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Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
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10:05 pm - Interesting Weather Zone
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OK, we seem to be in that part of the wintertime when we have interesting weather on a daily basis. We had a warming trend late last week which melted almost all of the accumulated snow (approximately 1 foot) we got between Christmas and New Year's. Then we got another 2 inches of snow over the weekend coupled with very cold temperatures, creating a hazardous mix of ice and sharp snow on the ground, especially the driveways and parking lots. Now a chinook wind is blowing, gusting between 30 and 45 miles an hour. The snow has vanished entirely. It is 55° outside. I ventured out to collect various items from the yard that were starting to blow around like the lid of the garbage can, and a spare cat litter box. During the new construction, we had to demolish the old shed which used to hold a lot of this stuff. A fair amount went to the dump, but other items are simply stacked against what is usually the lee side of the house. When the wind comes out of a different quarter, it pays to go and check and make sure things aren't straying away.
At least now that the builder's work is completed, windstorms like these are no longer sucking out pink insulation flocking from the attic and distributing it over the neighborhood.
So far, the new construction is holding up well, having been tested by a fairly decent snow burden, ice, torrential rain, and now wind. The new part of the house is less noisy than the older part; I think modern insulation conducts less sound between the outside and inside.
Of course, my bedroom being in the old part of the house and on the windward side, it is subject to all sorts of little noises, many of them due to the fact that an old TV cable is hanging loose and tapping on the wall outside with every vagrant gust of wind. I really ought to go out and find some way of clipping it to the siding so it doesn't flap around in wind storms like this, but I never think of it when the weather is calm. -__-
current mood:  anxious
current music: North Wind
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| Thursday, January 1st, 2009
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10:25 pm - Happy New Year!
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I'm back! Alive and well, and as sane as I ever am. :D
The house remodel pretty much ate my brain the last couple months. Phase one, the addition, is finished. I'm sitting and typing this in my new office, which is still a novel feeling for me, not to be sitting at the kitchen table with the computer gear taking up most of the floor space.
Next phase will be to get the carpet replaced in the living room, the kitchen floor replaced, and stuff moved around to free up the master bedroom for my mom. We hope to finish combining households this year.
We spent a quiet Christmas together, around heavy snowstorms and "weather". We were hoping to be joined by my sister and her family, but the roads kept closing and the passes over the mountains were full of avalanches, so they stayed home and stayed safe. New Years we spent with friends, watching the Dark Knight movie, eating cookies, drinking coffee, and chatting till midnight. We're such a wild bunch. :D
I hope everyone has a wonderful, healthy, and safe 2009.
current mood:  calm
current music: BBC World Service
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| Friday, August 8th, 2008
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11:18 pm - And in Other News
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One of the outdoor kitties, S'mores, got into a fight with his brother last Friday and got a nasty bite wound to the chest that needed a trip to the vet, stitches, a drain, an injection of antibiotic, and a "buster collar" to keep him from pulling out said stitches. Needless to say he has been an indoor kitty for almost a week now, and once he recovers, I'll be looking for a new home for him where he can live indoors away from his brother. The two of them just don't seem to be able to share the outside territory without constant spats. And while S'mores may start the fights, he doesn't seem to win them. Or learn from the experience. Brother Sable got some scrapes, but he definitely came out ahead of S'mores. -__- What is weird is that he's getting along OK with my cats, it just seems he can't stand his brother. It figures. So... anybody want a gorgeous snowshoe cat with a lovely people-oriented personality? :) click for kitty-pic ( Read more... )
And in other news, I got home tired, laid down for a nap, and was awakened by my across the street neighbor ringing the doorbell. I opened the door and saw a whole bunch of police cars clustered around my next-door neighbor's house. What the heck? It turns out a pair of young men were fleeing from the city police, at speeds around 100 mph (according to the policeman who filled us in), tried to turn the corner onto our street and didn't quite make it. He sailed over my neighbor's lawn, through/under the chain-link fence, and crashed into their garage. Just like something out of a movie. If you look at the photos below, you can see a taillight shining in the garage. Unfortunately he did not drive in the entrance of the garage, but made a new one through the garage wall. My neighbors are fortunate that the idiots didn't end up in their living room or in their backyard pool. And the garage didn't collapse on them. Amazingly enough the two men inside walked/limped away from the crash, to be collected by the police a few minutes later. I'm not sure what exactly they had done to be trying to flee from the cops through a residential area at such high speeds, but I doubt it was anything intelligent.
