Our hardwood floors are done. Our contractor just needs to put together some things he took apart to install the floors, like closet doors and the cover to the air return. And then the hardwood stairs go in which is a different project. We decided to just use solid white risers (the vertical part of the stairs), so I painted the MDF boards that he brought over. Thought it might take a couple hours, but with a roller and a long handle it took about 15 minutes for the actual painting.
Our deck is going, going. They delivered the new boards today.
I need to plant some fruit shrubs and trees. Seems like a good time as it's still wet and rainy. Also been working on our auction business a bit.
Played poker Tuesday night at Snoqualmie Casino. It was the first time I'd been there in three months. I came back from Las Vegas in March and was a bit frustrated and took a break. Between being out of town every weekend, finishing up work, and knowing I was going to Vegas, poker didn't fit in April or May, or when it did I met Meier in Seattle. Anyway, a very boring session. I saw two pocket pairs -- raised and flopped top set with jacks, called a raise and folded the flop with sixes -- and AK and AQ (won with both), and a bunch of nothing. Good news is I finished up a bit. A lot of times when card dead I play too many very speculative hands and wind up behind. I tightened up and just made money where I could. Bummer is that it was a very good table -- saw a number of pre-flop all-ins for $200 with marginal hands. Lots of money was being passed around. Couldn't really get much though.
Anyway, back to work on home projects.
Showing posts with label home decorating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home decorating. Show all posts
Thursday, June 17
Monday, May 17
Friday and the weekend (long)
Friday I finished cleaning our outdoor furniture and moving it upstairs to the deck. We now have 10 chairs and a "bench", so it's more work than it sounds. Though it's mainly tedious -- lots of trips around the house. I moved our table on Sunday. It's big, glass, and heavy; that was actually work. And when I thought I was done, Monica said "hey let's put one chair downstairs so I can sit with the dogs". Score one point for well-written acceptance criteria.
Met my friend Jay for lunch on Friday and got to catch up. Jay's sort of like Griffey, Jr. -- he was the face and the star of our softball team for a number of years but was often injured and those injuries have finally led him to retire. What's that? Griffey hasn't retired yet?
Spent a lot of time over the weekend working on taxes, mainly stock sales, interest, and dividends. This is where having managed accounts -- like mutual funds but you own actual stocks -- becomes a pain. Lots and lots of stock transactions. Import/download is a life saver, but verifying is still a fair amount of work. Yuck!
In more fun stuff, Saturday I helped man the both for Monica at the Redmond pet fair. My role is basically to watch the booth when she needs a break and keep her company. It isn't busy enough and I don't really know enough about Ttouch or pet adoption counseling to share the booth. For the first time she's set up at one of these things, it was actually useful. I don't know if she'll actually get anyone who calls, but she talked to a number of people who seemed very interested in her services, took her card, and should call her. On of our observations mid-way through the day was that 10-3 was too long for this event. Everyone started packing up their booths at 2:30, so I guess we weren't alone in that view. I walked outside at 2:25 to get some fresh air and when I came back 1/3 of the "vendors" were gone. I think once the first person bailed, everyone else decided it was OK to follow suit. By 3:00, there was no one left.
Saturday night we went to a great dinner at Ruth's Chris, separate post coming. Sunday was mainly running around. We had softball in the morning and played one of the key games of the season. Before the 2008 season I split our team in two. We had developed a group of players who thought recreational co-ed softball was all about winning and not about having fun (OK they liked to have fun, but their idea of fun was winning). Their attitudes sucked and it made it no fun to play on Sunday. I kicked a couple people off the team a few of their friends from my team joined them and they decided to recruit a bunch of good players and form their own team. I wouldn't say this team is our rival but they're one of the better teams in the division, they care a lot about the final score, and half the players used to be on our team, so the game is special. We scored 3 runs in the top of the first and never trailed though the game was a toss up until we pulled away in the 6th and 7th innings. We played terrific defense which was the key and got them out running the bases four or five times, though the umpire missed one of the outs. Final was 13-6.
Sunday afternoon Hunny Bear had an acupuncture appointment. And then Sunday evening I went to the Storm Opening Night. The game was sloppy as I'd expect. Training camp is about 3 weeks in the WNBA and the star players don't get back from overseas until the last week. So you're watching a team that's practiced together for about 4 days. It was pretty ugly at times and the Storm had long stretches where they didn't score, but in the end they beat LA, their #1 rival, by about 10 points.
