05:00

floors done. just got home (12:20 am). i feel like death. can't wait for a day at work (real job) so i can rest a little.

so tired, need sleepy

2005-12-11T00:12:00.000-05:00

sorry no posts ... and this post is only to tell you that there are no posts. all i can say is we're working our tails off. we need sleep. hopefully an update with pictures and such on Monday. go Colts tomorrow, err ... later today i guess.

the good, the bad, the ugly

2005-12-05T23:04:00.000-05:00

first, the good. the hardwood floor and painting projects made decent progress this weekend. we worked all day Saturday and Sunday afternoon (after halftime of the Colts game, 12-0 baby!) through late evening. our friend Kristi came over on Saturday and helped Chrissy paint the dining room. we ran way short of paint in there (but had a lot of excess Pepto-primer, go figure). i think it was just the fact that you need a lot of paint to get that deep of a red color. we got another gallon and Chrissy finished it up on Sunday. it really looks nice. it makes the room feel a little bit smaller, but not in a bad way. just a very cozy, warm space. we definitely need to get lower wattage bulbs in the light to help hide some of the "character" in the walls (the glare from the light shows them more). that, or lots of artwork. the hardwoods went somewhat slowly. i hit some of the more difficult stretches to work through (beveled cuts at the front door, radiused cuts at the stairs, end rows of rooms, etc.), so the slow-down was expected. the difficult spots went fairly well, just slow. the radiused cuts weren't perfect, but i plan to radius some shoe molding around there to cover it. after all was said and done, the living room and sunroom got finished. it's really nice to see the huge expanse of the living room all completed. just the kitchen and upstairs hallway to go (roughly 160 SF, including some semi-tricky transitions to get things started). i'm behind my initial schedule, but should be fine since we have all this week and next weekend to work. sorry, the dining room pic didn't turn out very well and the living room one has wood laying on the floor making it look funny. i'll try to get some better ones soon.

ok, so now the bad -- tonight. it has been fairly cold the past few days, especially starting last night. i have been worried about the pipes in the downstairs bath freezing because that area is on crawlspace and seemed to get very cold. well, they were frozen tonight. luckily, nothing burst. there were already some pipe heaters attached to those water lines, so after a discussion about their potential safety with my brother, i decided to use them (this was actually before i found out they were frozen). so, i plugged them guys in. it seemed awful breezy down there so i grabbed my flashlight to try to figure out why. i thought it was the poor brick-work down there but it seemed to be too much for that alone. lo and behold, i found a rather large gap in the end wall of the house right at the top of the foundation wall (just under the siding). i don't know how i didn't notice it before, i guess the siding and weeds kind of hid it. so, i grabbed more expanding foam insulation and insulated the snot out of the cracks and gaps. the foam doesn't work as well in the extreme cold, so i hope it still expands a little more to really seal things up tight. i could tell a definite difference right away though. there was still a very slight breeze coming from somewhere, but much much less than before. hopefully the foam will expand up and stop it. if not, i'll see if i can track it down also.

then, the ugly. after a bit i was able to get a few drips of water to come out and eventually the hot water line was going. but, the drain wasn't draining, but dripping out under the sink. i grabbed a little bucket to catch the water. the drain stopper connection was leaking like crazy. so, i tightened that but still no water was going down the drain - frozen?? i went back down and looked in the crawlspace ... lo and behold ... the last section of the drain line, between the toilet and sink runs DOWNHILL (as in the water needs to run uphill, which is sort of the opposite of gravity--at least here in Indiana, which is wrong, dumb, stupid, retarded, someone should be shot). for the love. so, we have a nice section of frozen waste water down there. nice. we kept hot water in the sink the rest of the night hoping to loosen it up. no luck yet. we're hoping things heat up down there with the gaps filled so that thing melts (also closed the bathroom door to try to keep some heat in there). so, this has confirmed what was only a theory before ... the construction of the addition (bathroom, mudroom) was terrible at best. makes me just want to knock it over and build something better there. for now, more insulating to try to keep it warmer down there and using the line heaters when it is really cold out. ugh.

so tonight was not so good. i also almost broke my ankle and my flashlight (it worked for a bit, but then stopped working so who knows), and nearly lost a nail punch, not to mention getting more insulation stuck to my fingers. so we decided to call it an early night (as if 10:30 is early). all i REALLY got done was preparing the door jambs going into the kitchen to lay hardwood around. which is a small victory on a rough night. Chrissy untaped the dining room and listened to me lament the woes of plumbing in a crawlspace. so, when can we start drawing plans for a NEW house??

ambition does not a hardwood floor lay

2005-12-02T23:49:00.000-05:00

well, Thursday didn't quite go as planned, but was not a total failure. i got a bit of later start than i hoped, but a little extra sleep was probably needed. the main problem was my back (something ambition can't do much about). i think its just really worn out. even with the brace, it was really sore all day ... really slowed me down at times. and i had forgotten to bring along some Advil, so i had to wait for Chrissy to stop in on her way home from work to get some pain relief (and dinner). i did make good progress though, just not as much as i wanted. the sunroom is almost done (probably 85%). i ran out of light (no new electric to the light in there yet) before i got finished. so, i moved to the living room and went as far as i could -- about 2 strips before the front door. i didn't want to go further than that because i needed to do some cutting around the frame and insulating under the threshold before laying the floor there. so, i ended the day with another expanding foam insulation party (i know, doesn't that sound like fun!?). initially i had WAY too much under the threshold. if i hadn't knocked it down, i have a feeling we wouldn't have been able to open the door the next time we went over (and still no guarantee, we'll find out tomorrow morning). there was a ton of cold air entering through the bottom of the door, so hopefully the insulation and a door sweep (currently using a piece of floor padding) will cut down on that. all-in-all, i got about 100 SF done and some insulating. not as much as i wanted, but ok. dang back. next time, Advil will accompany me.

