Late night snack

OK, so it's dinner. Steak, eggs, grits, and a little bit of horseradish. Better than anything you will get at Denny's...

The List

Here is the list. Some things are quick and easy, a couple will take a bit of time. Many of them can be done concurrently. We would like to get the kids back in this house, that can't happen before all items above the first line are done. Ideally, if possible, all items above the second line should be done, but I am not holding my breath.

Tara's parents are starting to wear out. If we could, we would bring the girls home tomorrow night. Anyone want to come help Thursday or Friday?

1. Back bathroom - door install

2. Pantry - door install

3. Laundry – sill install

4. Main bath - back splash

5. Front hall - remove swamp cooler vent

6. Front hall – drywall & texture

7. Main bath – venting for fan and plumbing

8. Laundry – Dryer vent

9. Attic Access – Install trim

10. Attic Access – paint 'door' – white

11. Back bedrooms – casing for windows

12. Master bedroom – door trim

13. Hall – white board trim

14. Hall – finish base board

15. Pantry – door trim

16. Kitchen – base board

17. Kitchen – paint

18. Pantry - paint

19. Fix tear in roof vent

20. Back bath – plumbing

21. Main bath – side splash

22. Back bath – side splash

23. Laundry – paint

24. Laundry – electrical panel door

25. Bedrooms – blinds

26. Front room - blinds

27. Back bath – paint ceiling

28. Back bath – paint walls

29. Back bath – door trim

30. Back bath – medicine cabinet

31. Laundry – install bifold

32. Laundry – cut big cabinet door in half

33. Back room – paint

34. Back room – Carpet transition to laundry/bath?

35. Laundry – move in washer & dryer

36. Back room – sliding door trim

37. Paint unpainted doors

38. switch & outlet covers

39. Back room – base board

40. Hall - shelving

41. Main bath - shelving

42. Back bath - shelving

43. Back room – Quilt rack install

44. Putty all trim nails

45. Front hall – trim

46. Front hall – paint ceiling

47. Pantry - shelving

48. Front door

49. Siding & Insulation

4 hours...

...The amount of time the girls were in the house today. Lily took a magic marker and wrote all over one of the walls in that time. They are headed back up to Grandmas for a few more days...

Regularly scheduled program

I clearly have some work to do in order to cook perfectly fried flour tortillas. I made pork tacos tonight. The pork was cooked in a bell pepper, onion, garlic, horseradish sauce. This was topped with cheese and fried shredded zucchini. Pretty good.

Still not ready for a full compliment of children...

Today felt kind of like a Saturday. It's a holiday from work today, which meant I still had a lot to do, but it was all done at home. And it was work on the house. I just didn't have to post a vacation day, which I am pretty sure I am out of right now. Lily came home with me for the afternoon, she seemed to enjoy being back in "her home" as she called it.

The hallway to the back bedroom is very nearly complete. I moved in the other dressers today and the laundry hamper. It fits just the way I pictured it in my head when we started. As you can see, the blinds are also up, which I am sure the neighbors are grateful for. (5 other windows still need blinds...)

Drew came over and painted the dress closet. While he was painting, Lily was watching, and creeping closer and closer until she got paint on her hands.

I put the medicine cabinet up in the main bath, and electrical covers. That room is almost done as well.

Adam is expressing his displeasure right this very minute with being put to bed.

I set Lily up with a table and stool to eat her dinner in the pantry. Almost like having a padded cell...

Yesterday this was a total mess. Today it is all cleaned up and ready to go. Took a while, but it is done. And there were no sparks or shocking involved.

I decided to add an outlet while I was at it.

We need to hurry, Tara thinks her Dad might be tiring of children. Emma also starts Chinese boot camp on Monday.

House remodel update

It's been a little too long since I posted, long overdue. I owe this in part to the fact that in the past week I:

• flew from here to Buffalo via Baltimore
• Ate a bunch of chicken wings
• Ignored my laptop for about 5 days
• Packed up Tara and the girls
• Drove to Indiana, visited Grandma Oaks - She seems to be doing well.
• Drove the rest of the way home
• Fixed a fairly high priority problem at work
• Got back into helping try to get the house going

The house isn't quite child approved, at least not for 6 children. I made a list of things to do, with must/should/could categories. We got a few things crossed off the list today. The kids have taken over Tara's parents house. Our van is with the young men from the ward, they are going to Seattle. (We hope the truck lasts until the van gets back, it is starting to have some driving problems...)