Oh yeh, Sprint 3 planning Sunday night.
Met my friend Jay for lunch on Friday and got to catch up. Jay's sort of like Griffey, Jr. -- he was the face and the star of our softball team for a number of years but was often injured and those injuries have finally led him to retire. What's that? Griffey hasn't retired yet?
Spent a lot of time over the weekend working on taxes, mainly stock sales, interest, and dividends. This is where having managed accounts -- like mutual funds but you own actual stocks -- becomes a pain. Lots and lots of stock transactions. Import/download is a life saver, but verifying is still a fair amount of work. Yuck!
In more fun stuff, Saturday I helped man the both for Monica at the Redmond pet fair. My role is basically to watch the booth when she needs a break and keep her company. It isn't busy enough and I don't really know enough about Ttouch or pet adoption counseling to share the booth. For the first time she's set up at one of these things, it was actually useful. I don't know if she'll actually get anyone who calls, but she talked to a number of people who seemed very interested in her services, took her card, and should call her. On of our observations mid-way through the day was that 10-3 was too long for this event. Everyone started packing up their booths at 2:30, so I guess we weren't alone in that view. I walked outside at 2:25 to get some fresh air and when I came back 1/3 of the "vendors" were gone. I think once the first person bailed, everyone else decided it was OK to follow suit. By 3:00, there was no one left.
Saturday night we went to a great dinner at Ruth's Chris, separate post coming. Sunday was mainly running around. We had softball in the morning and played one of the key games of the season. Before the 2008 season I split our team in two. We had developed a group of players who thought recreational co-ed softball was all about winning and not about having fun (OK they liked to have fun, but their idea of fun was winning). Their attitudes sucked and it made it no fun to play on Sunday. I kicked a couple people off the team a few of their friends from my team joined them and they decided to recruit a bunch of good players and form their own team. I wouldn't say this team is our rival but they're one of the better teams in the division, they care a lot about the final score, and half the players used to be on our team, so the game is special. We scored 3 runs in the top of the first and never trailed though the game was a toss up until we pulled away in the 6th and 7th innings. We played terrific defense which was the key and got them out running the bases four or five times, though the umpire missed one of the outs. Final was 13-6.
Sunday afternoon Hunny Bear had an acupuncture appointment. And then Sunday evening I went to the Storm Opening Night. The game was sloppy as I'd expect. Training camp is about 3 weeks in the WNBA and the star players don't get back from overseas until the last week. So you're watching a team that's practiced together for about 4 days. It was pretty ugly at times and the Storm had long stretches where they didn't score, but in the end they beat LA, their #1 rival, by about 10 points.
Oh yeh, Sprint 3 planning Sunday night.
Friday, May 14
Day 8, Thursday
A very busy and productive day, though I started by sleeping in since we didn't have contractors coming at 7:30.
I made it back to the gym for the first time this week. Lined up a contractor, actually two it turns out, to trim and tack the carpet in the doorways where it bumps up against the new hardwoods. Made a nice dinner -- brisket and sweet potato casserole (Yams Richard). Was a nice treat to do that without it being a holiday. Sort of like turkey only gets made once or twice a year.
Made a lot of progress catching up on financial records. Really I hadn't entered our "bank" statements into MS Money in a year. Which was really dumb because it took 10 minutes for most months and 20 minutes for tricky months... it just became a pile I never looked at. Caught up through the end of 2009, so I can work on taxes now. And so, I really started on our taxes for 2009.
Went to Kinko's to print some brochures for Monica's business to use at the Pet Fair this weekend. In the end, she has nice looking brochures -- I assume, I've only seen the proof, but the process was a bit frustrating. Actually working with the people at Fedex/Kinko's took 5-10 minutes but driving there, figuring out where I needed to be, and waiting in line took 45 minutes -- very high signal to noise ratio. Also helped Monica do through all her stuff to get ready for Saturday.
Worked out cleaning our outdoor furniture for the season. Everything has sat outside getting rained on or worse since the fall. A quick soap and rinse and letting mother nature do the drying.
Somewhere in between we took Hunny Bear for a nice long walk.
