alive.and.well

i know ive been quiet for almost a week now, definitely an oddity as of late. i just wanted to quickly let you all know that karen and i are both "alive and well" to quote my mother-in-law, but that things have just been a little hectic lately and its wearing on us both. i just havent had a chance to sit down and regurgitate all of our adventures just yet. im sure youre all anxiously awaiting my thoughts and embellishments, sitting on pins and needles no doubt, but youll have to wait a little longer im afraid. 

as a final thought i'll only say this:

go vote! for the love of all that is holy, i dont care who you vote for or what you vote for, just go and vote! its one fo the few rights we still have left, its our duty as citizens, and damnit its an oppurtunity! 

and please. please, please, oh please, TRY to be informed when you do so... actually, ill amend my previous statements - go vote, if and only if, youre informed. god knows we dont need a billion more idiots out there voting for something when they have no idea why. blind and ignorant following of any cause or man [and i do mean ANY!] is simply intollerable - please do not let yourself be a victim of it. if you dont know why youre doing something, its better not to do it. 

[these are just for fun, not to push one side or the other! oprah '08?!]

"alive and well"

the.populist

post.script: whats your political philosophy? comment and share! 

[click the link/title for each issue to find out more about it and figure out where you stand]

clumping

well guys and dolls, we've got some catching up to do. we had a long but productive weekend, and with some happy successes along the way. 

when we last left our hero & heroine, they were about to embark on a weekend of scrubbing walls & floors, yard-work, and appliance hunting. also, they'd just had a mason's estimate come back and were waiting on another mason, a roofer (possibly 2) and a new plumber to get into the bidding. so lets see what happened!

friday.

so friday we heard back from the 3rd mason. and wow! we are glad we did. he called me up when he was at the house to make sure he was seeing everything and we discussed the various things i wanted taken care of while he could see them. so just a quick run-down to refresh you guys [& dolls] we've got the brick wall thats in pretty bad shape from water damage from the busted box gutter above it; theres also a chimney above that wall that needs to come down because its falling apart and is no longer being used; theres a second chimney on the back of the house thats in the same situation; and then theres a couple of spots where some bricks are just going bad and need to be replaced; and some various spots that need tuck pointing. okay so ballpark for all that work + materials he says we're looking at about 2-2.5g's... what?! thats amazing! thats a quarter of what the other guys are estimating! so the catch. he cant do it right away, hes booked for the next 2 weeks. bummer - good enough though. so he said hed do a little pricing on materials and get back to us with a written estimate early this week - awesome. he also gave me the name of a roofer he works with and he knows does good work for a fair price, so i tried calling them, but it was already 5 when i got off the phone with the mason - no answer. but overall im hopeful!

after work i discovered that karen had gotten a line on a stove on craigslist and we were going to pick it up. sweet. 50 bucks - you cant beat that. so we drove out to where the stove was... it was a little scary i'll admit. we we're deep in the suburbs and surrounded by "mccain/palin '08" signs in every single yard. it was very frightening, we were skurred. anyway, so we got there and the guy was really nice, showed us the stove, and we loaded it up and headed out. it just so happened [as it often does in deep deep suburbia] that we passed a home depot not far from his place and given that we needed a few things for the weekend's yard work, we stopped off to pick em up.

so after a half an hour, we left home depot [our second home as of late it would seem] with a new trashcan for the yard, a new chainsaw [hell yeah!] some hedge clippers, and a few other smaller things like extension chords and what have you. 

well again as it turns out [just...so...shockingly...] theres a red lobster next to the home depot and i grin at karen mentioning how tasty the cheddar biscuits are. and she stares blankly back at me. huh? im sorry, i dont care who you are, you cannot deny the tastiness of red lobster cheddar biscuits, thats like blasphemy! so i ask her what the deal is and why she isnt eagerly and excitedly agreeing with me - shes never been to red lobster! what kind of island dwelling crazy person did i marry!? totally cut off from the deliciousness of cheddar biscuits. its tragic really. so i decide to end her suffering and make her go to red lobster for dinner and resolve this travesty once and for all. [haha, dramatic much? who me? never.] so we had red lobster for dinner, it had been years since id been, so it was quite delectable, karen was mildly appeased, hardly impressed [ugh, shes such a food-snob! if it doesnt come from the island its just not good enough for her highness, bleh.] but admitted my biscuits were good. [lol!] so after that we were pretty drained, but went home and changed quickly from our work clothes and unloaded everything at the house before calling it a night. 