tonight we went to JC Penny's and ordered curtains for the living room and dining room and then browsed tools and appliances at Sears. they have some good deals next Saturday morning, so we'll probably go place our appliance order then (not cheap!).

tomorrow i'll hit the floors hard again (properly medicated of course). i need to visit a hardwood supply store for a few items in the morning, but the rest of the day should be all hardwood laying. Chrissy will continue painting (hopefully getting rid of our pretty pink walls) with a friend or two of ours helping her.

also, i have scheduled Griffith & Sons back out on Monday the 12th to finish the new floors! woohoo! so i have just over a week to get the remaining approx. 250 SF down. shouldn't be a problem. i'm hoping to get about 150-200 this weekend alone. hopefully we'll have most of the painting done by that day too, so we can just abandon the house for a few days while they work. i think we are finally starting to see a bit of a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. for the first round of renovation anyway!

don't stop believin'

2005-11-30T23:41:00.000-05:00

the work continues ... and continues ... and doesn't stop. Monday night was shortened due to, uhh, certain extenuating circumstances (Colts game) but i still got around 10-12 SF down. Tuesday, just over 30 SF. Tonight was shortened a bit due to needing a Home Depot trip for some supplies, so only got about 18 SF. Since the dining room is essentially done, Chrissy went ahead and started the painting process there. The dining room is now about 80% primed, with a very lovely Pepto-Bismol pink color. I can't wait for the red to hit the wall ... it kills me to look at that all night. Sorry, keep forgetting the camera, so no pics yet. It feels really nice to know that the painting project is really getting underway at the same time as the floors. I feel like it reduces some of the pressure to get the floors done asap. Also today, UPS delivered our new light switch for the dining room. It's a modern version of the push-button switches, but with a dimmer switch on the bottom.

i'm taking tomorrow off work to try to take a dent out of the floor project. my goal is to get the sunroom done and about 5 or 6 feet further into the living room. i think that's fairly ambitious, but hey, i'm an ambitious guy.

horray for hardwood

2005-11-27T23:46:00.000-05:00

we are back! let's see ... Tuesday we tried to continue laying floor. yes, tried. we got maybe 10 SF or so down and gave up ... the stupid retardo mallet kept coming apart. piece of junk. Home Depot was already closed, so we'd have to exchange it later in the week. Wednesday evening we traveled north to Chrissy's parents house for Thanksgiving. while there I went to the local Home Depot and they gave me a new mallet from another package. i tried to get them to let me buy the mallet from another nailer that is the type i like better ... they didn't bite though ... so we're stuck with the chinsy Porta-nailer mallet.

After much enjoyable eating and relaxing, we unfortunately had to leave on Saturday morning to resume our house projects. With the driving, time change, lunch, and waking up later than planned ... we didn't really get started until around 1. We got some floor down before Chrissy's brother and his fiancee arrived to help. Chrissy and Kim began painting our bedroom. There was some random blue paint we found in the house that we thought would work well as a primer. They got the whole room taped and primed by late afternoon. Michael and i kept going on the floors. With a couple hours of work after dinner, we had the floor to the point where we were just past the doors separating the living and dining room.

that evening, we also found in our mail ... a response from the previous owners on the floor issue. in response to our thorough, courteous letter ... we got a two paragraph insult back. they basically acused us of being horrible people. the letter was of very poor taste and was nothing but an attack on us as people. needless to say, they don't want to help defray the extra costs and time we are incurring. so, now we need to think about what we want to do. do we really want to try to recoup some of our money in small claims court?? of course, that pretty much bummed us out for the rest of the night. watching Batman Begins again helped a little bit ... i forgot how good that movie was.

Michael and Kim went home after lunch Sunday and we headed to the airport to pick up my mom returning from Florida (she drove my grandparents down for the winter). My brother Jim and his family were returning from Thanksgiving in Kentucky, so stopped by and picked up Mom to take her the rest of the way. After that, we were back at it. By about 10 tonight, we had the dining room 99.9% finished! Just a few trim-out pieces to go and creating the transition into the kitchen. At this point, we think we have around 330-340 SF down. That is around half of the downstairs. So, we're making pretty decent progress. I plan on taking a day off work this week to get a big chunk done ... with a goal of completing next weekend or early the week after. If things go smoothly, that may be do-able -- providing my blisters don't get much worse :-)

oh, and we've decided this is what happens when you work on your home remodeling projects for too long. so be careful out there when you work on your own projects.

keeping things moving

2005-11-21T23:34:00.000-05:00

tonight i stopped at our friendly local Home Depot and picked up a Porta-Nailer 402 and some nails (gotta love buying new tools, i sure do). don't worry, the sign says your are getting the now discontinued model 401, but the actual box says 402 on it. after dinner, we went to the house and after figuring out how to load and use it, we put down just a shade over 30 SF of floor in about 2.5 hours. we think we can probably get that up to 15 SF/hour after we get more in the swing of things. the new nailer works really well. it has a ratcheting system that allows you to take a couple swings if it doesn't drive fully the first time. this is really useful if you are in a location where you can't take a full swing (near a wall, inside a door opening, etc.). with the other nailer, you had to really wind up and hope you hit it square in those tight spots (or pop a finish nail in instead). i don't, however, like the mallet that comes with it. the handle isn't as comfortable, the steel end of the hammer is shaped differently (worse in my opinion) and you tend to rip up the building paper when tapping pieces into place, and at one point the end just came off of it. i'm contemplating hunting down a different mallet ... but we'll see. it's not awful, i just liked the ones we had Saturday much better. we're hoping to put 35-45 SF down tomorrow night. well, my back is sore from bending over so much ... so i'm gonna grab the heat pack and rest a bit before bed. gotta track down a back brace i think.

