Randar's Stream of Unconsciousness

Wow, holy neglected blog, batman!

2010-02-19T13:39:00.002-06:00

Ok, so I just checked things out here and realized I haven't posted since Kayla was 12 weeks old!

In my best Tiger Woods impersonation: "My apologies good people of the Earth in search of cute Kayla pictures."

As you can imagine, a lot has changed between 12 weeks and 8 and a half months of age. Kayla is now crawling around, pulling herself up on things and standing in very precarious positions! "Da Da" and "Ma Ma" and "dog" are pretty common Kayla yelps, although I think I may have overdone the "da da" training, since she calls almost everything "da da".

We had a wonderful holiday season and now that we're cruising right along through the winter, we can't wait to get her waddling around out in the yard this spring!

Here is a picture/video summary of the last 6 months! Enjoy! Oh, and we just got a handheld video camera that shoots in 720p and 1080p, so high quality videos are coming soon (along with pictures/video of my ridiculous brewery projects)

Here is a pic of Kayla taking a tummy-rest at the St Louis zoo last October. (Clicking on this picture will take you to a collection of pics from her 3-month age)

Next is Kayla's set of 5-month pictures which includes a couple of different costumes (a pumpkin and an ear of corn). At this age she also started to really become a lot of fun to take videos of, so you'll see more and more of our Flickr pics are actually videos.

Ad of course, the more recent pics and videos of Kayla are of her crawling around, attacking dogs, or just the usual cute baby things we find funny. (Kayla's 7-9 month videos and pics are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/randybrace/sets/72157623167614499/detail/)

And a little bit of Kayla at her second swim class!

And of course, where would a blog update be without some home improvement projects? I am (still) working on our master bath remodel, although I am getting there. The floors are done (and the heated floors tested!) and the shower is coming along. Not being able to run a tile saw at reliable intervals due to baby naps and weeknight daddy daycare has really dragged the project along. I will update with pics if and when we finish.

I did manage to find time to finish the garage though. In true Randar style, go big or go home. The garage floor was shot-blasted and a 3-coat 100% solids epoxy floor system was installed by yours truly. Of course, this was a commercial grade epoxy that is used in FDA food processing facilities as well as private airplane hangars, so if you ever need such a facility, LET ME KNOW! :-P This was followed by a custom paint job on the walls, and a Gladiator Garageworks workbench and cabinet system. I even used a PVC-based plastic baseboard along the edges of the stem walls. Believe me, I have heard many times already how people think it's funny we have trim in the garage but not the house!

Here is a pic and you can see more of the garage project by clicking on the pic and going to my Flickr site.

If anyone out there is still reading this, hope you find some time to go through the Kayla videos and pictures. She's a little ball of hillarious!

12 weeks old already

2009-08-23T22:54:00.003-05:00

Yes, you read that correctly. Maybe it didn't seem like it went that fast to the rest of you, who have instead been wondering what happened to your summer, but it has flown by. It seemed as if things were just kind of cruising along. Kayla would have a few really calm days (as much as a week and a half at a time) and we would all sort of settle into a schedule. Then she would have 3 days or so where should would be irritable, eat enormous amounts, and not sleep well. I have to be careful here, because in general she's been a champion sleeper, usually sleeping around 8-9 hours overnight with only 1 or 2 wake-up feedings. After these little irritable bouts, Jenni and I would both comment how she would just look like she grew overnight. Turns out, she pretty much was! She was 11 lbs 8 oz at her 2 month checkup and she's continued to sprout periodically.

Until about 3 weeks ago, she's basically been an eating, pooping, and sleeping blob of cuteness. Suddenly she's started knocking off all kinds of developmental milestones. A couple weeks ago she started really being able to hold her head up on her own and look around. Now she really only wants to be held facing out so she can hold her own head up and be able to see everything.

Then this past week, while I was traveling to the UK for work, she turned herself over from her back to her front. Jenni put her in bed on her back and came in to feed her in the morning and she was sleeping comfortably... on her belly! This continued for a couple days and when I returned, she showed me how it was done. So exciting! She even managed to roll over front to back once. So strong!

Now in just the past 48 hours or so, she has gotten into babbling mode! She's started trying to make sounds directed at us. Just the usual baby babbling, but it's uber-cute. Here is are a couple videos of her babbling with Jenni just a few hours ago:

On Saturday evening we went off to Kayla's first White Sox game against the Baltimore Orioles. We had great weather and were there early enough to do a little tailgating and get into the stadium for the first pitch. We had a great time, and Kayla (except for a hunger spaz attack in the 7th inning) was actively observing all the goings on. We had front row seats along the 1st baseline and we were on television a couple of times. One of the security guards also brought us a foul ball! Kayla gets one in her first game and I've never gotten one in 30 years! Lucky girl. Here is a shot of us from the TV feed in the background and one of us with the foul ball:

Here is a pic of us after the game and then a pic of Kayla watching intently at her first fireworks show after the Sox victory.

A few days in and hundreds of pictures later!

2009-06-06T14:46:00.003-05:00

Kayla's almost a week old. Wow. It's crazy saying that since it seems like she was born just yesterday. We are totally in love with this funny little girl and she's just a riot to watch change every waking minute. Her expressions certainly remind us of my own with her furrowed brow, sleeping with her mouth open, and her "sour puss" face when she scrunches up her mouth.

Kayla's 2nd Day:

Kayla's first day home:

We've also had quite the introduction to parenting. After our first uneventful pediatrician appointment and first lunch out, we had to induce her first bowel movement since we've had her home from the hospital. Comical and eye-opening to say the least. Let's just say that I will have a terribly embarrassing story to share with her pre-teen friends one day.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention what a blessing it's been to be home with momma and baby for this first week (and for the rest of June). It's a luxury most don't get to share. While being layed-off and unemployed can be a very frustrating experience, the fact that I already have a job lined up and have this time with Kayla and Jenni, things couldn't have worked out any better.

Here are some more Kayla pics:

Welcome Kayla Marie to the family

2009-05-31T22:15:00.002-05:00

At 7 am today, Sunday, May 31st, Kayla Marie Brace was born as a happy and healthy 7 pound 8 oz and 20 inch baby girl. Baby and momma are healthy and resting after a relatively brief labor which started at 10 pm last night.

As some may know, Jenni's official due date was May 24th. We had several "last dinners out", "last grocery shopping", etc, but on Saturday night we were convinced we were destined to be induced early this coming week. All of this after a very encouraging doctor appt on Wednesday where our doc predicted labor within 24-46 hours and Jenni was already 3.5-4 cm dilated. By Saturday night we'd all but given up (despite Jenni having some light cramping), so we went to dinner at Maggiano's, visited some friends for a few minutes, and returned home around 9:30 with the intent to finish some laundry and watch a movie we've been meaning to watch for about 6 months now. 10 minutes into the movie Jenni bent down to grab a towel and said something to the effect of (sorry, events are already somewhat blurry) "UhOH, I think my water just broke". No, not a huge gush like the movies, but just a little trickle that was no-doubt her membranes rupturing. Within 10-15 minutes, she had her first contraction and they were 5 minutes apart and 30 seconds long right from the start. 40 minutes later things were obviously progressing and by 11:50 pm we were walking into the maternity ward at Highland Park Hospital (which has amazing facilities, huge birthing/recovery rooms, and an outstanding staff, btw). Here is a pic of Jenni from when we had checked into the hospital and contractions were still mild and 4 or 5 minutes apart. Still smiling!

