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!
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