rodent.olympics

so if the title of this post alludes to anything, theres a short but humorous story coming.

so this morning im turning off the shower and i suddenly hear this very fast, very loud tromping sound. my first thought is that karen is running down the stairs right outside the bathroom, which leads to questions of why...? so i paused for a second, didnt hear the alarm, so i quickly exited the bathroom to make sure she was alright, and to my surprise she was rolled up in the bed like a burrito, her usual routine once i vacate the bed.

so as im standing there dripping in a towel staring at my wife still in bed mid sentence asking "what the heck...", again theres a loud, fast, tromping sound. only this time, its obviously coming from the ceiling above us. "...was that?" she rolls over and says shes not sure, but its been going on a while. so i chuckle to myself and stand there under the skylight looking up at the roof. and then again theres something racing across the roof. and again, and then along the side of the skylight i see the quick outline of a squirrel butt and tail scurrying by. at this point im laughing out loud and i tell karen i just saw a squirrel, and then shes laughing too. "man, thats pretty loud for a little squirrel, i wouldnt think..." and all of a sudden a giant raccoon scurries directly across the top of the skylight quite visibly, lol. karen saw it too, and we were both laughing pretty hysterically at that point. "man sweetie, i didnt know we were having rodent olympics on our roof!"

we still arent sure what the heck they were doing up there, chasing birds, defending their territory, who knows. but im pretty confident they arent living on our roof, it would provide little, if any shelter at all from the elements. so that was our comic event of the morning, hope the story was as enjoyable as the experience itself, lol, what a way to start the day. =]

p.s. for those of you [*ahem*my wife*ahem] that didnt figure it out on your own, there were two posts yesterday. one was an actual post entitled "then.suddenly.productivity" and the other was a brief post of the stained glass that my mother-in-law emailed me directly after i posted the original... post. so for those of you that missed the actual update yesterday, feel free to read it at your leisure to catch up on current events. =]

wow-o!

i just cant help posting this.

my mother-in-law just sent me some pictures of some projects she's been working on for us. she makes stained glass windows in her spare time and has decided she wants to make a bunch for us for the house. so far shes created three of them, two based on our lotus designs from our wedding, and another based on our affinity for art-deco. and oh my gosh, they are all just so gorgeous!! i cant wait to get them in the house and see what else she comes up with!! i think there are two or three more shes planning, so stay tuned for more, but for now wow-o!! enjoy these!!

just gorgeous!

then.suddenly.productivity

sorry its been a while, again. it seems like when i first started blogging, it was an everyday thing. and now, im lucky to get around to it once a week. so for those of you loyal readers that miss my multiple weekly postings, i do apologize, however im not sure if it'll change any time soon.

i guess the biggest change in the last few months has been our level of productivity, and thus the quantity of things for me to report on.

luckily, theres been a lot of activity in the last few days, so ive actually got something to talk about. and, to be honest, i probably have enough to last me a couple of lunch breaks, so you might actually get more than one post this week. we shall see...

so whats new in current events...

[roof/contractors]

well i think i mentioned last time around that the roofers had moved their ladders for the neighbors, but that they were nearly finished. well, to expand on that a little, i guess i'll give you the full breadth of what all we've had done in the last few months.

obviously we started out with the roof. the original roofing job consisted of repairing/replacing/rebuilding the box gutters along the west side of the house where there was significant damage that then resulted in significant water damage to the west side of the house. also, they were going to tear off all the existing slate on our mansard roof and replace it all with 30year dimensional shingle. lastly, they were going to do a number of various repair work including molding, trim, flashing, dormers, a little repainting and sealing, and downspouts. that was the original work, haha. soon after we got started they discovered that the porch roof was in pretty bad shape, and so we shingled and repaired it as well. well as far as the roof goes, that was about it, but as ive mentioned in previous posts, my roofer is actually a general contractor and can do just about any work we need [and ive also mentioned hes a great guy!] so we recently ended up having him do some work in the basement as well repairing some floor joists and reinforcing them with columns and footings. and finally, on top of all that, after we had the windows installed and my parents were in town, we discovered a few leaks in the house after a rainstorm and came to the realization that we had a serious problem involving some gaps in the exterior surface of the house around the window openings and that we didnt really have proper sill flashing with the windows either. so while the contractor had his ladders out and his guys out anyway, we had him do some minor repairs to those gaps by filling them with expanding foam and then caulking them in and then additionally adding sill flashing to all the windows. and thus concludes the entire scope of work from our contractor.

well as far as a progress report goes, theyve finished just about all of it! =]

there are only a few minor things that remain and hes assured me theyll get it done in the very near future. [just need some good weather during the week, like... today for instance...] anyway, what still remains is some very minor patching on the corners of the trim around the edge of our flat roof, and then two small places where the guys didnt finish the window caulking - my guess is that they stopped for lunch and then just forgot to finish it up afterwards and moved on to other things. no biggie really, everything they have less should take a couple of hours tops.

