Doug's Sounding Board

For her birthday yesterday Nicole painted the dining room wall brown (Benjamin Moore Stone Brown). I prepped the laundry room for painting with the hope that we would get some done before the new washer and dryer arrive today. Fortunately birthday stuff got in the way.

While we were working the contractors got the tub installed.

Wednesday the refrigerator box was built and that night we primered it. Then yesterday Nicole painted it purple. This morning it was put in place so when the people arrive to template the counter tops everything would be in place.

Well, according to the Weekly World News anyway. Here they are:

1. I am the one God of all faiths. Thou shalt stop bickering about it.
2. Thou shalt not make thee a graven image upon toast or other comestibles and declare it to be holy.
3. Thou shalt not make war to obtain thy neighbor’s resources.
4. Thou shalt hold thy mother and father close to thy bosom, putting them no tin rest homes.
5. Thou shalt not abondon thy children upon divorce.
6. Thou shalt not allow thy God-given girth to exceed thy height.
7. Thou shalt speak and frolic with thy offspring and not place them before colored boxes of gaming.
8. Thou shalt not press makers of noise or gesture in anger whilst in transit.
9. Thou shalt discard containers of plastic and metal appropriately.
10. Thou shalt not worship the housewives who are desperate, nor their box, upon the Sabbath

Also…
A black hole from space has been found in Black Rock Desert, NV
The government is creating a Department of the Paranormal
and Haiti’s first president was a zombie

You can see some results from my painting in the kitchen. That cleared the way for the contractor to install the cabinets. Unfortunately, two of the upper cabinets were damaged and they will build us new ones. Also the trash drawer was built wrong so they need to fix that too, but that doesn’t interfere with the cabinet boxes. They made it so you have to open two doors to pull out the bins when the entire thing should be a pull-out or two side by side pull-outs.

Templating for the counter tops will happen on Friday.

Some tile work has happened in the bathroom too. You can see the different floor tiles in place and some of the wall tile. Also you can see a picture of the not yet installed tub. Hopefully the tub will get installed today which will allow the application of more tile.

We needed to get the kitchen painted this weekend so the contractor could start installing the cabinets. Nicole was sick so that left it up to me. Saturday I got the ceiling in the kitchen and dining area, and the ceiling in the living room primered. The Wagner Power Roller helped a lot since I didn’t have to keep bending down to add more paint to the roller, just slide the switch for a few second and keep on going.

Sunday Nicole remembered that King’s Paint is closed and they have the Benjamin Moore paint we had picked out. I looked on-line and found a number of other paint stores and one after the other they were all closed on Sunday. Finally we found one in San Jose. We got our paint and came home and Nicole went back to bed. I started to set up and asked if we had a tool to do corners with. Nicole said “No,” but that I could go get one. So off I went again (to OSH) but they were out and it was a mob around the paint area, probably because dedicated paint stores are closed on Sundays. I found an edging tool and decided to give that a whirl.

I like the edging tool, a simple square brush with wheels so you don’t slop onto the other part and it’s simple. Apparently I have a long way to go to master it though. After about 15 minutes Nicole came to check on my progress and told me that I was putting the paint on too thick and it was going to show a seam. I tried to smooth it out but that part was too far gone. I started using less paint and going back to smooth out seams but that still seems to have resulted in a noticable difference.

Finally I finished edging in the kitchen and dining area and got out the power roller to make quick work of the rest. I learned then that the power roller wasn’t really meant for lot’s of repeated uses using different paints. Each time you use it you have to clean it out which means running water through it. You can’t get all the water out so unless you use it for occasional painting you are going to have water come out when you first turn it on to get the paint going. The manual cleaning instructions assume you’re going to store it so they leave out any tips that might help you deal with that. So I start rolling and waiting and water starts coming out and making a puddle and then watery paint starts coming out and adding to the puddle. So I start rolling it on the wall in a place that will be covered when everything is in place. If you’re at our house before the refrigerator goes in or happen to be here if everything is being torn out you’ll see very drippy paint. If only I had thought to use red…

So the rolling going fairly well for a mintue or two before I realize that in the current light that while the paint is wet, you can’t distinguish the paint from the primer except for the wetness and you can’t always see that. I did the best I could but there are sime thin spots and a few missed spots we’ll have to hit later. The areas that are done well are those that the contractor needed to work in so mission accomplished there.