From there, things progressed quite well and Jenni continued to have accelerating contractions. Being the middle of the night, things were quite serene and we were really able to focus on Jenni's breathing and relaxing between contractions (with the help of calming ocean sounds television on the hospital TV network, we didn't even need the iPod). The hospital had an egg shaped Yoga ball that was indispensable. Jenni was able to stay on her knees during contractions and lean over the ball while staying in bed. This was by far the most comfortable position for her even though the baby was positioned perfectly. Here is a pic of Jenni on the Yoga ball during labor. She is deep into her breathing and was basically meditating between contractions and focusing on her breathing and a little stuffed animal that looked like our dog Chomper. It was pretty amazing that she was able to do all of this with no medication and even without an IV. She was awesome.

Jenni was having a little break in the contractions and some light urges to push. I looked into the little trusty "manual" we got at the birthing class to get some kind of indication into what stage we were in and lo and behold, she fit the description of just having finished one of the most difficult stages of labor (transition) while barely breaking a sweat. Sure enough, the doctor came in shortly thereafter and Jenni was ready to push. After 2 tough hours of exhausting contractions and pushing, out came our beautiful little girl. A couple little cries were enough to ease everyone's concerns. Here is a wonderful pic of her nursing (which came quite naturally) immediately after delivery. Jenni looks like she's been at the spa for crying out loud!

There are a few more pictures with mother and father, grandparents, etc if you click on any of the pics and go to the Flickr site (no need to register).

And with that, I'm off to try to catch a few Z's while I can. Goodnight!

Long time without an update

2009-05-15T12:40:00.004-05:00

I admit, I've been delinquent in my duties as the official biographer of this pregnancy thing. As anyone who still reads this knows, Jenni is preggo and due May 24th (any day now). We have taken a few "bump" pics along the way, but as you'd expect here in the final days, Jenni has gotten quite round (I might be in trouble for putting it that way, LOL). We have taken all the appropriate classes, are going to try for as natural a birth as possible, and we have indeed picked out a name for the little girl (and no, we aren't telling anyone the name, so don't ask). I have included a picture from the baby shower that shows Jenni a couple weeks ago. I also want to thank my Mom, mother-in-law, and Aunts Sheree and Kay who worked very hard to put together a very nice shower for us.

I will try to be more diligent in updating the blog and posting baby pics to Flickr or Facebook (we have been more active on Facebook than the blog lately). Other updates include the purchase of half a buffalo in January from a ranch in northern Michigan (about 300 pounds). We have made a lot of tasty meals so far that include meatballs, chili, burgers, steaks, fajitas, etc. Pretty sweet. Also, in a desperate attempt to get into shape before the baby comes, I have been doing p90x workouts (you may have seen the infomercials). Let's just say they are crazy-hard and have worked pretty well. I have 17 days left to go to finish the 90 days and have lost or relocated some much needed weight and feel great heading into sleep deprivation cycle. I surely would have lost more if I had been more careful about diet and cut down on the beer, but how is that any fun? If interested in learning more about p90x, see the p90x Official Website. We also made one last trip out to San Diego to visit my sister and a couple of friends out there before my sister moves to Ohio this summer. Here are some pics from the San Diego Zoo with Jenni and our friend Jim, his wife, and step-daughter.

In other news, the company I worked for the past 4 years decided to get out of the cellular business and closed up shop after several failed attempts to sell the division. As of April 24th, I have been happily unemployed. The good news is we had a good severance package and the better news is that I already have a job lined up to start at the end of June. This will make for a nice pre/post baby paternity leave that also coincides with some beautiful weather. This time and weather has given me the time to get the yard and garden in prime condition. We are about to transplant all our little seedlings we started indoors (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, broccoli, herbs, zucchini & squash, etc). Meanwhile, spring is in full bloom and I was able to take a little photographic tour of the garden flowers/plants. You can click on this flower picture to get to see the whole collection.

As usual, we are in the middle of a renovation project. The Master Bed/Bath/Closet are currently in disarray as we reconfigure the size of the closet/bath as well as entirely redo the bathroom. We are waiting to finalize our refinancing (hopefully for the last time) before making the major purchases (tile, vanity/top, heated floor mats, etc). The closet has been re-framed and drywalled and we are sort of stalled here as the baby is due to pop out any time now.

Mother's Day is also when we usually celebrate Jenni's cousin Justin's birthday, so here are some family pics from the dual-celebration event.

And in final news, my little brother Derrick graduated from UIC with a BS in Mechanical engineering last weekend. Here are a few pics from the event. Congrats D!

It's a girl!

2009-01-11T11:10:00.003-06:00

On the first Monday of January, we learned our fate. That's right, we're having a little girl! Jenni has been convinced it was a boy, so much so she has been calling it "him". So inevitably, it had to be a girl, hehe.

Here is a snippet of her face from the 20 week ultrasound:

So, needless to say, we are still happy and excited and just thankful that all tests have come back normal and she appears to be totally healthy. Jenni is hungry all the time, wants to sleep 9 hours a night (that may be normal for her though), feels like a whale (center of gravity is different so she struggles to turn over), and reacts in amazement daily about the size of her giant preggo boobs. She's excited that she is finally starting to "look" pregnant to the average passer by (as opposed to just looking "fat", as she has complained about).

In other news, we are busy as usual. Jenni (along with some ridiculous contractor estimates) convinced me to renovated Jenni's parents' bathroom. This was just a normal 5x8 bath, but it was in similar shape and age to those in our house. We didn't get a good before picture (it was scary), and the sink and medicine cabinet are not yet in, but here is a picture of what it looks like today (well, a couple weeks ago). Jenni's family might be a bit shocked since there used to be a window inthe middly of the tub surround. We removed and boarded it up and my siding guy will fix it this winter. All this work has also gotten me back into the home renovation mood. Winter has us stir crazy and the serious planning for the master bath renovation is in full swing. This weekend I ripped out the tile and tub from the surround and began exploring the plumbing plan.

We have all kinds of pictures from the various Xmas/New Years functions (and lot's of pictures of our 3-month old niece, Isabel) and fun. In chronological order (click on any picture to go to the matching album):

Weiss Lab Turkey (and anything else you can think of) Fry:

The Menu included mixed root veggie chips, mushrooms, zucchini, tempura veggies, risotto balls, pierogies (homemade by Jenni & her mom), bloomin' onions, a 20 lb turkey and all kinds of other non-fried stuff. Good stuff.

Jenni's Dad's (Ejka)family Xmas party:

Jenni's Mom's Family Xmas:

Randy's Family Xmas

New Years at our house with Vedders and Stewarts (a 4-dog night):

And on a final note, we love our new camera, but it can be time consuming to do all the post-processing of the images when taken in RAW format. They turn out so much nicer I keep telling myself it is worth it.

Camera training and baby preparations...

2008-12-05T14:28:00.002-06:00

For years Jenni and I have been missing our old SLR film cameras and all the interesting pictures and flexibility it gave us. It has been many years since my old Canon A100 bit the dust and the point-and-shoots have been great for taking candid shots. However, recent trips to Yosemite and elsewhere has highlighted what I have been missing. Artistic flexibility.

So, with the bun in the oven, we broke down and bought a Canon 40D last week when the price finally dropped to what we deemed "affordable". Figuring that we would be taking many baby and kid pictures in the future and having the dogs to practice on, this is going to be a 6-month crash course before the baby arrives and our free-time is centered around it.

