Well, I finally got around to building the wall that will turn the loft area in our new place into the fourth bedroom.
I actually built the frame on Saturday, and then put up the first half of the drywall panels (with some help from Randy) yesterday morning. I plan to hang the other large panels after work today, and then finish it up on or by this weekend.
I made a deal that it would be done before I go to San Francisco on the 21st, but since we’re going to New York this next weekend that means I pretty much have to have it wrapped up by this weekend.
I’m sure that I’ve sworn off doing this sort of thing myself many times on this blog, but this time I just couldn’t resist saving so much money.
I’ll post some before, half-way, and after photos shortly.
We have an issue with our upstairs bathroom toilet right now where it will keep running unless you jiggle the handle after you flush it, and you can hear it from downstairs if you’re right below it, sitting in the corner chair of the living room.
The funny thing is that instead of actually going and fixing it, every time I hear it I always start thinking about how I need to build some sort of home intercom system so that I can call upstairs and tell them to jiggle the handle to get the toilet to stop running. While this would undoubtedly be more expensive than just fixing the toilet, it would have other uses, and it’s just plain cooler.
September 18, 2006 – 8:57 pm
Last week was pretty hectic. Aside from being really busy at work lately, I had also set a goal to have the grass in the backyard done in time for Randy & Jacquie’s 30th Anniversary party (which turned out really great, BTW), as well as putting together a slide show for the party, which I didn’t end up starting until about 10pm the night before. With that on Friday night and the party itself on Saturday, I ended up not getting a whole lot of sleep this weekend, and I foolishly didn’t really make up for it by going to bed early last night.
The grass rush turned out not to be a mixed success: it looked good, but it was still not really ready for people to walk on it since you have to water it so much in the first week. I heard that may be because I didn’t smash the dirt back down after I tilled it but before laying down the grass, but oh well, it will still be alright. I did get it all in and finished off the playground area on Friday afternoon; now we just need some more wood chips to add to it and we’ll be set.
Still no pictures of the grass yet, and I don’t know if I’ll take the time at this point. Everyone who’s interested who hasn’t seen it yet can check it out the next time they’re over.
September 11, 2006 – 8:40 pm
[ Phase 1 ] [ Phase 2 ]
Today I got the grass and put it in. I went to Green Thumb yesterday afternoon to try and pick it up, but they didn’t have enough, and what they did have was getting a bit old and dry to try and use. Thankfully, however, the guy told me that for that quantity, I’d be better off ordering it directly with the people who supply them. It’s slightly cheaper that way, and I could get it delivered to our house rather than trying to arrange for a truck. It’s also fresher, since it’s coming straight from them rather than trying to hit Green Thumb on the right day when they get their deliveries.
So, I did that, and it arrived today. While it did take a while to put in, I think this was probably the easiest part of this process so far. The only downside was getting towards the end later this afternoon and realizing that we either measured wrong or they under-delivered on our order. Luckily, I was able to run down to Green Thumb again and pick up about 10 extra strips from an order they just got delivered today, and use that to finish it off.
Now it’s just a matter of watering it like crazy for the next week, and completing the final step (for this process) by building the barriers around the playground to hold the wood chips in, and then filling it with wood chips.
September 10, 2006 – 10:37 pm
As you can tell from my lack of blog activity, this was another jam packed weekend. I think right now (Sunday night) is the first time I’ve cracked open my computer.
Saturday was a bit crazy, with a garage sale, 3 soccer games and more yard work in all the time that was left during the day. Huge thanks to the Camerons and the Aldersons and everyone else who ran that garage sale for us (to raise money for Christian and Emma’s school trip) while we ran around to the various soccer games.
Once we were done with that, I ran over to Home Depot to rent a tiller and bust up all the dirt in the backyard as step two in the process we started last weekend of getting more grass in the backyard. It was a bit tougher than I thought for a few reasons. Not only was the dirt in a lot of places really solid and hard, there were also two spots where we recently pulled up trees that had been there for a long time, and there were thick roots everywhere (along with a fair amount of big rocks) which would interfere with the tilling process.
I’d post pictures, but it’s not that different that the last ones I posted, other than everything is smoothed out and more even now. That’s one thing that’s a bit frustrating since after a lot of work you still just have a whole lot of dirt, just like when you started. Of course the dirt is in a lot better shape for planting, but still.
While that wasn’t the end of the draining aspects of this weekend, I think that’s all I’m going to post about tonight. Thanks again to everyone who helped out.
Well, as you can clearly tell by this post, I’m not making a whole lot of progress on my goal I mentioned in the last post.
The good news is, however, that I did manage to finish staining the ceiling in the game room today (although it ended up taking a lot longer than expected), and my headache seems to be gone. The bad news is that I now wreak of paint thinner, which was required in liberal doses to unstain my body after I was done, and my headache has been replaced with a neck-ache that I’m much more sure is attributable to the staining work.
Oh, well, at least it’s over now. Well, actually not quite; I still have to put up the modling around the edges before Wednesday, since that is when I agreed to have the whole thing done by. Speaking of that, everyone’s welcome over to our house that night for “common meal” (sharing dinner for those not clued into the hip lingo). Check Martha’s blog or the b web site for the details like what kind of food we’re having.
I put in a shower door today in our bathroom, since it had been missing one since our earlier gutting of that bathroom. I unfortunately was looking at the wrong box label / brochure type thing in the store, because I thought the one we were getting was the adjustable width one, but when I got it home and unpacked it I realized it was the kind where you have to cut all the metal pieces to the appropriate widths yourself with a hacksaw, which is definitely a pain.
We’ve had a big hole in the cement in our back patio that was caused a while back when a water pipe broke underneath it, and it had to be broken up to get to the pipe so it could be fixed. Yesterday I finally got around to taking care of that hole, after two trips to Lowes because I underestimated the amount of concrete I would need.
December 26, 2005 – 7:07 pm
We had a great Christmas, despite me being sick since Thursday. Martha totally outdid me in terms of gifts by creating a painting for me based around a hymn we’ve been doing at church lately.
Now I’m heading into a week off, during which I’ll hopefully get better. Of course, there is more home improvement stuff to be done as well; I just went to Costco today to buy the ~300 more square feet of flooring for our room upstairs that I will be doing tomorrow. Now I just have to figure out how to do the cutting in our upstairs bathroom, as I really don’t want to be running up and down the stairs all day. Last time the thing that took the longest by far was going in and outside to do the cutting, and that was downstairs.