[this.weekend|saturday]

so this weekend we were actually quite productive in comparison to the last couple of weekends.

on saturday we did our usual saturday morning routine that we've been in for the last 6 weeks or so. we get up and walk down the 4 or 5 blocks to our local diner, blue jays, and have a nice breakfast. its nice to take the short walk in the mornings and we really love being able to support locally owned and operated businesses in our neighborhood - not to mention they have pretty great food!

well after that we walked home and took a look at our list of things to get accomplished and our list of things we needed from the store. well, it was still pretty chilly outside [around 37] but it was supposed to warm up to the mid 60's in the afternoon and we wanted to get a lot of stuff done outside, so we decided to do our trip to walmart first. so we drove over to walmart and spent a good hour to hour and a half [as it always seems to take...] going through the store and getting the things on our list, and as usual, a few things that werent. well this isnt really an exciting story for the most part, however we did have a little event during the trip. we'd finally gotten to the register with our things after waiting in line for god only knows how long [classic walmart, 20 registers in the store w/4 open on a saturday afternoon...] and i reach for my wallet as we start loading the conveyor belt. uh-oh. yeah, i didnt have it... but we'd already waited in line so long! so i sent karen out to the truck to look for it or anything else that might be out there while i continued to load. well soon enough she returned, sans wallet. ef. i knew exactly where it was... my nightstand. however we did have a checkbook, so i tried to just pay with a check. however, without your drivers license... no dice. so we apologized, asked if they could hold our cart, and went to look for my wallet "in the truck." well, i was a bit frustrated to say the least as we drove all the way home and then all the way back with my wallet [yeah, it was on the nightstand] and then got back in the back of the line and waited again to finally pay for our purchase. embarrassing? yes. waste of time and gas? yes. did i want to just say f*&^ it and not get the crap? yes. but by the time we finished paying, i was in better spirits and karen and i were joking around as normal as we headed home.

well by the time we finally got home [hours later] we had a brief lunch and then decided it was time to start on that list. well luckily we'd wasted enough of the morning that it had warmed up quite a bit and was actually quite beautiful outside. so the first thing on our list was to secure all of the railings on the porch. so drill and a box of screws in had, i went around the porch and did just that. overall it was a fairly simple task and we finished it up quickly enough. and now that we've gotten that taken care of, karen is going to be scheduling our insurance agent to come out some time this week [hopefully] and we can stop tempting fate and finally get some homeowners insurance! [which is a handy thing to have, because without it if your house that youd spent all your money and gotten into debt with , say had an electrical fire *ahem* and burnt to the ground, well, i think the technical insurance term for what youd be is, um... f*&^ed.]

so with that crossed off the list, we moved on to installing the new waterhose reel we'd gotten at the walmart and then the new hose we'd gotten. that went fairly smoothly as well, and karen was quite excited about the prospects of washing the truck and the potential "gardening" we'll be getting to do when spring finally gets here. [im not convinced thats anytime soon, haha] again, easy enough, crossed off the list.

well the next thing on the list was the one i was dreading... the backyard. see the roofers, as they were ripping down everything and replaying it, had been creating a nice pile in the backyard [im pretty sure thereve been a few pictures posted] of... crap. well the little wifey had had enough, she wanted it gone, and thats what we intended to do. luckily, the guys next door have been working steadily all week and we've had a pretty amiable relationship with them so far and friday afternoon the guy in charge was nice enough to offer his giant dumpster to us if ever we needed it. so that made life a million times easier, instead of having to make multiple trips to who knows where carting off all the crap in our backyard, we just had to move it from the backyard to the dumpster in the front. =] well i shouldnt say easy... this was no easy task... it took hours [and plenty of grumbling on my part, haha] but by the time it was starting to get dark [7ish?] we'd made dozens of trips to the dumpster and our enormous pile had dwindled to a few reasonably small piles of sorted brick, stone, and slate scraps. we'd made a world of progress on the trash situation, and while theres still plenty of work to be done [like cleaning up the hopelessly crushed slate thats... everywhere...] we're quite pleased with ourselves. also, in addition to our trips to the dumpster, we also made a dozen or so trips to the basement with all the leftover bags of shingles we had and made a nice little palette of them in a high dry-er place in the basement.

now, if that wasnt enough, well... part of the way through cleaning the pile i got it in my head that i was damn tired of the remaining pieces of the stair/deck/balcony on the back of the house. you may remember in one of my much earlier posts, that we'd ripped down all the stairs off this thing, but that the decks still remained. well... now the middle one doesnt =] i started to disassemble a few party of the remaining hand rail while karen continued on the pile and before long i was determined to just rip the middle deck down altogether, and thats exactly what i did. basically i got behind the thing against the wall, and with karen helping to stabilize, i successfully removed it from the wall, and into the middle of the backyard, in one... strenuous, haha, push. well, luckily for us the thing fell perfectly with our guidance, and twisted itself right into the middle of the yard avoiding all obstacles on its way - including the balcony, the house, all of our trees and shrubs, and most importantly - my wife. =]

so for part of the time we were cleaning up i ripped the deck apart and we salvaged some of the wood that looked like it could possibly be reused. now theres a partially dismantled platform remaining in the backyard, but its amazing how much different it looks without that stupid thing back there! the tress and bushes that had been growing up under it all look so happy as they bask in their new sunlight, heh.

well anyway, that was about it for saturday, after they we were just destroyed for the day and settled in for a nice dinner and some tv in bed.

