Fun with Layouts - Kitchen

Three cheers for progress ... at least of the planning variety



The cabinets I've been looking at are from Ikea and I like the Adel Medium Brown so far, but that could change. I would like to get a tall cabinet in the space between the fridge and sink cabinet but don't know if there will be doom yet until I demo and prep the kitchen and take better measurements. I already have my stove and matching overhead microwave.

Heading out from work early today to meet with a duct work guy.

Fun with Layouts - Living Room

I did this in MS Word because I am limited in the programs I have available to me (it is to scale +/- an inch or two in a couple places):



I got a great deal on a front loading washer and dryer set a few weeks ago so I have those sitting in my kitchen right now and that got me thinking that it makes more sense to have them accessible on the main floor than having to hunch over in the basement every time. Also, getting them down there would most likely damage them in some way since there aren't really any openings wide enough. I thought about putting them in the kitchen, but since I already need to have that part of the room sectioned off for plumbing and possibly HVAC ducts, it wouldn't be too hard to frame out an enclosure there.

I contacted someone to come out and give me an idea of how the duct work will need to be run and what I'll need to work into my layout; I'll post an update once I get that info.

I'm working on the other rooms now and will try to put my ideas out there so I can have a record somewhere to compare against when it ends up being completely different.

This 1 post a month thing has got to stop

I've been terrible with posting over the past few months but hopefully that will change. I've been doing a lot of planning for my house and been working extra hours so I can take off an extended amount of time and get a lot done in one shot. Some random stuff from the last month.

The holidays were a lot of fun and it was nice to spend time with the whole family.

We had our first big snowfall of the year; getting about 20ish inches. Chloe had a lot of fun but decided to run away when she got wind of a deer. Of course since she couldn't catch the deer, she decided the next best thing would be to find a group of dogs playing while their owners were shoveling. While posting my "lost dog" craigslist ad after searching for about an hour, I got a call from one of the people who's dog she was playing with. Only about 5 minutes away from where I turned back during my search, I was thankful she was found and went back out to get her.



The house directly behind me is being gutted and a sign on the front indicates they'll be building up, adding a third level and a rooftop deck. While cleaning their back yard, they tore down the cement wall between our property. I'm pretty sure this was mostly on my property and now there is nothing preventing people from breaking into the back of my house. I think I am going to research if I can take them to small claims for the cost of the wall, and they also broke some of my concrete yard. I'll post pictures when I take them tonight.

Lastly, I'm having trouble finding a vendor for metal stringers. Right now the company I'm planning on going with is in Canada and freight would be several hundred dollars. I may contact a contractor, but I'm planning on installing them myself and don't know how that would go over just to get the info from them.

Progress, but not on MY house

I haven't really had much of a chance to work on my house because I have been installing flooring at my friend's house. She bought engineered hardwoods from Lumber Liquidators and decided on Brazilian Walnut because she liked the level of variation among the boards. The floor is around 650 square feet and the layout has some fun challenges.

When she ordered the wood I took a couple days to prep everything while waiting for it to come in. There were three types of flooring that needed to be pulled up; pergo-type, carpet, and linoleum with a thin subfloor underneath. I moved all the furniture around and with the exception of the craptastic subfloor that was stapled down every 2 inches in the kitchen, it was all pretty easy. I started rolling out the underlayment and decided to start the wood along the front of the house, since it was the longest continuous wall.





It took a lot longer than I anticipated because of a lot of unusual angles and obstructions in the floor I had to cut around (such as floor outlets and central air registers). I finished the floor and am pretty happy how it turned out and I think my friend is too. I do like the color variation a lot, but don't know how well it would go with the brick in my house.



I still have the molding left to do, but am only going to cut it and she and her dad are going to hammer it in. I enjoyed this project and hopefully it will get me back on track to work on my place (probably not), plus, I got some saws out of the deal and now have just about everything I should need for my place.

Meet my new roommate, Chloe

Meet Chloe.



Chloe was lost and followed my friend's wife and their dog, Sneaker home one day. After trying to find an owner and not having any luck, I decided to take her in. Her first visit to the vet determined that she was somewhere around 6 - 9 months old and most likely a Pure White Husky (even though her eyes look blue-ish, they are really a milky white). She is right around her full size and will probably just add some weight to her frame (ending around 45-50 lbs). She's a fairly independent breed and very intelligent. Another thing I found out, she doesn't do floating stairs (the kind without risers) and had to take the elevator up to the check-out room.

