Doug's Sounding Board

The VW was towed today by a car donation agency (a few hours later than the window they set up). It hadn’t been started in three weeks. We jump-started it and it was running rough, and if the jumper cables were removed it would die. Looks like the alternator died while it was sitting there. […]

I took some pictures of the kitchen backsplash, and the tile we’re going to use in the bathroom. This afternoon we should be able to paint the bathroom.

We have hot water now! The plumber came back yesterday to check into the lack of hot water problem. He experimented with running a temporary dedicated gas line to the water heater, but that didn’t help though he did determine that out gas pressure was a little too low, especially if the house heater is […]

Hang ‘Em High The is the second old Clint Eastwood western I’ve seen, the first was The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. I think I liked this one better. The characters feel real and have difficult decisions to make, even the minor ones seem to stand out. The Family Stone I just wanted to […]

I know they all seem like state of the house, but it seems like there are a lot of little things to mention. We got an on-demand water heater (Takagi K-2). The old water heater was in an outside closet that took up part of the office. The floor sloped slightly in so if the […]

The kitchen has walls now. If you stand in the middle of it you feel like you’re in a padded cell.

Between the holidays, and buying a new car, I haven’t had time to take or post many pictures. That works out though because contractors and sub-contractors also take time off for the holidays so not much gets done. Anyway, here are pictures of the kitchen and bathroom that cover the highlights of the last few […]

In the year 2006 I resolve to: Invent a better pizza. Get your resolution here

Chevrolet HHR wagon – I saw there was a funky wagon in Consumer Reports and when we parked at the auto mall there it was. We walked up to take a look and they asked if we wanted to drive it. We did and it’s a pretty good car overall. It has a lot of […]

Two weeks ago we were told that the transmission and clutch are in need of replacing. No one does rebuilds of them because with 5 different manual transmissions used for the 97 Passat it just doesn’t make sense unless you are VW. The cost of a new one installed is $3500. The average yearly cost […]