[this.weekend|sunday]

well sunday got here much sooner than i wanted it to... karen got out of bed about an hour to an hour and a half before i did and started cleaning house and doing laundry and other domestic things while i finished getting my beauty sleep, haha, i have an awesome wife!

anyway, eventually i joined her and we spent the morning doing some various cleaning and straightening up, and soon enough i started in again on the bookshelves we'd started a few weeks ago. well, while i worked on drilling holes, putting in anchors, cutting pieces, etc. karen worked on painting all the pieces i finished with as well as some furniture that still needed to be painted. you may remember that originally we'd started to stain the bookshelves an oops stain we'd bought some time ago, however after seeing some of it on the wall we decided it just didnt fit in the room and opted to paint it all the same high-gloss black we were doing some of the furniture in. and honestly, it looks a million times better so far. by midday we decided to take a break from the bookshelves after making quite a bit of progress. so far we'd gotten all of the holes drilled and anchors in place for 5 out of the six walls that the shelves were on, all of the mounting pieces cut and almost all of them painted, and all of the mounting pieces actually mounted to the wall on one side. all in all, that was a HUGE accomplishment given whats left of assembling them =] again we were quite pleased with ourselves, haha.

well it was time to go outside and soak up the day a little bit while we took our break, so karen decided it was time to wash the truck and finally put on the license plates, lol, and some new windshield wipers. so while she got started on the washing, i got started on the installing, and soon enough we had it all done and the truck was looking as shiny as when we first bought it.

and while i was waiting on karen to put the finishing touched on the truck, i took a moment to fix the latch on the fence gate once and for all - now it opens and closes as smooth as butter ;]

after the outside work we went back inside and i prepared a nice little feast for dinner and we sat down in the parlor to bask in our days accomplishments. things were coming together pretty well, i must say. we'd spent a good part of the day just cleaning up and straightening things and we even moved the skeletal remains of a sectional sofa out of the house now that karen had finished harvesting all the materials she wanted off of it. so far shes already made 2 pillows from its carcass, and im sure theres plenty more to come =]

well by the time it got dark we were pretty well done for the weekend and dreading the coming week, so we spent the rest of the night watching a movie and a little tv before passing out.

so now, its back to the grind stone as the week starts up. so far my day has been fairly routine, but ive stayed busy so im not complaining. karen is off this week as she gears up for her next quarter starting next week and her new job. she'll be spending the week getting school stuff together, working on some minor house stuff, and whatever other little things need to get done [like the home owners insurance!].

right now we're planning to get the house cleaned up pretty good in the next few days and hopefully this weekend or next we'll be able to have a small get together at the house for all our friends in cincy to come check out the house progress. but we'll see how that goes, we've been intending to do it for months, but something always seems to come up. more on that as things develop =]

well thats all for today, hope youre all having a pleasant monday and enjoying some gorgeous weather!

goin.round

so when last we left off, we'd just received a not so positive result on our electrical inspection. 

well a few days later we got the official report on what still needs to be fixed, and after having discussed it somewhat with dad, theres a lot i can do myself it would seem, some clarification needed on some things, and still some that i am not able to do - mainly, the new service line. no thank you. so thats kind of where we are on that. in limbo for the moment. im sure ill get around to doing a lot of it sometime in the semi-near future, but i dont know for sure. work is kinda an issue when it comes to devoting myself completely to the electrical thing. and since we know what we do have is safe and its all working, its hard to convince myself that this is something of great importance, but meh, whatever. i think it all has to be done by the end of march, so im sure itll get done sooner rather than later. moving on...

well thursday, as i mentioned in the last post, we were having an inspector out to check out the new joists, columns, and footings in the basement so that we could finally and once and for all get the certificate of occupancy situation completely sewn up. so around lunch time i headed home on thursday and waited for the inspector to show up. well around 12:15 i hadnt seen or heard anything from him, and i had to be back at work in half an hour, so i made a phone call and he assured me he was on his way, just running late. okay... well about 10 minutes late, sure enough i hear noise outside and see this big old' cowboy striding up my front porch and knocking on my door. for those of you back home in texas, you know those cowboy santa clause images you see all over the place around christmas time, that is exactly what this guy looked like. long curly white hair, and full beard, round body, and then cowboy jeans, boots, hat, and to top it off - a biker style red white and blue patriotic leather jacket. haha, this guy was awesome. and he talked with that slow southern drawl to boot. anyway, just from the looks of the guy  i knew we were going to be just fine, so we meandered down to the basement as i tried to charge his memory of the situation, and he tried to recall everything, and we walked around and i pointed out all the work wed had done and explained all the details of what he was looking at, and he just kept nodding and sayin yep. 10 minutes later he was on his way out, shook my hand and with that he assured me everything looked good to him, and we were fine to get our certificate of occupancy. so, i guess that means we're good on that! oh, just a small side note, he damn near fell off the porch when he leaned on one of our rickety old railings and it gave under his weight. luckily the house next door is only 3 ft off the porch and he was able to put his hand out and save himself the 2 foot tumble to the ground. and luckily for us, he chuckled and said hes seen that happen more than once in these old houses as i assured him we were going to be fixing the railing very soon. anyway, so he was satisfied with that response and went on his jolly way.

late last week, the roofers pulled down all their ladders and ladder jacks from the side of the house, so i called up my contractor to get the details. it turns out that the people next door needed access to that side of the house, and so they obliged. but at the same time, he said they were pretty much finished anyway. theres one window that still needs a little attention and they didnt finish all the painting, but he needs to discuss some rotted wood issues they discovered with me before we go any further with the painting anyhow. basically theve found some of the fascia boards are rotted out and he didnt want to waste our money painting them if we were just going to replace them, however he never intended to replace them in the original scope of work either so he didnt tear into them, because who knows what the wood looks like behind them. and if you start tearing in and find more rotted wood, its just a big can of worms at that point, you know? so we're going to have to look at where he thinks the damaged stuff is at some point in the near future, and then decide where, and if, we want to go from there. 