The view from my front door. As you can see, the front yards are not terribly big, so the guys in the car cut the corner badly and pretty much flew into the neighbor's garage. They are lucky to be alive. At least we ended up having a nice neighborhood get-together with everyone, hanging out, watching, and chatting for about an hour.
It's been an interesting week. :)
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10:22 pm - House Remodel -- Drywall
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Yep, some "dry" pictures for you -- it doesn't get much drier than this!
A load of drywall was stacked up in the pantry on Friday last week. The drywall team arrived this Tuesday around mid-day and went to work like a team of crazed beavers, sawing, routing, and power-nailing till 8:30 pm. Actually, I think they used a power screwdriver, because the fasteners were not ordinary nails.
I was warned this would be dusty work, and they were right. I washed the kitchen floor twice that day, and wiped down all the kitchen counters multiple times, plus had to rinse off any dishes I had left out on the counters.
These photos show the results of that day's work, plus Wednesday they cleaned up some of the dusty mess and scrap and laid out paper to catch the drips from the taping/mudding team.
The office, all drywalled. It looks like a proper room now. :)
Bathroom - photo shot around the shower.
Greymalkin inspects the box of vent covers for the air ducts.
And now that there is a back door, Rum wants Out, of course!
The taping and mudding team worked all yesterday, and checked their work today. It was humid the past couple days, so things weren't dry enough for a second coat, so they will be back tomorrow to work a bit more. I'm very impressed with the results - wow!
current mood: working
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| Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
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7:29 am - Siding
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The exterior siding is done. More photos to come when I get a spare minute. This shot shows the siding about 7/8ths complete on the back side of the house.
Still some cleanup stuff to be done in the yard, but not too bad, really. The work crews have tried to keep the mess down, although they managed to tidy away the sewer clean out cover somewhere, and I may have to ask the contractor to get a new one. -__-
And the city has passed the electrical work, so the interior drywall work can begin, yay!
current mood:  tired
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| Saturday, July 19th, 2008
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8:31 am - Pipes and Piping
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| Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
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6:53 am - Roofing
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| Saturday, July 12th, 2008
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7:34 am - Roofline
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| Thursday, July 10th, 2008
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10:54 pm - Trusses!
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They put up the trusses today and we had a terrible windstorm right afterward -- it figures. Mother nature is stress-testing everything. The interior of the addition was a malestrom of dirt, pink insulation flocking, dust, lawn debris, bits of tarpaper... ugh! I've got a sand dune in my scalp!
Look, Mom! A roof line!
Why was I inside the interior of the addition in such terrible conditions? The builders had put a nice heavy piece of plastic over the area where the hot water heater was nestled, but in high winds it tends to tear loose and make a lot of noise as it flaps against a wall of the kitchen. So I sallied forth with duct tape and scissors to tack it all down again. I'm debating washing my hair before I go to bed since bits of gravel and dirt fall out of my hair when I shake it. 0__o
Mom is having the interior of her house repainted this month, and I went over this evening to bring dinner, and help her move stuff out of the first areas that are going to get painted. When I got home, the wind storm was pretty much over, and the new trusses were still standing. Hooray for modern construction! One of the builders was swinging by to check on it as I left the house; I really appreciate their care and professionalism.
A view straight up through the middle of the house, showing the attic trusses in place.
The front of the addition-- well, actually it's the back of the house --notice the big prop running up to the ridge line. The front truss was tied into the frame as well, but they put in the prop as extra insurance, and I'm glad they did.
I took Saki to the vet today to get his teeth cleaned, and rescued him on the way home from work. Like his brother, he had a little bit of that reabsorbtive disease and they had to extract one of his pre-molars. He also had a little cyst in his mouth which they removed, but his teeth were in better shape than his brother's. Hopefully this will help to keep him healthy and sassy for many years to come.
current mood: tired
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| Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
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10:15 pm - Electrical and Trusses
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They finished switching over the electrical system today. At about quarter till 8 the contractor's electricians showed up, followed shortly thereafter by the city Public Works electricians.
This is what the electric meter, and assorted power cables looked like before they started.
Our electrician is an artist -- he put a little doodle on the cardboard covering the place where the electrical meter would go. :D
At eight o'clock they took down the main power and commenced switching everything over to the new system. I left for work, and mom dropped by at 9:30 to see how everything was going. The day turned out to be incredibly hot with a high at or near 100°. The electrician told me yesterday the power would only be down for an hour or two, max, but I was a little worried if it took longer than that the house might start getting uncomfortably warm for the cats. I needn't have worried. They had almost all the power to the main house restored by the time mom showed up. They had the important stuff like the air conditioner and the refrigerator running, and by the time I got home at the end of the day all power in the older part of the house was functional.