That being said, having had 2-3 days to play (and already 200-300 pics under my belt), here are a few dog and other pics I have snapped with the also new 60mm Macro lens (that's perfect for garden closeups or portrait shots).

As for Preggo, she is doing well and although she is starting to feel "big", it's only the beginning as we approach 16 weeks.

Some news on Turkeyday

2008-11-27T11:40:00.002-06:00

First, Happy Thanksgiving to all (and any that still read this), but on to our news. Jenni and I are expecting a little addition to our family in May. No, not another little fu-fu dog. While we are totally excited and thrilled, we also recognize that we are in no way prepared for this (as any first-timer should readily admit).

So, while this means many new things for us, we are only now thinking of how we will be prepared for this. We just bought a new Digital SLR to record as many of the upcoming moments as possible and I am planning for the renovation of our master bath/closet (since I figure to have little time on my hands for a project this large in the near future). Currently, though, I am working on Jenni's parents bathroom and I am squarely in the middle of that project.

So Happy Thanksgiving [our last in peace :-)]

Garden is gone, cold weather setting in, house projects on hold

2008-10-27T17:49:00.002-05:00

Well, not too much to update everyone on these days (if anyone even still reads our delinquent blog). We have been uber-busy with weekend events since my 30th birthday mixed in with mass garden production, canning veggies, and generally just trying to keep up with the normal home things. Our autumn has been filled with football, a new niece, a couple of rocking concerts, and lots of chillin'.

All of that being said, as the financial and housing markets leave much to be desired, we still have a few unfinished projects going on and new ones we'd like to get underway. I started painting windows only to realize the wood windows we have will not fit back into their frames easily and I think I will be spending some spring days/nights scraping the paint off and staining/lacquering them instead. This, of course, also puts some time delay into our plans to finish the trim and molding throughout the house. I think I can still do baseboards and doors, but window trim will have to wait :(.

In addition to these projects, I would also like to get started on our master bathroom/closet remodel and I have started drawing up some schematics and plans for said area. This, of course, will be a huge project, but if we are ever going to get it done, we probably have to start sooner than later. The good news is that most home improvement stores are so desperate for business there are plenty of good deals to be had. But, before any of that can go forward, there is considerable drywall, framing, and lighting work to be done, so you can see this will be a winter-long project in all likelihood.

No pictures this post, but we will try to put some up on our Flickr site, so check back later!

Tomatoes, Tomatoes and More Tomatoes

2008-08-25T00:31:00.008-05:00

Sorry for the long delay between posts. We've been busy! We've been working hard on our huge garden this year. At the moment we're up to our ears in tomatoes, but we've also had huge crops of peas, green beans, eggplant, zucchini, cucumber, broccoli, and lettuce. And I almost forgot, the gazillion types of pepper plants that Randy managed to sneak in behind my back, and the reason we ripped up half the yard, Randy's hops!

My butterfly garden has also been doing well. Chomper loves to walk through the flowers in hunt of butterflies. While she loves to chase them, she can't quite catch them! Dusty on the other hand, has been busy terrorizing (is that the origin of "terrior") the neighborhood. Add four bunnies and a small bird to her list of "defeats".

Randy's been busy finishing up the hall bath. Which is finally completed and looks beautiful! Also works beautifully (an added bonus). We also had carpet installed in the guest bedrooms. A huge upgrade from plywood subfloor. And we finally have doors! Our plan is to finish up the trim and get a final coat on the doors. Then maybe we'll think about the master bedroom updates..... Maybe.... Other than, just enjoying the beautiful Chicago summer, and celebrating a few birthdays (celebrated my 30th in June and gearing up for Randy's 30th party this upcoming weekend.

Chicago-to-Telluride-to-Rome-to-Yosemite

2008-04-17T23:57:00.002-05:00

What is going on here? Yes, a ski trip to Telluride with some friends and a planned family trip to Yosemite has now been mixed with a trip to Rome next week. I'm heading out for 4 days to Rome and hope to be able to see a few of the sights in the little bit of free time I will have. Jenni is, of course, jealous, but the inside of a conference room looks the same in just about every country.

Having never been to Rome and having only a few days to research, I am a little pessimistic about really getting a flavor for the city and the historical sights. Luckily I will be with a few coworkers who have spent some time there and there is the outside chance of getting a "behind the scenes" tour of the Vatican.

I will have pictures when I return, but for now I will have to amaze you with the pictures of Telluride. Skiing at 12,000 feet and sleeping (in a 6,000 sq ft "cabin" down the street from Oprah and Dan Quale) at 10,000 feet makes for an easily-winded vacationer!

Also, I will have to continue to replace renovation pictures with vacation and beard pictures... We're still working on the upstairs bath, recently had carpeting installed in 2 of the spare bedrooms, and have a garage full of solid pine doors sitting around waiting to be painted. At least spring is here so I can start building my hop trellis and working on the landscaping (dripping sarcasm).

Enjoy!

Festival of Beards 2008

2008-02-16T10:19:00.002-06:00

Well, the time finally came to shave my scraggly cave-man beard. After about 3 months of "torture" (as Jenni describes it), the photo-documentary of the second annual Festival of Beards follows:

The shaggy beginning:

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

Back to the grind...

2008-01-10T11:32:00.000-06:00

We had a great New Year and Holiday season, spending tons of time with family around the Chicago area and Michigan. Now, with the Holidays over, the extra 10 pounds of "middleware" I am carrying around, and Jenni and I both being back in the old work routine, I figured it would be a good time to give everyone an update. Here is a Xmas picture with more up on the Flickr site:

I have pictures from the kitchen up on my Flickr site. If you have seen the pre-renovation pictures but have not yet seen the finished product, you should take a look. It is quite the transformation. The same could be said of the floor and new stairs, so here is a picture of each (click to follow to more).

Now we are on to what we hope is the home stretch. I am in the process of tiling the upstairs hall bath and we are picking out carpets for the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms. After that, we have doors and trim left to do this spring. We are probably going to wait a while to do the master bathroom, but we will see how the rest of this goes. Here is an in-progress picture of the tiling of the bathroom.

No pictures until after the Holidays...

2007-12-07T16:43:00.001-06:00

Well, as things are coming together, I figured I would stop osting pics until after the Holidays. We are hosting several Holiday parties, starting this weekend with Jenni's lab. It will be our second Turkey Fry of the season, and we intend to start up some more home brew to ensure we have plenty of variety and quantity on hand for the later parties.

I figured between Jenni's family, my family, and any other slackards I may be seeing over the Christmas season, I don't want to spoil what will otherwise be a shocking transformation of the gloomy, badly-painted, extremely dirty home we purchased in August 2006, into the "still coming along" home we will have ready by Christmas.

I still have some drywall repairs to make, a little electrical, the tiling of the upstairs bathroom, and we have to pick out and have carpet installed. All in all, still a lot of work to do that probably won't ALL get done by the end of the year.

We're going to host Christmas? WHA!?!?

2007-11-19T18:32:00.000-06:00

Well, that's what Jenni told her family! So I guess we are going to be busting our butts from here till then to make it happen.