down it goes

2005-11-20T23:45:00.000-05:00

much has happened and we're finally heading in the positive direction on the flooring project! Thursday we finished removing nails, did final cleaning, and began shellacing (got a coat on the sunroom and about 3/4 of the living room). we think we were only slightly buzzed after the shellacing. the shellac (which i have learned is a very interesting natural product) is made soluable using denatured alcohol ... thus when it dries, much alcohol is vaporized. after a time, you get really sick (to the stomach) of the smell. it dries pretty quick though, so it's not bad once you get it down. the floors were really porous, so it went on at about twice the normal rate (thus i had to go buy more). Friday night we finished shallacing the downstairs (2 coats) and made final preparations for Saturday. the shellacing really darkened the floors ... as you can see in this picture.

Saturday morning, my uncle Wil and cousin Matt drove down to help begin laying the hardwood floor. after some planning, measuring and more planning ... we had most of the building paper down and the wood began to fly. Matt borrowed/rented two manual floor nailers from his neighbor. i had never used one before, but had heard they take quite a hit from the mallet to set the nail. this is true, you really need to wail on that sucker to make it work right. it took me a while to get the hang of it ... and still would have a few that needed setting from time to time. once you get a feel for it though, it's really not all that bad.

we worked until around 7 that night. we got about 160 SF put down. while the quantity isn't huge, it was some of the more difficult areas to get put down. getting things all planned out so that the floor was continuous through the living and dining rooms was tricky (but successful). we (well, mainly Wil and Matt) got the sunroom started also. this included another tricky transition ... as i wanted to turn the flooring the other direction and not use any molding to cover the transition. the result was great, it's going to be a seamless merger between the floors. most of the remainder of the downstairs will be really fairly simple. there are few things to go around and the initial layout is done. starting the upstairs hallway and the kitchen still need to be done, but we discussed some strategy before the experts left. i'm planning on buying a manual floor nailer Monday to keep moving. it's going to take a while, but i think Chrissy and i can move along at a good clip ... she was pretty excited to learn how to use the miter saw. i can't thank Wil and Matt enough for helping get things started and teaching me how to finish the rest. thanks for giving up your saturday to help guys.

so far, we are really really pleased with the results. the cheap oak is really looking great (our opinion i guess). there is a really nice mix of lengths (a lot more long pieces than i expected), colors, and textures ... character (which we like ... you may not). we bought 20% extra to account for some of the rougher pieces and waste ... thus far i think we're well under that. there was one bundle where about 75% of it was pretty much unusable due to a lot of splitting ... usually there are only one or two bad pieces (to much "character") though. most can at least be salvaged as a row starting/ending piece.

meanwhile, Saturday afternoon Chrissy prep-ed the upstairs bathroom and got it painted! the darker blue turned out great. she also cleaned it up as it was covered with the remnants of the electric project. we just need to do a little patching around the new outlet and some touch up of the lower area and the room is pretty much done for now. well, we will probably put new lights in too i guess, but that won't take long.

sunday we were out of town ... having a family Thanksgiving at, strangely enough, Wil's house. we had a great time hanging out with the fam. i'm not sure if i'll post again soon. we'll be working Mon and Tues nights, but be out of town Weds evening - Sat morning. we hope to get a bunch of hardwood down next weekend, so i'll probably update then. have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

a big pile of wood

2005-11-16T23:19:00.000-05:00

last night we headed downtown to our local friendly Lumber Liquidators to order our new hardwood floors (in the middle of the horrid storms). tonight, the massive pile of wood was delivered along with some snow! the mudroom looks like a warehouse. there are some rough pieces (machine burns, open knots, etc.) and quite a few short pieces (less than 2'-0"), but in general we are happy with the condition of the el-cheapo wood. they had a picture at the store of a floor put down using the same material ... it looked simply unbelievable. i only hope our floor looks close to that good. also got some good news last night, my uncle and cousin volunteered to come down and help lay the floor on saturday! my uncle Wil (the one we went to the Grand Canyon with this summer) laid a bunch of hardwood at his house, so an experienced teacher will really help me a lot. it should also be a lot of fun working with them also.

also tonight, we removed all the old hardwood from the dining room (the last of the old hardwood) and pulled nails from about 3/4 of the floor (forgot the camera, so no pics today of the old floor or pile of wood). tomorrow we'll finish that and start the final prep work for laying new hardwood (cleaning and shellacing). i picked up some supplies for the shellacing and flooring Monday, including exchanging our ShopVac. ours has always had some sort of problem in the motor. after running it for a few minutes it would start to smell awful, like the motor was burning itself up. ran the new one tonight for probably 1/2 hour straight with no issues, nice. we are dreaming of the day, hopefully in about a month, where we can LIVE in the house and not have muddy boogers (from all the dust).