saturday.

well we got up early and checked craigslist for appliances again and found a fridge for 125 bucks, sweet! it looked fairly new from the picture, and it was certainly well taken care of so we called em up. a half hour later [after a trip to the atm] we arrived at what turned out to be an estate sale and a jolly middle-aged man greeting us on the front porch. long story short here, we got the fridge for 75 bucks [score!] and had to take the doors off of it to get it out of the house. however, somewhere in the midst of everything we managed to lose or forget the center hinge that is pretty much the integral connecting piece of the entire set-up [although we didnt discover this till later that night]. so we took the fridge to the house and got started on our work for the day. 

saturday we spent the entire day in the back yard. i got to use the new chainsaw [and it was quite joyous!] and karen fell in love with the hedge clippers. i have never seen anyone have so much fun with a pair of those things, lol, but she just got into it man. so throughout the day we did mostly cleared out the brush [and obviously fixed that felled tree situation] and cleaned up the yard in general. in the process of doing so we discovered a wealth of large rocks, bricks, and chunks of slate just below the surface of the yard [odd, but cool] and that we had a network of serious roots from some small plants that were growing through our fence [that we seriously could not dig up despite our best efforts. these little buggers are crazy! the plant is like a half an inch diameter through the fence, but the roots are like 3 inches in diameter! insane!] 

also, we have these weird bushes [i guess is what they are] that are clumps of stems that are long and tree-like individually and are just overgrown everywhere trying to get sunlight. well, when i was in denver i saw a grad project [possibly a thesis, not sure] that was about wrapping trees. it made a good argument that wrapping trees didnt hurt them and actually created a habitat for wildlife within the wrapping [like for birds to nest in and the like] that they wouldnt normally have. so this led me to suggest to karen that we wrap these things in tighter clumps to maybe encourage them to grow more vertically, and also to wrap some of the clumps together. well when i mentioned that to her, she loved the idea and told me that she knew something about binding oleanders [i think is the bush she told me about] and eventually the stems will actually grow together into a tree trunk. sweet. so we decided to give it a shot and we wrapped/binded all our bushes/trees while we were clearing out brush and digging up the dead, mostly dead, or somehow intertwined in the fences, plants. 

oh! and i forgot to mention! karen was all ready to go on scrubbing the inside of the house until we realized we dont have any plumbing, lol! kinda hard to clean without water. so we nixed that for the time being. ;]

heres a few before and afters for you on saturdays fun:

sunday.

so sunday morning we did whats become our normal routine:

church followed by a trip to home depot, lol!

church was good, a bit much, but i wont go into that now. home depot is always fun, lol! so upon discovering late saturday night that wed misplaced this hinge, we decided to see if we could get a replacement one at home depot as well as some replacement handles [the ones that came with this thing were just plain ugly with no hope]. also we looked into what it might take to repair or replace the door jambs and door hardware that were partially destroyed at the house right now, although we really liked and wanted to salvage the doors themselves. they were actually in good shape - its just the jambs that were messed up from someone kicking in the door at some point in the past. 

so we did some shopping and actually ran into our new neighbors at home depot which was fun. ive always wanted to run into my neighbors at home depot, haha, i know its silly but its very mayberry and for whatever reason i like the idea of that. although, running into the neighbors just isnt the same without their enormous dog feigning for attention, lol! i dont know what kind of dog this thing is, but its a friendly monster!

so after 'the depot' we went back to the house and got started on our new projects for the day. somehow [lol] i just assumed that installing new door hardware was going to be no big deal. heh, i was wrong. it probably took me 3 or 4 hours to install the first deadbolt having none of the proper equipment, lol! all i had was my drill and my largest bit is a 3/8" so you can imagine it took forever to bore out the 2"+ holes necessary, and to keep them clean for that matter! however, ive gotta say, i did pretty damn well considering. to look at em, youd never have known i didnt have the right equipment :]

so the first deadbolt took forever, but once i figured out some tricks with what tools i did have, the doorknob took like a half an hour, lol! when it was all said and done, it took most of the day, but i got one door mostly finished and all the hardware works properly. [and it only took one re-do on the deadbolt, lol!]

