Remodel Update Week 11
This week the remodeling was all about drywall mudding and taping. Tape, mud, repeat. Repeat. Repeat some more. We were out of town which was a nice thing. It was fun to see the walls looking so nice and smooth when we got back. It feels like we are entering the home stretch now.
Remodel Update Week 10
I’m posting this weeks update a little early, the progress is so fun to see. The theme for this week is drywall! The framing is gone, and in it’s place is grey drywall everywhere you look. I was amazed that one guy did it all. The result of these huge 54" by 12 foot sheets of drywall and one guy over two days was impressive. The new space feels like it will when it’s done now. We continue to be really excited for the project!
Next there is buckets and buckets of joint compound.
Majestic Trees
One of my favorite things about living in our neighborhood is walking around with the old, majestic trees overhead. Conversely, I get very sad when I see an orange ring spray painted around a tree indicating it has to be cut down. When I was walking to the bus this morning the crew was getting ready.
On my way home…
We have a huge ash in our yard that we have on a every program that Rainbow Treecare recommends. I hope we never lose it to invading pests.
Efficient Market
One of the things that I really like about eBay is that I don’t have to set a price. I typically am selling used electronics or camera gear. My process is simple. I see if there is an active market for that product. If there is, I price it low with no reserve and let the market figure it out.
I’m doing something interesting right now though. I have three first generation Apple TV’s on eBay. I find the bids really interesting. These three units are exactly the same, and they all have auction ends within an hour of each other.
If markets are always so efficient, shouldn’t the price of these all be the same? I’ll be curious to see what the three units ultimately sell for. They all have the same number of watchers too, which is odd. Maybe they are the same 15 people watching all of them.
Gypsie
Tonight we put Gypsie to sleep. Tammy took her to the vet a couple of months ago because we noticed that she didn’t seem to be urinating right. There were puddles of water in her litter box. She had also lost over half of her body weight, leaving just four pounds of mostly fur and bones. The vet did some tests and concluded quickly that her kidneys had failed. A terminal situation regardless of treatments, just a matter of time.
Gypsie sitting on a chair in my old apartment in 2001.
Gypsie got her name because she was a bit of a Gypsy originally. I got her when I moved into an apartment in college and the previous people where moving out and couldn’t take a cat with them. They had gotten her the same way, and had named her Gypsie. She ended up being my cat from then on. I never really knew exactly how old she was. We figure that she was 22 years old now, but that could be off a year. Needless to say she lived a long cat life.
Gypsie was my cat for years of college living with roommates and then a decade of living on my own. She was always a good cat and fine even when I was traveling for work a ton. She had incredibly soft calico fur. Her favorite thing was to sit on my lap or on my desk while I was relaxing or working on the computer. One of the odd things about her was she couldn’t really meow. I have no idea why, but she could just make a “kak” kind of sound. No meowing. She was also had an understated purr.
Gypsie sitting on my desk at the apartment in 2001.
Gypsie ended up being one of those challenging things from your life before being married and kids. She never liked Tammy’s cat Logan. She never really like Tammy. She was downright mad when we got a dog, and then another dog. She was mostly stoic about all of that though, and it wasn’t until our last move that her health really started to deteriorate.
Mazie and Gypsie just shortly before the vet visited.
The end for her was incredibly peaceful. She had a shot to put her to sleep, and then another shot that euthanized her. I held her while she fell asleep and it was all harder than I expected. While she had gotten progressively out of sync with the rest of the family happenings, she was after all my cat for nearly 20 years. I can’t help but feel that I could have been a better cat owner for the last year with the new house, a new son and an uncountable number of other things. But I also know that all the kids liked playing with her and she liked playing with them. She wasn’t the friendliest cat in her youth, but in the last year she was very nice to everyone.
Her kidneys had failed and she was very frail. When she fell asleep after the first shot tonight she seemed about as small as a little kitten. She faded away very calmly. Mazie was there and involved in the process. Tammy answered her questions about what was going on. It was hard, but I know it was the right thing to do.
