Oh the weather outside is???.......

More freaking snow. It snowed early in the week, then we had a 1/2" of ice, then more snow on top of the ice. I am waiting for the power lines to give up the ghost and start breaking at anytime. Now the rest of the weekend is suppose to be a high of ZERO. Yeah I am bitching about the weather and I know I live in Northern Illinois, but I have to bitch about something, we have a Governor that got caught red handed selling a Senate seat and refuses to step down, not much I can do about that either, and I never voted for the bastard anyway.

Well, with a spurt of the cash flow I was able to work a bit more on the front porch. I still have to trim out the painting  but I think it turned out ok thus far, and to me that's all that matters.

Here are some pictures of the project:

I bought some paint for the living/dining room today, I picked a color called called (get this) Butterscotch Candy! A normal person would call it pumpkin. So my intent is to paint two of the four walls this color and I haven't decided on what color the other two walls will be. So for reference, the West and South walls will be Butterscotch Candy, and the North and East walls are mostly windows and a fireplace. But both of these walls need to be stripped of their paneling first and I am not sure that I want to do that just yet.

Yep so I am sitting here and the wind has really picked up and the lights are flickering, and I just got a call from work through our automated system that my servers are on battery backup and fading fast.

UPDATE: So I head into work late last night and being as though all the doors are electronically locked, and the computer that controls then is now on battery backup, I can't get into the building. After driving around to the back I was able to get in the back door the old fashioned way, with a key! Then as I made it to the door to the data center it is locked electronically and I left the key in the car, so back outside in the wind and cold to find the key and back inside. I finally made it into the data center and the power came back on. The short of the long is it wook me longer to get to work, get in the data center than it did to actually do what I had to do once I got there.

Saturday

Ok, so I head over to Home Depot in my car to get some bead board or wainscoting to go on the walls for the porch. Not owning a truck, I thought that if they cut the 4x8's in half I could squeeze them into the back of the car. Know where I am going with this? So it is raining, cold, and the wind blowing hard enogh that the American Flag over the store was blowing straight out. And of course nothing fit. So I am standing there looking stupid trying to think who had a truck, and after a few phone calls I cajoled a co-worker into letting me use his truck.

So here is a shot of the first pieces I installed:

And here is a shot after priming:

Now being on a strict budget, I took a 8' length of 1x4 clear pine board that I had left over from the bedroom project, then ran the router and cut a bead down the edge. After making the router cuts, I put the wood on the circular saw and made a few more cuts.

I will admit that it took me a good 90 mins. to decide how to cut, and where to cut the wood before I got what I wanted. So don't get the impression that I really knew what I was doing. Most of the time I don't.

And this is the final product(sorry that I got my fat fingers in the picture). I am sure most folks would just by some chair rail and slap it up there, but being cheap and unconventional I did it my way.

I also had a contractor come over today and give me an estimate on replacing the wiring, shoot some insulation in the attic, and replace the basement windows. Roughly $6000, but I won't have a hard copy estimate until next week.