My GM Valet Underconstruction

Can you not feel the potential as this skid of wood gets stored in the
warehouse, and the pathos oh the pathos...

But seriously, I asked teasingly of the good folks over at
http://www.geekchichq.com for a stats update on my table, and
obligingly they sent along this image and some kindly teasing of there
own. I really really really can't wait until I get the my first piece
of furniture from them, but it is all in preparation for the next
piece, which is 5 years or a lottery ticket out. Still it is what
I've built the basement for, so you know... If you build it...

sent on behalf of Geoffrey Peart by the Modrons who plumb the tubes of
the interwebosphere..

Hey, your camera works better then mine

Teaching Evie Animal Sounds

We've been working with Evie to teach her animal sounds, and I wanted to make sure she got the most important ones.  So we finally hung my gallery of monster illustrations I picked up at FanExpo last year.

The Beholder says Zorch
The Owlbear says Woot
The Displacer Beast says Mew

The Gelatinous Cube says Blub
The Umber Hulk says Klik

Basement illuminated

Well the basement is getting there, and this weekend so a lot of spit and polish.  We finished the second coat of paint, and there is a little bit of touch up to do, but we will wait until the end to do that.  We also finally wired up all the wall sconces.  Those have been a long time coming, and they fill the room with light (okay, it might be a bit too much light, but one of the principle goals of the room is a games room, and for that we need light.

From this point there is a couple plugs left to wire, and none of the plugs are hooked up to breakers yet.  That takes care of electrical, short of the light fixtures that don't exist yet. 

Next step is floor and trim, we have a bunch of carpet samples, and I think we've settled on one, we are just waiting on a price and setting up the install.  After carpet is trim, and I'm having a devil of a time with a contractor, so I'm looking for a second or third quote, because the first guy has fallen off the face off there earth.  I'm hoping that ~3 weeks and we done.  So yeah!

Maybe when I'm not spending every free moment in the basement, I'll get back to being more social :)

Farming

Cooking Like a Pro

Dinner tonight looked like something out of a cookbook, so I thought
I'd capture it for no good reason

Valentines for Daddy

Evie and I got photos for Geoff just before Valentines. It was a rough
start to the day, but the photos came out better than I thought!

Never too sick for the park!

Evie is home sick today with a cold, but the weather is so nice we
still went to the park and she had lots of fun (until she didn't).

As you enter from the foyer

What Erin likes to call the Under Kitchen, I hate to quibble, but it is more a kitchenette.

Looking back at the entrance, and the pocket door

Main room, debris strewn

"hallway" to bathroom

Art niche, and horrifying tangle of wires which belong to the three-way

Looking back at the other half of the main room and the under kitchen

Basement Progress

I know it has been an age and a day since I've last posted with any seriousness, and not the least of which was about the progress of my major project, aka the basement. The reason I've been quite is because I've been working on it nearly every chance I've had, and them collapsing with exhaustion after. I took this past week off to get some work done, and I can tell by the way my muscles have been feeling at night that they think I've accomplished a lot. I, afraid I have no pictures, because with the way I'm working, by the time I'm done for the day the light is too dim for anything decent, but here goes.

In the last week I've:

•  finished drywalling the entire main room area, ceiling included, 
• plumbed the extra water lines, 
• hung two out of four doors 
• got all the electrical rough-ins finished. 

 The doors are the most frustrating story on two counts, the first is that I hired a contractor to hang them, and he never showed up, on the plus side, I hadn't payed yet, but I really hate doors from past experience, so I had been happy to pay to let someone else deal with them. The other part of the story is that the one pocket door I hung I had prepared the opening about 0.02 m to small and had to break it down and rebuild it on the spot. Now that it is done it is a pretty cool door, but it ate most of a day just hanging it. The other issue with the pocket door is I had to cut the door's height down to fit. I cut it exclusively from the bottom, and I think it makes the door a little ugly. I have a second pocket door to hang (whose opening also needs to be fixed) I will experiment with trimming its door more evenly from top and bottom and hope it looks better.

So major task left before I finish this phase (this phase being the rough drywalling):

• hang two more doors
• 3-4 odd cut sheets of drywall in the main area
• electrical in the bathroom
• framing the bathroom ceiling
• drain stack for the under kitchen 
• drain stack for the bathroom sink
• drywall the bathroom 

That sound like a lot when I type it all out, but it hardly compares with what is accomplished. I am actually tentatively going to abandon the bathroom work other them the one wall I have to do for fire safety, and leave if to the far future.

After this is all done comes two parts I can't do my self:

• Mudding and taping 
• Trim 

Somewhere in there I will paint, and there is a shelf for the art niche I need to build and stain. After that is all done, it is electrical finalization, and inspection, and carpet. All told I'm a lottery ticket and a couple months away from being done. I suspect end of May or at the latest July, if any one wants any birthday suggestions I can point you to my local lighting store where I've picked out my ceiling fixtures. Anyways that is the update, I hacked this out on a touch screen, so I'm sure autocorrect has enhanced my normal poor spelling and grammar to near unreadable heights. I will see what I can do about pictures later.