She got the full work-up of shots and tests and needed to be spayed so she stayed there overnight. When I went to pick her up the doctor said she did great and was a really well behaved dog. I took her home, gave her the pain meds and let her sleep (she wanted nothing to do with her food that night).

I guess my next move is going to be getting a hamster and black tuxedo cat to round out the pack.



She loves sticking her head out the window, but isn't so much a fan of car rides in general.



I've taken her around Patterson Park once so far and we saw 4 other huskies on our walk but they all had normal coloring and were a lot fluffier than Chloe. We've also gone to the dog park in Canton a couple times and she's very reserved with the other dogs and just seems to go with the flow. Her favorite walks seem to be down along the water between the 1st Mariner Bank building and Fells Point.



I know I haven't been posting much lately, but hopefully I'll get back into a more regular schedule. My internet has been out at home for a while and I'm really not in any rush to fix it.

U2 360 Tour - Washington DC - FedEx Field - 09-29-2009

I went to the U2 360 Tour concert on Tuesday night with Muse as the opening act. I'm not much of a U2 fan and was more looking forward to seeing Muse, but I've heard that the U2 concerts are an "experience" and if you get a chance to go, you should go.

I was amazed how easy it was to park and get into the stadium; even traffic on the DC beltway wasn't all that bad and we got there with plenty of time to spare. I figured that 5:30 on a Tuesday evening would be congested without the 80,000+ people trying to get to the concert. We parked and went to our seats and then others in my group took a lap around the club level (where our seats were) before Muse went on.

The place was relatively empty when the stadium lights cut out and Muse came on stage around 7:30 PM. They opened with Knights of Cydonia and tore through their set list without much of a break between songs. They brought a lot of energy but it didn't seem like a lot of people knew them and were just waiting for U2. I thought they were great and was glad I was there early enough to see the whole set. They played for about 45ish minutes.

The following picture is from a little before U2 went on after the place filled up for the most part (more people showed up and most of the seats except the top few rows of the stadium were filled):



U2 started their performance in much the same way Muse did, shutting off the light in FedEx Field, but they came on stage in a more theatric way introducing each member individually and (from our distance) just appearing on stage. The "360" aspect of the concert was pretty amazing. The video screen wrapped all the way around the stage and would transition from showing the same video to each of the 4 sides to becoming a single video that wrapped all the way around. The screen was also able to expand and take up the entire space from the top of the open area to just over U2's heads or be lowered completely in its more compressed size. It was pretty awesome just to see that, regardless of what music was being played.

Throughout the 2+ hour set (including encores), Bono made sure to bring up his political beliefs whenever there was a break. He did it in more of a "this is what's happening" way than a overly preachy delivery; which was appreciated. It actually flowed pretty well with their songs and the overall atmosphere of the event.

U2 is a pretty remarkable band. After attending this show, I'm still not going to go out and buy any of their music, and I'm still going to change the radio station whenever one of their songs comes on, but I am going to remember this as one of the best concert experiences I've had and also realize that this band is so ingrained in our culture (not what I want to use, but it kinda fits) that I was able to sing (or at least pretend to) the words to about 80% of the songs even though I have never actively played a U2 song in my life.

Oh, and don't get me started on the 150 foot tall space ship they use as their stage. It was something I would expect to see at Universal Studios in Orlando as a ride or attraction of some sort. The light show and the way the band interacted with the field crowd on the outer rings made me wish I was passionate about U2 and willing to stand down there for 4 hours so I could be right up front.



On a side note: as we were leaving the parking lot, we saw a girl get hit by a car. I drove after the guy trying to get his tag and I was stopped by one of the cops directing traffic. I told him what happened and another officer got in his car and went after. The girl was OK (at least to our knowledge) and I gave them my info in case they needed someone to testify or something. About a 1/4 mile down the road (once we got back on our way), the guy was pulled over and out of his car with a bunch of cops around him. Maybe this is the Karma I have and why I haven't had to do jury duty when all of my friends that are younger than me have; score one for civic duty.

I got nominated for something

This blog and it's current pace of 2-3 posts a month were nominated for a Mobbie (Maryland's Outstanding Blogs). The Baltimore Sun sponsors them and the winners are determined by reader votes. I am currently 15th in the 'Personal' category ... out of 15. But right now there is a little arrow pointing up, which I can only assume means I am getting more votes than I was. At the same time, I also assume that 1 is more than 0 :-)

I found out about my nomination from my friend Corey's blog (well, it's Corey and Leigh's blog now) Baltimore Rowhouse; which is also nominated in the 'Neighborhood' category. You should vote for them.