Project 5 Part 2: almost but not quite complete

2005-11-13T23:20:00.000-05:00

well, we still aren't quite done, but we're really close. my previous estimates of completion were a bit optomistic it seems. but, a whole lot did get accomplished this weekend.

my mom, dad, brothers Jim and Dave, and nephew Bryce (Jim's oldest) arrived Saturday around 9. i had taken some photos of the urine damage in the sunroom, so mom and Bryce started pulling out the old floor there. Jim went around wiring up all the devices we ran wire to the previous electric day. Dave, Dad and I went about figuring out how to rewire the main level lighting. in the process, Dave found the source of the short we had been dealing with. it appears the light in the living room was partially held together with scotch tape. yes, scotch tape. now that's some genius work there. we did see some pretty sparks when he was taking the light down. we deciphered where all the lights and switches would be on the second floor and proceeded to cut out floor boards as necessary to gain access to that area. while doing this, we noticed that all the second level floor joists had been doubled up at some point. more on this later. there was a bit of a gap in the flooring at one wall ... many treasures were to be found laying on the plaster beneath (pens, birthday cards, film negatives, etc.).

once the wires were all pulled, Jim took over installing ceiling boxes for the lights while we moved on to getting wires to the second floor lights and switches. those were really easy in comparision as we could generally just drop from the attic down. the upstairs hall light was trickier, as it is a 3-way switch ... with the 2nd switch being downstairs. this resulted in a wire going from the attic, to the basement, and back up to the first floor switch. nothing like taking the scenic route.

mom and Chrissy repainted/caulked the windows from the attic dormer and spackled some holes about the house. Chrissy also took care of making us some great meals. after dinner, the lights went back in (including the new chandelier for the dining room). oh, and just because the package says 100W bulbs ... think a little bit and get bulbs that aren't so bright if there are 9 of them (i think airplanes started accidentally landing on our street after we turned the light on).

the crew was a bunch of troopers as they all kept working until about 10! dad and Dave went home, while mom, Jim and Bryce decided to stick around. Sunday, Jim did some final work on some switches and outlets, i did some insulating around exterior wall outlets/switches with fun expanding foam ... and we all tag-teamed the living room hardwood. by mid-afternoon we had it all out, including nails ... and a lot of cleanup done. we did find some areas where staining made it through to the subfloor -- so some shellacing there will also be needed.

this brings me back to the 2nd floor joists being supplemented. after pulling up the first floor hardwood, we noticed evidence of a previous wall (see picture). it appears that maybe there used to be a load-bearing wall and a partition wall there (making a hallway?). this explains the new floor joists (which span from outside wall to outside wall) and a seemingly useless beam in the basement. we can't quite figure out what the room would have been used for ... it was very oddly shaped. this would also mean that the double-doors into the dining room didn't used to be double-doors either. maybe pulling up the dining room floor will enlighten us further.

ok, so we have a little electric work left. we need to figure out how to get a new wire to the sunroom light (no access above), re-wire some lights and outlets in the sunroom, add an outlet to the downstairs bathroom, and add under-counter lights in the kitchen. not bad really, compared to what has already been done. it's very nice knowing that almost all of the wiring is now new. sweet. quite a project though, quite a project. i've added some pictures of random things to the flickr site if you are interested (including some stained floor pics).

Project 2: 97% Complete

2005-11-06T21:53:00.000-05:00

It's so close, we can almost taste it. well, it's that or the nasty urine smell we're tasting still. anyway, the cleanup portion of the garage removal is almost done. Saturday morning, Chrissy's brother Michael and his fiancee Kim came down. We did some mowing and raking of leaves and then began loading up the wood. I had borrowed Jon and Carrie's truck to make it possible. We got the first load ready and i drove it over to the Waldens, while the rest of the gang finished yard work and got some lunch. I brought Jon back with a chainsaw to cut down some of the longer pieces. Two trips later, we had about 90% of the wood over there. Jon and I started the fire on our first trip and Carrie had kept feeding it throughout the afternoon. We let it die down and cooked a couple brats for dinner ... mighty tasty brats. We decided that maybe tearing down the garage, hauling the wood, etc. was quite a bit of work for a few BTUs of heat to cook some brats, but they were good. Oh well. After eating, we started the blaze going again, but had to let it die down because of some strong winds. We'll have to head over some other time to finish the burning. It was a fun time ... we hadn't really hung out with Jon and Carrie outside of work, so it was a nice change of pace. We even took a minute to do an American Gothic pose in front of our fire (i think we somewhat captured the half-ticked off, half confused look of the painting).

Sunday after Michael and Kim left, we headed back over to load up the shingle mess. We stopped and bought a scoop shovel on the way over -- nice purchase, saved us quite a bit of time. We loaded all the shingles up and a few other bits of trash in about an hour. We were hoping to get the rest of the wood on also, but the truck was just too full for anything else. I plan on running this load to Waste Management in the morning and we'll load up the rest tomorrow evening for a Tuesday morning dropoff. Oh, and the leaves we raked yesterday ... waste of time. We had some intense storms overnight which made the yard look worse than when we started. We met a former neighbor of ours who was looking around her old house (currently vacant). She grew up in a house across the back yard (in the late 40s and 50s). She shared a coupe memories of our former homeowners from when she was a kid (before the area went downhill with all the rental homes). She was really disappointed with how the area had been run down but was happy that people who were going to restore the homes were now moving in.

updates

2005-11-01T20:05:00.000-05:00

ok. what's happened lately? well, a few things. we received our rugs ... one Friday, the other Monday. they turned out great! these pictures hardly do the colors justice ... the lighter (goldish/ greenish) one just belew us away when we unrolled it. we went solely on these pictures so we never knew how well the real thing will look. we were very pleased. we can't wait to see them in the house.

last weekend went went to Chrissy's parents place. we visited her Aunt & Uncle on saturday which was a lot of fun. we hadn't seen them in a long time, so it was a really good time. they live on the northwest side of Chicago, so we stopped at Ikea on the way back. we made some great buys there. we got roman shades for the sunroom and the upstairs bedrooms (15 total). we got lighting for underneath the kitchen cabinets. and, we got a new entertainment center for the living room (sorry everyone, i think the concrete block masterpiece is being retired). best of all, ikea was celebrating their 20th anniversary ... so everything was 15% off! nice.

