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Busy weekend…

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Last weekend Tara’s family came down for Easter. It was pretty fun, but it was a lot of people in the house (9), that all stayed the night. Got to show Tara’s uncle, the hobby carpenter (a very talented one who basically completely built their house). He was quite impressed with our flooring and tiling jobs. Everyone else was impressed by the tile as well as our new pots and pans. Yes, we bought about $500 in new pots and pans that would be over $1000 retail. They’re very nice.

We had to put a bed in the office, an inflatable in the living room, and have someone on the couch to make room for everyone. Lot of people! Dinner was great, though, one of the nights we had mashed potatoes with spinach in them. I love spinach, and I love mashed potatoes, but putting them together, not great. You couldn’t taste the spinach, but you certainly got the texture. Not great. =/

Since then, we’ve been trying to keep the house clean, and doing yard work, etc. It’s been nice the past couple days, so we got a bunch of weeding done (Tara did all of that), planted some roses (that actually happened before Tara’s family came), planted a kiwi in the back, moved a blueberry, pulled up a dead Dogwood, and an ugly Mock Orange, mowed the lawns, etc. Tomorrow and Tuesday are supposed to be in the 70’s to 80’s again, so that will be nice to get some more sun, and get some more things done.

The garage needs cleaning as well, and I hope to get my radiation shield for my weather station completed tomorrow.

On the other side, and this is mainly for my own memory: one of the 3 plumeria cuttings that Tara brought back from Hawaii in January 2009 survived. The other two both got stem rot. I hope to buy a few cuttings online from Maui Plumeria next month, and get those planted, but we’ll see. The one that survived seems quite healthy. I’ve been putting it outside during the day the past couple days to get it some heat/air/sun. Here’s hoping it helps.

Oh, and in the past 2 years we’ve had a tomato in a bucket upside down, and it’s been great, but the bucket is fugly. This last week, we bought one of those Topsy Turvy’s. I’m not sure there’s enough soil held in them for a tomato to really thrive, but we shall see. It’s certainly prettier than a 5 gal bucket, and it has a pivot so that it can move in the wind (which might prevent one issue with the bucket in that, the tomato really tried to grow toward the sun). We shall see. If it works well, maybe I’ll get another one next year for Cucumbers, or Bell Peppers or something. Supposedly they work for Eggplant too. =) Will post more when I know more.

I also hope to fertilize two of the blueberries soon. Once the flowers open, I am supposed to give them each a cup of Ammonium Sulfate. We’ll see how that goes as well.

Think that’s it. I’ll try to write more later in the week.

Tiling the Laundry

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Over the past few weeks, Tara and I (mostly Tara) have been working on tiling the laundry room. It started months ago when we installed the hardwood, and pulled up the ugly linoleum on the downstairs landing. It remained that way for months, and just recently we started the laundry room.

We went with a porcelain, cream/tan colored tile. 13″x13″. About $1.19/sq ft at the local hardware store.

After pulling out the washer and dryer, and pulling the base boards, we pulled up the linoleum. Tara scraped off most of the old glue, and we started working on caulking under the drywall to prevent the self leveler from oozing out under it. During that, we discovered that the drywall right under the washer drain spout was rotted out (well, dissolved out), probably due to the drain backing up and water pouring out and getting under the drywall. So, we cut out that bad drywall and found mold (big surprise). We cut out probably a 3’x4′ chunk, and replaced it, taped, mudded, textured. Painted (later). Looks good.

So, after that, we poured self leveler since the room wasn’t very flat. There’s kind of a “hump” in the middle of the room. After one bag worth, we saw the hump was still there, so we mixed and poured another bag worth. The hump was still there, but much better. And we didn’t want to spend another $30 on a bag that will just raise the floor even more. So, we called it good.
Tara basically did all the tiling herself. She mixed the thinset, cut the tile (with a wonderfully handy tile saw we borrowed from her uncle). She basically did it all while I was at work. Tilesaw works great… except when you don’t have the blade shield all the way down and water sprays all over the front of your pants… but I digress.

Next came grouting, which is a tedious process, but might be easier if the grout was a bit thinner. I mixed it a bit thick, so it really took some elbow grease to work in. Then you wipe it down, and seal it a few days later. All of this went pretty well. The only thing I didn’t look forward to was trimming the doors to make room for the extra 1/2 of tile, thinset, and self leveler. But, all and all, that went quite well as well.

And we’re done! we put the washer and dryer back, all the various holes in the walls have been sealed (you know, where the valves for the washer water come through, or the dryer exhaust, etc. Hopefully the laundry room will stay a bit warmer now. Heck, we even bought nice new hoses for the washer (did you know you’re supposed to replace the hoses every 5 years???). Really, the only thing left is to finish the new baseboard, and sometime down the road, get a laundry sink/basin installed (which we’ll have a plumber do, and probably run us a few hundred).

With Tara’s family coming down this weekend, we’re now in rapid cleaning mode. I also need to install a new lav faucet in the guest bathroom, which I’ll probably do tonight. That’s easy plumbing…

Additions…

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Okay people, as you can now see, there are some additions on the side bar, and a new theme. The theme, well, it’s okay. It’s better than the default. I’m not a HUGE fan, but at least it’s not 3 column, and it isn’t like reading a newspaper sidebar (like the default). 

The additions are fairly self explanatory.

The one marked “Weather” is actually a webcam image taken from my house with the current weather info superimposed over the top of it. Clicking on it will give you my weather data. 

The one marked “Current Power usage” is also, just that. My power meter is being polled for info every minute, and it’s appending it to a file. This is just the latest record in that file. It’s resolution for power is 10watts, and for time is 1 minute. If I were ajax-y, I could make it auto update. Maybe when I have some time. The “cost” in parenthesis is based on the SUB power rate of $0.0463/KWH. So, assuming I continued to use that same amount of power for an hour, that’s what it would cost. 

In other news, I took the day off today to go to the dentist (perfect exam/teeth, as always), run a few errands, and makes some calls to places that are only open during business hours (TED (to unlock the usb port)). Also called Apple and got my battery replaced on my MacBook Pro since it was faulty (covered under the battery exchange they did a few years back). Gotta give the MacStore credit on this one. Called Apple, they opened a case, I went to the MacStore, they ran Apple Hardware Test (which I have never seen work, except this one time when it told the guy my battery was “BAD”), and they replaced my battery right then and there. Cool. 

Tara and I bought the tile and thinset today. Go 300lbs of tile and thinset. Getting that in and out of the car was “fun”. Also set up the tile saw that we borrowed from Tara’s uncle months ago. So, hopefully, we’ll have the tile down by the end of the week, and grouted by the end of the weekend. Here’s hopin’. 

Talk to you all later!