meanwhile, karen had taken on some projects of her own to keep her busy on sunday. while we were at home depot we discovered we were up $h!t creek [so to speak] as far as the fridge hardware was considered, so we were looking to improvise. the big stores dont carry all the little parts [or even the big ones] for fridges, so we decided to look in the general hardware section to see if we could be creative. well we didnt find anything that would work for the hinge [thats a pretty specific part that we were just going to have to re-order from the manufacturer] but we were pretty successful with the handles. as far as we're concerned, handles are handles, whether they be for doors, cabinets, fridges, cars, chairs, whatever. and we were looking to put something cool on our fridge that really spoke to our more fun & eclectic style. i wont spoil the pictures and tell you what we found, but we were very happy with the results! also, when we were looking for the handles we decided we were going to need some spray paint and we got some appliance enamel stuff. this is where karens projects came into play. as we were looking at the spray paint she got an idea for some fun and thats what she spent the day doing. again, pictures to follow - and keep in mind shes not quite done with the appliances yet, so these are just a taste. 

heres the sunday before and afters:

so over-all it was a very successful weekend and we're excited to get out to the house again and see what else we can accomplish!

we miss you all, hope you had a good weekend too!

charged

happy friday!

so yesterday ended up being a good day for the house. 

we finally got the energy guy out and got both the electricity and the gas turned on and it didnt cust us a dime. awesome. the guy even switched on the furnace for us and made sure it was running before he left. 

on the subject of furnaces, heres our story. in most of the houses we looked at the furnace was ancient and in questionable shape at best. but. this house was different, we actually got really lucky with this one and the furnace was installed in 1998 and appears to be in great condition. it works, i can tell you that from feeling the heat when we walked in the door yesterday evening after it had been on for a couple of hours, however we do need to have it serviced. some of the pipes arent installed properly and they arent venting right either. so just to be on the safe side we're going to have it serviced and we also need to install a digital programmable thermostat [or two or three, lol].

also, we got one of the masons estimates back [the one that was technologically challenged, heh]. it was a little odd to say the least. he only gave us prices on the labor, they seemed to be a little random on their pricing [it costs 250 to take down one chimney but 6-800 for the other one??]. so the fact that he didnt include any materials or equipment and that the labor was as high as it was to begin with, makes me hesitant [to say the least] to take this estimate seriously. not to mention he wrote in there that he wants a 3rd of the money upfront and the remainder after which there is no way im doing. ive had a number of people tell me not to pay anything upfront because youll ultimately get screwed. and if this guy doesnt have any kind of official invoices or anything anyway... nah. ill use someone else. hopefully ill have another mason and a roofers estimates pretty soon.

additionally, i finally got that other plumbers information today. i called and gave them all the information and now im just waiting on a call to confirm a date and time to have them out to get the estimate. i gotta say, this process is starting to get a little frustrating, especially when these estimates arent as low as id like them to be. but we've gotta get the work done and it IS a learning experience, so we're doing and well and having fun. hell id say we're doing really well, im sure its not near this smooth for a lot of people to get estimates for work. this whole contractor thing is just hit or miss and it really sucks. i dont understand what happened to honesty and integrity and just plain good business practices. until the last couple of years of experience i never would have imagined that people would agree to give you an estimate and then never answer or return your calls again. or that a firm would just never respond to a job inquiry. seriously? how does a large architectural firm [or dozens of them for that matter] just never respond to multiple inquiries from an interested individual. i understand that times are hard, but common courtesy people! if someone sends you their resume, you at LEAST say "sorry, but we dont have anything available." at the very least... thats just common courtesy, have we lost even that?

anyway, im not going to rant on that business today, just happy thoughts about the house for me, haha! so this weekend, we're going to do more house work. karen is planning to completely scrub the entire interior of this house and make it immaculate. ugh, sounds like a lot of work. additionally, we're going to get a chainsaw and some hedge shears and do some more yard work [a large part of that being the removal of a felled tree in our backyard that is currently destroying a section of our fence - apparently there was some damage from ike at our place after all]. between those two, im sure we'll have more than enough work on our plate to keep us busy, but we're also looking into getting some appliances for the house to try and get it up to livability. there are no, zero, nada appliances in the house right now, so we're looking for all of it. stove, oven, fridge, washer/dryer, grill, you name it - we need it. so we'll be looking on craigslist to see if we can find anything [we've already spotted a few items that have caught our interest] and if we dont make any progress there, who knows. re-sale shops, rich neighborhoods garbage, lol, we'll see.

well anyway, thats your daily update. any thoughts or advice on any of the above projects is welcomed [as always] and i wish you all a happy weekend!