so i mentioned the people next door. well, for those of you that may or may not remember from blogs past, the house to the east of our house, has been vacant since well before we moved in, but we'd heard from the neighbors across the street that an urban renewal development company thats been buying up property in our neighborhood owned it. well wed never seen anything being done to the place, so we werent sure what was going on with it as far as rehabbing or whatever, but last week, i think it was wednesday there suddenly appeared a dumpster in the front yard when we got home from work, and it was obvious someone had started demo. well, since then, theyve been out there working on that house every day and have pulled off all this terribly tacky asphalt shingle brick pattern crap that was on the sides of the house, tore down the porch, and have started thoroughly gutting the inside of this little house. karen and i are very excited that this is going on, and its a lot of fun to watch their progress everyday. even though theyre still in the demo phase, this eyesore of a dwelling is looking exponentially better everyday. =]

this weekend karen and i were both sick. she was getting over it, and i was only just catching it from her, so between the two of us being sickly we didnt get a whole lot done around the house. we dont know what it is we had/have [im still sick and feeling pretty out of it at work right now...] but its something thats definitely goin round her office. she said at least 4 or 5 people in her section alone were out last week sick, so it was bound to catch her and then i as well. so anyway, ive got it now, and shes feeling mostly better, and im seriously considering going home at lunch. 

but anyway, we did get a little bit done this weekend. in the office, the light had stopped working as soon as my parents had left town and it had been a bit of a mystery as to why. id taken the thing apart at some point to check the wiring and it all looked good, the switch as well, and wed tested at least 3 different working bulbs in the thing, so we werent sure what was going on. it had worked fine before theyd left, and my dad had checked it right before they left, so it should be working. well anyway, last weekend when wed gone to lowes wed gotten some new track lighting to go in the office [we wanted spots for art work in there anyway] and this weekend i decided to put it up. so i took down the fan/light that was there, inspected all the wiring once again, and installed the new track lighting. it actually went up very easily now that i know what im doing, and i had no problems at all really - well, save dropping screws every 5 minutes, but thats neither here nor there, and im happy to report it is fully functional and wife is quite happy to now be able to use her office after work. shes spent half the weekend in there organizing her school papers and getting ready for the next trimester to begin. 

other than that, kared did some sewing projects and i spent a lot of time fiddling with my computer, but we didnt really get a whole lot else accomplished. we went for a walk on sunday, the weather was once again gorgeous this weekend, and grilled hot-dogs - quite superbly this time around, yes, i am the grill master.... nah, thast not ture at all..] but the dogs were quite tasty. umm... yeah, thats it, i think.

so now im at work and feeling more light headed by the second and finding it quite impossible to concentrate on much of anything [including this...] right now, and im not sure how much longer im going to make it. hope you all have a good week.

happy belated pi day to everyone! [that was saturday] hope you had some, pi! ;]

current.events

so i know its been a while since i last posted, and i do sincerely apologize. however, i really just dont have much to report. i dont know what it is, but karen and i just dont seem to have gotten into anything exciting recently. i think life is catching up to us a little and we've just been pretty exhausted every day. 

this weekend we did get a little accomplished, but nothing extraordinary. 

on saturday i removed the two old mailboxes that were on the front porch - from when the house was a multi-family - and put up a new one by the front door. i put a new door closer on the storm door at the front door because the old one was, well, useless.  karen painted our house numbers on the house in nice gigantic numbers, so that was fun - she enjoyed herself. we attempted to grill burgers [did i mention the weather was GORGEOUS out on saturday? hence the outdoor projects] however, we did not succeed. im not sure what happened exactly [i dont know how to grill burgers possibly? hmm....] but they pretty much crumbled on the grill, which neglected to heat up appropriately for about an hour... weird, and we ended up having overcooked and non-sloppy sloppy-joes instead. so yeah, basically cooked ground beef on a bun. the meat was seasoned quite well though, blah. um, other than that we got started on bookshelves on saturday. i marked up the walls for all the nailers and we started measuring and cutting them. 

sunday we went to church in the morning and then did our usual round of shopping - lowes/the depot and biggs[grocery store]. then i got a haircut - it was that time again [and i got it for free! woohoo 11th cut!] after that we spent the remainder of the day measuring and cutting the rest of the nailers for the bookshelves and measuring all and cutting a couple of the shelves themselves. we also started staining everything with this oops stain we'd bought at the depot only god knows when that had a tealish stain color on the lid, but turns out was grey. meh, whatever. we're going to go with it for now, and if we dont like it, we can always do something else instead. in the end we got one shelf mostly up on the wall, it just needs its face trim - which we have to re-cut because i didnt think to measure the actual opening, just the board itself, and guess what, our walls arent straight - whodathunk?

so um, yeah, thats all there is to report on projects i guess. the only other recent event of any substance is that yesterday i had an inspector out to inspect all the electrical that dad and i had done. and as it turns out there are a few problems with our work. im not going to go into any lengthy description right now, but its suffice to say that theyre going to send us a detailed letter spelling out all the things we need to fix, and then from the sound of what he mentioned to me when he was there, we're going to have to end up getting an electrician out to do most of it. and before you think im copping out, the biggest issue that needed to be fixed was that we needed a whole new service line installed in the house [ours is chewed to hell outside, exposed wiring and such, its in bad shape] and i am in no way remotely qualified to do something like that. 

so yeah, that was kind of a bummer after all the hard work we'd put in.