Lastly, this is my 150th post. My 151st post will be about the U2 concert from Tuesday night.

And yes UL, I know I still need to e-mail you about my new job.

Watch HGTV tonight at 9:30

Tonight is the night that two Baltimore house bloggers will be shown on the HGTV show, Bang for your Buck.

Corey and Leigh (congrats, btw) over at Baltimore Rowhouse

Jon and Craig over at Project Rowhouse

I've been to both of these houses (and am jealous of both) and followed their work through their blogs and can tell you this will be an interesting show to watch.

Bang for Your Buck is on HGTV at 9:30 EST.

The things under the stairs

I haven't posted anything about my house in a long, long time. Well, I guess I should throw something up here about that. The below picture will show you that I have cleared out the area below my stairs and now have an open view to my basement. My eventual goal here is to have access to the basement through a hatch type thing once I change to a floating staircase and lay hardwoods (or some form of fake hardwood). I think I may have found the stairs I want, and they really aren't that expensive ... but I want to finish some of the other work before I decide to tear out my current stairs.



While clearing out the wall under the stairs, I found a treasure trove and random crap from half a century ago. Everything was just scattered around (with a lot of nasty dirt and dust) in the area under the first couple steps. Well, not everything ... some of it was actually IN the walls.



Here are some of the highlight of what I found:



There were a few more of those playing cards, I think maybe 5 in total. There were a ton of prayer cards from different funerals, but I thought the most interesting one was for a priest that spent a large portion of his time in Japan. The prayer cards were mostly in very good shape. The card with planes on them are part of a set of 144 or something, but they are pretty beat up. The metal thing in the middle is a dog license from the 1950's and will go great with the other stuff I've found in walls from the 50's when I frame them in a shadow box. Probably the most interesting thing though is a Buck Rodgers card from 1936. Like the plane cards, it's in pretty bad shape ... but it's from 1936! Who cares what kind of shape it's in, it's older than my parents.



I guess I'll leave you with a picture of my living room with most of the sub floor put down (ignore all the crap, I took the picture on a whim and didn't feel like cleaning up).

Virgin Mobile Free Fest

I went to the Virgin Mobile Free Fest yesterday and had a great time. I ended up getting to Merriweather around 12 so that I could be there when other people I had tickets for showed up. As I wandered around the grounds I was impressed with the number of booths there were and the variety of sponsors that had promotional tents set up. I went to the Charm City Roller Girls booth and found out my friend was there skating around (she tried to do the half-pipe on roller skates and that ended in a predictable outcome; her pulling wood out of her fishnets).



There were also a lot of performance artists there. I ran into the below group several times so I figured after our tenth encounter I should get a picture. There was a woman on stilts towering over everyone and my favorite was a group of people dressed as garden gnomes and two people that looked like moving bushes and they would set up different scenes all over the place.



I ran into several people I knew while I was walking around, which was amazing since there were 35,000+ people there. The pitcher Magda is holding below was the best deal in the festival ... with the exception of the free tickets, of course. These pitchers were only $16 and were around 64 ounces, a pretty good deal for this kind of event.



Even though I spent a lot of time walking around and going between the different stages and different events, I still did spend a lot of time watching the bands. The first act I was was The Birthday Massacre; damn could that girl sing, and scream. It was heavier than a lot of what I listen to, but I will definitely check them out more because her voice was awesome. I went back to the side stage and caught a little of St. Vincent's act, but couldn't really get into it so I wandered around more. After a while, I went over to see Taking Back Sunday on the Main Stage. I've always liked TBS and they put on a pretty good show. My favorite line was, "There's really no pressure if we mess up because it's not like you paid anything," or something along those lines. I didn't really see anyone else until Weezer came on and their line-up was great. After their set, we made our way to the front of the lawn area before Blink came on, some people were not happy to have a 6'4" guy blocking their view of Travis' ridiculous drum skills. There were rumors going around that they may not play because of DJ AM's death, but they come on on-time and played a full set. They were awesome and they played everything I wanted to hear. Throughout the set I found myself realizing that I knew the words to almost all the songs they played. I didn't know the were so many Blink songs I knew.



All in all, it was a great time and I am glad I ended up going. The event was very well organized, there were plenty of vendors so lines weren't too long, ditto for the bathrooms. The staff all seemed happy to be there and again, there were plenty of them. The fans seemed to not get out of control like I have seen at many other festivals of this sort and with the exception of some overly drunk people, I didn't see anything that required someones intervention (cops, EMT's, staff, etc.). I hope they have this, or more fests like this, at Merriweather again next year ... I would even pay ... but not too much.