post.script: ive been addicted to a couple of friends blogs for a while now, and it might just be me, but i love getting to be part of their lives, thoughts, ideas, experiments, or whatever else they share. if you havent already checked out my linx section, do so - you might find something you like.

justin's blog - an obituary for mediocrity - is filled with a lot of insight into the current state of disrepair our country has let itself slide into both economically and more specifically on a city-planning level. he asks some great questions [and i usually add a few of my own] that hopefully we can eventually answer and make strides of change and hope in our futures. 

claire's blog - two c's in a pod - just awesome, awesome stuff. claire and chance love to "dish" about their favorite restaurants, pets, and local hotspots back in austin,tx as well as a lot of really great results theyve had with crafty stuff like furniture rehabbing. its just fun and intelligent to read and often has fantastic photos! [did i mention claire and chance are awesome photographers?] not to mention shes got a list a mile long of awesome links to check out if youre into that crafty stuff. :]

kim's blog - running in circles - just a friend back in denver sharing some current events as she takes a leap into marriage and just takes on life in general. shes got a great sense of humor and sarcasm and a playful appreciation for life and the fun little aspects of it that many of us enjoy. 

"theyyyr grrrrrrrrrreat!"

in.my.house

just a short one to keep you all up to speed.

wednesday was a fairly successful day as well. we went to work as usual and did our whole work thing up until lunch time. i worked on more leed stuff, i assume karen did her usual as well. at lunch time we actually both had a lunch & learn. 

ill deviate topics for a moment here - have i discussed lunch & learns?

in our little industry, theres the overarching organization which most registered architects choose to be a member of - the AIA [american institute of architects]. well as a membership requirement you pay dues like so many other professional organizations, as well as various other little requirements - one of which being the AIA's commitment to continuing education even after professional registration. i can't speak to other professions on this one because i honestly have no idea, but the AIA believes that as architects we have a responsibility[and really just the need if we're being honest] to stay informed on current trends in our industry and all those related [which is a LOT] if we're to be the best at our jobs and id say if we're to stay relevant in the world in general. so what this means is that members of the organization have to fulfill x number of points of continuing education each year to meet the guidelines and stay in good favor or what have you. as a result, pretty much every architectural office out there [im speaking specifically of u.s. based, obviously] has regularly scheduled "lunch & learns." this is where some product manufacturer, distributor, or other professional relevant to architecture and its related industries [take door-knob manufacturers or software developers for example as options in this realm] come to the office during lunch time [so as not to waste valuable billable hours], provides lunch, and gives an hour long seminar over whatever the topic is. [so if the guy develops the software from my previous example, he gives a seminar on the relevancies of different software types in the industry, what trends are occurring within the profession involving software vs. traditional methods, and ultimately slips in briefly how his software is a better fit for our office's needs than all his competitors] in return, we get a couple of points towards our c.e. quota, and this guy [yeah, i know im not being pc, get over it] gets the option of having our office spec his product, service, etc.

so during the lunch in learn [or "l&l" for short, or "cell" as its referred to in my office - continuing education lunch & learn] karen got a call from a blocked number and excused herself to answer it, didnt get it in time, and there was no message or callback... weird. we assumed if it were one of our people they'd try again and ignored it. about 5 minutes after my l&l ended i got a phone call from the plumber scheduled that day saying hed be at the house in about 20 minutes, so i coordinated with karen and she met him out at the house. 

from what i can tell it went well, but the guy either didnt know how a high-efficiency water-heater works or was just trying to pull a fast one on us, because he told karen that the current water-heater was venting through the wall instead of the normal through the roof and that he'd have to install a "special fan" to correct this when he installed the new water-heater... the reason its venting through the wall is because its a high efficiency water-heater [be it old and in need of replacement, probably one of the first models] and they vent through the wall... thats how theyre designed. so either the guy is ignorant of his profession, or thinks we are. [im betting on the latter, or maybe just hoping, lol!] 

so she got that taken care of, we'll get his estimate in a day or two. [speaking of, we got the other guys estimate later after i blogged, and it was almost double the first plumber! what?! not to mention he was trying to get us to install new waterlines and venting for the laundry that we already have and look like theyre in perfectly functional condition... is everyone going to try to ef us? seriously? what happened to honesty and integrity in your craft?] so we we're looking good, now we just had to get the energy guy out to connect the electricity and gas, and we'd really be in business. 