This is what it looked like when I got home today -- the power cable had been switched over and tied in. I wonder what they used to splice the cables together? It must be tough stuff to withstand the wind load that is going to happen over the years it is in service.
Something else had been accomplished at the end of the day -- the roof trusses had arrived and the preparation work had begun to start fitting them on to the frame of the addition. I can tell it's going to look rather messy until that part is done, since they have to peel off old roof tiles to make new for the new trusses. At the moment, the trusses are all stacked up neatly -- mostly over the framing of the new edition with some of it laying on the roof of the old house. I was concerned about the weight, and then I realized everything has to bear the weight of the trusses anyway, so I quit worrying so much.
Trusses! Laid across the span of the addition.
The trusses viewed from inside the pantry/laundry room. There is a smallish attic zone in the middle of the trusses, where we might be able to store light stuff like the Xmas lights.
Click for cat pictures! :) ( Read more... )
current mood:  sleepy
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| Saturday, July 5th, 2008
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7:36 am - The Rocket's Red Glare
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| Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
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12:05 am - Framed-In
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The building crew arrived and went right to work at eight o'clock. I left them vitamin water and cookies, and I came home to the result of their day's labors and took pictures. I'm very impressed. I can't believe how quickly it goes up and starts looking like a real house. My contractor says the roof trusses should arrive soon.
This side shows the pantry room door, and the picture window into the family room.
And this side shows the same picture window and the window into the office.
Click for interior shots of the rooms. ( Read more... )
The things you learn when working with contractors -- because I'm living in a World War II era house I'm permitted to put in windows of the same size as the original windows, they call it "grandfathered construction". Technically all modern construction should have windows that are even a size larger -- large enough to admit a fireman in full rescue gear. The windows certainly will be big enough to permit everyone to bail out if necessary. There are small homes in the neighborhood built in the same time period as my own with very small windows that probably would not allow an adult human to escape in the event of an emergency. I think if I was renovating one of them I would upgrade the windows for safety's sake.
current mood: amazed
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| Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
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7:36 am - Framing Started
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| Sunday, June 29th, 2008
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9:27 pm - Coming Soon - Framing
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Got a call midweek from my contractor saying the lumber for the framing would start to show up Monday or so and that the roof trusses were on order. Once the material arrives the framing-in will start and evidently that goes very fast. He said, "soon it will look like a house!" Cool. :)
This meant I had to make a decision on what color shingles were going to go on the roof. I took Friday off as a little minivacation, so Mom and I went down to the contractor's office and looked at samples of shingles and siding. We were torn between a color called "weathered white" and another color called "pewter". The weathered white looked like its name, while the pewter looked like a nice medium gray. I was leaning toward the pewter color because it would make a very lovely contrast with the pale siding we wanted. The very nice lady in charge of the office said there were two homes the contractor had just re-roofed, one with each color, so we could go and see how it looked in daylight. I got the addresses, printed out maps from Google maps, and then Mom and I went on a little drive around the area to find the homes. It turned out it was time well spent, the weathered white colored shingles actually look like a soft silver gray in daylight, which is a color I really like and so did Mom. The pewter shingles looked almost black -- very handsome -- but in this climate in the full sun they would really retain the heat. So we decided on the weathered white shingles and a siding color called "Pearl", which is a very pale warm gray close to what I have on the house already.
The concrete is now hard as... well, concrete. I've been walking over it as I drag the hose and sprinkler from one end of the yard to the other in an attempt to keep the lawn alive. Summer is here with a vengeance -- it has been 105-107 degrees F the past few days, ugh. Looks like the weather may moderate toward the end of the week, but is IS July, and that means hot. This probably means the various builders may be showing up very early in the morning to beat the heat. Guess I should get to bed before 1 am, huh?
Here are two photos from last week.
The concrete slab all nice and set up. This is before a bunch of birds decided to poop on it after eating wild cherries. :P
The back of the house as it looks right now. The exposed wall doesn't look terribly nice, but it is holding up well despite the vagaries of the weather. As of this moment it is wind storming outside and there were big thunderheads on the horizon before the sun went down. Maybe if we are lucky we'll get a little free water out of the deal, but this time of year we are just as likely to get a dust storm rather than a rain shower.
