That Other Wall

So, as usual, it's been awhile since I've written. You should be used to this by now. I've been super busy at work, readying the small website I work on for a living, for a significant financial event. My work has been completed for said event, and I now have some time on my hands, as I will not being doing much work until next Monday. Hooray.

Sadly, with all this free time, I will not be able to fill it with rambling blog-posts a plenty. I haven't really done much to the house aside from painting another potentially-baby-terrifying skeleton on a wall. This is that skeleton:

Finally, some work.

It’s been about 14 years since I last wrote.  I’ve had nothing really to write about, as work on the house has slowed to a super crawl.  We’re saving up money for a kitchen.  These things take time.

Since my last post, however, life has changed a bit for us.  Not in any major way (yet), but slightly.  Our house renovation priorities have shifted a bit, as we’re going to have a tiny, mucous slinging, pants pooping, scream production plant moving in with us.

In April, Amanda will probably give birth to a miniature male human Topham.  Big mistake.

In light of this development, we’ve started to make some alterations to our guest room to become our permanent crying guest room.  Getting some furniture (thanks parents) and repainting the room has already happened (lighter blue three walls, flat grey/blue one wall).  You will likely see the proverbial fruits of that labor shortly.  Over this last weekend, however, we got cracking making it into an actual kid’s room.

Please keep in mind when reading the rest of this, and looking at the images, that we’d like our offspring to be a man of science, rather than a man of cutesy boring stuff.  The following is a decent head start, but will likely do almost nothing in slowing the cutesy boring stuff train post-birth.

Instead of buying pictures and stuff like that, we decided to paint a big stencil on the wall(s).  Since we both like dorky science stuff, we thought dinosaurs would be appropriate for a boys room, as they are generally awesome.  in attempting to find some images to steal and edit, we didn’t really find anything that we liked.  On Friday evening, knowing that we were going to start working on the stencils this the next day, we continued our image search hoping to find something usable. 

We didn’t find anything that we really liked, only a few things that we found acceptable, when I had the epiphany of using dinosaur skeletons instead of fleshed and skinned cartoon or rendered dinosaurs.  It was a great idea.

We found some cool skeletons to use, I edited them a little bit in Photoshop and we get them printed out.  Here is the first example, expertly printed by our friends over at Office Max (I don’t own a printer):

Stepping back a bit, the way that I usually stencil things is to print out a giant image (usually on many pieces of paper), cut out the stencil from said paper, tape it to whatever it is that I want to paint it on, and paint.  Since our walls are textured (because the house was built in the 80s, which were terrible), my usual way of painting would prove impossible, as I wouldn’t be able to get a crisp line, since the stencil would be off of the wall in some spots, allowing paint to seep behind it.

Amanda had the semi-genius idea to procure a small projector from her workplace.  She got said projector:

We put the printout (regular letter size) under the project, darkened the room, and displayed the image on the wall.  We lined it all up and Amanda got to tracing:

The fun part about the tracing was how small the projector was.  It only showed some of the picture, not all of it.  Amanda had the pleasure of attempting to line up everything she had traced after moving the projector to accommodate the larger than its input printout.  I’m sure it was a joyous chore.

She persevered, and once penciled, it was up to me to fill in this with paint:

To say the the process was painstaking would be pretty accurate.  I had three different sized paint brushes to use and had to trace out and fill in all kinds of weird shapes.

The above took me probably two and a half hours to do.  As you can clearly see, it wasn’t all that close to being finished.  After another two and a half hours of painting, the brontosaurus skeleton that will surely scare our offspring at some point on a stormy night was completed:

Amanda also traced out a Tyrannosaur skeleton on a different wall, but I will pain that one a little later on, when I have five hours of free time.

Admittedly, a stencil of a dinosaur’s bones on a kid’s wall might be a terrible idea.  It could conceivably terrify the child every night.  Amanda and I are banking on the fact that since a baby has no prior experience with anything at all (aside from complete darkness, cramped spaces inside a uterus and muffled noises), he will have no frame of reference for what is and is not scary.  Once the kid is old enough to have developed that frame of reference, we likely won’t live in this house any longer and the stencil would have long bee painted over.

At any rate, I think it looks super awesome, so that little imp can stuff it.

He’s Back. And Probably Gone Again.

So a little while ago, I got a phone call from a number that I didn’t recognize, aside from the area code. It was from Rhode Island. Since I never answer my phone if I don’t know who’s calling, I let it ring and hoped that the caller would leave me a voicemail.

Boy did they.

I called my mailbox and was greeted by the automated voicemail woman letting me know that I had one new voicemail. No duh. The message finally began. It was, ahem, Crazy. Jeff. Doors.

I was elated.

He started off the message by saying, “Hey Ryan, this is Jeff. You know, the guy who you think burned down your house.” I cracked up. It turns out that he was calling to let me know that there is a building “as big as an entire block” for sale in Providence for 60 grand. He thought that I should buy it. He also asked if I had any work for him. He said that in a much less concise way, but no matter.