Anyhow, the camera is back, I have some better quality pictures for everyone:

The laundry room and back bath are still the front end of a work in progress. It might get there sooner or later, we are getting closer to being able to throw drywall up.

Kitchen pantry - doesn't look incredibly exciting, it is just a big empty room. (Now with a light!) More to come.

I picked this carpet remnant out at the carpet place yesterday. The carpet guys came today to install it. They did a really good job. Drew came tonight and started throwing down the baseboard.

The little hall fits the dresser perfect. Just like I planed. The long famed prize box is on top. There are two more dressers to put in the hall, a job for tomorrow.

I drew a map for the kids when they get back. It's only half the house, but I think they can figure it out.

Tara and I went and bought doorknobs tonight. We have doorknobs again. We also bought fire detectors, which I installed tonight.

I spent about 5 hours today trying to fix the electrical in the main bath. It was kind of screwy. I ended up taking everything all apart after spending an hour trying to figure out what was going on. I traced every wire, which took a while, running back and forth turning the breaker on and off. I got everything working.

The bathroom, hall, and bedrooms only have a few small things things to do, hopefully we can have them all done in a few days.

Tomorrow's crazy electrical project? Trying to make some sense out of this.

Got work-work to do. Gotta go.

Book Review

Infinite Crisis
Greg Cox

Back in the 80's, DC comics had this thing called "Crisis on Infinite Earths", where they tried to resolve the fact that they had gotten lost with all the alternate realities in their comics. They ended up having one Earth at the end, and kind of melded the characters they wanted to keep into the one place.

A couple of years ago, they revisited the story, I think mostly to try to boost comic book sales. (Why else would they do it?) Something called Infinite Crisis was the result. This book is a serialization of those stories. I didn't actually read the associated comics with this thing, sort of just followed the outline of the thing on the internet a bit.

The author does a good job of telling the story of the thing without having the associated pictures from the comics. Now I really know what happened with Infinite Crisis. It kept me occupied through both plane flights yesterday, I finded the book just after landing in Buffalo.

Lots of characters were killed off, DC afterwards jumped everything forward a year. Basically, the multiple Earths are brought back, and eventually the single reality and single Earth is restored again.

I thought the book was interesting to read, I actually prefer books like this to read, rather than comics themselves, I think, when the author does a really good job with descriptions and just writing the story out. It lets you picture what is happening a little better in your head than just looking at the comic itself. Plus you get the entire story all packaged up in one book. They did an audiobook dramatization of the book, it sounds like with a full cast, 13 hours long. That might be interesting to listen to.

Last year they did something called "Final Crisis", I don't really know what happened, maybe this guy will write a book...

What will Tom do next time he visits home?

They are tearing down the Spaulding Fibre plant. It took them long enough. I wonder how long it will take to clean the place up for it to be used as something else...

The water tower is also gone, for some reason.

Completely inspiring with confidence

Yesterday I went on a little plane trip. My flight was supposed to leave at 10:00am. At around 8:52am, I was shoving my backpack onto the xray conveyor belt at security when it started ringing. After getting through security, I find Southwest had called, they were calling to let me know the flight was delayed 45 minutes.

I went down to the gate to make sure I would make my connection. I was told I would, so I eventually started wandering around looking for something to eat, since I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time to do anything but get to my next gate in Baltimore. I got all the way down to the next terminal, almost went in to a place to get something, and decided to head back. A minute later (9:55am) I got a call from Southwest letting me know my flight was set for an on-time departure. Going between terminals, I could see a plane docking way down at the gate I was supposed to be in. I hurried back, they had an announcement on the intercom saying all passengers for the flight should come back.

When I got back there, the guy at the gate started explaining that the pilot reported a problem with the plane, the mechanics were looking at it, and they would update us when they knew more. 45 minutes later, they finally started boarding.

As we were boarding, the mechanics still were up to their elbows in the right engine. I tried taking a picture, but didn't get a very good one. One guy was doing something, and sending the other guy back to the truck for tools over and over. When we got on the plane, the crew was very careful to not say a single word about the functional condition of the plane.

