i.need.a.holiday.after.my.holiday[part.one]

so when i last left you all i was in the middle of the weekend. well a lot of time has passed since then and my memory of the details of sunday are foggy at best. the only real excitement i can recall is that our closet collapsed sunday night at about 11pm and i had to fix it on monday. it was quite an annoyance, but everything is fine now.

the real excitement happened over this last holiday weekend. as i mentioned in the previous post, the in-laws were comin to town for a visit and we'd been preparing for their arrival. so friday night after work i cleaned house some more and set up the 2nd floor bedroom for them so they could have a little privacy on the 2nd floor with their own room and own bathroom. [theyd still have to share the only working shower, but its a big step up from practically sharing the same room with us - see: the circus coming to town...] anyway i got things pretty well prepared for them and then after karen was finished with school we went to the store and got some window treatments for the room so that the room wouldnt be completely open for the world to see. we spent the next couple of hours putting those up - a task that proved more difficult than id have liked, and the heat in the house was not working in my favor either... [this is actually going to be a bit of a consistency for the entire weekend... it was HOT] well at some point we finished and snuggled up in front of the tv for a while and before we knew it the cell phone was ringing and the in-laws were at the front door. well it was around 12:15am from my recollection and this was actually a little unexpected. wed been informed earlier that day that their flight had been delayed at least an hour, and they actually showed up earlier than originally planned... so not entirely sure what happened there, but we exchanged hugs, showed them to their room, and let them retire for the evening after all their traveling.