on the hardwood floor front, not a whole lot has really happened. we are nearly finished with a letter we will be sending to the sellers to see what they think about the staining. it's obviously a touchy letter, so we are really trying to get it just right (including enlisting the help of our friend Casey who is in his final year of law school). we're hoping they are willing to help defray at least some of the costs. we think it's only fair since they failed to disclose the condition.

we're still not sure of the exact course of action for the floors. there are 2 options really. tear out the old floor (on the first floor only) or clean it and coat it with shellac (upstairs has to be the shellac option, no subfloor up there and we think the staining is less significant). i got some advice from a professional "disaster" recovery cleaner today who suggested shellac because it seals completely, unlike paint which will emit some small amount of vapor. we're trying to figure out which would take longer ... cleaning and multiple coats of shellac ... or just ripping the old floor out. and we have to balance confronting the previous owners with our schedule demands ... we need to get moving on the floors soon so we can finish before we need to move in. but, if we tear into them, we're essentially destroying the evidence. we do plan on taking a ton of photos of course.

in other plans, we hope to finish the electric work the weekend of the 12th. my dad and bros. are going to bring down some tools for me to use on the floor ... so i'd like to get started laying new floor the week after that. this weekend we will be taking care of the garage remnants. we'll be having a massive bonfire out at the Waldens ... that should be fun! we hope to load up the shingles also and drop them at a transfer station on Monday morning. other than that, this week won't involve more house work. we have a recurring Bible study on Wednesdays, i'm out of town Thursday for a seminar, and a dinner/award program that night ... and then Friday we're having an all-day company planning session at work that won't end until Saturday morning. Chrissy's brother and his fiancee are planning to come down and help this weekend also. ok, back to working on the letter.

what a day

2005-10-27T23:23:00.000-05:00

well, we got some really bad news today. the contractor came out to refinish the floors. exciting, right!?! i got a call about 2 hours after they started that i needed to come look at the floor, it wasn't looking good. our worst fears were coming true, the hardwoods were really stained. i went out at lunch and was met by a horrid stench. nothing like a freshly sanded, dog urine soaked floor to brighten your day. and they weren't just sort of stained, they were STAINED. there wasn't more than a few square feet of unstained wood in the sunroom (and it smelled like death). the living room and dining room had some decent areas (which looked mighty nice freshly sanded i might add) but also some really bad areas. well, we found the reason the floors were painted ... to hold back the urine stench (literally, that was why they were painted, to seal in the smell). mystery solved. looking back it all makes sense. apparently, the previous owners (renters actually) just allowed their dogs/cats to go pretty much wherever they pleased and didn't bother to ever clean it up. nice. i'm not sure how anyone could live in that, i'm sure it had to have reeked before it was painted. you could even see the outline of some former piece of furniture in the dining room where a dog/cat had repeatedly gone in the same areas (it was jet black there). i'll get some pictures taken and posted soon. sigh.

so, pretty much there is no chance of refinishing this hardwood. the stained areas will take the good stain much differently (as in, turn black). some areas the wood was deteriorated enough that the paint is so deep in that it's essentially impossible to sand out. not to mention it will most likely always smell ... the poly finish breathes so it won't trap the smell underneath. the hardwood guys were very nice and said we wouldn't be charged for what they did. they were nice enough to stop when they could see it was pointless, whereas some guys would have just finished and charged us. they also offered lots of advice on how to proceed. good guys.

we've been pondering and researching our options tonight. we are currently leaning towards putting new hardwood down on the first floor (over top of the existing) and in the hallway upstairs. we would then put the carpet back down in the bedrooms and potentially put hardwood there sometime in the future. i haven't done hardwood before, but from what i hear it's not extraordinarily difficult just somewhat time consuming. so, if things go really really well in the next month and half, we might push ahead and finish the bedrooms. but for now, we'll plan on carpet (for money and time's sake). before any of that happens ... we need to paint ... the floors again (aack). we need to do something to kill the urine smell and keep it from coming through. i'm going to research some other options to hopefully kill any lingering mold/bacteria that comes along with it.

as far as hardwood goes, lumber liquidators sells a 99-cent/SF 2 1/4" strip oak (mixed red/white) floor. i asked the hardwood guys about it, expecting them to sneer at it ... only to be surprised that they actually like it (but don't tell their bosses). they personally think it looks better, especially in an old house, because it has more variety and leaves you with a neater overall look than the super clean grades of wood. i was a bit shocked at this, but happy that a cheaper material does look nice. so, we're going to ponder our plan a bit more over the weekend (we're out of town). right now it seems like the best with regard to money, time, and overall finished product. neither of us would ultimately be happy reverting to carpet, so now is the time to act if we ever want hardwood. it is just really overwhelming, stressful, disheartening, etc. to think we have a bunch of hardwood to put down along with everything else in the next month or so. sigh.

we are also going to be evaluating a potential claim against the sellers. we had asked our agent to inquire about the hardwoods and why they were painted during the purchase process. we were never given an answer other than that they were all painted white. they did not disclose WHY they were painted white ... and you know that they knew why. i'm trying to gather some info via our agent about how she asked the question and some details about how long they have owned that place to see if i think we have a case. right now she thinks we should be taking it to small claims court because they did not disclose that damage when we asked about it. so, maybe we can have some of the extra costs defrayed, but it's hard to recoup time. double sigh. anyway, so we're pretty discouraged right now. but we have a possible plan, it just involves a lot of work. a lot. we welcome any thoughts or suggestions or a pencil to stick in our eye.