I made it back to the gym for the first time this week. Lined up a contractor, actually two it turns out, to trim and tack the carpet in the doorways where it bumps up against the new hardwoods. Made a nice dinner -- brisket and sweet potato casserole (Yams Richard). Was a nice treat to do that without it being a holiday. Sort of like turkey only gets made once or twice a year.
Made a lot of progress catching up on financial records. Really I hadn't entered our "bank" statements into MS Money in a year. Which was really dumb because it took 10 minutes for most months and 20 minutes for tricky months... it just became a pile I never looked at. Caught up through the end of 2009, so I can work on taxes now. And so, I really started on our taxes for 2009.
Went to Kinko's to print some brochures for Monica's business to use at the Pet Fair this weekend. In the end, she has nice looking brochures -- I assume, I've only seen the proof, but the process was a bit frustrating. Actually working with the people at Fedex/Kinko's took 5-10 minutes but driving there, figuring out where I needed to be, and waiting in line took 45 minutes -- very high signal to noise ratio. Also helped Monica do through all her stuff to get ready for Saturday.
Worked out cleaning our outdoor furniture for the season. Everything has sat outside getting rained on or worse since the fall. A quick soap and rinse and letting mother nature do the drying.
Somewhere in between we took Hunny Bear for a nice long walk.
Thursday, May 13
Week 2
After another typical weekend -- Mariners lose, softball team wins -- it's back to work.
This week I've been keeping an eye on our dogs while parts of the remodel are in progress. I was going to put them in daycare, but they're actually been pretty good about staying out of the way and not barking at the workers or all the noise. Nailing in a hardwood floor is noisy, but Tommy sleeps right through it.
Monday the hardwood guy got to work installing boards and my painters arrived. Fortunately the were working around each other. When we moved in we removed a divider from the bottom of the stairs and patched the walls and ceiling but never painted. I picked up some paint six months ago to see if I could get a match, but it was never on the top of the to do list. Sort of out-of-sight, out-of-mind but more after staring at the ugliness every day, we just learned to live with it. But with hardwoods going in, we wanted to paint first rather than risk getting paint on the new wood floors. In the end, we cut out a chunk of the wall and did a color match. They were able to feather in the paint to avoid painting the 15" wall above the stairwell and perhaps other walls to match which was a great saving of time and money. Hard to explain really; you have to see it.
Tuesday the hardwood installer got most of the floor done and Wednesday he finished up with the hallway and the edges. Looks great and it hasn't been sanded or finished yet.
Meanwhile I've been working on planning my trip to Las Vegas and it looks like it's a go. I'll be there May 24th through June 4th. Have airfare, hotels, and a rental car booked. I'm staying off the strip at Alexis Park the first week to keep my costs down. Even Imperial Palace wants $200 for Saturday over Memorial Day weekend, then moving to IP the second week where I have 4 nights for $85! My plan is rather than to play poker non-stop to actually have a vacation. See some shows, walk down the strip, maybe sit by the pool. Get away from the strip to see some other parts of Vegas. And really before 11 AM the poker action isn't that good.
Also working around the house. It seems the laundry never stops, even for just the two of us. I've been catching up on entering our financial records into MS Money in preparation for doing our taxes. Yes, I haven't even started taxes yet. Finished reseeding the back yard. Dogs and dog "output" do a number on a lawn. I can't believe how bad it looks just a year after we put down sod. Seeding is more work than it sounds like. Had to loosen up the soil in lots of places and work the seed into the dirt. Otherwise it just washes away. The lawn eeds a lot of TLC (and a lot of water) this year. Hope to see some grass and hope in a couple of weeks.
I installed a keyless entry for the garage. That was actually a fun project where I felt like I accomplished something rather than started something that will eventually finish. Our garage is attached to our house but is external so the door is locked and it's a pain to unlock it, every time to go into the garage. I looked at doing this when we first moved in, but didn't see one that would work. Maybe it's a new model, but this was pretty easy to install and only took an hour and works great.already.
Also made a trip to the vet. Hunny Bear and Cocoa are fine -- still needs another round of meds for his yeast infection -- but Tommy has problems with ears and eyes. And it's almost impossible for us to medicate him. He sees the dropper bottle coming for his ears or eyes and he runs. When you catch him he shakes and jerks his head. Try putting eye drops in while shaking -- impossible. That's my challenge foe the week.
