Feeling Better Tonight

Some of the littl neighbor girls stopped by to bring something to Jeanne this afternoon and one of them asked "Are you painting?". I asked her how she new and she said "You have paint all over your shirt". Well, I've been painting the last two days and tonight (Tah Dah) the ceiling is DONE, FINISHED, COMPLETED. I was sooooo worried about the new work blending with the old work, and I have to say, even if you know where it is you probably can't see it. You have no idea how happy that makes me. It's 8:30 and we are going to go drink some hot chocolate and watch Ratatouille .

Another Milestone in the Kitchen

I don't think that I have mentioned that one of my biggest concerns of this kitchen remodel has been making the transition from the new work to the old work in a way that does not show. The old ceiling is textured and once before when I did a patch in another part of the house it looked "okay", but it is still visible if you know where to look. Since this joint goes clear across the entire kitchen from one side to the other I have been very worried. In addition to that you throw in the sky light and look at the old texturing around that and it compounds it. Anyway . . . Last night we started the texturing. Some friends at work told me to thin the mud (drywall joint compound) with a little water. A friend of mine who had his own painting business for several years, told me not to thin it. I had done several texturings before and always felt that they were not bad for an amateur, but I was never 100% happy with them, so I tried the thinning and I think it came out pretty good. As it looks right now it seems to be quite difficult to see the transition from the new to the old. Tomorrow we will start painting with a coat of primer and then we'll see even better. I think the best I can hope for is that people don't walk in the room and see where the transition is or be able to see that the new work was even done, compared to the old work. If I accomplish that I'll be happy.

If you click on and enlarge the photo with the sky light you can see where the ceiling goes from shiny to dull. Of course the shiny is the old paint and the dull is the new work that has not been painted yet. I'll post more photos when the painting is done. That is when the tale will be told.

Happy Thanksgiving

I thought I'd just take a moment to tell you about our Thanksgiving day festivities. Yes, we are still working on the kitchen. We have put a couple layers of mud on the walls since the dry walling. As you can see, the really fun part is the sanding. You can definitely see where my goggles and dust mask were. The whole kitchen had a layer of dust about the same as my head did after we were done. Fortunately, this was done a few days ago, not today. Two or three more like this and we might have it ready for texturing the inside of the sky light and the ceiling and then the primer paint. I can hardly wait.

Today being Thanksgiving day we decided not to have it at our house. This is what our kitchen looks like today, complete with plastic hanging to keep the dust in the kitchen as much as possible.


Melissa was kind enough to invite us over to her and Jeff’s place, along with Wade’s family. Eric was having his Thanksgiving with Jannica’s family this year. As you would expect, Melissa had everything just perfect, and even got creative and put a little reminder around each glass of someone who we wish was there, but could not be. Only 10 of us from a family of 27. We sure missed a lot of people. Maybe next year Jeanne and I will do Thanksgiving in some other state???



Makenna and Wade had to leave early to head down to Las Vegas for a Soccer tournament that she is playing in. She wanted to share a little love with the camera.

I love Thanksgiving. It is a day when I get to spend most of it with the people I love the most, and which are the things I am most thankful for in this world. That is why we missed those who weren't there so much. Hope all of you, even the ones who weren't at Melissa and Jeff's house, had a wonderful thanksgiving and that you were reminded of the many many things which God has blessed us with that we are thankful for.

Just in case anyone is not aware of it, if you want a better look at any photo you can just put your mouse pointer on the photo and click on it and you will get a full size image.

I Got the Cutest Video

This cute video showed up in my inbox and I thought you would like to see it to. He is such a smart boy!!!
To view this just click on the play button in the lower left corner.
Enjoy!

The Mind Reader

I know what you are thinking. . . . Yes I do. . . . Yes I do. But besides that I'll bet you noticed when you first looked at this post, that it was just a little different. Maybe you noticed that it popped up just a little faster, or maybe the type is just a little clearer. Whatever it was that you noticed there is a good reason for it. You probably guessed that I added this post with my brand new laptop computer. Well, okay, it's not brand new. Eric had it for a little while, but really never used it, so it was taking up space. We took it to the computer place and had Windows Vista taken off and installed XP. I did that because I don't think Vista is compatable with a lot of my programs. Oh, and I also had them add another gig of memory. Mostly I got this for using for email and the blogs and the family web site. It has the Centrino duo chip and, now, 2 Gb of memory so it should be very fast. I also got a wireless network router that works with my VOIP system (Vonage phone). Hopefully I'll be able to sit in the family room or, in the summer, out on the back porch and do my blogging, email and family web site stuff. Also, when we travel I will have my computer. That's all for now, but next time you see me ask to see my new laptop, then I will feel like you really care.

Love to all,
Dad

Kind of a Milestone Reached

You bet, there is still plenty to do, but there is something about getting the sheet rock all back in place and closed in that makes it "kind of a milestone". In goes the last piece!! Yahoo!!