well karen picked me up from work as usual and my first question was "what happened with the energy guy?" turns out he never called her... weird... so she called them. the blocked call she missed in the l&l - yeah, that was their guy. so she had to re-schedule that for later on this week. possibly today [thursday] or tomorrow, i cant remember which now. but i do know they gave us a smaller window this time around, 12-4, so thats cool. 

so yeah, thats the update on the contractors. 

hope youre all having lovely days. holla back!

post.script: happy birthday kimber!

post.post.script: daft punk is playing in my house, in my house. 

that is all.

contractors.galore

so today has been a busy day... i wont bother with the topic subtitle/section business, its all about the house these days. :]

monday.

so monday morning the first thing to do on our list was to figure out this barricade situation. the woman i had talked to on saturday said we could go to the city buildings & inspections office and that they would give us the keys to the locks since we were the homeowners and we had the right to access our property. thats good news, right? lol! so apparently they were supposed to open by 7:30 and we figured wed just stop by there on the way to work, get the keys, and then one of us could meet the electric company guy we had scheduled at some point between 8 & 4 [really specific right? freakin energy companies...] out at the house to let him in. no problems right? haha, its never quite that easy.

so we get to the city office at around 7:45 and ask the receptionist to see the guy who id tried calling a few times. she sent us on our way, and after waiting upstairs for someone to fetch him, we met dave, and he was a really nice guy. he walked us through everything we were going to need to do to obtain permits, what we needed to do to get the house up to passing inspections, you name it, the guy was a wealth of great info. except the keys, lol, he forgot all about those until he was about to send us on our way and i was like oh, one last thing, could we get those keys? haha, he laughed and went and talked to a lady who came out to tell us the bad news. the contractor who was out over the weekend doing all the work still had them. so we discussed our options and we decided to swing back buy tuesday morning before work to get them and she swore shed have them for us. so... close enough. whats one more day?

so later on i ended up making a number of phone calls and talking to a variety of contractors. first, i scheduled 3 different plumbers to come out and give us an estimate. all three are local and i just found them using a google map search for the closest to our area, and these are the guys that popped up. one of them even had some ratings on google and they were encouraging, so i felt good about it. so i called all these guys up, gave them my info and scheduled them all for as soon as possible. so we ended up getting one guy for tuesday [today] between 8 & 10am, one guy for tuesday but we didnt get a time frame from the woman on the phone, and the last guy for wednesday between 12 & 4pm. additionally i contacted the new mason [the friend of the window guy] who was very happy to hear from me and said hed love to come out either tuesday or wednesday morning to check it out and we could go from there, and then i called the roofer again who promised he hadnt forgotten about me and would try to be there by wednesday to have a look, thursday at the latest. meanwhile, karen was calling the energy company to try and re-schedule them to come out on a day when we actually had access to the house, and she made that for wednesday as well [although still the really specific time frame of 8-4...]

so all in all we had a pretty successful day i thought. i felt good about how things were going, and even more so how smoothly they seemed to be going even with a few hiccups.

tuesday[today, for those of you keeping score]

so this morning we got up early and got over to the city office at 7:30 and great news, she had the keys! so we were in and out of there in no time flat, just a copy of my i.d. in case anyone wanted to dispute who had the keys, and off we went. so we're headed back to the house and karen is on the phone confirming what time the first plumber would be there, ah... 30-45 minutes. crap. now what?

 so we decided to turn around and id take karen to work [because her office is anal about starting at 8am sharp] and then id meet the morning plumber, take her the truck, and then shed meet the afternoon plumber [hopefully on her lunch break]. so, i dropped her off, turned around, and arrived at the house at the exact same time as the plumber and another truck with two guys who got out and walked towards the house as well... masons? yesss! score. so now i had not only a plumber on time, but also a mason who showed up at all, and i had the joy of juggling both to get an estimate at the same time. well it went just fine. the masons had a look around outside, the plumber did his thing in the basement and when it was all over with i had an estimate in hand from the plumber [nice guy, by the way] and the mason [also a nice guy but technologically challenged] promising to drop off an estimate at the house either wednesday or thursday. sweet. things are lookin good. 

so i took karen the truck and then went to work [only an hour late after all this, not bad at all] and did the whole work thing. right now at work im working on getting leed credits for 6 different schools we're working on, and its a good learning experience, but tedious as hell. for those of you that dont know, LEED is a certification that a building can achieve for designing and building sustainably and efficiently and is a program sponsored by the USGBC [united states green building council]. its a good thing for all new buildings to get, and is a great start in driving our nation to thinking about energy efficiency and what we can do to reduce our impact on the environment. anyway, ive been working mostly on daylighting points lately, but thats not really the point of this post. 