This week I've been keeping an eye on our dogs while parts of the remodel are in progress. I was going to put them in daycare, but they're actually been pretty good about staying out of the way and not barking at the workers or all the noise. Nailing in a hardwood floor is noisy, but Tommy sleeps right through it.
Monday the hardwood guy got to work installing boards and my painters arrived. Fortunately the were working around each other. When we moved in we removed a divider from the bottom of the stairs and patched the walls and ceiling but never painted. I picked up some paint six months ago to see if I could get a match, but it was never on the top of the to do list. Sort of out-of-sight, out-of-mind but more after staring at the ugliness every day, we just learned to live with it. But with hardwoods going in, we wanted to paint first rather than risk getting paint on the new wood floors. In the end, we cut out a chunk of the wall and did a color match. They were able to feather in the paint to avoid painting the 15" wall above the stairwell and perhaps other walls to match which was a great saving of time and money. Hard to explain really; you have to see it.
Tuesday the hardwood installer got most of the floor done and Wednesday he finished up with the hallway and the edges. Looks great and it hasn't been sanded or finished yet.
Meanwhile I've been working on planning my trip to Las Vegas and it looks like it's a go. I'll be there May 24th through June 4th. Have airfare, hotels, and a rental car booked. I'm staying off the strip at Alexis Park the first week to keep my costs down. Even Imperial Palace wants $200 for Saturday over Memorial Day weekend, then moving to IP the second week where I have 4 nights for $85! My plan is rather than to play poker non-stop to actually have a vacation. See some shows, walk down the strip, maybe sit by the pool. Get away from the strip to see some other parts of Vegas. And really before 11 AM the poker action isn't that good.
Also working around the house. It seems the laundry never stops, even for just the two of us. I've been catching up on entering our financial records into MS Money in preparation for doing our taxes. Yes, I haven't even started taxes yet. Finished reseeding the back yard. Dogs and dog "output" do a number on a lawn. I can't believe how bad it looks just a year after we put down sod. Seeding is more work than it sounds like. Had to loosen up the soil in lots of places and work the seed into the dirt. Otherwise it just washes away. The lawn eeds a lot of TLC (and a lot of water) this year. Hope to see some grass and hope in a couple of weeks.
I installed a keyless entry for the garage. That was actually a fun project where I felt like I accomplished something rather than started something that will eventually finish. Our garage is attached to our house but is external so the door is locked and it's a pain to unlock it, every time to go into the garage. I looked at doing this when we first moved in, but didn't see one that would work. Maybe it's a new model, but this was pretty easy to install and only took an hour and works great.already.
Also made a trip to the vet. Hunny Bear and Cocoa are fine -- still needs another round of meds for his yeast infection -- but Tommy has problems with ears and eyes. And it's almost impossible for us to medicate him. He sees the dropper bottle coming for his ears or eyes and he runs. When you catch him he shakes and jerks his head. Try putting eye drops in while shaking -- impossible. That's my challenge foe the week.
Wednesday, May 5
Days 0 and 1
The weekend doesn't count because I'm usually "unemployed" on weekends, so this isn't different. And this was pretty typical for a spring/summer weekend. Went to the Mariners game on Saturday and played started softball season on Sunday. Mariners lost and I've yet to see them win in person this year. Softball team went 1-1 which is good since we started last year 0-7. We also met with our hardwood installer again and finalized our floor plan. We're going to install real cherry wood floors rather than prefinished wood. It's a lot messier and will take a few days longer because it will have to be sanded and finished, but it will look a lot better and be less expensive. Also we can get the wood this week instead of a 3-4 week backup for delivery.
Monday was day 0. When we got laid off, it was supposed to be our last day of work, but as noted I was already done so my real plans were for Tuesday. Slept in, went to the gym, hit Costco for some essentials, finished Mother's Day shopping and mailed all our Mother's Day gifts.Got movers in place for Wednesday.
Tuesday I had some plans in place. I took the dogs to the vet in the morning. Cocoa was due for his annual checkup and some vaccines and Hunny Bear needed to have stitches removed from his surgery last week and was due for a vaccine as well. Hunny Bear is great though Cocoa has a yeast infection in his ears. We need to do some serious ear cleaning on him. Then I met a friend for lunch, met with my financial adviser to discuss converting my traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs which has special rules in 2010. It turns out to be a good idea if you're far from retiring and don't want to be forced to take withdrawals at 70 1/2 -- say you don't expect to ever need the money. Didn't make it to the gym.