[saturday day.one]
well we were anticipating getting some house work done this weekend [i believe we may have discussed in brevity what projects we anticipated the night before] so we were all up pretty early and getting ready to start the festivities. after everyone had their coffee and breakfast we decided on a plan of action and then started putting together all of our lists. the days projects were anticipated to include, but werent limited to: home depot/lowes for materials & supplies, the grocery store to stock up for the weekend and the week to come, finish the bookshelves once and for all, put up the crown molding [caulk, fill, paint, and touch up as required], and if there was time get started on painting a few small areas that were still in need of some tlc. anticipated items for day 2 were to include replacing two doors, getting dirt and filling the planter outside, and then moving on to more painting and landscaping in the backyard. day 3, to be determined.
well, obviously we were a bit eager and thinking we could get quite a bit done, so we soon set off for the depot to pick up the few items we needed.
at the depot we got a little side tracked looking for some items that they ended up not having, but we were pretty good about staying on the list and without too much delay left the depot and headed to lowes to see if they had the missing items. well, they did, however we ran into a little bit of an assistance snag [in that the guy assisting us was pretty well worthless] and resolved to let anne [thats mom-in-law] stay at lowes to finish up while the rest of us walked next door to biggs to get started on grocery shopping. soon we were filling the basket with all the usual weekly items and then allan [dad-in-law] pulled out the envelope of coupons that mom was insisting we use, and we worked on those as well. i cant tell you exactly how long it had been, but it must have been close to an hour when mom finally popped into the grocery store as we were getting the last few items and checking out. apparently the worthless guy had been quite an ordeal, but eventually shed gotten what we needed and mom and i decided to go get the car and bring it around while karen and dad finished up with the groceries and we could all load up.
soon we were in the car and headed back home, anxious to unload all the new goodies and get started on the projects for the day. after unloading and having a quick bite to eat we were ready to get to work and split up into teams for the weekend. dad and i would do most of the guy stuff - measuring, cutting, heavy lifting, installing, that sort of thing - and mom and karen would take care of the lighter [although still just as important and just as labor intensive] work - like caulking, filling, painting, doing homework [that was karen specific] and supervising the guys [obviously the most crucial and time intensive task]. well we decided to start with the crown molding for the guys while the girls took down all the shelves that still needed to be painted and got started on that.
we were pretty confident as we got started on the crown molding because, well, how hard could it really be? its a 45degree miter for a 90 degree corner, right? thats what it was on all the base molding, and that went pretty quickly when karen and i did it, so this should be just as straight forward logically. well we took some measurement and got our crown out, got the miter saw hooked up and decided that just in case we were off a little on our measurement or cuts we better start with the smallest corner. so we set the miter, measured out boards and cuts [not just once, but twice] and climbed the ladder to bask in our glory.... and thats where everything went wrong. hahaha, as we stuck the wo pieces together we soon realized that they werent just a little off, but in fact were a mile off. the angles didnt line up at all, wed totally forgotten about the crown tilting out and having to cut back. crap, these were going to be compound angles. not only were we going to need the 45degree between the boards, we were also going to have to cut back at a 45 degree so that they would lean out - right? so we tried that method. calibrated the saw accordingly, made our new measurements, cuts, and then climbed back up the ladder... nope. what? but its a 90 degree angle, and this is half of that and theyre tilted at the same angle, so why isnt this working?? well we were a little befuddled at this point and had no idea what was wrong, so i came to the conclusion that since they were tilting out maybe that cut the angle in half again, so it was half of 45, so 22.5. that makes sense, right? alright, we had a plan, wed figured it out, we just didnt completely wrap our minds around the geometry the first two times, no biggie, we were still fresh afterall, the weekend had only just begun. so we re-calibrated, re-measure, re-cut again [at this point having gone through 3/4's of a piece of crown] and back up the ladder to see our succe...s&%$. that wasnt it either. and there was no discernible rationale for what angle we could possibly infer as the difference between the two. well now that we were quite frustrated and scratching our heads [which between the two of us - a masters in architecture and a real life head of scientific research - is saying a little bit i think] we decided to find the d.i.y. beginners books that mom had gotten us when we first bought the house, lol! well when those didnt turn up [weve misplaced a few things in all the rearranging and moving things around, but im sure theyll turn up soon] we opted for the advice of the internet. after a little searching karen found some website that had a table listing the various angles necessary for cutting crown molding - none of which made any logical sense whatsoever from a 90 degree wall angle and a 45degree bisection of that angle, but... whatever. so we found the numbers we thought we needed on the table, set our saw appropriately, re-measured the cuts again and then.... no. still not right... wtf?? so we consulted the website and chart again and it turns out theres two types of crown, one tilts at 45 degrees, one tilts at 38 degrees [where did these people come up with this stuff??? why 38 degrees??] and we apparently had the 38 degree variety so that came with a whole new set of angles. so we went back to the saw and comically enough, discovered that the new angles were actually pre-marked right on the saw all along if only we'd known to look for them, lol! apparently these are the "typical" angles for cutting crown.... anyway, so we remeasured [now having completely gone through a whole length of crown] and got ready to install using our handy new air compressor and nail gun that karen and i bought some time back. we tested the cut pieces and this time it worked! woo hoo! we were in business! i still have no clue how they came up with the angles that make these things work, but i also have no desire to sit down and try to work the geometry to figure it out either. lets just say that a master carpenter somewhere along the line was way better at this stuff than i am, heh.
so we glued the pieces up and stuck them where they were meant to go and got the compressor kicked on until we ran into a little hiccup - we were missing the one little connector between the gun and the hose. #$^*@.... so we sent karen to the hardware store around the corner while we measured and cut the next piece in line and by the time she got back we were ready to install. after trouble shooting the nail gun and getting everything in place we shot the first couple of nails and soon we were moving right along. the first two pieces went up no problem and then the 3rd we ran into a little snag. it was an outside masonry wall and the nail gun was not going to cut it. so we resolved to cut and mount a nailer first, then after a little more work we had the crown in place attached to it. well by this time we were starting to get the hang of this and it started to go a little faster. measure, cut, glue, nail, countersink... we got into a pattern and before long we'd installed all of the crown on 4/5's of the entryway. however, we ran into a little snag... we ran out of crown after all that trial and error on the first piece, haha! so we decided instead to move on to the second piece of the crown [we were doing a two piece type, for those of you that dont know, floor and crown molding can be a variety of combinations of pieces and any number of sizes]. these were just going to be flat against the wall like the base molding and were a much more simple measuring and cutting situation after the insanity of the crown. well... while wed been doing all this, the girls had painted all the shelves and were letting those dry, then had moved on to installing some pieces of glass that were missing in our front and back door - to make them much prettier - and then had even started filling and painting the trim around the two diamond windows in the stairwell and priming the rest of the stairwell to paint to match the entryway. well around dinner time we were all pretty gross from sweating all day [did i mention it was HOT?!] and were pretty hungry, so we decided to go to the comet for some mexican food and some hot salsa we'd told the in-laws about.
by the time we finished dinner it was getting pretty late and we'd only gotten most of one project done, so a little frustrated with our progress the guys finished as much of the crown as we could without the extra we needed to buy the next day and before long we were all exhausted and called it a night.

sorry, but my lunch break is over, youll just have to stay tuned for pictures and the rest of the weekend!!