Posts filed under 'Bathroom'
As much as I hate myself for drinking pop every time quit, I seem fall of the wagon harder each time. Recently I have gotten in the habit of drinking a pop around 8-9 pm each night and while I never thought caffeine had that much of an impact on my system, I have definitely noticed it lately. Sometimes I will just stare at the TV and/or computer screen and have this great need to do a million things at once, but I don’t know where to start or what I really want to do, so I just sit there. I can sometimes feel my heart race and when I something goes right or a find something to read, I get so excited I feel like I need to go run around the block a few times. In any case, I need to stop.
Summer Promises
At least once, I said I would try to ride to work with Will this summer. We did it last week with some pretty good results. He loved riding in the trailer. In fact, when I told him we were going to ride to daycare, he hounded me for the next 30 minutes while I packed and got the bike and trailer ready. “Daddy, Come on”, “I want to get in (the trailer)”, “I want to ride.”
Logistically, it was tough, He arrived at daycare a little earlier and left a little later and I got to work a tad late and left a tad earlier. Riding home with the trailer attached and then with Will in it wasn’t a lot of fun either. Will did get a big kick out of the whole thing though and he was perfectly content in his trailer. I’d like to do it once a week as the savings in gas is worth it, but we’ll have to see how it goes. Angie will have a lot of July off, so I might just ride in alone a lot or drop him off and let Angie pick him up.
Copycats
My sister-in-law wants to be like me.
Bathroom Rehash
I put the door trim up this weekend. It still needs to be painted, but I am hoping Angie does that. I also put the door hardware on again and fixed where the door was sticking while it closed. That just leaves the air vent as the last big thing to finish up, so hopefully that can be done this weekend.
Other projects
Well when we fixed the bathroom door, we also worked on the basement door which had basically fallen off its hinges. The hinges are still bent, but the door swings much better than it use to. Now I need to add a door stop so you can’t push the door clear through the opening. I also still need to add my “pantry” to the basement steps. Add that to the list of things I hope I can knock out this weekend.
Speaking of steps, I finally bought a few materials and put proper steps on the garage. It actually was a quick project and it is much better than stepping on stacked pavers that tended to roll off and out from under your feet when you stepped on the edges. I think Angie will appriacitate them more when I get the garage empty enough for her to park in again, but that is a long ways off.
I also built a raised bed for a garden this weekend and planted it. We’ve had some decent steady rain, so I am hoping the plants grow nice and fast. It is my first attempt at a garden, so I am not expecting much. We might end up with too much food or we grow nothing but weeds. Only time will tell.
The garage and the fence are the last big projects I need to start and finish this summer. I’d really like to do the fence, but the garage is half done and all the supplies are on hand. If anything, I need to just clean the shop really, really well and get things organized so I can actually do some work. As it is now, I spend hours looking for stuff. The unisaw rebuild is wrapping up, so the old saw needs to be setup to sell and that will free a lot of space. But I have added a ton of basically free wood, a unisaw for my dad, and a metal lathe probably all within the last few weeks. It has caused a bit of a space problem. At any rate, I think I convinced myself to side the garage during this rant, so that is what I am going to set about doing this weekend.
Hoosier Heartland
Well it seems the rotation Angie was hoping to get in Indiana is back on again. Initially they told her there were no spots available, but then she e-mailed a few people and magically they found a spot. Since the rotation is four weeks long, I won’t be able to go during the entire time, but Will and I will probably burn up all my available vacation to spend as much time as we can there. It should be fun to be in Indiana that long without really anything to do. No holidays or anything else like that to worry about. I am assuming Angie will be working a lot, so I am sure Will and I will have lots of excess time on our hands to visit everyone.
The caffeine seems to be kicking in again and I can’t sit still, so that’s the end.
June 3rd, 2008
That was one really, really long week. Major operations have ceased and Angie is taking care of touch up work as I type this. I have to say thanks to my parents for coming up and lending a hand and to my sister Sarah who fielded call after call about tiling.
Working with my dad for a week was… an experience. On one hand, when he said our new framing should be 60″ wall-to-wall, it was. On the other, he didn’t hesitate to clean his pipe out on my jointer even after he sang praise upon praise about its quality. At any rate, I think I picked up a few tricks throughout the project (all of which I wish I had when I started the basement) and he got a few decent tools for free, so I think we evened out a bit.
Now I have to get back on some sort of schedule and get back to a routine. Angie has been on an extremely easy rotation so my “Will” duties have been pretty non-existent the last few weeks and during the remodel I don’t think I went to bed before midnight one night. At this point though, I would be happy to just not eat fast food for a little while.
Look to the pictures for more information on the remodel, I am going to start adding comments in a minute.
Oh I also have to say thanks to my Wife for putting up with such a messy house and my generally poor attitude all week.