Kitchen is basically done (minus the backsplash):

The stairs company (Cooper Stairs) was here today starting the stairs after we demolished them this weekend with help of friends Tom and Stewbie:

Progress so far:

Jerusalem redux

2007-11-19T18:08:00.000-06:00

Well, I never got around to posting much about my trip to Israel. We spent most of our time just north of Tel Aviv. This is about a 2-hour drive from Jerusalem. Some comments or observations:

- Much more modern than I thought. Tel Aviv is a very modern city (supposedly the most "Western" city in Israel). Large boardwalk on the Med and tons of excellent restaurants and bars.
- Israel, for the most part, seems to be free of conflict. There are a few hot-spots, primarily in the occupied territories (Gaza, West Bank). Israelis go about their daily business just as you or I might. The only difference seems to be the security in certain areas, but it not an inconvenience.
- Most Israelis feel that they would give Palestine their own country in a heartbeat if they could trust that the conflict/violence would end. Most would even give up Jerusalem as long as it remained open to all. One sign that I wish I could have gotten on film before we passed was of an American Indian character with a saying "Ask me about land for peace" with an outline of Palestine super-imposed over a bullseye with an arrow in it... I think that was pretty symbolic of the lack of trust between the sides.
- The Old City is amazingly small. You can walk through it in no time at all. We took a guided tour for a few hours and covered most of the primary spots. The Wailing Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Arab and Armenian quarters, etc.

Here is one picture and click on it to see the whole list of pictures from the Old City.

Well, things are still moving forward, despite the lack of posts

2007-10-26T17:29:00.000-05:00

I figured I would update the blog before heading out of the country for the next week. I will be traveling to Tel Aviv for the next week to attend some meetings for work. Luckily, we will have the better part of a day to go on a tour of Jeruselem. We are staying at a hotel right on the Mediterranean and the weather is supposed to be 80 degrees and sunny every day. I will have pictures and commentary when I reutn.

But, we are moving along with the house. We have the finishing touches on the kitchen left to be made and we are waiting for our custom staircase to be completed. The company doing the stairs estimates it to be sometime around Thanksgiving they should be ready to install. In preparation of that, we are on the hook to finish the hardwood flooring throughout the rest of the house and painting. I took Thursday off to address some unlevel flooring issues. I had to rip out a huge chunk of sub-floor and then add strips of ripped-down 2x4's to the top of the joists and sand them to level. Quite a tiring day of work. The upstairs bath is roughed-in and the sheetrock and cement backer for the tile are both in as well.

I keep thinking we are right around the corner from being finished, but I have been thinking that for the past few months. Hopefully once the stairs and floors are done, it will seem much more "complete." Also, having a new finished bath upstairs will be a big relief. Hopefully we will be done in time to host some fun Christmas parties!

Here are some pics to have a look at and click to see more:

Kitchen updates!

2007-09-13T15:57:00.001-05:00

Here are some updated pictures from the kitchen renovation. We had the granite installed on Wednesday and the Advantium fixed and oven installed on Monday. Last night, I installed all the plumbing fixtures and we now have a "working" kitchen. All that is left is to get the dishwasher, hood, and cooktop installed. The we can order the last few trim and door pieces that are needed!

Oh, and we have started on the upstairs hallway bath. We installed a new ceiling and lights with a new ultra-quiet vent fan. Hopefully we can get the bathtub in very soon, so we can start on the walls and tiling the floor!

As usual, click on the picture to take you to our picture site and view the rest:

40 days and 40 nights...

2007-08-23T17:08:00.000-05:00

In keeping with the biblical references, I just had to comment about this unbelievable series of storms we have had here in Chicago in August. The recorded average for rainfall in the month of August in Wheeling, IL is 4.84". As I am sitting here in the pouring rain being stuck at work, we have already had 15.19" of rain this month (at least another inch today and more rain on the way tomorrow). I have had a tough time tracking down the record monthly rainfall for anywhere in Norther Illinois for the month of August, but this has got to be a record. I have never seen anything like this.

We have lost power twice within the last 2 weeks in huge overnight storms and today a funnel cloud was seen over the city of Chicago. This has been a real test of our modified drainage strategy and re-sloped landscaping. We have had a little bit of water weaping through a crack in the foundation, but for the amount of rain we have had in several of these storms, we have done pretty well. Most of the people I know that have finished basements and backup systems have even been having issues.

Ok, now on to more exciting progress on the construction. Last post showed the installation progress of the floors. As of this Monday, the cabinets have been going in. Slowly but surely, they have been going in. The fridge is being delivered tomorrow and the rest of the appliances are already on-site. The granite installer will be over to measure the space on Tuesday and within the next 2 weeks, we should have a "finished" kitchen.

Floors going in slowly but surely

2007-08-18T00:33:00.000-05:00

With the kitchen cabinets delivered Friday, Aug 17th, and schedule to be installed beginning Monday, we're rushing to finish the floors in the South half of the house (family room, kitchen, dining room). I took a few days off work, despite some hectic work schedules and projects ongoing, to make sure enough is completed for the kitchen work to continue.

Here are a few pictures of the in-progress installation and finally, a couple pictures of what we have complete right now.

Here I am working the power nailer. Unfortunately, Brazilian Cherry is almost 2x as hard as Red or White Oak. This is great for durability, but it makes installation a pain in the butt. The wood is too hard for the power nailer to fully drive the nail into the tongue of the planks. This means I have to go by hand and set every single nail. Ugh. You can see the hardness ratings of hardwoods at the following link:

The Janka Hardness Scale

Measure twice, cut once!

And here is what it looks like in a larger room:

On the 7th day, Randar said, "Let there be light!"

2007-07-31T12:59:00.001-05:00

We have finished installing the electrical, plumbing, and re-routing the ductwork so the drywall can be installed next week Monday. Tuesday morning the carpenter will be in to build the half-wall where the raised seating area will be and he will add 2" spacers to the the studs on the wall where the refridgerator will be so that it will be plumb and square.

Here are some pictures of "the warehouse" (click on the pictures to go to a bunch more):

Things are starting to hit a stride, I think. It seemed like we would never be getting this finished, but as the cabinets shipped from the factory on Monday, we are going to have to kick it into high gear to get everything done in time.

We still have a few minor items to resolve, such as insulating the exterior walls, but I think we are essentially ready. Once the drywall is installed, taped, and sanded, we will be rushing to get the floors installed. This will require a lot of work on a very uneven subfloor as well as some prep work for my eventual "Staircase to Heaven" that will be hand-crafted from Brazilian Cherry planks, handrails, and wrought iron ballusters. This of course is of far less priority than finishing everything that currently stands in our way of having the kitchen finished. I think we are already tired of walking to the basement to fetch anything from the fridge or eating pre-cooked and frozen meals.

We're not going to meet our August 15th deadline (one year from move-in), but we are still hoping to be done by labor day weekend.

By the way, this past weekend we went to the Eric Clapton Guitar Festival at Toyota Park and had a blast. We saw a legendary list of guitar, rock, and blues gods that is rarely assembled in the same location (Clapton last held this festival in 2004). Here is the list of attendees. I won't pick out my favorite, because the whole thing was simply awesome. We were probably 30-40 yards from stage and the concert lasted from about noon till 11:00 pm. What a day!

Here is a barely interpretable picture of Eric Clapton on stage:

New developments

2007-06-12T17:05:00.000-05:00

We have the construction crew in house today working on the structural beam removal. When I left for work after lunch, they had the temporary walls in place, the new 3-part gluelam beam was going up one piece at a time, and in general, it was loud! Here are some "in-progress" pictures that I will update over the next couple of days. Just click on this picture to take you to the picture site that will list all the pictures for this project and I will add updates there even if I do not add a new blog post.

Also, since we have the ceiling off and we have access to all the plumbing, we decided, "hey, we don't have enough to do, let's renovate the upstairs guest/kids bath, too!" So here are some pictures of the demolition. We are going to go with a 1-1/4 inch hexagon marble tile for the floor and a crackled brick tile with some additional features in the tub surround. The tub is going to come out tonight I think, but I might have to wait for one of my buddies to come over to help me get it down the stairs...