in other news, we ordered area rugs for the living and dining rooms (for our "refinished floors") on tuesday. amazingly, they will arrive tomorrow! wow. Kohl's had then on sale for over 50% off, plus we are getting a $10 credit for every $50 spent ... so that can pay for some other home items. let's just hope those turn out ok ... right now i expect them to come the wrong size and color and not be able to get a refund. monday and tuesday night we did final cleanup for today's aborted sanding effort. what a waste of time. in actual fun news, we ate dinner with Sarah and Jeremiah tonight (and it was Indian food, double good). they were 2 of our hiking companions on our Grand Canyon trip this summer. it was good to see them again (it had been a month or so) and catch up ... and give them the tour of our stinky house. they are a lot of fun to hang out with. and, you can just start to tell that Sarah is a few months into her pregnancy! we're really excited for them. well, i'm going to lament over some milk and cookies and go to bed. hmph.

ding dong

2005-10-23T22:03:00.000-05:00

the wicked witch of the north is dead ... otherwise known as the old garage. Chrissy and i went out this afternoon and dealt the final blows to the old lady. in about 2 hours we had the rest tore down and onto the wood pile and some of the cleanup done. the shack did retaliate a bit against me. in all of the time we spent out there the other weekend, i didn't step on a single nail. tonight, i didn't step on 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 nails. 2 of them were just roofing nails ... but the other 2 were 16 penny framing nails which both hit the bottom of my feet (i know, should have been wearing my work boots). the first of those i was certain had put a hole in me, it sure felt like it. i lucked out, it must have hit a callous or something. anyway, i'm going to look into getting a small dumpster out there for the shingle trash. i think it would just take too long to bag up and send out with the trash.

we did some other cleanup in the house and called it quits. Chrissy wasn't feeling the greatest from a migrane and i was happy to have part of the day off. in the next 2 days we need to prepare for the sanding to begin on Thurs. we need to remove a few last tack strips, move everything out of those rooms (including moving the carpet again), and do a good cleaning to get any debris out of there. we're gonna do a quick scan for missed staples/nails also. i think we've also decided to have the hardwood guys go ahead and stain and finish the floors also. i just don't think we're gonna have the time to do it ourselves. it isn't going to cost much more (about $0.75 /sq. ft.) so we'll let the pros do it. well, i'm off ... looks like the Sox are gonna go up 2-0 ... sweet.

Project #5, Part 2: not quite complete

2005-10-23T21:39:00.000-05:00

We made great progress yesterday, however did not quite finish the electrical work. Dad and Dave arrived around 8 and got to work quickly. Dave did a little repair to the back door that i didn't even realize it needed. He also did some much needed repairs to the basement stairs ... making it much more comfortable to walk up and down throughout the day. We removed a huge pile of trash from the basement and i did a major cobweb removal to make it easier to work up in the ceiling. Meanwhile, Dad and Jim made quick work rewiring the basement lighting including adding several new lights. Combined with the cleaning and stair repair, the basement is hardly recognizable.

Next, holes began appearing for some new outlets on the first floor (we added i think 6 more outlets, 5 more than i had even hoped for, very cool). The challenge of getting wire from the basement up to the outlets then began. It appeared the much of the previous power came from somewhere above ... which is really hard do in a retrofit. Come from below, that can't be so hard ... can it? Well, our house has appx. 9"x9" timbers for sills that need to be drilled through to get up into the wall cavity. In one of the first holes, Dave nearly had a fire ... his drill bit got red-hot trying to get through these really tough timbers. A big glass of water down the hole set us more at ease (and the smoke stopped coming out). They devised a new technique and the rest went fairly smoothly (that i know of anyway).

After the downstairs was rolling, Brad Stayte (who was also around helping ... including doing a bang-up job of staple removal from the stairs), Dave, Dad and I started working upstairs. I worked with Dad to get our wire from the basement up to the attic. Luckily, we found a nice path beside the vent pipe. From there, we all started working at getting wires pulled from the outlets to the attic. I think i inhaled a bit too much of the attic's insulation ... but i guess my lungs will be well-insulated for winter. Speaking of insulation, i was very excited to find some insulation in the exterior walls. It appears to be an older expanding foam insulation. It seems to be cracked in some areas, but is vast improvement over what i thought would be there (nothing). Upstairs, we ran new wire to all the outlets (including 3 new ones) and the bathroom lights (which we are adding a switch for). Meanwhile, Jim had been running a ton of wire for the downstairs outlets and getting the boxes ready.

Mid-afternoon it became apparent that we just weren't going to have time to finish. So, we had dinner and took things to good stopping points and called it a day so the northerners could get home. I'd say we're about 75% done with this portion. Pretty much all the outlets have new wire. Basically, we need to get new wire to the lights and switches plus terminate with outlets/switches/covers. We weren't sure at first if we'd do the lights, but Jim found some questionable wiring at the kitchen lights that he feels should be replaced. The upstairs lights will be pretty easy, but we'll probably need a hole in the ceiling to do the main level lights. Unfortunate, but ultimately it'll be much better to have fresh wiring. It will be really nice knowing that the whole house is on safe wiring ... elminating some scary looking connections of knob-and-tube to modern wiring (a big mess of them above the downstairs shower of all places).

All in all, it was a successful day even though we aren't done. We'll find another weekend soon to finish the job. I really enjoyed spending time with my dad and brothers ... not something i get to do much anymore. Despite all the long day of hard dirty work, we still had a lot of fun. I really look forward to doing it again.