We finally took off, and there was no trouble with the flight. I guess the mechanics got it right. As we were landing, one of the flight attendants got on, told the people with connections to Concord to get off the plane, and go right across the hall to get on their plane. She told the people with connections to Buffalo to go to Gate A2 (We were in B something) and hurry.

As I was hurrying off, I heard them announcing the boarding of my flight. I had to run to the gate to get on the plane, but I made it. No lunch. But also no mechanics.

It could have been worse. Last time they didn't bother to hold the connection for me, I missed the flight, it took about 45 minutes to get set up on another flight...

Optimism abounds

Rich came over today, and started on the electrical work. He has the new main to the house pulled in, and wires pulled from the old breaker to the new breaker. Sounds like it shouldn't take him all that long to get done.

We had a number of people from the ward come over this afternoon to help get things moved around. The bedrooms are basically done, I wanted to have beds and things in to be ready when everyone gets home. Haws sanded down the new bunkbed, we took it apart, and moved it in.

The girls have enough room, I think. Hopefully a smaller space will actually help them keep it cleaner...

... Or something.

Anyway, I also hired Rich's father-in-law, Grant, to do the rest of the drywall work in the house. He used to do drywall for a living, he is actually the guy that did the ceiling in our back room about 15 years ago or so. He got in about 4 hours today, and did about 3 days worth of the work I could do, except his looks perfect.

Drew volunteered to come behind Grant and do priming and painting of the ceilings and walls. Chad plans to try to keep ahead of Grant on the framing of the pantry, laundry, and back bath. I think it is actually possible that things might be done by the time Tara and the girls come back. I don't know if it was just that a lot got done today, or that beds were in the proper places, or just that Grant is amazing with drywall mud, but there is optimism there, which wasn't there yesterday...

Stay tuned. (Hope you had a happy birthday, Rob.)

Overly engineered bunk bed

The plumber got me some hot water in the house tonight. The basement is starting to look quite a bit different than it did just a week ago... We have a water junction box now. (Not sure what else to call it. I am sure it has a name.)

We also now have a water softener. My hair feels so much softer already. And shorter.

The tankless water heater is also alive. I could have spent hours in the hot water tonight, and it would have just kept on going. And going, and going. No more cold showers. For anyone in the house.


I spent the better part of the afternoon making the second in a series of over engineered bunks beds here at the house. It needs a good sanding, but it is essentially built. No paint, that would ruin the charm, especially since the girls just draw all over the other bunk bed anyway.

The thing is completely solid. No movement. I added an extra feature, cross braces for the top bunk, to prevent a collapse do to jumping on the bed. Hopefully Emma and Lily like it.

Tomorrow? (more correctly: "Later Today?") I am headed off to work. I wanted to get some things done, but I imagine at this point that that stuff will get shoved out of the way to work on the problem we looked at tonight... At 2pm, there may be a bunch of people at the house to lend a hand. We have furniture to move around, walls to sand and mud, that sort of thing.

Home Run Derby

The Home Run Derby is the best part of the All Star Game. The players in the Home Run Derby want to win it, you don't get the same feeling from the All Star Game itself.

I recorded the thing tonight, to watch it later. (I was working on a bunk bed when the thing was running, and I knew I had work to do later that night, perfect for watching the Derby.)

Anyhow, turns out that the DVR had it set to record for 2 hours. I missed the full second and third rounds of the thing. 36 home runs. Almost half of the entire thing.

I guess I will have to block out the thing right now for next year...

Unfinished Project update

I finished one of the 'grand 2009 unfinished project list' items today. I got the little path behind the house finally cleaned up all the way. Having a big giant dumpster in the front of the house, and a neighbor willing to help went a long way in the right direction.

The path in January.

The path several months ago.

The path now. All cleaned up.


The bunny has a new home down at the end of the path. This is good, because it is now in an area more protected from the weather. If I could just get the back yard sprinklers to stop spraying it, we would be all set...

Not exactly firing on all cyliners

Today was a strange day. It felt like half of what I touched I messed up. Maybe I should have just stayed in bed, but we had some people come over to help out today, which was appreciated, and it would have been pretty tacky to sleep through it.


James and Mike worked more on gutting the bathroom. There is more to do, but they got quite a bit done.