More to come. Check back early and often!

where have we been for 2 months?

2007-06-03T23:34:00.000-05:00

Well, you might ask if we're still alive? Maybe we killed each other during a late night renovation session? Well, not to disappoint, but we've been busy re-grading our yeard, redoing the entire lawn and landscaping, and we've also been preparing for our kitchen/floor renovation.

As opposed to giving tons of commentary and stories, I'll leave you to the pictures, as 2 months of stories would take days of writing.

Here are some Landsaping photos after we roto-tilled the entire front and back, dug out a huge french drain and added a lot of new plants and grass. Click on this picture to go to a collection of about 20 others:

We've also been stripping out the remnants of our kitchen to do a lot of the plumbing and electrical prep work before drywalling and doing the floors before the rest of the kitchen is installed.

And here is one last set of some pictures of us removing the front closet. We plan to put a boot bench and coat hooks here to open the space:

Hopefully it won't be another 2 months before the next update. We should have lots of progress to report! (we hope!)

Been a long time

2007-04-02T13:00:00.000-05:00

It's been a little over a month since the last update and we feel like the pace of progress has slowed to a halt. That being said, with the coming warmer weather, we're eager to get outside and enjoy going some manual labor outdoors! Over the past month, we have made some progress on various tasks:

We have begun to hang the laundry room cabinets, as pictured here. The sink base is not yet installed and the crown molding is not yet attached. That will be a quick day's work sometime in the near future (waiting on a part for the washer/dryer).

We have also been interviewing and trying to pick out our kitchen contractor, cabinets, appliances, etc. This is more leg-work than manual labor. With that in mind, we have to be ready to install our new hardwood floor as soon as we get a contractor in to replace a structural beam and we order our kitchen cabinets. From that point, we need to have all the flooring installed by the time the cabinets arrive. We have selected Brazilian cherry hardwood flooring and we will be going with white trim and white doors throughout the house. I think Jenni has looked at a few too many Pottery Barn catalogs, myself. But, I know it will turn out beautifully. Here are some progress shots showing the removal of the foyer ceramic tile and the hardwood in the family room.

With some warm weather we also have headed outside to get a little bit of yard work done. We plan to rototill the entire back yard and re-grade it to have a nice continuous slope away from the house. Right now I would call it "lumpy" at best. We removed a rotted cedar railing from the external access stairwell to the basement as pictured. What's left are 3 very deep post-holes that were filled with concrete that we had to break up and remove. We'll be replacing these within the next few weeks.

We also have been trying to figure out a way to get our sump pump to drain away from the house. With the current drainage pattern we have a mini lake next to the house (and in the neighbor's yard). We found a buried drainage pipe yesterday for just the use. Now we just have to try to figure out why it wasn't being used! However, with rain in the forecast and the weekend winding down, we didn't take it apart to determine its usefulness. This will be a nice task for a drier day in the near future!

More updates pictures to come soon. We have determined that we are very good at demolition, but rebuilding everything seems to be a much slower task!

Festival of Beards Week

2007-02-23T13:18:00.000-06:00

In honor of my first attempt at growing a beard, this week was the first (annual?) Festival of Beards Week. After not-shaving for a week over Christmas, I decided to just keep letting in grow out of curiosity. Well, Jenni and I had both finally had enough of the "mountain man" look...

Here is the weekly array of beard configurations for Festival of Beards Week 2007:

Monday's neatly trimmed beard:

Tuesday's rendition of Chops & Goatee:

Wednesday's reduced chops and trimmed goatee:

Thursday's ridiculous Reno 911 style mustache:

Friday's soul patch and side burns:

Beer brewing and random house updates...

2007-02-23T12:55:00.000-06:00

We have been dieing to brew our own beer for quite some time, and with Jenni's yeast experience, we figured we could make some kind of justifiable science experiment out of it in the process. So, for Valentine's day, I surprised Jenni with a pretty serious beer brew kit. This had big glass carboys and all kinds of tubes and whatnot. Northern Brewer is THE place to get all your homebrew supplies if you decide to give it a try. Seems pretty darn easy.

So, my friend Mike has been brewing his own beer since New Years and was in town for work, so we had a beer brewing night Wednesday night this week. Despite some work obligations we had until about 8:00, we still managed to get our Bavarian Dunkel (a dark German Lager) brewed and it is now fermenting in the basement. We'll see how it turned out in about 6-8 weeks! We'll keep you all updated and hopefully this and our other English and India Pale Ale brews will also go well.

Here are some pictures Jenni took while Mike, Tom (AKA Eddie) and I were siphoning and filtering the wort from the kettle, through a wort cooling device called the Chillzilla, and into the glass carboy, where it is currently fermenting:

As for the house? Well, the winter has taken its toll. Beer drinking/brewing, warmth, and sleep have taken over as our primary activities. We're still managing to make some progress. We are plastering and sanding the walls and ceilings in all of the bedrooms at one time. This has been a ton of work, as we have had to replace sections of drywall, fix damage from wall paper borders, the window installation, and a lot of general damage to the wall surfaces. The ceilings are essentially done (one more coat of paint, and the difference is already huge. As soon as we finish painting we're hoping to have the carpet and flooring work started. This may take some time, but it will make a huge difference in how we feel about the coziness of the house.

Also, as I previously wrote, we received our washer and dryer and are making progress on finishing up in the laundry room. The walls are finished, some ceiling touch-ups are required, and we're going to start installing the cabinets this weekend. Pictures to follow, of course!

If you have a few minutes, you should read this column about hanging cabinets. It's a really funny summary of what nearly every home improvement project entails to some degree. How to Hang a Cabinet

You're Damn Right I Got the Blues

2007-02-09T14:52:00.000-06:00

If you're a fan of the Blues, you've surely heard of Buddy Guy. If not, it's time to open your eyes and ears to one of the best Blues musicians to ever play. He was Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn before either were able to even pick up a guitar and play.

A couple weekends ago we went to Buddy Guy's last concert at Legends (his blues club)in Chicago. Legends is on Columbia University property and when his lease ended, they announced plans to build a new student center on the site where Legends has been for the past 17 years. Legends is scheduled to close in the middle of the summer, so if you have never been... GO. If you have never heard the Blues... GO. While Buddy promised to do whatever it took to open a new club in the very near future, this was the last show of his annual January series of concerts that have been a staple in Chicago for many years.

Our friends Shane and Jen went along for their first time. Jenni and I have been to one of his shows here last year and also saw him at Ravinia 2 years ago. It's always an amazing and lively show, featuring Buddy walking among the audience and even outside in the dead of winter, only to re-enter among the crowd. This is a bit he picked up from Guitar Slim in his formative days growing up in Louisiana and kept with him to this day. Even at the age of 72 he get's it revved up and is a wild-man.

Here are some pictures from the concert, where we showed up 3.5 hours early to ensure we got a table and were able to sit and watch Buddy from close-up, as you can see here. I hope you'll go out and buy his box set, which is only $29 on Amazon.com and includes 3 great CD's and a DVD of live shows and interviews with Buddy about his life in the Blues music industry. Worth every penny.

Oh, and for an update on the house, we finally got our washer and dryer and have been doing laundry for days it seems! HAHA!

