Last weekend I decided that I was going to buy a piece of vinyl flooring and put it underneath Jack’s base cabinets.  Everything that I want to do down in the basement has been put off because of the water that comes up from the center of the floor.  (hydrostatic pressure).  (I will link this to the page that explains the basement water issues at a later date)

So…Jack’s cabinets have been sitting in the basement for way too long, he busted his ass building them…and they are beautiful, but they were custom made for their kitchen in DE…we couldn’t leave them there!!

Today, I put down the vinyl and put the base cabinets in…I would say they are permanently installed.  Since we had done all the kitchen cabinets with Scott, I was feeling fairly confident that I could do this!  The floor isnt level so that really was the only trick…I wedged a 1x under one end of the room and smaller wedges to the other end and screwed them into place.

I will get my dart board back up soon!

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Jack Pop’s cabinets are now a permanent fixture in my basement

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It’s been a while since I have put any updates on this page…there’s a reason for that…and I may or may not include my reasons later…but I am hoping to get back on track with the house stuff in the spring…as well as add some personal stuff I have going on.

The newest thing going on is the MS-City to Shore bike ride, in October…it all started with Jen giving into peer pressure from her friends (just kidding)…they asked her if she wanted to try it next year and without thinking…she was in!  Then she asked me if I wanted to do it, and then I gave into the peer pressure without thinking and said yes…wait, what?  🙂

Since I did the Bike to the Bay (twice) 20+ years ago, I kinda know what it’s like, I kinda know what we will need to do before Oct…so I have to work off 20 years of not doing the ride as well as figure out something that will help my lower back.  So if you have any ideas, please share!

I completed the steps on Saturday, but had to pull up one of the boards, shift it a hair and then put it back in place.  I also had to finish screwing in the board I replaced on the porch…so now it’s COMPLETE!

I also replaced one of the boards that ended up being part of the top step.

There are still a couple boards I want to replace, but I am thinking more about the railing now.  Strange how once you start improving things, the things that weren’t so bad, now seem to be worst…

There is one more thing that we want completed this year and then we will wait until next year (or the year after) to screen it in….the siding on the front A-Frame!  That will pretty much make it look complete from the front…Tyvek paper makes it look incomplete!

I watched a bunch of videos on siding, and if I had the patience for trying to figure out the angles, I know I could do it.  I just imagine me measuring, cutting, up and down the ladder a million times…total frustration!

Jen and I have been spending more time out on the front porch, there always seems to be a breeze and the porch now provides shade…it feels like summer at the beach now!

It’s a love hate thing!!

After months of working well, all the sudden mom’s computer started shutting down on her, she got to the point where she could time it. Troubleshooting remotely might have helped narrow it down faster, but timing that could be a real pain in the ass!

I gave Shelly a can of air to give to her to blow out the fan a while back, thinking that it was getting hot and her room is pretty much closed off, it could be full of dust (normal issue for any PC).

This didn’t seem to help, so my next guess was a lack of memory. So when she came over this weekend to dog sit, I asked her to bring her PC with her. I installed some hardware monitoring software and found out it was definetly heat related. The fan would come on and try to cool, but it would still shut down.

Turns out it was the hard drive that was overheating and NO way to cool it down. Who the hell would design a case that had no ventilation? I was set on tearing some old dead PC’s apart to rebuild one. So far, the only thing I would need to buy is a Power Supply. I told mom that she could take her PC home until I can replace it, but the problem is still there.
I told her that she could open the case, and blow a fan directly into it, as I showed her where the hard drive is, we discovered a vent that was hidden in the front plate. Needless to say, there is no longer a faceplate on it! The vent had many layers of dust! Once we cleaned it off, that seemed to do the trick!! Mom’s PC is back to it’s normal kick-ass self!

Welcome back to the internet mom!

I have to get Scott over here to see where we need to start but since I spent alot more on the external framing than I expected, I am super nervous about starting on the second phase (even though it has to get done).

siding needs to be done on the outside A Frame, and possibly on the inside wall since it’s still the outside of the house…let’s see what Scott says about it.

landing with steps…this minor thing will be a big bear of a job because the steps were notched into the existing porch.  But right now, the existing steps are dangerous

or maybe just put some semi-permanent steps in there until we are ready to enclose it all??

replace some of the 2″ x 6″ on the floor and maybe the cap rail, once that’s done, we may put down some indoor/outdoor carpet

I’m sure I will remember other things for this list as I sit out there and look around!

I don’t know anyone that doesn’t like to use a pressure washer!!  I read the user’s manual, added oil, gas and the hose and started on the back deck (just about where the old pressure washer died)

I played around with the different sprayer nozzles and decided on the “cleaning nozzle”.  It took a bit longer than I thought, but then I moved on to the shed, where you can really see the difference.  Lots of green algae on the front and side.

about 10 minutes later it is ready to be painted.

I still want to wait on the painting because depending on what we pick for the front of the house, may end up being the deciding factor, but it’s clean!

I switched sprayer nozzles to the one that “strips” (gotta say, I like this one a whole lot better than the “clean” nozzle) and headed out front.  There is a stupid white spot on the front walkway, it may be paint, it may be cement…who the hell knows?  I don’t want to try chemicals because that would most likely kill the grass, so tried the stripper! It made no real difference on the white spot, but now it stands out less because the cement around it seems to be whiter.

While I had it out, I went ahead and did the balusters on the front porch…and now they look new

Magic has had a really rough few weeks!  Once she started feeling better from the Tramadol incident, she started reverse sneezing constantly.  She was lethargic, she had no desire to eat anything in the house (not even hot dogs), but we knew she had an appetite and she had the shits!  We gave her Vetadryl for the sneezing and that seemed to help ALOT, but we needed to get food in her.  So I went and bought a bag of Kibbles and Bits (probably the worst dog food you can get for a dog, but we were getting desperate for a food she wanted to eat)…she did eat a bowl of it and started to act like she was feeling better, but then she wouldn’t touch the stuff after the first bowl.  While out and about today, we grabbed some special senior wet food that was recommended by someone from petkraze.  She loved this stuff!  and within a few hours she was getting back to her old self…this is her with a full belly and feeling better!  She never relaxes like that!

getting more of this tomorrow

I think there was a very light sun shower in the afternoon, but not even enough to really notice.

Rob came by to load up the truck with all of the scraps.  I was happy to see my yard…even though the grass that was under everything is hurting and may possibly be dead.  So I want to go get some Sun & Shade grass seed and see if we can get it looking good again fairly quick! I got the blower out and tried to get rid of some of the saw dust, or at least, spread it out a little thinner…but it didn’t want to go anywhere…not even the lawn mower could really blow it out.  Maybe next year (or the year after), I want to get a tiller…the mantis looks awesome, but super expensive.

Janice broke away from her house/kitchen project to come over.  We threw dinner on the grill and had full intention of playing some horseshoes.  But we ended up enjoying the new porch.  Chuck made it over after his baseball practice, so we decided to watch a movie too and relax a little!