Amanda looked at me funny, I relayed the message, and more importantly who it was from, and got to texting. below is out exchange, verbatim:

Ryan: Hey Jeff. Thanks for the heads up. We don’t think you burned anything; that’s crazy. We moved out of RI, so unless you want to drive to Texas, I probably don’t have any work for you.

Jeff’s Reply: TEXAS. ALL THERE IS IS STEERS N QUEERS AN I DON’T SEE ANY HORNS ON U BOY.

Awesome. That’s the Jeff I know and have a hard time dealing with.

Jeff’s Second, Unsolicited Reply: I’m glad you guys are Happy. God Bless. Im doing well. My case just settled in Federal. Have to wait until Feb to receive CAPITOL THEN this Slave State will find a way to suck it all back. but my quality of life will be much better. ROSIE DIED 4 13 11. She was very sick. Im good n on my own n my SAVIOR LOOKS OUT FOR ME. AS ALWAYS. PEACE.

Holy moly. So much unwanted information in a text message. The best part of it all is the fact that I had, and still have, no idea what he is talking about in most of it. Rosie, who is dead, was the giant woman who would sit in the car while he worked at my house(s). The rest of it? No idea. The random capitalization? What case? Should I know what he’s talking about? I don’t care. I loved it.

I sent back an ‘I’m sorry to hear that’ text and that was that.

Jeff is awesome. I really hope that he calls me again someday.

My Job Is Crazy Right Now

I work all of the time. It stinks. This will be short.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve torn out some carpeting, laid some more laminate floor covering, painted some things, put up some lights, installed some ceiling fans and entertained a visitor. And worked a lot.

Here’s a short photo essay of the floor project. Before, for reminding:

Mid carpet removal (with fun dog stains):

This is how much the previous owners’ dogs liked to dig:

Once the chewed up padding was gone, trim and carpet tack removal began (and ended with a pile of trim):

Aside - The fun part about this project was just throwing everything out of the window onto the ground. Carpets and padding crushed the crappy and dead bushes in the front of the house, and the trim/wood/nails went into the garbage can I dragged under the window. It’s really oddly satisfying to throw things out of a window. I recommend it. – Aside over.

After cleaning up, I discovered this. A terrible thing to read on something that you walk on all of the time (it says “Replace”):

Undeterred, I moved onto the next step. Since the floor in the bedroom is really, super extra uneven, I had to improvise a shim system made from paint stir sticks pilfered from Home Depot:

Not too bad. Once properly shimmed and semi-level, it was underlayment time:

Underlayment down, I spent the next several hours interlocking engineers fake wood boards:

Luckily, I wasn’t able to finish, as I ran out of boards. I needed maybe five more to be finished. Crap:

The floor still looks like that, weeks later. I have purchased one more box of flooring, since I purchased it, I’ve been to a wedding one weekend and it’s rained the other weekend, not to mention that I work all of the time now. I hope to finish up this weekend, along with baseboard trim, but who knows?

Another weekend, my father-in-law came to visit us. Here’s what his room looked like when he came:

It’s not quite all the way finished, but it was livable and is almost all the way finished.

More fun to come someday, but don’t count on it, as I’m working a lot. It should die down a bit after Monday, so I may be able to write more often, but again, no promises. The next big project is the kitchen remodel, but that might be a month or so away, as kitchens are expensive as all heck.

My Wrist Is Different

In that it is getting worse, rather than has been surgically repaired.

So at about 4:45pm on the Thursday before my scheduled wrist surgery (which you can read about a few posts ago), I got a phone call from the folks who would be doing the surgery.  They told me that my insurance wouldn’t cover it until July of 2012.

Sweet.

I asked why my insurance wouldn’t cover it and they replied that since I injured my wrist months ago, before I was insured by Blue Cross of Central Texas, they considered it a pre-existing condition, which isn’t covered in my apparently terrible health plan.  Not to worry though, as the folks who would be doing the surgery assured me that they would still love for me to come in at the scheduled time to get the surgery anyways.

This tickled me a bit.

Expecting hilarity, I asked them how much this would cost me, were I to still have the surgery.

The woman on the phone assured me that they gave heavy discounts for certain types of payment.  She went on to explain that if I chose to pay by credit card or personal check (what?), they would extend a whopping 65% discount.

I immediately asked what the price would be.

She again explained that the discount is significant and refused to actually quote the price after the discount.

I asked once again what the out of pocket cost for crazy wrist surgery is.

She explained the discount again and finally divulged the after-discount price:

Just over $8,800.

I laughed at her and told her that there was no way that I would pay that amount of money the next day.

She assured me that there was an even better discount if I chose to pay in another way.  I cut her off there and said something like, “is it going to be under a thousand dollars with this next incredible discount?”

She laughed at me and replied, “no.”

I thanked her for her time and terrible news and let her know that unless it was under $1,000, there was absolutely no chance of me showing up on time for my scheduled surgery.  I regret not having listened to the next incredible discount, but whatever, I didn’t want to waste anymore time.

In summation, I can’t get surgery until next July.  I have called multiple times to find out if there is anything I can do, but apparently once you get rejected by your insurance company, your surgeon refuses to call you back to discuss things.

