Doug's Sounding Board

Just one more picture of the end cap.

Last night we painted the living room and the color looks good but it needs a second coat.

Today the lighting stuff gets installed.

Yesterday they installed most of the counter tops. It’s Caesarstone Oyester, 3cm thick. They have to put in the other end cap/vertical counter and cut holes for the faucet today.

Also some pictures of the bathroom wall tile grouted. I think it looks really good and everything is starting to look like what it’s supposed to look like.

The plasterers were supposed to come yesterday to build out the wall/column in the kitchen that had the wrong measurement in the plans. They didn’t come. So they were supposed to come at 8AM today to fix it before the counter installers come at 9AM because it’s supposed to be done before the counters. They aren’t here yet.

Despite all that I’m feeling like things are coming together and I’m catching up. Yesterday I woke up at 4:13AM and was able to enter the last 9 months of 401K data. This morning I woke up at 3:43AM, but then I laid in bed for awhile before deciding that I really was awake and caught up on 9 months of filing that needed to get done. One more morning like that and I’ll have the taxes done!

Looks like the last paitning adventure killed the power roller. Well, I think I can bring it back if I take it apart and clean it, but I needed to do a second coat ont he living room ceiling and I can’t give my dad back a broken power roller so I got a new one. The new one also has improved cleaning instructions so it’s squeaky clean after an afternoon of use.

The ceiling looks good and even now, and we decided to make the entry way the same color so all that’s left is to paint the living room walls. If Nicole does the edging tomorrow then I can do the walls in no time tomorrow night.

I replaced the angle-stops, but then I turned the water back on the hot water valve was still leaking slightly. So I turned off the water again and tightened it another turn and now it’s fine. Buying one of each size it might be worked so now I have to return the others to OSH, but it’s better than making multiple trips.

Then I replaced the flexible part of the drain which is ridged. I was told by the inspector when I moved in that stuff collects in the ridges and it isn’t good for health. Since I was there I decided it was time to replace that too and I learned that the inspector was right, that section was nasty and the other parts were pretty clean. I cut the pipe to size using drywall saw because I couldn’t find the hack saw. I got it all assembled and still felt a drip, the connection between the pipe and sink was leaking. I undid that pipe to find that it was part of the drain itself, so I put it back. I tightened it as much as I could which was far tighter than it was before and now there isn’t any leak that I can tell.

The bathroom tile is now done and next up is the grout.

On Tuesday we get the counter tops installed in the kitchen.

This weekend plasterers come to finish the wall in the laundry room, the patch in the tv room, the wall in the office. Most importantly, they are going to complete the wall going to waht used to be the closet and re-texture our whole bedroom, so tonight we get to move our bed into the living room and sleep there this weekend.

Also this weekend, replacing the leaky bathroom faucet valves and drain pipe in Dar’s bathroom, hopefully installing the proper vent for the water heater, and installing the vent tube for the bathroom fan in Dar’s bathroom.

Last Friday the floor guy, John Crow of Crow’s Quality Flooring, came and installed the kitchen floor. It’s wide and long oak plank running perpendicular to the short narrow oak elsewhere in the house. Its up flush against the shorts so no cap is needed for the transition. The flooring is going to sit there for a month to acclimate to the humidity level in the house and swell to what it needs to swell to before it is stained to match the surrounding floor.

Althought he hasn’t done the staining part yet, I wish we had known about him when we had the floors done last year. Mr. Crow actually likes stained floors and as a result knows a lot about staining. The guy we had didn’t really like staining so much. While we’re happy with how they came out I think John Crow would have done a better job.

Pauly Shore is Dead is like watching someone’s therapy during a major transition. It also manages to be fairly funny at the same time. It’s good enough that I’ve watched all the DVD extras, but part of that might just be fascination at the whole project. If you watch this, be sure to check ou the version of “It’s Been Awhile” in the extras.

We happened across another DVD sale at the local video store and picked up 15 movies for $4 each.

First up is Club Dread. It’s a slasher flick parody without going overboard on jokes. That’s good in that you aren’t overwhelmed in wackiness, but bad in that it makes it just entertaining enough to not bother doing something else.

Some worthwhile things in the movie:

• Bill Paxton
• Life-sized Pac-Man game where power pellets are gourds filled with alcohol and people dressed in large foam fruits run around the maze. Also the ghosts are women in bikinis.
• Pretzel having sex with Watermelon
• Disembodied legs from the unstoppable killer kicking after the boat in the water at the end.

We got the new GE front loaders delivered on Tuesday of last week but they couldn’t complete the installation of th dryer because we had the wrong size connection at 3/8″. According to the install manual it needed a 1/2″ connection. I saw that I couldn’t just remove the valve because there wasn’t enough clearance with the wall for the valve lever to rotate through that space. I tried cutting a hole in the wall behind it but there was a beam there. So I carved all the wall up to the beam, but there still wasn’t enough clearance! Then I found the pipe was strapped to the wall with the strap under a load of plaster. Once I got that taken care of the rest of the gas hookup went very quickly.

Yesterday I ran a new dryer vent line so for the first time since I’ve lived here it doesn’t just vent under the house. The previous vent line was a flexible dryer hose plastered in to the wall and dangling under the house.