tomorrow ive got another inspector coming out to hopefully approve our new columns and joists. wish us luck, i dont think i can handle any more problems at this point. the electrical is kind of stressing me out. 

alright, thats all ive got. 

hope you all have a nice week. =]

the.post.game

so for those of you that have been anticipating some photographs of the work we got done during the visit, i finally got around to taking some. i've posted them, as well as commentary on my google photos site which you can find here. if that doesnt seem to be working, you can follow the link in the sidebar as usual. 

please try and forgive how much of a wreck things are, we're in a constant state of working on things, and well... it seems we can never keep a room clean for more than a day. anyway, hope you enjoy all the pictures, feel free to leave any comments you like! =]

when.the.circus.comes.to.town [the.conclusion+]

well first off i'll say that i completely forgot to take pictures last night for you all [y'all]. the reason for that, well... we'll get to it later on i suppose. =]

[wednesday]

so wednesday morning we got ready for work as usual and said our goodbyes and i love yous to mom and dad. i forgot to mention in the last post, but only mom and dad stayed the extra day, kimber had to get back for school or something, so mom had taken her to the airport for her original flight on tuesday while dad and i kept working on the electrical. well, when the night came and we finally quit for bedtime we'd gotten damn near everything finished. there were only a few things left to do: a few light fixtures to put back together, a few outlets and switches to put back in the wall, our two lovely 3 ways that had been wired wrong were still in need of a little tlc, and there were still two wires we hadnt hooked back up to the panel yet, but that was about it. pretty light relative to the previous days work. 

[1]so while karen and i were at work, mom and dad got those last little things finished up, mom did laundry and dishes again i think, and even took some time to make us cookies, lol! but by the time they left the house was in great shape and we'd gotten so much accomplished it was pretty extraordinary. thanks everyone for all the help and hard work, karen and i cant even express how appreciative we are!

[2]well, our contractor also made a little visit on wednesday while the 'rents were finishing up, and they got a ton of work done too. they were able to cut out and replace the bad wood in both of the other two joists, cut holes and dig out for the footings, and put in place all 3 columns before the day was up - awesome work! and fast! 

so when wednesday evening finally came upon us we were exhausted, haha. but we decided to go out to dinner to celebrate all we'd gotten done, and also to celebrate karen's new job! i think i mentioned before that she was going to try to find some part time work while she was taking classes next quarter and well, she had an interview that dfay and had gotten the job! basically shes going to be doing general office work 12+ hours a week, and shes getting paid the same thing shes making now, so its really a dream come true! she even has the option of working more hours if she feels like she can handle it, theyre extremely flexible, and even more great news, the office shes working in is in the same building as all of her classes, so she doesnt even have to walk across campus to go to work! =]

[thursday]

well thursday was a pretty normal day, and i wouldnt even bring it up, except to say that the contractors were back again and poured all three of our footings and finished putting some steel in the joists as well. so at they point they were pretty much finished with the basement minus a little clean-up and letting the concrete cure for a few days. thursday night we did nothing but hang out and relax - finally!

[friday]

nada on projects. we were supposed to meet some of our friends for dinner and drinks, but something came up and they had to take a raincheck, so we just did it on our own. we had a nice night out and went to bed pretty early =]

[saturday]

saturday i wanted to do nothing, and thats exactly what i did, hehe. i needed an entire day off with nothing but rest and relaxation, and thats what i got. i stayed in bed half the day and basically just watched tv and movies all day, it was awesome! karen bummed around with me for a lot of the day, but she was restless and wanted to get stuff done, so in the afternoon she went to run some errands and then in the evening went to a "all girls craft party" at a friend of hers and had a good time. im still not entirely sure what all happens at a party of this sort, but i know she made some sort of crafty thing that she didnt bring home, lol, so whatever. 

[sunday]

well, sunday was a pretty busy day - considering we got nothing done on saturday of any real substance, lol. we went to church in the morning and then made the rounds to a few stores. first was target because my sweetie needed some new clothes for school [its like august 2000 again, lol!]. then we had lunch and it was delicious. then we went to michaels where we got some thread and yarn and possibly some other things, i cant remember now. 

then it was next door to bigg's for the weekly grocery store trip. by the time we were finished with all that it was about 5pm and we unloaded groceries and cleaned out the fridge while we decided what to do next. 

well, given the newly renovated rooms we decided we needed to get some new furniture, haha. so we went to ikea and spent a couple of hours browsing through the store and trying to decide what we really needed and of that what we actually wanted to buy and well, we ended up getting some great deals! for the office we got 4 shelves - 2 wall mountable shelves that are essentially a bookshelf turned sideways, so we can not only store stuff inside the shelf, we can also put stuff on top of it, so with 2 of them, we're actually getting 4 - not bad at all, and they were a pretty good deal. the other shelves stand on their own and they have 4 shelves each, so we got a ton of storage for the price. =]

also, we got karen a desk chair for her new desk that was on sale for pretty cheap and shes really excited about it. and lastly we got 4 dining room chairs that are the right height for our real dining room table. i know i mentioned before the vintage dining room table we have now with the legs i had to fix, but the plan is that that table is going to end up in the kitchen as a little nook type table, and then our other "real" dining room table can finally take its rightful place. its a pub-height table we got as a wedding gift and its really beautiful, but the problem was that we didnt have any pub-height chairs so that we could actually use it. so at ikea we found some chairs that arent the optimum solution, but they were very reasonably priced and they'll do the trick in a pinch, so to speak, so that we can actually use our fancy table, heh. 

so when we got home from ikea we had dinner and then i spent the rest of the night putting together the new dining room chairs - which proved to be a serious pain in the ass, lol. they were probably some of the hardest to assemble furniture ive ever gotten from ikea, but i finally got them all put together and they look good!

