The person who invented the flat bar

I want to personally thank the person who invented the flat bar. This has got to one of the best tools a person can own when redoing a house. I slammed through peeling off the baseboards and crown in about 45 mins. I cracked a few boards but nothing that will be any show stopper later on and when I reinstall the boards no one will ever know cept' me.

So being single and Sugar not being very talkative most of time, I usually have the TV on for white noise. Well tonight it was the SciFi channel and the show was called Apocalypse. Great movie, NOT! ok here is the premise, A large earth quake is going to split the country in half, from North Dakota (ah jezz) all the way to the Gulf. I suppose that is something that could be dealt with if just left alone, but oh no! there are two back stories that deal with rescues, and yes love. Just freaking great! But with all that going on and the country being split in half that just wasn't enough. There is a nuclear power plant in Texas that sits right in the middle of the path that the fault is splitting the ground towards. AND but wait! there is a large gas line that goes right by the Nuke plant that the "scientist" blowup just in time to cause the fault to go around. Success! yeah! they saved the nuke plant! But wait there is more drama, Houston was split right in half! I mean right down the center of downtown, that poor Enron building.

And oh yes, there is (cue your best Dr. Evil voice) hot magma in fault line. Once it hit the gulf it back filled with water all the way North the the Hudson bay. I am sure there were sharks with lasers on their heads that swam north to Canada and just devastated the entire Eskimo population while they hunted for seals. But they ran out of time to cover that part of the story.

So anyway, I hope I saved you from watching the reruns of that movie. You can thank me later.

Here is a picture of the trim I pulled off tonight. The baseboards are a full 7 1/4" wide, you can't buy that kind of wood anymore, and not in poplar.

I wish I had the money for a planner, it would save so much time stripping and sanding.

Here are a few pics of the before and afters:

And my last note for the night, I have been looking at programmable furnace thermostats, I was walking through Walmart and saw this Hunter brand for $26 dollars. It seems to be working so far, I set it for 64 degrees during the day and 70 at night. So we will see if it saves on the gas bill.