at about a quarter to noon i get a call, its the other plumber, he'll be at the house in about 20 minutes. so i called karen and off she went to meet him. i dont have any gory details of their exciting meeting [lol] but i know it went well, and the plumber should email us an estimate by wednesday afternoon at the latest. 

now. 

so after a long day, we're doing great i think! tomorrow weve got another plumber coming, the energy guy, and potentially a roofer. so house repairs are looking up at the moment, and hopefully they stay that way! honestly, if all wed gotten done today was gaining access to the house id have been pretty happy, but in my opinion we surpassed that by leaps and bounds! 

well, i think thats it for now. if you havent already noticed, look carefully at the blog layout and see if you can find what i changed today, lol! i know, i know... im a nerd. but i cant help it, its who i am. [and i love who i am, heh]

"catch you on the flip side yo"

[for 10 awesome pts in chris' book of awesome, email me and tell me where that quote is from. no cheating, and dont post it directly on the blog to spoil it for everyone else. and seriously, no cheating. just whatever knowledge youve got locked away in that head of yours. hint: potatoes]

post.script: lcd sound system is rocking my world as of late. lovin it. 

post.post.script: http://www.shapeofamerica.org/ [get inspired!]

sore.shoulders

hello hello all! :]

so a little update action is in order i think. 

house.

the biggie obviously is the house. thats really all our excitement these days. 

thursday - thursday after work and still bubbling with the excitement of the new house i dropped karen off at class and went straight to the house to check things out. excuse me, OUR house. hehe! well when i got there, to my surprise i found a notice in the window from the city. this wasnt the first time this had happened, you may remember the condemnation orders we found once that the sellers neglected to tell us about or do anything about, so here we go again. this time its a barricade order. great. since the door still hadnt been repaired [after we told the seller a number of times] the city had come by and found it open to trespassers and given that its also considered a safety hazard in its present condition by the city [and no one wants to get sued...], the city issued orders that the house either be secured from trespassers or else theyd barricade it themselves, the seller had 3 days to comply. um... yeah those orders had been issued long ago, i was shocked they hadnt already barricaded it. so i immediately called the numbers to find out who i needed to talk to and what i needed to do, etc. got no one. the guy im supposed to talk to is only in the office from 8-10, m-f and the rest of the time hes out in the field doing these inspections and such. fantastic. guess i'll try again tomorrow...

friday - so friday i went to the house to meet with a new window guy. [for those of you that remember, a few months ago we got initial estimates on a lot of the work we're going to have to do, i.e. the brick wall, the roof, & windows being the 3 biggest jobs] so i was supposed to meet him at 4, and i got there at roughly 3:50. i had tried calling the city again in the morning to no avail and had left a message for the guy i was supposed to talk to. i hadnt heard back, so i tried calling again while i waited for the window guy. no luck, they were gone, it was basically an answering service i got hold of. even better... what now? no clue... 

well the house was still open, luckily, so the window guy arrived at 4pm, right on time, and damn he was a fast talker. it seems a lot of these contractor, subcontractor types are. or maybe its because im in yankee country and im used to texans talking nice and slow, lol, i dont know. but i had to listen pretty intently to keep up, lol! so we walk through the house, he takes a look at all the windows, we discuss my options, and then he gets busy measuring every window in the house. 

now for those of you that remember from last time we got an estimate from homedepot and it was a pretty decent one we thought. $225 per window installed, an extra charge for those on the second floor and again for the finished attic. the windows were very nice, but on all of our huge windows on the first level we were going to have to do some shimming [for lack of a better term] to get the window openings down to their maximum size. but overall we were pretty happy with the estimate they gave us. well this guy, man, what a deal. no only did all of our windows [save the two floor to ceilings in the front room that are just ridiculously large] fit within their maximum opening size [so no shimming!], the windows were even better [welded corners this time around], there was no extra charge for any windows on any upper levels, and they also had an option for a trim treatment in which they encase the window trim all the way around in a vinyl casing to protect it from the elements and save us the pain of having to paint trim every couple of years. we havent decided for sure on that, it adds 50 bucks per window, but we're definitely considering it. oh and the windows are pretty much the same price installed as home depots base price - these are $235 each with the lowE + argon insulated glass. 