May 19th, 2008
Just putting in a place holder for the eventual bathroom entry.
May 15th, 2008
I feel like Christmas is right around the corner now with almost everything purchased and ready to go for the bathroom makeover. Every time I go in the bathroom, all I can think about is how it might be the last time I have to look at the ugliness, someone else’s sloppy work, and the hole I put in the wall so long ago. I am actually looking forward to working with my dad too. I was kind of flying blind with most of the basement and I often had to learn to do things the hard way, so I am hoping he can teach me a few tricks of the trade. There will be a little of everything to do, some plumbing, some framing (that is kind of a maybe), drywalling, tiling (although I am not sure if he’s tiled before), and general finish and trim work. I need to start making a list of questions to ask him about when he is here, so I can better explain things.
I am not sure I have gone to bed before 11:30 in the last two weeks as I have been really busy out in the garage trying to get it cleaned up and trying to get more projects done. I was really hoping to have the Unisaw together and running before my parents came down, but that deadline is fading. If I have a few nights to work while they’re here, I might finish it up.
I have to kind of laugh about what it will be like someday when I am out of this house and in a different one. That day is quickly approaching, but I am wondering if the pressure I put on myself to get projects done will be any less. I have long felt the looming deadline of Angie’s residency as the drop dead date for projects. I tried multitasking on the projects, but that just seems to lead to bigger messes and more delays. I can feel myself saying things like “If I can just get the garage sheeted, then this big pile of OSB will be out of the garage and I can do this, this, and this.” The reality is I just need to scratch something, anything, off the list. That, I think, is the real essence of my excitement for my dad visiting. I want the bathroom DONE, not 90% with some finishing touches, because I will never get to those, I want it done completely. If there is down time, like waiting for something to dry or whatever, hopefully we can knock off a few other small things.
Oh, and we took Will to Como Town on Sunday and he rode a few rides by himself (yep he is almost a man) and it was a hoot watching him. He took his car ride very seriously and loved riding the train so much he cried when Angie took him off. Of course, I totally dropped the ball and forgot the camera at home.
May 6th, 2008
April sucked. Snow or rain every Friday and May seems to be on the same track. Some brief comments that will cover a variety of topics:
Bathroom
I can’t believe next Friday I will start gutting the bathroom. Angie and I need to nail down some final details for the bathroom plan and I need to finish buying supplies. Fortunately, Angie is between rotations this weekend, so she should have no excuse to put me off.
Camera
I really killed my old camera last weekend. If you remember, the movie function gave up the ghost some time ago, and then over the weekend I was moving some heavy equipment with the camera forgotten in my pocket and I crushed the LCD screen in the back. It was a pain to use, but it was still useful by looking through the tiny view finder. That worked for about 10 more photos then the lens would no longer retract. It will beep at me and flash some lights now, but other than that it is pretty much dead.
Since I’ve never bought a digital camera, I asked my brother and sister-in-laws for advice and settled on the Canon SD1000. It is a generation old, but it was cheap and overnight shipping it was cheap. It kind of drives me nuts not having a camera on hand. For the few months, I have just been wishing I could record some videos of Will or more recently, take some photos of the tools being rebuilt. In any case, I think this new camera is going to get a workout this weekend.
Last Weekend
So about that heavy equipment I was moving… I have met a few guys that have similar interests in restoring older machines and one has basically having a giant garage sale to thin his inventory and get some more floor space back. About 12 guys showed up and there were lots of exchanges of machines. Many guys (like me) already had deals in place and this was the perfect time to exchange machines and look through more stuff. I picked up an 8″ jointer, a lathe, a smaller motor, and a bearing press which are big machines for me, but were nothing compared to other machines moving. A few needed a forklift for loading/unloading, but most just needed a gantry crane.
Machine Rebuilds
Even though I promised not to talk about it much, I am getting pretty close to getting my 1949 Unisaw rebuilt. I have the motor ready to go and I finished rebuilding the saw arbor earlier this week. Last night I spent a few hours stripping down the cabinet and got a coat of primer on it. There are still some miscellaneous parts to strip and paint, but the cabinet is the biggest/hardest part to do. I should have it finished up this weekend, which means parts can start going back in.
I’d really like to get it done before my dad gets here, one so he can see it and use it and two because I don’t really want anything to distract me during the bathroom remodel.
30 Rock
I won’t say 30 Rock is my favorite show, but watching Alec Baldwin makes sitting through the rest of the show worth it. Last night he made a reference to leaving GE (the Cindy Crawford of corporations) to lie down with a “tramp” like 3M and I nearly split my side laughing. It pissed off Angie because she is hyper-sensitive to noise when Will is sleeping, but it was mostly entertaining because that is exactly what happened with our former CEO. He didn’t get the top job at GE and jumped ship to join 3M.
May 2nd, 2008