[monday|yesterday]

well, if you hadnt guessed it yet, the reason i didnt get around to taking pictures last night, is because i got distracted with putting together our new ikea shelves, lol! i love putting together furniture, so i just get caught up in it and thats all she wrote. anyway, we got 3 of the 4 shelves put together last night and karens new desk chair with pretty much no problems at all =] other than that the day was pretty normal, work was trying, make dinner, and watch heroes!

actually, s long as we're talking about tv shows ill say a few things.

[1] the new season of heroes is bugging me a little. im still enjoying it, but does anyone else feel like its really just dragging along very slowly? i guess last season just had so much going on so fast that i kinda got used to that momentum, and now we spend half the show watching the characters having conversations and not really doing a whole lot. but maybe thats just me. 

[2] does anyone else watch fringe? can i just say i love this show? i dont know what it is, but it really just grabs the nerd in me and gets me so into everything going on that i cant help it. and honestly, i cant believe im saying it, but i really like joshua jackson's character. i mean, given his dawsons creek make-me-wunna-puke background, i was expecting to be annoyed with him very quickly, but im not! so kudos there. also, the italian guy from the black donnely's whos name i cant remember, really like his character on this show - i just wish theyd give him more of a primary role! 

[3] so ive started watching fox's two new prime time shows as well this season. lie to me i really enjoy, i find it hilarious and it keeps me very entertained. dollhouse on the other hand... im not sure yet. the advertisements for the show made it look really cool, and i thought it was more of like an assassin type thing, but now i find out its more like super-escort service? hmm... i think theyre trying to develop the backstory and really get to the good stuff, but its taking a little while and im just not sure how i feel about it all just yet. its got potential, especially if they do take the espionage|assassin route - not to mention you really cant go wrong with eliza dushku! so we'll see how those two play out, haha, in my one night a week internet tv veg-outs, lol!

[4] how i met your mother is still awesome. thats really all i gotta say about that. virtual high-five!

anyone else watching something good i should pay attention to? anyone seen any good movies lately? ive got a short list of summer blockbusters i want to see [star trek!!!!!] and theres a few coming out in march i know of that look interesting, but i really havent been keeping up lately. 

well guys and dolls, i think thats it for now. i really should be working, but its been a really... really... slow morning so far, and i honestly dont have anything to do. guess i'll go dig something up! have a great day!

when.the.circus.comes.to.town [ch.3]

[friday]

again friday was a normal work day for karen and i, so in the morning we ventured to our offices, while mom, kimber, and dad stayed home and did their thing. 

[1] from what i remember mom spent the majority of the day getting more rooms cleaned, organized, rearranged, and prepped to begin painting when it came time for that. 

[2] dad & kimber spent the majority of the day trying to trace more wires back to the electrical panel and map out where the ones were that theyd yet been unable to find or figure out where they were going. i think mom helped out some with this as well - you wouldnt think it was so time consuming and difficult to trace wires, but when everything just pops out in the basement, goes to half a dozen junction boxes, disappears above and behind duct work and in the floor joists, nothing is labeled or seems to have any pattern or coordination... its frustrating... whoever wired the house before us took a number of short-cuts, was lazy in doing things, did them bizarrely, or just completely wrong altogether. 

[3] i think mom and kimber got started painting in both the office and the hallway and made some progress in both - although more in the office than the hall. 

as i said before, josh and cassie got in right after work on friday and we went to dinner in the frigid cold, and i dont really remember getting much accomplished that night in the way of projects after our big dinner. we gave them the tour of the place [although they really gave themselves the tour more than they let us, lol] and i think we all ended up in bed fairly early after a pretty exhausting day thus far. 

[saturday]

well saturday was the first big day that everyone was at the house and ready to get some work done. so other than our various excursions to the depot, lowes, or meijer [another place that seemed to be frequented during their visit] we spent the day working on the house - and all over the house at that. 

[1] all the women spent a good part of the day prepping the parlor, and painting it [with some caulking assistance from josh and i around the ceiling, in the corners, and around the windows.] by the end of the day theyd not only finished painting 2 coats in the parlor, but had also rearranged furniture, and put together window treatments with handmade curtains [a la my lovely and talented wife!] and had the parlor looking mighty fine. it really is gorgeous =] they were quite pleased with themselves, heh. [and much deservedly]

[2] in between coats in the parlor they spent more time on the hallway and the office getting them taped off and painted. when that was all said and done for saturday theyd gotten all of the office painted that could be [there were some things that needed to be repaired before the rest could be painted] and the hall had one coat on about half of it - which is a lot considering how big it is. =] additionally, i think they even got started painting a primer coat in the closet and possibly got started on painting some trim and doors in the closet, but i cant remember if that was more saturday or sunday. 

[3] dad and i spent the day tracing more wires out and trying to find the last few wires that we couldnt yet find and started pulling new romex in the basement for some of the lines we needed to replace. one of the biggest accomplishments we achieved was getting a new homerun [thats when you run a wire to the circuit panel or "home", thus homerun] pulled through a pain in the ass plumbing chase from the attic and managed to get the power fixed in the previously powerless half of the attic! awesome! so now we actually had light in the bathroom! kind of a cool thing, heh. 