Fantasy Football

My league had our draft Wednesday night and I had the 2nd overall pick. I love theses drafts because the entire time we are making fun of each other's picks or giving someone shit for taking too long. We hold our draft at a sports bar/restaurant and sometimes it gets out of hand toward the end when everyone's had several beers and we're cursing at someone at the other end of the 12-15 person table about taking our handcuff too early while the geriatric couple sitting near us looks on in horror. This year they gave us our own room and it was a good thing, as I think we were louder than usual. I especially enjoyed this year's draft because most of the people in the league are from the company I left only a month ago and it was good to see them again.

Here's my team:
1. Maurice Jones-Drew
2. Roddy White
3. Drew Brees
4. Reggie Bush
5. TJ Houshmanzadah
6. Jericho Cotchery
7. Donald Brown
8. LeSean McCoy
9. Visanthe Shiancoe
10. Donnie Avery
11. San Diego
12. Earl Bennett
13. James Davis
14. Brian Robiskie
15. Kenny Britt

I went down the high risk, high reward path from the seventh round on picking mostly rookies and pissing off the guys that picked Westbrook and Addia. Overall, I'm pretty happy with my team but will need to drop someone and get a kicker before week 1.

Charm City Roller Girls

I went to my first Charm City Roller Girls event tonight at DuBurns arena and it was great. I recently found out someone I went to college with is one of the girls on the Charm City squad and made it a point to check it out. I've wanted to see what it was all about for a while but never got around to actually going to one of the events.

I was honestly surprised when I got there and the place was packed, I had no idea how popular this was and how much of a following there was. Almost every seat was taken and there were a lot of people just standing to watch. I had a friend get there before me so I kind of had a seat saved for me and made it up to the first row.

The girls I knew was awesome ... even though she kinda reminded me of Happy Gilmore at times; she kept getting sent to the penalty box. When she was the Jammer, (I had to read the rules in the program about 4 times before I had a decent understanding of what was going on) she was great and got the crowd into it when she got points. Hell, even when she fouled someone she raised her arms and got cheers like she didn't why they sent her to the bench.

My pictures aren't great, but all I had was my iPhone. The Charm City squad lost, but it was fun to watch and I am definitely going again.

Wow, two months

It's been a little over two months since my last post and I am completely OK with that. Work on my house has stalled (for the most part) over the summer and I have been busy with other things. I changed jobs and am now in a comfortable position that I can see myself in for the majority of my career. I went to the beach for the first time in several years for a relaxing week of reading and finally got to play some tennis. I also got this, which I am excited to use for drilling into brick and the 100 year old wood that is as hard as brick:



That's all for now, more to come.

Lots of wood to keep me busy

This will keep me busy for a while. Over 300 square feet for a new sub-floor.



More to come ...

I'm Back ... Kinda

It's been a long time since my last post but don't worry, you haven't missed much. I haven't really done any work to my house and other than a few fun nights out I've been pretty boring.

I have a pretty busy Memorial Day weekend as long as I can survive past the sunburn I got from golfing yesterday ... or at least attempting to golf.

This morning I am waiting for Comcast to show up so I can get faster internet (currently have slow Verizon DSL). I'll be saving around $15 a month and get about 3x - 4x the speed ... as long as my cable internet is as fast a my neighbors. While waiting in my 4-hour window, I decided to fix something that's been bothering me and really needs to be fixed for a multitude of reasons.

When I exposed the brick in the living room, I noticed that light was coming through from my alley. Today, I decided to scrape out the remaining mortar and clean the area so I could fill it back in. Since it's a relatively small area, i just used regular mortar for the outside layer and will fill the rest in from the inside with something different.

As always, instead of writing, I'll opt for pictures:


From the outside looking in


Living room to the alley


Outside layer of mortar

Once I get the rest of the supplies and finish the inside, I'll take more pictures.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Chimney TV Walls

I haven't posted anything in a while because I've been busy with friends visiting and doing other fun and exciting things that I could write about, but don't want to get back to this being just a bunch of pictures of me hanging out with friends.