Project #5, Part 1: complete

2005-10-21T22:42:00.000-05:00

well, part one of the electric project is done, although it almost wasn't to be. it rained a lot overnight and this morning ... at about 7:45 Cinergy called Jim and told him they weren't going to disconnect us because it was raining. what?!? all they have to do is snip 3 wires. after discussing with a few people, he finally came up with the real reason ... the union agreement says they don't have to work in the rain, so they didn't want to. unions, hmph. we got to the house and as we pulled in a Cinergy guy drove up. he hadn't heard that we had been talked to already, but came out to tell us he wasn't going to be doing it. we talked to him ... and eventually Jim had him convinced to do it (but no guarantee of a re-hookup later). good thing too, with Jim coming this far ... that would have been such a waste to not get it all done. thanks Cinergy guy.

so, with that emergency behind we dove in. Jim got the old disconnect and meter base down while i ran a couple errands. shortly thereafter, the new disconnect and meter base were up. the old panel came down ... the new went up ... we were doing well. we took a lunch break and i ran to Menards to pick up the new main service wire and a few more supplies. it took forever ... we only had about an hour til the inspector was supposed to show up and we hadn't even run the new service wire. so we double-timed it ... only to have the inspector show up 1/2 hr early. turns out ... his inspection lasted all of about 25 seconds ... didn't even care that we weren't done, didn't even look at the panel inside. whew! uh oh ... what if Cinergy responds really quick to his reconnect call and comes to hook it up before we're done? back to double-speed. at 2:59 (1 minute before the original inspection time) that last connection was made. about 4:00 Cinergy had us back in power (we were always wondering if they would actually show or not ... esp since it was after 3:00 when their workers get off work ... 3:00??). we did a few last items ... and some planning for Sat ... then headed home.

after cleaning up and Chrissy was home from work, we went and got dinner at Barley Island ... mmm. then we closed down Lowe's gathering more supplies for tomorrow. wow, we've bought a LOT of electrical "stuff" the past 2 days! this includes, a new chandelier for the dining room ... a light for the sunroom and mudroom ... and all new lights for the basement. anyway, we got today's mission accomplished and are hoping for a restful night's sleep to begin again tomorrow morning (inside wiring updates). word on the street is that my dad and brother Dave are leaving at 5am to get down here. yikes! i didn't know there was a 5 other than p.m. unless you get there by not sleeping.

Pictures - Top: Jim hooking up new meter base; Middle: partially hooked up new electric panel; Bottom: completed exterior portion

project #1 update

2005-10-20T12:59:00.000-05:00

just got a call from Griffith Hardwood Floors ... they will be out to do the sanding Thursday and Friday of next week (27th & 28th). cool.

welcome

2005-10-20T12:09:00.000-05:00

in other news, we'd like to welcome 2 new members to our family: Marvin and Ferguson. Who are they? well, they are our new (but old) chairs. you weren't expecting that were you? we were trying to figure out how to lay out the living room and thought that it would be nice to have 2 chairs in there. we looked around and found these two guys on Craig's List. we borrowed my co-worker's truck and headed to the southside of Indy on Monday night to check them out. obviously, we liked them ... so are now proud owners of two Danish modern chairs (so they say). they are in good condition and very comfortable. we might want to re-upholster them at some point though. we chatted with their previous owners Chris and Jessica for quite a while. they are really great folks. turns out they make their living selling modern art at a gallery downtown, via Ebay, and through referrals (our bank chain, Irwin Union, has started putting them in their branches). they are doing well enough that they have both quit their regular jobs to pursue it full time. they have two funny labs named Marvin and Ferguson, so we thought we'd carry on their names for them. we enjoyed talking to them for a while, then headed back north with our new chairs. after that, i headed back downtown to watch the Colts game with some friends. last night, i was pretty much spent from work, so we took the night off. tonight, Chrissy finished pulling staples from the upstairs hallway and did some cleanup up there in addition to the things mentioned under Project #5. today i also officially signed a proposal to have someone do all our floor sanding for us. that should happen in the next 2 weeks i believe. that's it for now. gotta get some sleep ... tomorrow will be a long day i think.

Project #5: Clean up that juice

2005-10-19T23:53:00.000-05:00

Project #5: re-do the wiring in the house and upgrade to 200A service. Most of the house still has the old knob-and-tube wiring ... which is really really outdated. There is some new wiring to a few things, but a lot of new still connects to the old stuff which isn't really a good idea. So, the plan is to start fresh. My brother Jim is coming down tomorrow night (Thurs) and on Friday we will be replacing the electric panel and upgrading to 200A service. When i say "we", i mean he will do it and i will watch/be the gopher. I picked up the permit to do that this morning. After that is done, we will start with rewiring the rest of the house. Saturday, my dad and brother Dave are coming down to help with that. A few of our friends here will most likely be there to help out also. I've not retrofitted wiring before (my dad and brothers have thankfully) so i'm a bit apprehensive. I just hope it goes smoothly because I don't know enough about that stuff to feel comfortable doing much of it myself. Once it is done it will be a vast improvement. The new wiring will be much safer and more efficient (less energy wasted due to losses in the old wire). I also think it will add quite a bit to the house's value to have fully modern electric throughout.

Tonight we started prepping for the process. We went through the house deciding which outlets could go, which needed changing, and where we would like to add a few. We also moved the carpet into the dining room to make it easier to work in the mud room. I then headed down to the dungeon and started cleaning up a bit down there to make it more comfortable to work in this weekend. Wow, is it ever dirty, dusty, dingy down there. Lots of random trash too as could be expected. I hope to finish piling the trash in one spot tomorrow night along with finishing sweeping and running the shop vac to suck up all the cobwebs and nastiness. Work has been tough this week so i hope i have time to do some of that tomorrow evening.