[sunday]

well as i mentioned before, sunday was the end of josh and cassies visit and we spent most of the morning having breakfast, after which we went home to work on the house as much as we could before they had to say goodbye. 

[1] so while they were still around we tried to put them to work a little and there was more painting done in the closet with the primer and the trim and door. 

[2] dad and i were pleased with our progress with the new line for the attic and decided on a plan of attack for the other half of the attic..

--let me take a second here to explain briefly the situation with our electrical in more depth. basically, the entire house was on 2 circuits, minus a few independent lines for the stove, furnace, electric radiators in the attic, and the dryer. other than that, there were two circuits that everything was on - one for the lower two levels and one for the upper two levels. so you can imagine we had somewhere around 30+ outlets and lights on each of those circuits which is a few more than youd really like to have. not to mention there were 3 or 4 other circuits in the house that only had like one outlet on them, soooooo weird. so one of the main goals of our electrical work was to split all the circuits up in a way that made sense and distributed the electrical loads more evenly. so now to get back on track with the storyline we were going to try and have three independent circuits in the attic, one for each half of lights and outlets [which was fairly even] and the same independent line for the electric radiators.-- 

well, before the day was over we'd been able to not only successfully pull a new homerun for the second half of the attic, but we'd done it on one or the outside walls - which in a house of this age with structural brick and plaster exterior walls, is a feat nothing short of miraculous. id be understating significantly if i said it was difficult - dad didnt think we'd really be able to do it and was pretty shocked we were able to pull it off, haha!

[3] josh was also a great help in doing some patchwork in various places it was needed. there was that same spot in the stairwell that i mentioned long ago that id neglected to finish, and then a few other places.

[4] dad and i scraped a wall in the office where there had been a lot of water damage to the plaster and paint - the main thing that needed to be done for more painting - and i demo-ed out the existing closet in the office that was not only very poorly constructed, but was pretty well water damaged as well and just is really sad shape. the absence of that closet in the office is a significant transformation - and so much for the better!

[5] dad and i also were able to disconnect and pull off the old circuit panel and start hooking up the new circuit panel in its place. which sounds fairly simple when i say it here, but theres a lot that has to be done in order to disconnect every circuit from a circuit breaker, disconnect a panel, install a new panel and hook up new circuits - especially since we were trying to put all the news stuff in with a lot more sense than it had originally been done - god only knows what sense [if any] that piece of crap made.

[monday]

well cassie and josh were now back in texas and it felt quieter and calmer without them there. it was a little strange considering how short of a time theyd actually been in town, but those days were extremely long with all the work that got done, and i know i [as well as the rest of the group] had quickly gotten accustomed to them being there and we missed them a little after theyd left. 

well again, monday was back to the normal grind for karen and i, so we headed out to the offices for work, and then straight home to get started on what waited for us there. 

[1] mom and kimber spent most of the day doing more painting - this time they were working on finishing the primer coat in the closet and getting the first coat of real paint on the walls in there as well. other than that, i know that they did some general cleaning and straightening things up around the house and more secondary things like laundry and the dishes and such, im really not sure at this point - but i know it was all very helpful!

[2] dad had spent the majority of the day [and i helped as soon as i got home] pulling new wire for some of the circuits that needed to have wire replaced. there was a lot of knob and tube [really old wiring] in a lot of the house, and also a lof of older romex [the new-er kind of wiring, although this was still pretty damn old] and a lot of it was either a gauge of wire that dad really felt it shouldnt be or it was old and crumbling and such - basically it just needed to be updated and replaced to make dad feel like we were in a safer situation - no more fires in our walls! [did i mention that dad discovered the original outage in the attic was caused by a fire in one of our junction boxes that fried the circuit? we are so so so so lucky it was contained in that junction box and didnt spread into the walls and cause some serious damage - thank the lord!]

[tuesday]

well karen went to work on tuesday [despite all my efforts, heh] and i took the day off to keep working on the house. keeping in mind that mom and dad and kimber were supposed to be leaving tuesday at around 2:30pm and we still had a LOT of work to get done before dad left - stuff that i just couldnt do myself [although i had picked up a ton of knowledge and experience helping him over their visit and there was much more i was capable of doing on my own than id ever thought i would].

[1] mom and kimber spent the day going through and really cleaning house as best they could. the place looked like it had been ransacked by viking siege or something with all the messes we were creating in all these various projects and mom really wanted the place to be as clean as possible for us so that we could have some peace and sanity once they left. i think there might have been a little more painting done in the closet, but i cant remember for sure - i think they tried to steer clear of painting and making any more messes, lol!

[2] well dad and i spent the morning trying to re-wire and move wires out of the way of all the joists in the basement that were going to be repaired. we also pulled new wire to the kitchen so that we could finally get the microwave operational without an extension cord, and also an independent line that was for the future hookups of the dishwasher and garbage disposal - which ended up being a whole pain in the ass all on its own, haha, poor dad. [but awesome!!] anyway, i think i mentioned earlier that mom and dad didnt end up leaving on tuesday, and well the reason was that by the time 2 oclock rolled around, dad and i still werent finished even though we'd busted our asses the whole weekend to try and get finished, but these things just take a lot of time, and there wasnt anything we could do about that. so they ended up extending their trip a day and dad and i worked the rest of the day and night to try and finish running all the new wire we needed and hooking up the rest of the new circuits and such in the new panel. 