so we're really happy with this guys quote. he's willing to work with us in phases if we need to and overall he was just really friendly and offered us a great deal. so we're most likely going to go with them. [thanks mom-in-law for the recommendation!] and on top of that the guy gave me the name and number of a mason friend of his who he says does great work, very dependable guy, whos currently looking for work. sweetness, another mason! so far we've only gotten one quote on that damn wall, and its a little high we think, so im definitely looking for more options. [ill be calling him later this afternoon]

saturday - saturday morning we decided to get up and go to the tile place near our apartment to see what options we were going to have to work with and start formulating some plans for the work we want to do in the bathrooms and such. after that we were headed over to the house to measure doors to see about possible replacing or at the very least new door hardware in order to secure the house and hopefully avoid the barricading. 

well the tiling place was really cool. there were so many more options than we'd expected! we'd looked at homedepot briefly when we were there for the tiling seminar and their selection was fairly limited, to say the least. but this place was like a tile paradise! they had everything you could imagine, and a lot of stuff you couldnt. we found a lot of what we were looking for there and a lot we werent looking for, lol! overall it was a very successful trip and we're definitely brainstorming about our options now. 

after the tile place we went straight to the house, although we'd spent more time than originally anticipated at the tile place, it was now 11am. yeah, you guessed it, when we got to the house we found that the city had already been there and barricaded - boarded up a window, the back door, and put a pad-lock on the front door. we were stuck. locked out. crap. 

well... i called the city, to no avail, no one works on saturday in the offices that could help me. so we were screwed till monday morning. at which point we'd have to go to the building & inspections office to see about getting a key to our house. well, we were planning to go to homedepot anyway, so instead of doing door stuff we decided to get stuff to do yard work - push brooms, rakes, yard bags, etc. 

after a few hours and trips to not only homedepot but also walmart and mejier, we finally had most of what we needed, including a haircut for chris [oh man did she ever butcher my hair... ugh...i miss you christina!!!] and a few groceries we needed as well. however, it was now about 3 oclock and we hadnt eaten since 8am, so we decided to head home for lunch. after lunch, haha, we didnt want to do anything, we were full and sleepy after all the running around, so we stayed in and watched a couple of netflix, leaving the rough stuff for tomorrow [sunday].

sunday -  so sunday morning we did our usual. a little breakfast, and then off to church for a couple of hours. after church we headed home to do a little research on some remodeling equipment we're thinking about getting [more on that at a later time] and then had lunch before heading over to the house. we got there at about 1:30pm and unloaded the truck of our newly acquired supplies, ready to do some house work!

so we started by raking in the back and then sweeping some, and uncovered that theres actually a concrete slab in the back where the back door is stretching out under the entire stair case. who knew?! it was covered in leaves and a thick layer of dirt every time we were there, so we thought it was just dirt, lol! [not to mention there were a few trees growing through some cracks in the slab, leading to our deception] next we decided to do some maintenance that our neighbors could enjoy and moved to the front and side of the house. we did more raking on the side initially and then the front yard and sidewalk in front of the house, and then came back with a push broom and finally a regular broom for detailing and got all the dirt and dust off the porch, and walks, and it looked sooo different. i thought we could always see the concrete on the side of the house but we pulled 2 trash bags full of dirt and leaves and trash out of the side and we could actually see the sidewalk for the first time! we even uncovered a drain that we never knew was there, lol! so after a few hours of raking & sweeping & bagging we had about 7 bags of crap wed picked up and the house looked great in the front. 

in the process we'd actually met a couple of our neighbors whod been out walking their dogs and noticed us working and decided to say hello. the neighbor directly across the street from us [in one of the newly built houses] was so friendly and a wealth of knowledge - she gave us at least a half a dozen names of people to get in contact with for trash, recycling, a neighborhood e-newsletter, and other various neighborhood related things. shes really nice, and seems excited to have some new neighbors. we probably talked to her for at least a half an hour and she made a few trips inside her house to get us numbers and email addresses, haha! very cool. shes very soft spoken and calm and for some reason her mannerism's and the soft spoken-ness really reminded me of jay, haha! [miss yah roomie!]

so after what had to have been a good 4 hours of the raking and sweeping, we decided to tackle the stairs in the back. they were rotting, because i assume they were never weather treated, and the whole thing was just built very shotty to begin with. we wanted to keep the top deck if possible because theres a door onto it from the house and we'd like to modify it into a nice little balcony off that door in the back. so we climbed up very, very carefully and swept off the decks and stairs to get a good look at what was underneath. after a lot of discussion we decided that the decks were in pretty decent shape, but that all the stairs were pretty rotted and would all need to be rebuilt if we decided we wanted them, but would need to come down for sure. so we started the fun part of remodeling - demolition. 