Update tomorrow coming.  I haven’t done too much to the house since I last wrote, as we had a visitor over one of the two weekends, but I took a few pictures and will share them.

Labor Weekend Weekend Part II

So, when I last wrote, I had removed all of the carpets from the second floor.  What happens to all of these carpets and carpet pads once they’ve been removed?  They get thrown away to rot in a landfill for the next seventeen hundred years.  Go Earth!

The reason that I tore out the carpets over the weekend was because the City of Austin was starting curbside pickup of bulk items.  I had spent the week before trying to find out if 750 square feet of carpet would be too bulky to be considered for bulk pick-up, and found out that the City of Austin would be happy to swing by and dispose of all of that garbage.  Awesome.

Not awesome?  Dragging it all to the curb.  Here’s the pile of garbage that came out of this fun project (and the living room project):

I sweat a lot.  A fun thing I learned?  When lugging hundreds of pounds of awkward tubes of carpet  thirty feet to the curb, it’s a good idea to wear long sleeves.  I was in short sleeves.  Here’s what one of my arms looked like afterwards:

That’s either from rough, scratchy undersides of carpeting or some flesh eating thing.  I still have forearm skin, so it’s probably a few tens of scratches from the undersides of discarded carpeting.

I have since healed.

Also done during the weekend, with the help of Amanda and her super brain:

There is not one good looking ceiling fan in the entire world.  Why is that?

Fun fact from the dismantling of an old and mantling of a new ceiling fan: I had to modify the mounting bracket because it was too big for the electrical box.  This thing will come crashing down at some point.  how is that not universal?  Was it universal when the house was built and they have since changed the universe?

Sigh.

Another fun fact: It took a long time to put up (since I had to modify the mounting bracket and kind of ghetto rig it thereafter) the fan.  Once Amanda and I had put it up, I flipped the breakers back on and turned on the fan.  Nothing happened.  I swore many times over and over.  I was preparing to re-wire it when Amanda said, “did you turn the fan itself on?”  I had not.  I turned it one and miraculously, the fan began to spin.

I gave Amanda a wet smooch.  She is a genius.

To wrap it up, yesterday, we got carpets installed.  For four hours yesterday afternoon, horrifying ranchero style music of Mexico was echoing throughout the house.  My blood pressure rose.  I put up with it though, as the folks who were installing the carpet were listening to it.  Here are some of the results:

It was also put in the office and Mr. Stotzer’s Bedroom.  I hope he enjoys it.

For the observant among you, you may notice the nice paint-less bald spot on the wall in the upper right of that last picture.  You can clearly see the outer limits of my reach with a paint roller.  It will eventually be painted, I promise.

This might be the last post for a little while, as I am having my ruined right wrist surgically repaired.  Or at least worked on.

Labor Weekend Weekend

I labored all weekend, instead of just one of the days of the long weekend.

In this post, I will go over hours and hours of work and make it seem like it didn’t take hours and hours.

Two weekends ago, I started in on the process of putting some baseboard trim up in the living room.  Since I had destroyed it all when I took out the old flooring, the trim was in real need of replacement.  I measured the room and realized that I needed over 80 feet of trim to do the job.  Holy moly.

I bought what I needed, including some paint, and then, painted:

That’s a lot of trim.  Also, the giant deck we purchased along with the house makes a great workshop.

once the trim had two coats of paint and had dried, I got to measuring, cutting and gluing the trim to the bottom of the wall.  Kind of tedious, but overall pretty easy.  Not bad looking when it was finished either:

Admittedly, I kind of slacked two weekends ago.  Although, the trim took awhile, I could have worked harder.

Labor Day Weekend, which ended yesterday, I worked much harder.  The hardest of the hard work, was tearing out the carpets on the stairs, the second floor hallway and the two guest bedrooms.  It was terrible.  To give you an idea of how gross these carpets were, here’s the underside of a carpet that sat within the closet of the guest room.  Please keep in mind while viewing this carpet that it lived in a closet.  A closet.  Please extrapolate after viewing and digesting how gross it was how gross actual higher traffic areas’ carpeting was.  This carpet is in a closet:

That’s in a closet.

!

So yea.  These carpets were just disgusting.

After tearing out the carpets, I was left with, once again, a better looking carpet pad.  Certainly better looking than the disgusting carpets:

The easiest part of carpet removal, if the builders were cheap, is removing the padding.  You just roll it up.  Non-cheap builders actually glue the padding to the sub-floor, but luckily, 1984 builders were cheap.

Carpet padding rolled up leaves a nice and dirty sub-floor:

Fun sub-flooring quirk:

That’s the floor in the office.  Quite the awesome difference in floor levels.  It’s like a step.  Nice work 1984 builders.

To illustrate further how super gross these carpets, which are luckily removed now, were, I submit this:

Take a look at that hard dirt line at the back of that stair.  The light color is the color that the carpeting used to be.  That filthy, darker hue is what the carpet color actually was (is).  So gross.

Anyways, once I had removed all of the carpeting, it was time to paint the miles and miles of baseboard and door trim throughout the uncarpeted room and hallways.  Pictures to come…