The only work I've done on my house involves cleaning ... and it is definitely cleaner than it has been in a long, long time. I even had some of the aforementioned friends sleeping on the first floor. Anyways, the next thing I want to do is frame out around the chimney. This is basically what I want to do:



I used IKEA's room design freeware which limited me from showing what I actually think it will look like, but you can get the idea. The shelving will be built into the wall on both side and there will be a HVAC duct on the left side of the image closing in that section of shelves. The chimney will have a mantle on it with the flat screen hanging above. I am going to use an in-wall mounting bracket so I can wire electric to it and easily hide all the wires. I am looking at the Sanus LR1A system (below). It will bring the TV flush against the wall and also allow me to extend it out and rotate toward the "dining" area in case I am working over there and want to watch something.






If I find better freeware to use, I'll make a better mock-up of this and other areas I need to work on.

I've been interviewed

After commenting on Baltimore Rowhouse's interview a while back, Danny from Urban Discoveries Living Blog asked if I would be interested in being interviewed. I jumped at the chance and even though it took me several weeks to get my answers to him, I am really happy with the results.

Head on over there and check it out. They also have lots of useful information and constant updates on what's going on in Baltimore.

Truffle Shuffle - League Champions!

This isn't a catch-up post since it happened last night. My volleyball team won the championships for our division last night at the Volleyball House. Everyone played great and at one point when we lost the lead late in a match, we didn't fold and came back to win by 3 points.

We are moving up to a new division for the next session (starting next week), and I am looking forward to getting better. I feel like I've come a long way, but I still wouldn't consider myself to be good compared to the other players on my team, let alone some of the other people I see playing at VBall house.



On another note, I sprained my ankle playing basketball over Easter weekend up in CT and it still hasn't healed (to be expected). I sat out vball on Wednesday and football yesterday morning so I wouldn't aggravate it. I thought playing last night wouldn't be too bad as long as I wrapped it up right, but after playing 5 tough games, it feels worse than it did originally. Now, our BSSC team has playoffs this Wednesday and Thursday and I know it won't be feeling much better by then, but I want to play. I guess this will be a never-ending cycle since the other league starts next Sunday and Beach vball starts next Wednesday. We'll see how this plays out.

Charity Happy Hour Re-cap (Catch-Up pt.3)

Last Thursday was the happy hour at Mad River to raise some money for Anna's House, my Dragonboat team's charity organization. The turn-out was pretty good and I think we raised a decent amount for them.

Lee, learning how to make a margarita:



My pops and Linda showed up (after the HH ended though):



From long range (Nick and I ran the table till everyone left for Mother's):



Everyone stayed at Mad River for a while after the happy hour ended and then headed over to Mother's until ... well ... I guess a while (the last picture in my camera from the night was taken at 11:55 PM and showed no signs of us stopping).

Sushi 101: Roll Your Own (Catch-Up pt. 2)

Wednesday night after Habitat, I went to Whole Foods in Mount Washington to take a FREE class in Sushi. The class was put on by Genji's community group. We got a Sushi 101 book that has step-by-step instructions for making your own rolls, but also has sections about terminology, recipes and other how-to sections (use chopsticks). There were about a dozen people there and the guys running the class seemed to think several didn't come because of the bad weather (a girl in our group didn't make it because the weather caused too much traffic).

The class started with a simple avocado roll. We were instructed to take a piece of nori (toasted seaweed) and place it on the mat with the shiny side down. Then we took an egg-sized ball of rice and spread it over the nori, leaving about a finger width at the top:



The chef told us to take 4 of the slivers of avocado and place it length-wise on the rice, closer to the fully-covered end (I only used 2 pieces to make it easier to roll, since it was my first time):



From here, we'll have to go with text only until the finished product (this is from my head because I don't have the book they gave us handy):

• Slide the nori to the end of the mat closest to you
• Grab under the mat with your thumbs and just past the avocado with your fingers
• Roll the mat (and nori) over the avocado, using your fingers to keep it from being pushed
• Once you have it rolled, squeeze the mat lightly
• Unrolled the mat and reposition the roll so the uncovered (by rice) nori is on the bottom
• Wrap the mat around the roll again and use your hands to form it into a square shape
• Unwrap and cut

I found some pretty good step-by-step pictures on flickr if you go through the photostream.

The class was great and would have been worth paying for. At the end, we got the free Sushi 101 book, a free mat and 4 free rolls (the we made ourselves). The 4 rolls included an avocado roll, cucumber roll, avocado and cucumber inside-out roll and a California inside-out roll. I definitely recommend this class for anyone that likes sushi.


An inside-out California Roll

Habitat for Humanity (Catch-Up pt. 1)

On Wednesday last week, I got to take the day off from work and volunteer with Arundel Habitat for Humanity as part of a Earth Day corporate citizenship effort (other workers could volunteer at the Baltimore Zoo or an Environmental Festival). The weather was crappy and it rained all day, but luckily we were working inside a house that had a completed roof. We worked on a house in Brooklyn that had been completely gutted and had new joists and floors. Our job was to frame out the rooms.