A few updates on the house

2007-01-30T15:45:00.000-06:00

We're still making some progress on the house, although it has been frustrating to have so many different projects going at once and not having any of them fully completed yet. We are almost finished with the drywall in the garage. I only have to trim out the areas around the garage doors. However, that still leaves the plaster/taping and the painting of the garage left for later. Still, it is crucial to be able to park 2 cars in the garage when it's 15 degrees out in the morning. Makes a huge difference.

On to the laundry room... We've plastered and painted the room in preparation for the washer and dryer. However, after the delivery company "lost" our first washing machine, the washer is now on backorder and we don't know when we will eventually receive it. It's beyond frustrating to have paid for these things 3 months ago and still be running to the Laundromat every 2 weeks. The cabinets are sitting in our living room now, also waiting to be installed after the washer/dryer arrive. Then we'll have to get a hold of the countertop people to come out and finish that room.

The downstairs bath, while "finished", still lacks a mirror or toilet paper and towel holders. We simply cannot find anything that remotely matches our sink in an oil-rubbed bronze finish.

We are so sick of our gross bedrooms that we have hastily undertaken a drywalling project to patch and finish the walls in preparation for painting. At that point, we're having the carpet replaced so we don't have to cringe every time we walk around without shoes on. Would be very nice to have our office set up and to have a clean and comfy guest room complete.

That is the majority of our current ongoing projects. We are still looking for a structural engineer and contractor to remove the beam in our living room and we're still floor shopping (although we've essentially settled on Brazilian cherry hardwood floors).

Here are a few pics of the garage to take a look at the "final" product with lighting, windows, drywall and cars (sans paint/plaster)!

Before:
After:

The pictures are in!

2007-01-09T12:27:00.000-06:00

Here are a slew of pictures from our vacation adventures. Click on the picture below to take you to all our pictures:

One crazy road trip, errr, Christmas, errr, New Years...

2007-01-04T15:19:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year to everyone! Well, let me start out by updating the house before I detail the total insanity of our trip to Lake Tahoe for Christmas. The windows and siding are officially complete. The house is practically a new house (on the outside).

(I'll put some photos up tomorrow)

As for Tahoe... Oh lordy, where to start?

So, we had planned to go to Tahoe for the Friday-to-Friday encompassing Christmas. My parents rented a house on the north end of the lake in King's Beach. It was a beautiful house, but I digress. On the evening before our departure we found out our flight had been cancelled. When given the option of connecting through Denver or San Fransisco in December, pick San Fransisco. Anywho, we finally got through to United reservations at 5:00 am Friday morning after deciding to sleep on it. The earliest flight they could get us on was Christmas Day arriving at Reno at around midnight. This would put us in Tahoe at about 2:00 am and we would have only had 3 days there. Not worth the cost of the tickets, we decided. Running out of options Jenni and I laid in bed for about a half hour before we both kind of suggested to drive to Tahoe. Dismissing it at first, we both just laid there and finally I said... let's go.

I figured we could be in Nebraska by noon and we were already packed and ready to go! So we threw our stuff in the Prius and headed for California! The trip out there wasn't terrible, but we did have our adventures. We tried to make Salt Lake City the first night but the road conditions in Western Wyoming were too icy and windy to make it, so we stopped in Rock Springs, WY for the night before heading to Salt Lake City in the morning. We stopped and got new tires in Salt Lake that morning and we were in Tahoe by dinner! Not too shabby.

As for the adventure along the way. I was trying to make one final stop for food and gas in Nevada and trying to do so where we wouldn't have to stop again before getting to Tahoe. However, the Prius decided to run out of gas a mile and a half from the exit where we intended to fuel up in Winnemucca, NV. The battery on the hybrid kicked in and got us to the off-ramp, where we proceeded to coast to the stop sign at the bottom. The sign there read 1.3 miles to the Shell station. NO WAY we'd make that, we thought. But, we turned and the Prius gave all it had to make it up a small hill at 5 mph before crapping out at the top of the hill. Luckily there was a shady "Gas'n'Go" or something or other there at the bottom of the hill and we were able to coast into the station on complete and utter EMPTY. We wouldn't have made it another 20 feet, as witnessed by Jenni's "should I get out and push" comment!

However, we made it to Tahoe and we made it in one piece.

Once there, we wined, dined, and skied our hearts out. Had a great Christmas dinner prepared by my mom and sister and and everything went pretty well. Had a very good time.

On the last skiing day, however, my brother managed to split his head open on the last run of the day in a collision with a snowboarder (my brother's fault). When his ski snapped off and came up behind him and clipped him in the back of the head, the instant flowing of blood was a sure sign of a significant cut. I had him put his hat on and goggle band over the wound and ski straight to the lodge. There we got a close look at what turned out to be a semi-circle shaped gash that essentially was half of a scalping. A large flap of skin peeled back when I took a closer look and we got him right to the ski patrol medical services office.

Turns out the guy needed 17 staples and the results I will post on here tomorrow in picture form :-)

Driving back turned out to be the real adventure, however. Nothing like the adventures of my friend Alex who is now in Ecuador attempting to climb a 19,000+ foot mountain (yes, you read that correctly), but an adventure all the same.

We decided to drive along the edge of Yosemite and back through Death Valley and Vegas before stopping at the Grand Canyon on our way home via a more Southern route that would take us through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas before heading North. Everything went well up to Albuquerque, NM. As we approached Albuquerque we heard they had closed Interstate 40 heading East. However, as we got closer, we found a 1-800 number to call for road conditions that proclaimed I-40 had just been re-opened. This was at about 5:00 pm, so we figured all was well if they were opening the road right before sunset. As we pulled into Albuquerque, the road was a parking lot. We figured if worst came to worse we could head south through El Paso, TX and over to Dallas. However, we used the Prius navigation system to wind through Albuquerque and came out the other side on Old Route 66. This followed I-40 for a long ways and gave us a chance to look at traffic. After about 8-10 miles traffic opened up and we jumped onto the interstate. Yet, just 50 miles East of Albuquerque the authorities decided to close the interstate. What the hell? Did they not realize it was nearly night when they opened the road? What was the purpose of opening it just to trap 50 miles of vehicles on the road? INSANE!

So here we are at 7:30 at night, stopped on the HWY in the middle of nowhere at 7000 feet elevation. Luckily we had food, water and ski equipment to keep us warm and hydrated, but I'm sure there were other not as lucky. We were able to turn the car on for 10 minutes every couple of hours to warm up.

At about 2:00 in the morning people came by waking everyone up and making sure they could start their cars. They told us we were going to get moving again. So we started rolling on ice packed end-to-end at about 35 mph. Then, just 8-10 miles after we started up, they stopped us again! ARE YOU SERIOUS? Nobody ever came by to make sure everyone was ok, warm, and had water. Here we sat without moving until nearly noon! 16 and a half hours of being stuck in the car, not moving, and not knowing when you would get moving again! REALLY!

Once the sun melted the snow and got us moving the next day, we were basically the only car on the road between there and Amarillo, TX. We had been very near the front of the line and once we got going and passed about 20 trucks and cars, we were home free!

From there we made it to Springfield, MO where we rang in the New Year with Steak & Shake and the ABC countdown that was already at 12 seconds to go by the time we got to our room and turned on the TV. No kidding. Stopping in St Louis to see Jenni's sister and then Bloomington, IL to see my friend Mike and his family, we eventually ended up at home at about 10:00 pm and New Years Day... and yes, we both had to work the next day!

I'll post pictures of our crazy adventures tomorrow, but thought I had better tell the story before all the details blurred.