I had two days off in a row, yesterday and today, and I decided I really wanted to get the sheet rock finished so I started out with framing in the skylight. - It was sure nice to have Eric's nail gun set these last couple weeks. That helped a lot with putting in extra boards and getting any last touch framing done. - Once it was framed in I went ahead and sheet rocked it. I knew that the side walls would be a challenge because I wanted to do them in one piece and they were a pretty weird shape. Thanks to Jeanne's help in measuring and cutting it went in perfectly the first time. You don't have to look very close to see that there was a time span between the photo with just the framing and the photo with the sheet rock in.



In the first photo below you can clearly see the new sheet rock because of the different color. We certainly did not have to use green board, but that was what we had left over and it definitely does not hurt to use it. In the second picture you see the rest of the kitchen done in the green board. We only used green board because we are going to be putting wet stuff on it to put the back splash of stone on it.

Note: Just because we are in the middle of a remodel doesn't mean we can't find a place for the beautiful art our grandchildren send us! :-)

And the Winner Is. . . . .

Congratulations to Eric!

He was the first person to correctly identify the Stove, Microwave, Refrigerator and Dishwasher, so he wins a prize worth $$$. It's a sad thing when I have to bribe people to at least go and look at my blog. I don't know what I'll give him yet, all I know is that it has to be worth at least $2.00 to qualify to be worth "dollars". Don't forget to check in often for more exciting happenings on the Empty Nesters' Blog and The Worlds Best Blog.

Scary Scary Night

What the heck do old people do on night made for kids? Our ward had a Trunk or Treat, but we decided not to do that, partly because I had to work and didn't get home until just about the time it started. It was mighty quiet at work and they kept bugging me to make a pumpkin for the pumpkin contest. They wanted every department represented. Since I was the only one in our department at the time I finally agreed and created the following masterpiece.

WANT TO WIN A PRIZE WORTH UP TO $$$?

The first person to post a comment correctly identifying all of the carvings on this pumpkin will win a prize worth up to $$$.

I guess just before I got home Lori brought Cody and Colt over to see Grandma. Fortunately, Jeanne took a picture so I could see how cute or in this case scary they looked. Later on, Eric and Jannica brought the kids over. Such a beautiful family. We wish we could have seen the rest, but it was sure nice to see the Grubbs on their blog.




We hope everybody had a happy Halloween.

Update on Kitchen

Sadly, not much has been happening this week. We started out with a bang. I had Tuesday off so Monday evening and Tuesday I got busy on the wiring and then hanging and wiring the canned lights. We had quite a time figuring exactly where we wanted them. Before we put up the ceiling dry wall we wanted to be sure they worked and so we tested them and they worked perfect the first time.


Tuesday Evening Melissa and Jeff came over again and we put up the ceiling. We could not have done it without help and we sure appreciate them being there every time. As you look at the picture below, you see what looks like a ragged edge or fringe along the edge where the new sheetrock meets the old. Since I was joining new with old I decided to use a trick that Dustin taught me years ago and instead of cutting the edge I peeled the extra sheetrock off to leave that edge which will be laid out over the old stuff to try to create an invisible seam. Before we put up the new sheetrock we tried to peel off some of the old paint and texturing along the edge of the old work. I'll let you know how it works. Tuesday was the only day we worked on it this week because of my work schedule and I had a lesson to give on Sunday and a client's wedding to prepare for coming up in a couple weeks.

I have all morning both tomorrow and Tuesday so I'm looking forward to getting quite a bit more done, inclucing getting the last electrical box in - I've been waiting trying to figure out exactly where it needs to be - and getting the sky light tunnel built in. For some reason I've had a real mental battle with the best way to do that.

Watch for more updates.

I Promised Pictures

This post won’t make much sense unless you read the previous post. Hopefully this will help you understand what’s been happening around our house the last couple days. As you can see by the first picture, we actually started some work before it was taken since the original wood frame and light fixture in the center of kitchen have been down for months because the florescent fixtures were going out and we knew we would be doing this so we couldn’t bring ourselves to replace the bad ones. In addition the light over the sink has been disassembled for some time.


(Click on any photo to see it full size)

On Wednesday morning we started by taking out the upper cupboards and storing them downstairs. In the second photo you can see the fridge is also gone and all the stuff from inside is on the counter.



As my previous post indicated, one of the biggest time users was getting the attic insulation removed. After hours of blowing it around and then sucking it up with the shop vac and moving it to different parts of the attic, we then started removing some of the drywall off the ceiling and blowing it away and then sucking it up and bagging it to be put back in later. Melissa thought that we had had so much fun she wanted to try it too.



Finally you can see the kitchen with almost all of the dropped ceiling removed. I say almost because if you look closely you will see that some of the 2X6s remain with wires running into them. Before I could remove the boards I had to take the wires out so I could put them down through the tops of the walls. The final picture shows with the drywall removed and the electrical boxes etc. exposed.



Again, I can't thank Melissa and Jeff enough. They truly saved us on this one.