Been awhile

Been a couple weeks since I posted.
I think last Saturday I started to install the crown around the tops of the kitchen cabinets, I only got two uppers finished. It takes me a long time to visualize the angles out in my head before I make any cuts. I guess I am overly cautious and want to make sure I don't mess up and waste the wood I am cutting. I bought two new saw blades for the chop saw, the hickory is so hard to cut and I could see that only after about 5 cuts the blade was having a hard time getting through the wood. I think there are about a dozen more cuts to do then I should have the crown finished.

Today, I caulked and painted the six windows on the backside of the house. Two are the original and the other four were put in about eight years ago. The original windows I caulked shut. There was quite a bit of air coming through and around the frames this past winter. I just figured until I can get them replaced, and I don't open them, I thought I might as well just seal them as best as I can.
The other four, are about 8 years old but the wood surrounding them is still the original wood, and in bad shape along with the caulk it was separating pretty good causing a few good sized gaps between the window and the wood frame. I used Behr exterior paint. A bit more expensive but I think it is worth the money.
I have to say that it went on really well and soaked in pretty good. Guess that is an indication of the old paint being just beat to death by the west sun and weather. I also used colored caulk (brown) to help blend in better. The rest of the house had all the windows replaced about six years ago and the company that did them wrapped all the exterior wood in aluminium. So those don't need any repainting. They still need some touch up with caulk to fill in the gaps that are drying out. I want to get as much done on the exterior before I have to leave for training this fall and get the house sealed. Don't need any worries about heating the outside again this winter.

About three weeks ago I had the roof leak in the valley above the front door. I called a guy to come look and see if he could patch things up to get me by for a while longer. Well it rained again two weekends ago and I still had leaking, this time in another room. The front room has a basketball sized bulge in the ceiling and now the front porch hallway has some bulging going on now. I planned on replacing the front room ceiling but did not want to do the hallway. Fucking sucks. Now I am looking at a roof replacement.
The insurance company was of no help and only offered to patch the roof and patch the ceiling. Just what I need, another freakin patch job by some hack that only State Farm approves of. Maybe it is my agent but they have fallen into the "they suck" basket as far as I am concerned. I will be parting ways with them soon.
The last week I have had three guys come look at the roof and give me quotes. The fourth never showed up. One isn't bad on price, the second wants to do a total tear off and replacement, and the third I had to do some price bickering to get him to come down a bit. It is still going to cost over $6000 and that is just a layover and not a tear off. The high side bid was over $10000, way out of my range.
Wednesday I stumbled into Home Depot and caught a sale on 30 year shingles, but the sale ended that night. I ran across the street to Menards and their cheapest shingle was still more expensive per bundle than the ones HD had. So I plunked down $2300 that night, and another $400 or so for the rest of the stuff, nails, starter strip, flashing, etc. Really sucks! I was hoping to get another 10 years out of the roof.
When the last roof guy was topside, he said he saw where who ever last put the roof on that they had cut other shingles on top of what was already laid down and sliced right through the flashing and shingles creating a pretty good sized gap for water to seap in. This last rain also showed another leak around the chimney where the flashing has failed prematurely from improper installation.
The neighbor did warn me that some gin heads and druggies did the last roof install. They also tore out all the copper flashing for good measure in case a normal person would want the rain to stay outside vice coming through. The guys are suppose to start Monday on the layover, so I am hoping that everything gets sealed up before the next rain, which is suppose to be Monday!
To take some frustration out over this past weeks roof "event" I moved 10 wheelbarrows of white marble rock across the street to my neighbors house. I had a ton of it around the house from the PO and this was the last of it and by far the biggest area to be removed. A few months ago I saw him and his wife outside pulling all their rock up, cleaning it, putting down a weed barrier and replacing what they had. I watched this for a weekend and thought I would go ask if they were going to buy more to add to their "pile". George and Brenda are nice people, I offered my white marble up and would even haul it over if they would take it. Deal struck! So all in all they got about 15 loads from me.
It saves me from having to pay someone to haul it away and they can finish their landscaping. How cool is that?! Now I need to work a deal out with someone to pull the lilac stumps out. Any takers?
Wish I took a picture of their front sidewalk, 10 loads of rock sitting in front of the house. That's where they wanted it!
Sunday? I need to tear a wall out in the basement and get it into the pile in the garage. I found a guy to haul all my debris away this coming week and he said to get all I could before he comes again.

Whoo Hooo!!

I finally got the floor all in. Now there still needs to be grout applied but the hard part is all done.
Maezie started to paint the nook with the Carmel Latte (Behr brand) on the walls and white on the ceiling. Here is a few pics with the first coat.


Next are a few pics of the first of many tiles to be laid.