90 Year-Old Garage - Free To Good Home (some assembly required)

2005-10-16T22:30:00.000-05:00

well, it's almost down. we headed back out after church, lunch, and part of the Bears game (a.k.a. around 2). we picked up an extra prybar after church (another successful Menards trip, several good finds) ... one that was a little more suitable for tearing down a shed. it really helped, we made great time today ... it tore through the roof ... and it freed up the other one for Chrissy to use pulling down siding. in about 2 hours i had the rest of the roof down ... and by a little after 4 there was just a frame left. we moved/straightened up the wood pile. wow, what a pile too. Chrissy did some more cleanup and i attacked the framing. i had the roof framing down and stacked away just as we ran out of daylight (so no pictures of the current condition). so, we only have the wall framing left. that shouldn't take more than an hour or so when we get a chance to work out there again. there is a bunch of cleanup to do still. Chrissy raked up the mess in the yard, but we're still about ankle deep in shingles, nails, and bits of wood on the old slab. so, we'll gather that up in bags and slowly work it out in the trash i think. it's a really nice feeling knowing that it's almost done. we celebrated with some Skyline Chili (to-go, they'd didn't want us dirty folk in there). they opened the Skyline in Noblesville about 2 months ago ... that sealed the deal for me :-)

TERMITE VILLAGE DESTROYED -- more at 10

2005-10-15T22:37:00.000-05:00

well, we started demo-ing the shed today. it was a tiring day, but we're a bit over halfway done -- and it looks better already. i started with the roof on the south side and encountered some unbelievable deterioration. termites and water damage had pretty much done most of my job. i think another year or two of walnuts hitting the roof would have done the same thing i was doing. i think the many layers of shingles were holding everything together. breaking through the disintegrating wood and shingles was a pretty messy ordeal. it also became obvious that the front 5 feet or so was an odd addition. i moved from the south to the east side where things were in much better condition, which actually made things somewhat harder. you actually had to pull the nails to get the roof off, not just put your hammer through it and watch it crumble. Chrissy started with the front door and moved to the west side tearing off the siding. she was a hammering, prying machine! the north wall gave us some trouble as the wood was in better condition making it harder to come off. so, she moved on to the rest of the front wall and part of the east side. bascially, we have the north and west roof, north and 1/2 of the east wall ... then the main frame (which shouldn't take long). hopefully we can get most of that done tomorrow. along the way we encountered numerous pill bug villages, flying ant nests, termites, spiders and the like. i found someone's secret whiskey stash (empty unfortunately) and in another spot, a secret stash of condoms. i can only imagine what we'll find next. we worked until around 5, then gave ourselves the evening off.

while we worked, we had some visitors! JD that i work with was passing through and stopped to say hi and see how things were going. we gave him (and his son Jack) the official tour while he was there. Tony stopped by with Allison to say hi also. like Tony, Allison also seems really nice. we chatted a bit and gave them the tour also. they seemed really excited to see what we were doing and excited to have neighbors who care about their house. it should be fun having them around.

cleaning up was a bit of an ordeal ... i think i'm going to be finding muddy grit in my hair, ears, & nose for a while. and we get to do it all again tomorrow. oh, and we also hacked down one of the few shrubs on the property (west side near the back of the house). that's for project #5 ... any guesses what it is?

getting closer

2005-10-14T23:53:00.000-05:00

we managed to finish de-staplizing the bedrooms and part of the upstairs hall tonight. just the stairs and remaining hall staples to go! on a related note, if anyone needs some used staples, we might have a hookup for you. we also took the laminate flooring out of the sunroom. i added some before and during pictures of the sunroom and a sneak peak at Project #5 (see Flickr page). i'll wait to introduce that one until later. i'm spent tonight.

injury report: the chest injury (?) has improved gradually over the week. i'm still pretty sore, especially when coughing or sneezing. i'm hoping i am able to make it through tomorrow without significant pain because ... tomorrow we attack the shack! if anyone feels like releasing some agression, stop on by anytime. oh, and Purdue gets to lose again tomorrow. horray.

PS: if anyone wants our carpet, let us know. the person who wanted it originally has had a change of plans. it's all brand new ... basically 4 reasonably sized pieces (12x12ish) and one big one (14x23ish). would work well to just drop down in an unfinished basement or even replace a room or so in your house. we have a bunch of padding to go along with it. free carpet, how can you resist?

hey, look, more staples

2005-10-13T22:54:00.000-05:00

Weds night is Bible study night, so we returned to action tonight ... again with the staple/tack strip pulling. yes, there were more. we finished Bedroom #2. only Bedroom #1, the hallway, and stairs to go! we also broke in the new shop vac cleaning out the ducts downstairs (as far in as the hose would reach anyway). it's amazing some of the things that end up in there after 90 years. well, some things aren't so amazing, rather unamazing really when you think about it ... dust, cobwebs. i'm more referring to plastic golf balls, spools of thread, marbles, and such. i hope to tell you about Project #5 tomorrow. too tired to type much more tonight.

staple be-gone

2005-10-11T23:14:00.000-05:00

well, more staple and tack strip pulling tonight. finished Bedroom #3. also did some space planning for the living room. it's a big room ... but kind of hard to lay out furniture in. we have some ideas though. also got our quote from the hardwood guy. a little higher than i hoped for. i'm gonna chat with him in the next day or so to see what can be done -- part of how it was quoted was a bit odd, so i'm gonna try to use that as leverage for a lower price. wheelin' and dealin' ... that's me. oh, beware of the upstairs toilet seat guys ... it doesn't stay up very well. i'll let you use your imagination ... let's just say i rode the learning curve for all of you. in other news, the trash man didn't like our trash apparently--unless we don't get a trash day this week because of columbus day. probably because our cans were too full (stuff sticking way out the top of them). i guess we'll just have to ration it out better each week to get rid of it. maybe dispose of some of the small stuff elsewhere (don't tell anyone, but that just might be our dumpster here). well, adios for now.

PS: thanks to my smart bro Nate ... there will hopefully be no more advertisements in the comments anymore. he found a setting to change to stop that ... it was getting really annoying.