Even though the day was crappy, I had a lot of fun and our group was able to accomplish a lot. By the end of the day we ran out of screws, and had to pack up a little early, but we were able to visit some of the other houses that were at different stages and see the transformation these groups are able to make.

I took a couple pictures with my phone:

Today is Catch-up Day

Expect several posts from the past week over the next several hours.

Happy Hour for Charity - Mad River, Thursday, 4/16, 6-9

Hey Everybody. We are hosting another happy hour to support Anna's House. Please come out and have a great time and support a great cause.

Where: Mad River - Federal Hill, Baltimore
When: Thursday, April 16th, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Why: I am on the Dragonboat team for my work and we are raising money for our charity organization, Anna's House
What: $10 cover (goes to Anna's House), $1 off specials for domestic beer, house wines and liquor (not top shelf though) and 1 free drink ticket with each paid cover, all tips also go to Anna's House and I will be "guest bartending" from 8:30 - 9:00 PM (these are what the specials were last time, they might be different)

I appreciate anyone coming out to support Anna's House.

I have light!

I have more pictures from other work I did this weekend, but they are on my camera at home; this is from my phone. I am pretty happy to have this wired up the way I want it now. It will also make working on the rest of the first floor a lot easier.

Baby Steps ... What about Bob!

I haven't really dedicated too much time working on the house this week, but I have been doing small one-off things that I can finish quickly and feel like I made some progress. I decided to clean the basement area at the front of the house since there were large piles consisting of plaster, mortar and other random debris from working on the front wall on the first floor (a lot of the debris feel through the holes left from the radiator piping). I don't have a picture, but the front area in the basement is now clean and I will start moving some of my stuff in storage to that area. I also covered the radiator holes so more debris doesn't fall through (see duct tape on floor).

I installed the first outlet in the living room and had to place it a little lower than planned (was going to do 14" to the bottom of the receptacle but it would fit under the window so I did 12"). I am glad I did this one first because now I will install the rest on the first floor at the same height.



I also got a chance to clean up my kitchen and have that room in a state it will remain in until after my friend's visit at the end of April. I'll probably hang some drop cloth in the doorway between the living/dining room and kitchen so the dust from any other work I do is minimal.



Not sure what I am going to do when I get home tonight (after volleyball, of course), maybe start moving all the stuff in the basement to the front so I can cut down the remaining radiator piping this weekend, or maybe just partition off the kitchen.

Also, I should be able to procure a hammer drill pretty soon and once I do that I can finish wiring the rest of the outlets in the living room and turn that breaker on.

When I named this post "Baby Steps," I didn't really think about it ... but when I went to publish it, I thought about the movie What About Bob? and had to post a picture.

A little building, a lot of destruction

Look at that wonderful installation. I re-ran some of the wiring between the recessed lighting and cleaned-up the connections. I also sketched up the electrical layout for the living room and dining room and the stairwell light switch ... I would show it here but don't have a scanner and don't feel like drawing it in excel or paint or visio. The second switch in this box is going to go to the stairwell light but I need to get a 4-way switch to put at the bottom of the stairs and run the wiring to this 3-way switch. I also found out that the basement walls do not extend as far out as the living room walls and I'll need to cut into some brick in order to run the wiring for the outlet that is going to be next to the chimney; should be a great time ... anyone have a hammer drill?



After constantly tripping on the uneven flooring when coming in the front door for the past 2 weeks I decided it was necessary to pull up the rest of the floor in the living room. A short time later I am left with this hideous green laminate that has stains all over it. I thought the point of laminate was that it is stain resistant. Oh well, I'll be leaving several pairs of sandals around to ensure I never step on it barefoot.



Where to put all that flooring you ask? In a pile behind the door making it harder to take out when I eventually dispose of it, of course. I blame my friend Brian for not pointing this fact out when we were stacking it.



So, right now I have my utensils in a box, a box that is balancing on a pot, a pot that is in a pan, a pan that is on a stack of cutting boards, a stack of cutting boards that are on my microwave ... why? Cause I am a great friend that donated my main kitchen cabinet to my friend so he can make a liquor cabinet out of it.

Oh, oh, look ... more laminate ... it's so pretty, I can't contain myself.

Once I clean up the now vacated area, I am going to put my mobile island there and use that as my primary cabinetry until I determine how I want to design the kitchen.