Here are a few pics of the original floor. From what I can tell the original flooring was poured in as one solid piece with the base boards as part of the install. It is like a terrazzo type material that was stained colors as you can see in the pics. I broke a few pieces (long story, but I took a chisel and hammer to the base boards) and it looks like there is sawdust in the mix and you can see the color in the layers. There were 2 layers of linoleum that came up very easy (thank goodness!) and wala! the terrazzo! I had a thought of trying to "save" the original flooring but a small winged troll with a large flat shovel flew by my head and slapped me up one side and down the other until I had a thought of not really restoring the original and just put down the new tile.

I haven't found anyone that can really explain what the "tile" is/was but my moms neighbor (after explaining) said years ago it was a pretty nice floor and it had a nice glossy finish. Other than that, nothing for what it is.

The actual grid pattern is from dirt that sifted down between the linoleum over the years and not the actual origianl tile.

Color Pallet

I took a vacation day Friday and had me a four day weekend. And promptly spent the entire weekend in doors and enjoying the nice weather from inside. It was kind of nice setting up the tools outside in the driveway. Saved allot of running up and down those basement steps. I finally finished the nook walls and ceiling. Here are a couple of shots of the breakfast nook ceiling.

Mazie spent her entire weekend helping ME! instead of working on her house. She has been allot of help this weekend and a real trooper. I finished the ceiling late Friday night. We got a call late from Home Depot saying they didn't have the tile I bought the night previously. So we cleaned up and headed down to Bloomington to take a look at the Home Depot down there for tile (it is a bigger store that what we have here) and also stopped at Lowe's. I had decided the night before to skip the floating vinyl floor and go back to the ceramic tile.

Found a cool tile at Lowe's, they had enough for the kitchen and we loaded up and headed home.

Sunday, I spent most of the day caulking the joints on the nook ceiling and cut a few pieces that I left hanging the night before. Mazie told me to call it a day around 3 and some friends came over and we had a cook out, drank a few beers and promptly crashed in the bed at 9:30.

Today, Mazie did a ton of painting while I tackled the tiling of the kitchen floor. I almost got the floor finished but my body just gave out on me and had to call it quits. Again Mazie did all the painting and cheered me on through out the day.

Now I know you are asking where was Sugar all weekend? Well she was at Grand Ma's and spent most of the rest of the weekend hiding in the bedroom, keeping the bed warm, and staying out of the kitchen fray.

Still allot of work to do, and two weeks until the cabinets are delivered. The biggest thing is I won't have cabinets sitting in the living room when they do get delivered. But Sears keeps calling me to come and pick up my stove that has been sitting at the store for 3 weeks.

Mothers Day

Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers and grandmothers out there.

Yesterday was my birthday and I treated myself to a FULL day of paint balling, I love the game! I only play woodsball and get a real kick out of stalking, hunting and popping a full load of paintballs into my quarry. Of course the opposite is true. I was hit hard with paintballs and today I have the bruises to prove it. But it is all in fun and at the end of the day friends and foes alike shake hands, slap backs and laugh about this shot or that shot or the one I took in the head.

The team I played on won the game for points and allot of people won some good prizes. It was my day and winning topped it all off.

Worked a bit more over the past few days on the kitchen ceiling. Made some good progress and applied three coats of high gloss on the panels and trim. I was also able to find 3 pendant lights are wired up and working. There are actually green glass globes on the ends but the CFL bulbs caused a big glow in pictures.

And below is the final product without the lights gowing, trim all attached and unbelievably everything lined up and is square. I still need another coat of paint on it but essentially it is done.

Now onto the walls.

Stimulate me

I received my "stimulus" (that's what we will call it) check yesterday in the mail. For those that haven't followed my postings religiously, and shame on you! I found out back in February that if you bought a house between April of 08' and July of 09' (which the law has since changed and has been extended) the government will allow a loan of $7500 for home improvement, and pretty simple payback period.
So I got my check and have been trying to get my crap together and formulate a plan. You would think that by now I would have had some sort of idea of what I want to do, NOT! Sunday I did do some tear out and kind of ran into some "issues" that put a bit of a dampener on what I had thought I wanted to do with the walls.
What I finally decided to do is bead board the walls up to the 8 ft level, then the remaining top 12 inches do a flat panel to the ceiling with a chair rail molding separating the two sections. On the ceiling I will also bead board with an alternating pattern in the center part of the room and a flat panel 16 inch border around the perimeter. The walls will be painted with Ruskin Room Green (egg shell), which is a Sherwin Williams color (but my designer, Home Depot insider, friend, insists that I use Behr brand paint) and a high gloss white on the ceiling. I think from the pictures Beth and I (mostly Beth, my insider) found and looked over of other kitchens it will turn out pretty groovy. Of course everything is subject to change and probably will.