haha, and it was fun for the most part. there were a million nails in this thing [whoever built it's justification for such a terrible structural design i assume] so it was a serious pain in the ass at first. however, at some point i just decided to hell with pulling nails and started ripping up the pieces with my hands. [thank god for work gloves, im far too impatient when it comes to destruction, lol] so after so many jerks here and there with my massive muscles, *wink wink* i tore the top stairs out without too much trouble. so we chucked those down to the ground and surveyed our progress. 

we were feeling pretty good and started in on the railings on the second deck. those came off alright, with some persuasion, and we decided the 2x4's under them were actually in decent shape. on to the bottom stairs. so i took out a few nails at the top of the bottom stairs while karen made her way to the ground [these stairs were built as one "solid" element on the ground and then just hoisted into place and toe-nailed into position with a handful of nails to secure them... lord...] so then i got down on the ground and we attempted at first to de-nail a few pieces that were connected to the posts, but after i got impatient with that, i just started doing it my way. i grabbed the whole stair element and started jerking on it until pretty quickly i yanked the entire left half completely off and we lowered it to the ground for dismantling. then i jerked off the second half and we did the same. however, in the process we discovered that this thing was built even shotty-er than we had originally concluded. 

the posts went from the ground all the way up to the top, but at the ground level were encased in what appeared to be a concrete footing. having poured a number of concrete footings with dad in my life time, i just assumed that the person that did these had dug out a whole 1-2ft deep and had filled with concrete in roughly a ft diameter up to where we could see it capped off, and that they were pretty securely in the ground - probably entombed in a few hundred pounds of concrete. ha. nope. during my *ahem* careful dismantling *ahem* of the stair elements, we discovered that the posts were simply resting on top of these little concrete mounds and just appeared to be encased in them, and every time id jerk, theyd pop up and then back down. good lord... who built this thing??? so now we've decided that the whole thing is going to have to come down and be rebuilt if we want a balcony - which we do. luckily some of the wood is salvageable for re-use [mainly the 4x4 posts and some of the structural 2x4 members that were most likely treated lumber to begin with.]

so after all that we were beat. especially me after my impatient ripping destruction, lol. that thing must have weighed a few hundred pounds, but with my adrenaline going i barely noticed, haha! [man i love adrenaline] so we did a little clean-up in the back and decided to call it a night. we'd been there about 5 and a half hours, and things we're looking really good. 

the pictures probably dont do all the work justice, but trust me, the transformation was pretty unbelievable for just one days work. and now hopefully you understand the title of this post, lol! right now my back and shoulders are pretty sore after all that sweeping and deconstruction. but it was a lot of fun, and we're pretty fired up to get some more work done. 

well kiddos, thats all ive got for now. tip your waiters, and drive safely. you dont have to go home, but you cant stay here! ;]

post.script: currently listening to apocalyptica's new album, its pretty amazing!

day.five

house.

so... its official!

we closed this morning!

we're proud homeowners!

if you want to see some pictures, click here!

this has been a serious roller coaster, but now, we've got it! thanks to everyone for their support, now the fun [hard] part starts as we begin renovations. 

detox diet.

we're done. we decided 5 days was enough. ive stayed steady at having lost 10lbs.

yesterday was the same menu as always, but for dinner we decided it was time for a little dressing on our salads to celebrate the end.  and wow, salad dressing [even the fat free kind] is amazingly rich in flavors! ive definitely got a new appreciation for the taste of food now. 

however, we're not totally abandoning this idea of eating healthier. we intend to stay on a healthier foods diet for the foreseeable future. yes, we'll incorporate some of those foods we gave up back in, but in much more moderation than before. we've got a general plan for how we're going to take it from here on out, and we're excited about the prospects of incorporating real food into our diets again! :]

so thats really all i have to report for now. today is the first non-raw foods diet day, and im actually excited about eating lunch again. this morning i even made some egg beaters for breakfast and they were delicious! ive definitely noticed that im eating a lot less, so thats good. i think the detox was good for minimizing my appetite a little. yesterday we worked out as usual and we ran a full 1.25miles without stopping, so that felt pretty good. and then last night we watched the debate - and i think it was finally a decent one. they actually talked specifics about the issues for once.

well yall, i gotta get to work now, just wanted to share our excitement!

miss you all!