On to the living room. I break out the edging tool and am being extra vigilant about drips and using too much. I think it’s better, but it’s still too much. I was using Dutch Boy Professional for this part because we liked the color. It was quite a bit thicker than the Benjamin Moore though so I should have been extra extra careful. It was all going well and I was close to done when I edged into an open corner. I was edging on the bottom edge and it ran to a wall at a right angle to it with nothing above it. When I got there the paint piled up and overflowed the edger and went into my hair and lips. I never said I was good at staying in the lines. By the time I got to the bottom of the paint tray I noticed a skin had formed at the bottom but that’s ok since I was done.

On to the roller part once again… I’ll give this tip for the Wagner Power Roller, if you are on a scaffold it’s good to drape the hose over your shoulder and loop it (loosely) so it stays there. That way you don’t have to lift the tube filled with paint and try to control it. You sacrifice some range but it’s worth it. Anyway, I learned from my last clean-up to start-up transition that I needed to get as much water out as possible, so this time I think just a cup was still in there. I rolled it on the waterproof paper floor covering until I got paint flow and then climbed up the scaffolding. Rolling was going great, but paint flow seemed to slow down. I was at the end of the gallon and that’s what hallens then so I put in a new gallon and started up again. It was around 11pm, I was getting tired and the painting seemed to be taking a long time.

Finally I finished at 12:30am and went to clean up the equipment. I noticed the water flow through the hose was less that it should be. That’s why it seemed to be taking longer, because it was! I read in the troubleshooting part of the manual that slow/no flow meant something was clogging the line and that requires sending it in to Wagner. Then I remembered the skin that formed which I was doing the edging. One of those must have formed by the time I got close to the end of the gallon and been sucked up. Great, now there’s a latex skin clot in the paint thing (sorry dad!) so I have to take it apart and try to get it out. If that doesn’t work then I’ll send it in, and if that doesn’t work then my dad gets a new power roller tube. Oh yeah, and a lid because the dogs decided to eat the other one in protest of being left at home.

Looking at the living room ceiling today I can see many spots where the paint just isn’t thick enough because I didn’t realize that I wasn’t getting enough paint on the roller. It was wet, I moved on. I guess we’ll try again later this week, but now other things jump to the front of the line. At least I got a good shoulder workout.

Saturday my left nostril wouldn’t stop draining. I figured some plaster dust got up there and was irritating things. I went to bed at midnight at got up at 2am Sunday morning because my nose was still a mess and I kept waking Nicole up.

So I watched Moonlighting and Hell Boy and sorted recycling. Then my nose was done by around 8am and at 10am was breakfast. Then came wandering around downtown, followed by taking the dogs out to run around and ordering lighting.

Around 5 or 6PM I felt warm so I checked my temp and found it was 100.4. Monday morning it was in the 99s so I worked from home and it dropped into the 98s by evening. Today it’s back to a more normal 97.4. Now I just need the gunk in my head to go away.

The Hebrew Hammer – Parody of the blaxploitation style with lots of Jewish jokes. I thought it was really funny and I’d say check it out. You probably won’t miss too many jokes if you aren’t Jewish.

Grandma’s Boy – Half geek comedy, half stoner comedy. Not great, but it has enough funny throughout. Mostly made up of normally background people in Adam Sandler movies it has a similar feel. Must be fun working on these movies goofing around with friends in front of a camera.

Underworld: Evolution – I thought the first one was kinda boring which I guess lowered my expectations enough to enjoy this one which is funny because I think this one was more rediculous as far as what happens story wise.

Hellboy – I’m halfway through this right now and it’s fully entertaining. Already I’m hoping for a sequel.

Monday the bathroom got coats of primer and we were going to paint but we didn’t make it to the paint store before they closed. So Tuesday Nicole painted the bathroom. Yay! It looks good!

Today had a number of good things:

The bike cages at work were activated again so we can lock up our bikes (scooter) again.

The Coke machine has been so allowing coins to flow through it very well fo rthe past few weeks. I generally dislodge them with a coffee straw and get a free Coke. Today that wasn’t working so I started pressing the coin return button really fast and a quarter came out. So I continued and about $3 in change came out including a penny. Was the penny causing the blockage all this time? The coins put in after seemed to work perfectly.

The project I’ve been working on at work had it’s first sale today. Now there’s six weeks to get everything working the rest of the way.

Good in only one respect… There was a project based layoff at work today. The good part is that this guy who talks loudly on the phone a lot (disturbs everyone in a 2-cube radius) is among them. I’m tired of knowing about his kids, of him giving live driving directions to her on her road trip, him confirming her reservations, etc.

In addition to being entertaining I also found Hostel to be educational with respect to travelling near Bratislava…

Avoid groups of children. They’ll jack you up for money or candy.
Avoid hot women buying offering you drinks.
Avoid creepy old men, who knows what they want?
Avoid young men, they just have work on their mind.
There are no old women to avoid.
I learned what “sneep” is.