[3] well, my contractor decided to make an appearance on tuesday morning as well. so while dad and i were moving stuff out of his way and trying to get our work done, he got started cutting out the first of the three bad joists and repairing it. it took a while, but but the time he left hed gotten the first joist mostly cut out and repaired, although it still needed some more hardware and eventually its column and footing as well. 

and thats all the time weve got. tune in next time for the exciting conclusion, lol! [and if youre lucky, i might even remember to take some pictures to post for you!]

when.the.circus.comes.to.town [ch.2]

well as promised, i will get right into the highlights of the circus' visit to town - although, since yesterday i started to really think hard about the timeline of events, and things started coming back to me a little and i might be able to lay it out slightly more linear than if id tried to in the last post.

projects.

[wednesday]

as i mentioned in the last blog, wednesday was the day my parents arrived, and one of the first things we did was head to the depot [oh this was only the first of many, many, many - too numerous to count - trips to the depot over the duration of their trip. basically, if we didnt go at least once a day - usually more like 2 to 3 times a day - to lowes or the depot, then the day just wasnt over yet...] and pick up a few fasteners for me to repair the dining room table. this is the same table i mentioned many moons ago [i find it necessary at times to allude in a light hearted manor to my native american heritage, feel free to ignore it altogether, but it makes me happy] in another blog that wed acquired via craigslist. its kind of a 50's diner style vintage thing with chrome framing and a blue vinyl top/leaf and came with 4 matching chairs, also chrome frame, but with green vinyl cushioning.

anyway, the legs on this thing had slowly been getting more and more loose as time progressed, and tuesday night [the night before the circus arrived] they all but completely gave out on us. we were in the middle of dinner when the table shook, then all four legs splayed out like those old cartoons with the dog chasing the cat out onto the frozen lake, and the table fell about 2 feet. luckily nothing came off the table, but at that point id had enough. id tried several times to fix this stupid thing by tightening its bolts, but the problem was that the bolts were rusted solid, and the original brackets for this table had somewhere along the line been replaced with some roughly cut wood shims... not exactly the original design intent. 

so anyway, when we got back from the depot wednesday night, i finally fixed the stupid legs with a few electrical conduit brackets and that was that. we flipped it over just as karen was getting home and it was good as gold - we havent had a problem with it since! =] other than that, like i mentioned in the last post, we procured the necessary permits from the i.b.i. and were ready to get going on the electrical whenever the time came. [definitely a great accomplishment!]

[thursday]

well karen and i were both back to work as usual on thursday so we missed out on all the fun that took place back at the house, but the general highlights of the day were as follows:

[1]the security company came by to repair the security system. recently we'd had a small number of false alarms and since we were still under warranty with the system, they sent out a guy to check the whole thing out and as it turned out, replace a bad sensor and a few batteries. since then we've had no further incidents - im sure the police are pleased. 

[2]kimber decided to take upon herself  the task of cleaning our basement. its much like any other basement in that its very dusty, dirty, and cobwebby [yeah, i made that up]. well by the end of the day shed swept up and vacuumed somewhere around 100lbs of dirt and debris from our basement into a giant trashcan - which proved to be something of an issue when it came to moving said trashcan... - and the basement had had a significant transformation! she did a great job, and we were very pleased. 

[3]mom had taken on the task of cleaning out the office and the closet on the second floor and getting the rooms prepped and ready for painting. additionally, shed gone through most of the house doing general organizing, cleaning, vacuuming, and some minor prepping to the various rooms we were planning to eventually tackle during their stay. 

[4]dad had spent his day going about tracing out a number of wires in the basement and trying to figure out what was going where, what was feeding what, where and how things were linked together, and starting to devise a plan of action to correct the numerous issues he was uncovering [yes, on top of the ones we were already well aware of].

[additionally] 

well, im not sure when this actually happened in the whole time-line scheme of things, but i figured id go ahead and give you the details now, as it will eventually be relevant to the rest of the story. i cant remember now if i mentioned it or not - i think i did - but just before my parents were scheduled to make their visit we decided to see if we could get the certificate of occupancy. as such, we discussed all the necessary permits and issues with our friendly city inspector, and we even ended up building a railing for the stairway up to the "penthouse" [as we're now referring to the attic suite - thanks mom.] and around the stair opening in the same. well im not sure if i got in to depth on how the inspection went, but we did pass - sorta.... 

he approved us in that the house was indeed a habitable domain, and as such we were legally allowed to occupy it [instead of continuing our stint as illegal squatters on our own property], however this was a conditional situation. during the inspection of the basement he found 3 places that he deemed "structural problems" in that there was "significant or considerable" termite damage to some of our floor joists from a previous infestation in the house. [as youll recall, we had a termite guy out earlier in the blog posts and he assured us there was no active infestation of any kind.] so in essence, we were given occupancy under the condition that sometime in the near future we would repair the structural defects and return the house to a safe environment. 

well the kicker was the way in which he was wanting this done. he wanted us to cut out all the bad wood in the floor joists, replace them with good wood. furthermore, where the new met the old we would need to add at minimum a 6x6 wood column to take the majority of the load off the new segment. if that wasnt enough, the new column was going to need to be placed within a new concrete footing that was basically an 18" cube, with 12" below the floor of our basement, and 6" above the floor which would also be the 6" the column should be set in.

so.... considering i dont have a saw to cut concrete, nor did we have the time to tackle all of that additional mess on top of the electrical issues and whatever other problems we would run into while the folks were here, karen and i decided to have our contractor do the joist stuff in addition to the roof he was still working on. 

and so... until i have a little more time and a jog in the memory, we'll leave this tbc...