Remodel Update Week 15
More finish work continued this week. The exterior of the new mudroom got painted. The real door arrived and will be put in after painting. The bannister got installed in the family room as well as the hand railing and the utility and electrical rooms are being finished so we can start moving some stuff back in!
This week is more painting, finish work, cabinetry and landscaping is starting to restore the yard.
Cube: Time Series Visualization ← This looks incredibly interesting. Cool possibilities.
Giddy to have my espresso machine back operational! New heating element in place and general tuneup!
Ring the Bell 2011
We made our first trip to the Renaissance Festival on Labor Day. As I do every year, I had to swing the hammer. I rung the bell 3 out of 5 times this year. Average.
Remodel Update Week 14
This week was all about finish carpentry. Happily the tile floor in the mudroom got installed and it does look really nice. The finish carpenters showed up and put the doors in, got trim up, installed the pocket doors and generally “finished” things. They are doing an excellent job and have one more day of work next week.
Next week the outdoor railing on top of the mudroom and the front entrance gets put on, and the painters arrive on Wednesday to do the final painting. It’s pretty straight forward stuff now through the finish of the project and only a few more decisions to make. Having the two built-in cabinets delivered and installed will probably be the biggest remaining changes to the space itself.
Delicious Pancakes with Fresh Berries.
Eating my first Saucy Burts meatball sandwich. Delicious!
Remodel Update Week 13
I think week 13 of the project will go down as the least exciting week for me. The only thing to get worked on was the mudroom tile floor. That was out of necessity, the mudroom is the access point to the basement and in the laborious process of putting in the tile floor access to the basement was cut off. The process takes days so it felt like a really slow week.
On the positive side, this marks the start of “finish work” to the project. The floor is really nice and on Friday the doors for the basement and all the finish materials were delivered. We’ve also received the exterior lights and on Tuesday (after Labor Day) the finish carpenters show up to start that work. The tile will also be finished this week. 😀
I was curious about the yellow box on the wall that said Loud Mouth on it. The electrician hooked that up to the in floor heat before the tile guy did his work. It monitors the integrity of the circuit, and if anything goes wrong during tiling it starts making noise immediately. Pretty smart to have.
Midnight in Paris
Tammy and I got to see a movie last night after a very, very long time. Can’t even remember the last one. We went to Midnight in Paris at the Edina Cinema. I really liked it. Fun, interesting and left us with a smile.
As Fall starts to approach in MN, so do Hüsker Dü and The Replacements on my playlists.
Been listening to The Decemberists all night.
Document Versioning in Mac OS X Lion
I’ve recently seen updates to some of the applications that I use regularly supporting the new document versioning feature in Lion. Wow. Time Machine is really nice, but you don’t have to use it that often. Being able to go back in documents is something I think a lot of people will find helpful. The trick will be knowing you can do it. The screen shot below is from OmniGraffle.
Test Post for RSS Feed
I’ve seen this problem for a while now where Google Reader isn’t getting my RSS feed for days, and sometimes weeks at a time. I have a theory for why it is happening and this post is a test for me to see if my fix worked.
Update
Well, my theory seems to be right. At one point in the past I had setup PubSubHubbub for my RSS feed and a while back I uninstalled it. No reason really, just wasn’t sure I really needed it. I think that Google Reader had flagged my RSS feed as one that supports PubSubHubbub and decided that it would not poll it in the future and just wait to get notified. When I reinstalled PubSubHubbub and I posted this it appeared in Google Reader in seconds.
Seems that once you advertise that you support PubSubHubbub you should make sure to continue to support it.
Update 2
Even the update to this post appeared in Google Reader in seconds. Looks like my RSS feed is back in business.
Tyler's Tractor
Shortly after Tyler was born my Mom got him a pedal tractor. At my Grandparents farm there was always a metal pedal tractor that my cousins and I use to ride all the time. In comparison to new toys, it was ridiculously heavy and hard to get moving. But we had a great time with it. It was a John Deere, just like Grandpa drove.
I’ve kept the tractor in the box since Tyler was just too small, but I decided to put it together today so he can start playing with it. He is still far too small to make it go, but he thought it was pretty cool to sit on!
I had to do one of these hip retro photos too.
Mazie had to give it a try to!
Remodel Update Week 12
We are entering the home stretch on the remodeling project. The work now is no longer about structure and wire. We are dealing with drywall mud, paint and finish work. This week all of the drywall got primer and the ceilings were all painted. The siding on the exterior of the house is being put back together, which is more complicated than it appears. The front of our house is pretty as we are replacing the trim. The trim was pine and was rotting out. Also the railing is being replaced to match the railing on the back. Lastly the temporary wall in our kitchen was removed. It was a bit shocking how large the kitchen felt now that we don’t have that plastic wall up anymore.
This week the tile is going to be installed in the mudroom and more finish work. We are still really excited about the project and can’t wait to start living in the new spaces!
Mazie's 2011
Today was the 2011 So Long Summer show! Our neighbors the Miller’s host this every year for five years running now. It’s the last Sunday before school and a ton of kids in the neighborhood do performances. It’s awesome on so many levels.
This year Mazie sang a song from her now favorite movie, Annie. She sang “It’s a Hard Knock” life and knocked it out of the park!
I was so proud of her — great job! The crappy focusing is my poor performance on my camera.
Add video.
Playhouse for the Kids
Tammy had noted that Mazie and Tyler really like to play in playhouses when we visit people. Our yard is a standard city lot, so we don’t have much space but she figured out a good spot in the yard and a playhouse that would work there.
The playhouse didn’t have a floor so we made a trip to Home Depot and got the stuff to build a simple deck that would sit on the ground with cedar deck boards. Mazie helped me build the platform and Tammy prepared the ground and got the playhouse ready to assemble. It was a fun afternoon of building and assembling and the kids like the end result.
Impromptu S'mores
Our neighbors down the street, the Conley’s, hosted an unplanned S’mores evening last night. Mazie loved staying up to 11:30 pm! 🔥🍫
Ballroom Jeans, and that doesn’t mean dancing.
I had no idea this was a problem requiring a specific pair of pants.
Thanks to sage guidance from Dan Frankowski I got my first AppEngine site running tonight at the “write” meeting of our book club.