Category: Life News

End Results [With Pictures!]

I promised pictures and now you have them! Introducing our kitchen bar before renovation. Notice the large gray overhang. It was so cumbersome and we kept running into it. It also took up a couple of feet of the sitting room next to the kitchen.

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Next, you’ll see the work in progress:

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So we ripped the ugly gray top off and replaced it with a nice piece of wood.

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Now that the painting’s done, this is the final result. It’s much easier to walk around and doesn’t feel so bulky. We love it!

We owe a special thanks to John Elliott for helping us get started [well, for doing most of the work on the construction part, but the painting was hard too!]. Many coats of paint later, we are finally finished.

Painting Madness

We are coming to the end of our home remodeling projects… Note I said “projects” – yes, we started another one before finishing the first. We ripped out Laura’s closet and have spackled and primed the closet. Next, we will paint it and hang up new custom shelving.

As for the bar area, I’ve decided I’m going to finish priming and painting it the original dull color and we’ll chose another color for accent purposes later.

It’s off to paint now!

Slackers

That’s us. Well, not really, but it’s taken longer that I like for us to come close to finishing the bar. We’ve now got the structure in place, the bar and wall fully plastered and primed, and even have some first coats of paint on the trim parts. We’re not really satisfied with the texture of the finish of the top, but I think that a couple more coats should solve the problem with that.

Then, of course, is the problem of the wall. It seems that the wall-colored paint we have that the previous owners stored in the basement is a few shades off from what the walls actually look like. We will not only have to paint the areas that have been plastered, but also the entire wall to all the seams. It’s quite an obvious difference, so we have to go floor-to-ceiling with it and corner-to-corner. With all that painting to be done, we might as well change the color. Once that’s all done, I’ll take a “final” picture and post it up here.

I’m really just a slacker for not blogging anything in the last couple of weeks, but I truly have been busy.

No! Really!

Demolition!

We’ve ripped out our bar counter top. Yep. Not even in the house two months and we’ve destroyed a surface. What we’ve done, though, is make the kitchen area feel so much larger. We’re just going to cap off the knee wall with a flat board and make “mini bar” of only 11″ inches wide or so. It’s our first remodeling project. The new sink doesn’t count…

Right now, though, it’s not done – just demolished. We couldn’t find the right lumber to finish the job. Hopefully, we’ll be done by Monday night and I’ll get some good pictures of the finished project.

Hopefully, I won’t be like Mike and not post ANY of the final result pictures of our kitchen remodel.. hint, hint!

A New TV

Soon will be delivered a new TV. Possibly Friday. We’ve decided to go with Samsung this time based on the recommendation of several friends. It’s going to be a nice 7-series model that’s 46″ this time. Funny – they don’t carry a 42″… Oh, well… I’ll just have to live with it.

Anyhow it’s supposed to be delivered on Friday during the day.

All Fired Up

Having done nothing recently on the photography business at all, Laura and I attended a seminar last night: the “I Shoot People” tour. I have to say it was AWESOME! I was so fired up that I volunteered to be the one to create the albums for our customers. Go figure. Laura was the one who wanted to do that! She says I’m not stepping on her toes, so maybe she’ll feel more free to help me with less of a burden of stress on her shoulders.

We also picked up some great business advice on how to avoid bad things in the business and how to appropriately price our services. All in all, it was the best seminar I’ve attended yet.

Now all we need are some customers!

HDTV Blues

2012-01-08 23:30:30

After taking the plunge very recently and buying a new HDTV LCD, we are now disappointed – and not just because cable HD content isn’t really HD. No: we’re disapointed in our TV itself. It seems that we have a defective unit. In fact, it’s the second defective unit in a row that we’ve purchased. You see, we exchanged the first one for the same model and it has the same problem. The TV is a Philips [nice, eh?] 42PFL7403D/27 television and the problem we’ve had in 2 out of 2 TVs is that in the center top of the screen, there appears on occasion a flickering vertical green line. It’s not constant, nor is it the same length each time, but it’s always in the same place.

Has anyone seen anything like this? I’m about to take it back and swear off that brand. But, that will cost us. We’ll have to pay more for a different brand at a different store.

Maybe we’ll just take it back for a refund and move the old 27″ down to the living room…

Retread

After over 28,000 miles on the bike, it’s time again for new tires… and new brake pads. So since it was already time for the 28K oil change, I took in the bike for the regular service plus tires and pads. It is ready now for pickup and we’re just about on our way.

The strange thing about bike tires is that with a new pair of tires, the bike handles differently. It’s an enormous and very noticeable difference, not like what you get with a car. With the bike, it drastically changes the way it turns and how responsive it is. I’ve been having to push the bike down into the turns for so long, I’m worried I may turn too fast now… Well, not really, but it will certainly feel like a different bike.

I’m also replacing my old torn up jacket. This is the jacket that I had the wreck in 3 years ago and the sleeves are still torn up. So, I’ve ordered a new one that will hopefully be more noticeable: bright white with black trim.

Next on the agenda: new helmet!

Office Space

No, no the movie of the same name, but our very own office space… Finally! After about a month or so of being without a space for my office in the new place [I’ve been working on the kitchen table…], we finally set up my desks last night. No more cluttered table… at least, no more cluttered table caused by my laptop and accoutrements.

So, now the basement is about half done, but of course the second half is always the hardest. Maybe finishing time can be represented on an asymptotic scale with time stretching to infinity as room approaches completion. The closer it gets to done, the longer it takes to actually finish…

Maybe now with the basement well started, we can work on some of the other things we’ve been putting off.