The concrete folks very nicely strung the hose from the old washer faucet and nailed it up along the side of the house to keep it out of the setting concrete. Someone also turned on the exterior faucet on the front of my house which was a really big help since I'm now using that to run all my sprinklers. At some point, the plumber is going to replace all that old piping and life may get a little bit easier in terms of the water supply.
current mood: calm
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| Thursday, June 19th, 2008
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11:09 pm - Foundation -- All In A Day's Work
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7:19 am - They're Heeere
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The concrete folks arrived at 6 am! I'm gonna bail to work in a few minutes and leave the place in their hands. I've got a huge tube suspended over the house so they can pump concrete over the old place and into the new footings and forms that will form the foundation of the addition. Yikes! I hope nothing leaks. The foreman said, "We've got good insurance, don't worry." 0__o :D
A nice young man with a cement mixer arrived yesterday at 7 am, looked around and went, "Where IS everybody?" Um... I dunno... 0__0 Turns out there was a slight miscommunication back at the shop -- they needed to do more foundation prep before they could pour, so here they are today to DO it. I am impressed with the work and the logistics. Yow!
More updates and piccies after work, I had to run out and take photos of the boom and tube over my house.
current mood: nervous
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| Saturday, June 14th, 2008
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9:29 pm - Spring! Summer! Work!
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The weather *finally* got good today -- clear skies, bright sun, temps in the low 80's, and no gale force winds. Which meant I got to sally forth into the junky jungle of my back yard and tackle some long-neglected yard work. So today I:
1. Tackled the outgrowths sprouting from the weeping cherry tree - scions of the rootstock that were definitely NOT weeping in growth habit but instead shot up 20 feet in a year. Cut off two of three big limbs, then asked mom to bring over the saw with big teeth that is better for heavy woodcutting jobs. The small pruning saw I had took forever and sure gave me a good aerobic workout. :P
2. Pruned grape vines and put them on their trellises where they belonged.
3. Pruned the weeping cherry, forsythia, and some of the lilacs.
4. Tried to cut down a persistent willow-thing that keeps trying to grow through my back fence. Will work on it tomorrow again with the bigger saw. Geeze, turn your back for a season and you get a jungle! Also tried to take out the walnut-grove the squirrels keep trying to plant.
5. Picked up the clippings and put them in the trash can (mostly). The larger limbs from the cherry will need to be cut up smaller to fit.
6. Planted catnip in the hanging planter.
7. Pruned the roses out front.
8. Planted lavender, verbena, and some petunias in a nice pot.
9. Watered the 3 earthboxes (tomatoes and basil) so far planted.
10. Dragged out the hose, connected the sprinkler and began watering the back yard the old-fashioned way. This is how it will be till I can get the irrigation fixed. Oy vey.
Time to collapse, I think. Will post a few more pics --
More rough plumbing, this for the kitchen and laundry area.
Sable mugging for the camera.
Click for more cat-pics. ( Read more... )
current mood: tired
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| Monday, June 9th, 2008
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11:00 pm - Let the Wind Blow!
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Goodness, it is blowing yet another windstorm, interspersed with spates of rain. The wind is averaging 30 mph, with gusts up to 45 mph. I had to re-wrap the washer and dryer, which are sitting under a blue plastic tarp along the side of the house -- the wind keeps working the tarp loose, and when I came home today, the tarp was in the hedge. At least it hadn't totally blown away.
Then I had to duct-tape the plastic sheeting protecting the circuit breaker and power cables, since the wind had torn most of it free of the staples holding it in place. Yay for duct tape! I really don't want water getting on the electrical stuff.
A closer picture of the plumbing stubs for the new bathroom. Interesting how it is done. Sometime this week the concrete will be poured, I think, assuming the weather cooperates. I doubt anyone would want to work in this gale. My scalp is full of sand from my sojourn outside. The outdoor kitties, came, ate, complained bitterly about the weather, and disappeared to their kitty house for the night.
I bought herbs on Saturday - rosemary, parsley, and catnip. I parked the catnip on top of the fridge, but Grey found it all too soon. So it is now in the back bedroom behind closed doors till I can put it in the hanging planter.
current music: BBC World News
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| Saturday, June 7th, 2008
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8:29 pm - House Remodel - Plumbing
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| Thursday, June 5th, 2008
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12:12 am - House Remodel - Footings and Forms
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exhausted
grateful
relieved