Hope your New Years was less chaotic than ours!

One more update before the Holidays!

2006-12-21T17:06:00.000-06:00

Well, all is going well on the renovations. We are painting the laundry room and getting ready for our trip to Tahoe for the holidays. The windows and siding are essentially complete minus one snafu with the ordering of windows for the kitchen. Turns out the contractor ordered a bigger-than-needed window for the kitchen and forgot to call us to ask if it would be OK. So he went to install the window and it just wouldn't fit in the opening. So, feeling bad about it and knowing these custom windows couldn't be reused or returned, he offered to install them anywhere in the house with free labor! NICE!

Since we had already installed 4 new windows into the house where there were not ones before, we decide to put these windows in the garage! So we got 2 free windows for our garage which will add nice light and ventilation. The only drawback is we must now wait 4 weeks to get the new windows from Marvin Windows. But, it's all seal-up for now and the siding is done and looks great.

I forgot my camera today so I don't have a picture to update but I will update the blog while we are in Tahoe with an update on skiing and relaxing!

Take care and have a happy and safe holidays!

Pace of working picking up steam

2006-11-29T17:07:00.000-06:00

We jumped right into a flurry of activity upon returning from St. Louis for Thanksgiving. Jenni and I caught some kind of food poisoning or flu (likely with Jenni's little cousins being around) and were sick as dogs Saturday and Sunday after returning early enough to get a bunch of work done in the garage before the windows and siding were to be delivered. So, needless to say, the drywall in the garage is still sitting int he middle of the floor next to the windows and doors that are jammed into the garage.

But, all was not lost. After the windows, siding and dumpster were delivered, Marek (our contractor) re-hung the Laundry room door so I could start tiling the laundry room floor in advance of the new washer/dryer being delivered (cabinets were also delivered Monday). So, after laying the Ditra (see my previous post about the bathroom floor to learn about Ditra) on Monday night, we laid the floor last night. Voila:

The workers didn't waste any time either. In one day all the siding was gone and the house was covered in Tyvek. They even covered most of the windows, so it was a bit like living inside a paper bag, especially when the wind was blowing.

Yesterday we had the first 3 windows hung and the siding started going up on the front of the house! Take a look (click to see a bigger version):

One last update before Turkeyday

2006-11-22T15:01:00.000-06:00

Just wanted to give one more update before heading to St. Louis for Thanksgiving. We have been working feverishly to try to get the garage ready for the acceptance of the windows/siding delivery as well as to clear the garage out for our general sanity.

Saturday we went out and returned 18 sheets of 5/8-inch fire core drywall that was only 8 feet long when we needed to have 10 foot sheets. In addition, we purchased the drywall for the rest of the garage ceiling and walls and the insulation to line the garage attic with. It was quite the event as it required renting a truck from Home Depot and moving all of that drywall ourselves, just Jenni and I. Jenni was about to collapse by the time we finished but we made it...

Here is how the garage is starting to shape up after installing the drywall along the shared wall with the house:

We're waiting on the windows/siding contractor to re-hang the laundry room door but as soon as that's complete, we have to tile, grout and seal the stone floor ASAP. We are having the Washer and dryer delivered in just a little over a week and it's crunch-time!

Have a happy Thanksgiving and make sure to take a nap after eating all that food, like these 2 jokers:

More updates, big work about to start

2006-11-17T16:14:00.000-06:00

I haven't blogged in a couple of weeks because we hit a little bit of a stand-still with the large-scale work we were doing. We had our patio and driveway mud-jacked, our chimney crown replaced, a tankless water heater installed, we power-washed and sealed the patio and driveway (risky bidness in early November I might add), and we've been working on finishing the garage. We found out today the windows and siding are going to be delivered on Nov 27th and work will begin immediately. Hope to have it all completed before Christmas!

The mud-jacking was pretty sweet. For those that don't know what that is, it a process that includes drilling a hole in the existing concrete and injecting a mud/concrete mix below the concrete to level or raise it. In our case, it was an entire day's work for about 6 guys. The patio was really the bulk of the work, as it included leveling off about 12 slabs of aggregate that were terribly uneven (lips of 2-3 inches between them in places). The finished product is shown here:

In preparation for "fire" season, we had our chimney crown replaced and the chimney tuck-pointed. We also went an bought a new screen, tools, and log-holder for the fireplace but those are on order. Here is a picture of our first fire, though:

A lot of the work we've been doing is also related to trying to finish the garage. I installed a new lighting system in the garage and ran dedicated circuits to the breaker panel for the garage outlets and the lights (separate circuits). I also bought new garage door openers for both doors (only one had an opener) that I also will install before we finish the garage out with drywall and an epoxy-based floor coating. Here is a pic of the lights in action:

The tankless water heater is pretty sweet. The old tank was on its last legs and this was a good investment from a resale perspective. Tankless water heaters have a 20+ year life expectancy as opposed to 6-10 years for a tank. Not only that, but it is more energy efficient as you don't have a pilot light burning gas all the time or 40-60 gallons of water to keep hot all the time. The electronic ignition only fires when there is demand for hot water and you will never run out of hot water. The company we used was VERY professional and did a wonderful job including all the plumbing, gas and electrical need for this nice clean and professional looking install job. Not only that but they stand behind the work for 10 years and it can be extended to 20. If they can't fix your unit if it ever breaks, they'll replace it in full THAT DAY. Not only that, but they carry commercial units from 5 companies that are far more powerful and versatile than you can get anywhere else. The company is called Imperial Tankless and that's all they do.

We're REALLY excited about the windows and siding starting soon. We have been waiting to finish the laundry room floor for a long while (door needs to be re-hung) and the cabinets and washer/dryer are arriving the week after Thanksgiving as well!

Check back later, should have more soon!

This past weekend's repairs

2006-11-01T16:54:00.001-06:00

As usual, our weekends are planned around the weather and trying to get as much done as possible between various social outings. This weekend we had our annual Halloween party to attend courtesy of our friends Dave and Anne. You can see the pictures by clicking on this picture of Jenni and I in our costumes. We also celebrated Jenni's grandmother's birthday Sunday and somehow found the time to replace a very picky and odd-shaped basement door.

The exterior entrance to a basement sounds like a great idea, but in reality, all it does is create a new entrance location for water and vermin. The existing door was wood and had deteriorated to the point of rotting. You could see light coming through all the way around the door and a good rainfall resulted in water actually flowing under the door and into the basement like a River. This was due primarily to the fact that the concrete landing at the base of the stairs was sloping towards the house! So the first thing I did after removing the door was to create a new concrete slope by laying a special thin-layer concrete atop the existing concrete to slope back towards the drain that leads to the waste pit. You can see the door and the concrete in these 3 pictures:

Unfortunately, the door we purchased didn't quite fit into the rough opening, but it was as close as we could come in an off-the-shelf door. In fact, the pre-framed door had to be sanded and trimmed down as well as doing the same to the rough opening. The results are pretty good, but it was a lot of work and a real pain in the ass to try to wedge that door in there and get it hung properly. I'm glad it's over. We still have to caulk and finish the door but it's already a million times better than before, as you can see here:

We're trying to finish the electrical in the garage before this weekend's party for Jenni's dad's birthday, but we have quite a bit to do yet. It's starting to get pretty cold and we still haven't started hanging drywall in the garage. Hopefully we can get that done before they deliver the windows in the next few weeks!