Monica and I had a 4:30 meeting regarding the Humane Society's vision plan, so it was a bit of a short day.
Plan for day 2 is to be here while they do the prep work for converting carpets to hardwoods.
Monday was day 0. When we got laid off, it was supposed to be our last day of work, but as noted I was already done so my real plans were for Tuesday. Slept in, went to the gym, hit Costco for some essentials, finished Mother's Day shopping and mailed all our Mother's Day gifts.Got movers in place for Wednesday.
Tuesday I had some plans in place. I took the dogs to the vet in the morning. Cocoa was due for his annual checkup and some vaccines and Hunny Bear needed to have stitches removed from his surgery last week and was due for a vaccine as well. Hunny Bear is great though Cocoa has a yeast infection in his ears. We need to do some serious ear cleaning on him. Then I met a friend for lunch, met with my financial adviser to discuss converting my traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs which has special rules in 2010. It turns out to be a good idea if you're far from retiring and don't want to be forced to take withdrawals at 70 1/2 -- say you don't expect to ever need the money. Didn't make it to the gym.
Monica and I had a 4:30 meeting regarding the Humane Society's vision plan, so it was a bit of a short day.
Plan for day 2 is to be here while they do the prep work for converting carpets to hardwoods.
Friday, April 30
Taking the Summer Off
As many of you who are reading this know, a couple months ago my company decided to close its Bellevue office and laid us all off. I was part of the transition team that was retained until May 3 to help move our work from Bellevue to Kiev. While May 3 is technically my last day at Serena, Thursday was my last day in the office and today starts my "summer".
Rather than jump back into another job, I decided to take a break for the summer to work on some projects. I'm going to try to blog about my day-to-day activities though won't necessarily post daily. One thing I want to do is take an extended trip to Las Vegas though this seems harder and harder to fit in around other plans.
Rather than jump back into another job, I decided to take a break for the summer to work on some projects. I'm going to try to blog about my day-to-day activities though won't necessarily post daily. One thing I want to do is take an extended trip to Las Vegas though this seems harder and harder to fit in around other plans.
Tuesday, November 27
Return to normalcy
Well, sort of. Our hardwoods are in and dry. Our rugs are down and our furniture is out of storage. The real work is done. See photos at the link in the previous post.
We still need to move everything back into the buffet, china cabinet, and baker's rack. And of course a few things were damaged in the move and will need to be replaced. And there are a couple of little fixes with the hardwood install.
But at least it feels like a house again. Let us know if/when you'd like to come over and see the finished results.
We still need to move everything back into the buffet, china cabinet, and baker's rack. And of course a few things were damaged in the move and will need to be replaced. And there are a couple of little fixes with the hardwood install.
But at least it feels like a house again. Let us know if/when you'd like to come over and see the finished results.
Sunday, November 4
More remodelling
Our final (I hope) major remodel project, replacing our crapets (sic) with hardwood floors, officially started on Friday. Unofficially the project started a couple weeks before as we started emptying out the rooms so they could pull up the carpets.
After 3+ years here, our carpets are horribly (and embarrassingly) urine stained from dogs -- mainly foster dogs and guests but our dogs aren't perfect either. And if you don't clean (or notice) a stain right away, you can never get it out. So we're ripping out the carpets in our dining room, living room, and piano room and installing hardwood floors. We're also refinishing the hardwood floors in the rest of downstairs to match.
I've started a photo album on snapfish to track the progress. So far all you can see is what's been ripped up. Have to get better to get worse, right?
After 3+ years here, our carpets are horribly (and embarrassingly) urine stained from dogs -- mainly foster dogs and guests but our dogs aren't perfect either. And if you don't clean (or notice) a stain right away, you can never get it out. So we're ripping out the carpets in our dining room, living room, and piano room and installing hardwood floors. We're also refinishing the hardwood floors in the rest of downstairs to match.
I've started a photo album on snapfish to track the progress. So far all you can see is what's been ripped up. Have to get better to get worse, right?
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