See ya Gyps…
Remodel Update Week 9
The remodel continues to go well. This week carpentry was mostly outside. The new mudroom got the exterior finished. The roof needs to be finished and then they will put the railing on top. Not much more before the outside will look done, minus some paint and the real door.
The inside work was wires and pipes. The electrician finished nearly everything with just a couple small things left, including my precious doorbell. The electrical inspection is done. The low voltage guys drug a bunch of Category 5E cable for me and almost as much speaker cable. The radon system got installed as well. We tested our basement and the radon levels weren’t bad, but we went ahead with it to make the radon even less of an issue and to make the air in the basement feel fresher.
Insulation gets put in this week and the sheet rock starts going up as well!
- Yeah, got my very first IPv6 only website running on my new Linode host. ipv6.thingelstad.com
- Unfortunately, no networks I have access to are IPv6 capable. Bummer.
- Plan to have all of my websites IPv6 available as I transition them to Linode.
Doing some Unix cleaning tonight and found the website I host for my cousin had been compromised. Ugh! 😕
One crappy WordPress plugin (is-human) with a PHP exec hack.
U2 360° FanCam
At the U2 360° show they had this “gigapixel” Fan Cam thingy. It would be interesting to know a bit more about how it worked. It captures the whole crowd with a pretty high degree of detail.
It caught me and Tammy. I look pretty dorky, munching on some popcorn before U2 came on stage.
Remodel Update Week 8
The remodel is continuing along really well. This week all the framing was completed. There were some ceiling parts left from last week. We did the electrical walk through on Monday of this week and the electrician got right to it. The pre-wiring for more security system stuff was done. The ducts for the furnace also got put in. Another temporary wall was put up in the kitchen so that the door could be taken out and the wall cut out above the espresso bar. The window in the upstairs bathroom was removed. The deck was also put back together which helps the yard feel more normal.
The week ahead is mostly about wires and pipes. Electrical inspection will happen this week and hopefully the low voltage work will get completed as well. I’m dragging new Ethernet and coax to a bunch of spots. The outside will also be restored further with our fencing put back in place and possibly the beginning of the siding work.
Somewhat rare that we all get in the same photo. Also Tammy with brand new hair color.
Tyler got a new background to his landing page website. tylerthing.com Gave me an excuse to use the text-shadow CSS attribute.
Did some big time exploring with MediaWiki and Semantic MediaWiki tonight. Cool stuff!
Crazy impressed with Linode so far. Hope to have my sites moved this weekend. Wish it was easier to move a VPS.
Electrician named Sparky
The last two build-outs that I’ve worked through at the office have had the same electrician and everyone always calls him Sparky. It is his nickname. I’ve always thought it was a fun nickname, or concerning since sparks aren’t what you want with electricity.
Today at our remodel I overheard the framers talking about Sparky being done in this area or still working over there. Is Sparky just a nickname for all electricians on job sites?
Tyler Playing with Shoes
Tammy put up a blog post about how much Tyler loves to play with shoes. This was one of the pictures that I thought was just great.
Remodel Update Week 7
The update last week felt really significant with the new floors in and all. This week felt like an even bigger advance! All of the walls in the basement are now framed in and the windows are in the mudroom and the family room. We can now see just how the light will be in the family room and get a sense for how the flow will be in the main level with the mudroom there. We also got most of our side lawn back this week. Tammy and I are both feeling really good about the layout.
The week the project also broke into the rest of the house. A temporary barrier is in place in the office to keep dust out and the exterior wall has already been taken out to make room for the new pocket doors.
This week we do the electrical walk-through as well as mapping out all the low voltage work. We are right around the half-way point now.
The pictures of all the framing are probably hard to make out without an idea of what direction things are.
U2 at TCF Stadium
Tip for tonight’s U2 show: Bring a Ziploc bag to put your phone in, just in case.
Pre-U2 blackberry mojito at Cafe Maude before catching #4 bus.
My coordinates for tonight’s U2 show: Section 215 Row 17
This could be straight out of War of the Worlds!