At one point, this is what the bathroom floor looked like. (It's called a tessellation, and it's ugly.)


The carpet guys came to install the carpet I had for both bedrooms. Turned out that the carpet remnant was a little too small to fit in both rooms. I had to go get another piece for the other bedroom, but the installers had to go, they will come back Monday.

I went to Taylor's Carpets in Provo. It's way back out of the way, but the guy is really nice. He knocked down the price on the remnant for me as well. I think we will have to go back there again.

After the carpet went in the one bedroom, I put in the baseboard. I say that, but it turns out that what I was really putting in was the moulding for the windows, not the baseboard. A few hours later I ended up pulling it out and putting in the real baseboard. We will have to see if we can still use the window moulding I used or if I need to get more.


I started to put up a dry erase board in the hallway. We hope that maybe the girls will focus their energies on drawing on the whiteboard instead of the walls...

The plumber was here for a while today, his goal was to get me a toilet, shower, and hot water. Two out of three isn't bad, I guess. He says hot water definitely on Monday.

Rich came over and showed me how to install a new circuit breaker. It's less shocking than I thought it would be.

I was picking something up for the plumber this afternoon, I accidentally knocked the gear shift into reverse. I don't know what's wrong with me. I thought for a minute that I would either get run over or drop the transmission, or both. Neither happened, the truck isn't running any worse than it already was. (Seem to have a problem with first gear...)

I'll have to maintain a low profile tomorrow, see if the brain cloud passes.

The house will not be done by the time Tara gets back. I will have failed in my goal. It's a little frustrating.

Graduation for a man who may not toot his own horn

Tom graduated from the Police Academy today. Drew and I went over, Drew ended up handing Tom his diploma. Pictures were taken, but Drew has them, they are on his camera. We went to dinner after at Goodwood, I had the STeak and Potatoes plate.

Tom may not tell anyone, we told him to update his resume at least, but he ended up getting an award for the highest test score average in his class, with an average score of 95% for all tests. Not bad.

Precious few days remaining

Had some of the young men from the ward come over today to help out. They were a big help. They worked on the demolition of the old storage area, taking it back as far as it can go before we hit the old bathroom.

Yesterday we put down tack strip and carpet pad in the bedrooms. Today I hired a carpet installer to come in and install the carpet in the bedrooms on Saturday. It would have cost us $60 to rent the equipment we would have needed, it only cost $65 for him to come do the install. I figured that was a pretty good deal.

For a while the young men were mudding up the hallways and bathroom. I had been doing some drywall and just kept going while they were here so we could get a complete first coat in. They did a pretty good job.




Chad got the bathroom closet framed and the vanity put in, which is pretty good until you consider the fact that he also put up the drywall for the thing, and not all the wiring for the electrical is done. I was waiting on the wall before doing the electrical, went to Tom's graduation, and came back to fully closed walls. Chad is not solely to blame, I put the drywall up in the hall blocking off access to the switches for wiring. Chad was gone before I got there, I will have to break the news to him tomorrow...

The plumber is sure that the hot water will be back on either tomorrow night or Saturday morning. He also thinks we can do the demolition of the old bathroom on Saturday. I took another cold shower this evening, not quite as bad as last night, still pretty cold, but not as bad.

Tomorrow? Carefully removing select pieces of drywall to run wires, duct work for HVAC, sanding and more drywall mud, and general mayhem all around...

Cold showers - Not a big fan...

Our new tankless water heater is in the wall, nearly all hooked up and ready to go. They took the old water heater out to make room for the new one. One of the things that is waiting for the new water heater is power, which we have not quite gotten done yet.

Long story short? There is no hot water in this house. I tried to man up and take an ice cold shower tonight, but I couldn't quite do it. I tried, but it was cold. I knew I wouldn't be able to wash my head in that water.

I ended up getting a big bowl, filling it, and heating it up in the microwave for 5 minutes. The result? Sort of warm water. I washed my head with it, then soaped up with a wash cloth. I used all the slightly warm water for my head, so I ended up rinsing off in the cold, cold water.

Soon I will have a tankless water heater working here. No more cold showers in the near future.

I know what you are saying. "Didn't he grow up in Buffalo?" Yes, that's true, and I had to take some cold showers growing up, and I took some cold showers at the scout camp, and also a few on my mission, but I didn't like it. I prefer the slightly warmer than lukewarm, but not really scalding type of shower, unless I am really sore, then I make the water warmer.

If the hot water is not on tomorrow, I plan to head somewhere else for my water needs. There is a shower in my building, but we have to vacate before 5pm and can't come back at night. I could go over to the school gym...

Really boring video

I still have to figure out how to import sound, but I was playing with my webcam for a minute today...

A touch of color

I am tired. Painting is just about my speed today. Drew came this morning to get started, which was nice, because in my sleep deprived fog, I forgot the HVAC guys were coming, Drew was here to let them in.

We now have two coats on the ceilings, one coat on the walls, and the ceiling fans put back together. I will get the second coat on the walls before I go to bed. The blue room is definitely blue, the purple room appears to be purple...

The furnace is done, the AC would be done if I had power ready for it. (So close, yet so far.)

Tara is missing a couple of her flower blooms...

Double Stamp Monday

This morning was our semi annual patch day. Fun for us. I was wrapping things up at about 4am when I found my semi annual hardware failure. Most of my servers are getting pretty old. We are trying to replace them this year, if we can. Anyhow, they only get rebooted twice a year, I find the hardware problems when they get rebooted.

Today's victim was a server that has been having problems for a couple of years. I have been able to resuscitate it in the past, but not today. Today it died. Because it was supposed to be replaced this year, I didn't think it was worth the effort to replace the disks and rebuild the server. I took a short nap, and we all got to work moving things to alternate locations.

Luckily for Jess and I, John walked in this morning from his trip to Europe. We briefed him and went home. I got another short nap this afternoon before working on the house a little. Tonight I plan to get a nice long sleep in, tomorrow I'm back into the fray.

"Double Stamp Monday"? After my short nap this morning, I was pretty groggy. I had to stop in at the gas station for a drink. The gas station has a frequent beverage card, Mondays are double stamp days. Bonus.

Ten

I woke up this morning exhausted. Kenji was coming over to help out, so I decided to actually get out of bed, otherwise I might have stayed there all day. Last night, Chad came back over at 10pm to work on the bedrooms, we (mostly he, really) got the stuff sanded down, and the texture tossed up. Chad had a theory about the ceiling and walls being dry by the morning so I could put primer up. Things didn't quite turn out that way. I don't think it helped to have it pour down rain last night at about 2pm, just after we finished up the work. It got really humid everywhere. It also couldn't have helped that the ceiling fans were not running...


Kenji and I ended up going to Home Depot to pick some stuff up. We did my traditional "futile attempt to cross to the West side of town during the Freedom Festival parade". I don't know why I always try that.

Anyhow, we got more 2x4, lights for the hallways, and a counter top for the bathroom. When we got the truck unloaded, Kenji helped me put the lights in. (It's a three or four hand job. I put one of those type of lights in our closet a while back, it took me about 4 hours and plenty of unkind words towards the light. It was much easier with two people...)

You can almost see the texture on the walls in this picture. After lighting, I was tired, I thanked Kenji and he went home. I ate lunch and seriously considered doing nothing else the entire day. In my head I heard Yoda say "The urge to be lazy is strong with this one...", which I posted on Twitter. Jared Garrett replied back with "Do.. or do not. There is no try." My reply to that was:

$DO || ! $DO ; try
try: command not found

Anyhow, blurry cell phone pictures don't do justice to the bedroom texture. I guess if you want to see it you will have to come over.

After my bout with laziness was over, I drywalled half the bathroom. I also got one wall and part of a closet done before dinner. For dinner I had a really big home made hamburger with onions, olive oil, and steak seasoning mixed in, along with french fries and corn. Tomorrow I plan to have a pork chop with french fries and corn. I'm going for a theme this weekend.

After dinner, I decided that I had plenty of time to finally put the primer on the walls in the two bedrooms. It took 3 hours and I broke the broom handle, but it is done, I can start painting on Monday. If anyone is out there with carpeting experience that wants to help out later this week, I would be glad to have you over.

I am still very tired, which is ok, since it is bedtime. I need to get plenty of sleep in the next 24 hours, I have to patch all our servers late tomorrow night. (Monday morning, really.) I hear they might have chips and salsa there when we get into the data center...