Meeting our Neighbors

2006-10-25T17:29:00.000-05:00

Well, we have met several of our neighbors since we moved in and everyone has been very cordial and "neighborly". However, it's funny that they have all warned us of our one "crazy neighbor" who calls the police on everyone and is a general pain in the ass.

On Monday night we got a chance to meet said neighbor. And the story goes something like this:

We had borrowed the minivan from my parents to rent a chipper on Saturday and a stump grinder on Sunday to do some last minute yard cleanup before winter. We chopped down a bunch of bushes and ugly juniper bushes to get ready for the siding guys to come and also because we just hated a few of them. So we spent 4 or 5 hours Saturday chipping them all up into mulch. Unfortunately on Sunday all the stump grinders had been rented out from both local Home Depots, so we were left to try to get it all done on Monday night. With winter coming and the days getting shorter, we didn't have much light to work with. I left work a little early and got the stump grinder home by 5:30 and went to work. Around 5:30 or 6:00, I see our said "crazy" neighbor peering out of her window through the blinds at me. As she noticed that I saw her, she turned all her lights off and then proceeded to continue to peer out the glass at me.

So, about 6:45 or so a flashlight starts shining over our fence. It's the police. Instead of coming outside and asking me to stop or simply being a decent person about it, she calls the police? Is this person pathological or just bored that she needs to create this kind of drama? So of course there is some kind of village ordinance that says you're not supposed to be operating loud equipment after 6 or 6:30 or whatever, but in the summer, 6:30 is early with 2 more hours of light to go! What the hell?

So I knew who had called the police and went over and talked to this woman to try to explain my situation that I had a borrowed van, rented equipment and about 20-30 minutes of work left at most and managed to convince her to let me finish. The real funny thing is this woman couldn't stop talking after telling me the noise was bothering her because she had a headache! WOW! Was feeling good enough to talk to me for 20 minutes! I think she's just lonely or bored, but if she's the kind of neighbor that just likes to be a thorn in your side for no reason, it could be a real adventure here, as many of you know I'm not one to take things like that or that kind of inappropriate behavior lying down...

There are some funny pics of us chipping the brush on my Flickr site, so have a look (click on the picture to take you there):

The party is over!

2006-10-16T15:23:00.000-05:00

The "Bathroom is finished" party went off well yesterday with many friends and family stopping by. We had a great time hosting and feeding everyone (with Ribs, kabobs, steak quesadillas, chicken wings, stuffed portobellos, guacamole, etc) and getting a chance to have many see the house "before" most of the renovations occur. With all kinds of work set to start on the house over the next month or so, we were eager to have everyone over and the weather cooperated nicely, with a cool but comfy 55 degree day.

The bathroom turned out really nice, although it is still lacking of a toilet paper holder, mirror, towel ring and baseboards. But hey, it works! We can't wait to have the rest of the house finished and to have our "After Renovations" party some time next summer.

Nobody was bold enough to bring their swim suits and try the hot tub, but we did have a nice bonfire in out fire pit.

Check out the picture of the finished bathroom alongside the previous bathroom picture:

So what's next? We have to finish the laundry room and with only so many good outdoor working days remaining this year, we've still got to finish power washing all the concrete and after they come to level out concrete slab patio this week, we can stain/seal everything! Can't wait to be done with that! We also are very eager to finish the garage so we can have a warm insulated garage to work in all winter while we tackle our many projects.

Stay TUNED!

Getting there...

2006-10-11T09:28:00.000-05:00

Busy week ahead. We are still trying to get the bathroom finished for the party on Sunday, so I won't post any pictures before the then to spoil the fun! But, we have the floor finished, the wall painted, and we are sealing the floor tonight and installing the fixtures on Thursday.

I stayed home from work on Monday to accept the delivery of a few of our appliances for our future kitchen and meet a chimney contractor to repair some damage to our chimney. I was able to use my uncle's pressure washer to wash much of the concrete around the house. The carpet adhesive on the front stoop was particularly pesky (required the use of an attachment that concentrates the stream to the point of being able to penetrate wood) and the mold and mildew in the exterior basement stairwell was beyond gross. It was like peeling back a layer of black paint from the stairs and walls! 30 years of mold gone in minutes. I don't think I'll ever look at a regular garden hose the same way again. While all that was kind of fun, I did get soaking wet in the process and as the day wore on it got cold and windy. October in Chicago is maybe not the best time to be soaking wet working outside.

While the bathroom should be finished, we're still a bit behind schedule. We wanted to have the laundry room finished, but we have to wait for the windows and siding guys to re-hang the laundry room door before we can safely do the stone floors. Also, the washing machine seems to be permanently out of balance, so we're going to take this opportunity to upgrade to front-loading high-efficiency washer and dryer and put a working countertop over the top of it (along with the new cabinets for the room.

Yesterday was a very frustrating day at work with lots of IT issues keeping me from delivering some work all day and making life very frustrating, so it was a good release to come home and tear some stuff up. Mostly just cleaning some hanging wires up, but also finishing the removal of what was left of the wall between the kitchen and family room with my reciprocating saw. FUN FUN FUN and a good stress relief.

Hope to see lots of friends and family (my sister is in town from California) this Sunday at our party!

Sleep deprivation and the smell of thin-set in the morning

2006-10-04T12:53:00.000-05:00

We have finally gotten around to tiling the floor in the bathroom. After a lot of shenanigans with respect to other projects distracting us and having a hard time deciding how to lay the tile out, we finally bit the bullet and started setting tiles at about 9:45 last night. The tile has a LOT of color variation and we like the darker tiles more than the lighter ones, but of course we ended up with more light ones than dark ones, making laying the course out very difficult. The grains in the stone and the patterns were so varied that it was very time consuming determining the best lay-out and creating a color gradient.

Here are some pictures of the practice lay-outs:

Unfortunately, I took a lot of time to make some very detailed cuts around the vent and toilet flange (and there's a long story to that as well entailing 3 tries, lots of PVC glue, quite a bit of cursing, and 3 trips to Home Depot). At about 2:25 am we ran out of mortar and we were left finishing where we were after vowing to not go to bed until it was done. It was a valiant effort but we came up short on mortar and energy. We'll have to finish it tonight, then grout in 2 days and seal it after that! WORK WORK WORK!

Here is the picture of the floor as it stands now next to how it was just before we started.

We've also had "fun with water" the past week or so. After finally fixing the "waterfall" in the basement that was causing water to collect around the base of the water heater and furnace (as shown in the pictures below) the water decided to come down harder than ever earlier this week and revealed 2 other sources of water flow to us, this time a crack in the foundation and the water continues to POUR out from underneath the basement entry door. We're going to have to do something about that as soon as the bathroom and laundry are done. Adding a second sump pump should help and re-grading the concrete in the landing at the bottom of the stairs won't hurt!

But wait, there's more! The other night during a particularly windy and violent storm we had water come through our living room ceiling! ARGH! When will it stop? This looks to be the result of some failed flashing along the edge of the siding and roof, but we're not 100% sure yet. I'll have to get a closer look at it this week when the weather is better, but it looks like this has happened before, so I have no idea what I may find underneath when I go looking...

We did take some time off to watch the Bears destroy Seattle Sunday night, though. Dusty looks pretty content with the game already in the bag by the end of the first half.

What is the price of caulk?

2006-09-26T14:10:00.000-05:00

Friday night I got a call from my parents asking to have their chainsaw back after I had borrowed it a week or 2 ago to chop a tree down that was growing right next to the foundation of our house.

Well, after some needling, I convinced my dad to come up and pick it up himself and help out around the house with the primary current project, laying the floors in the 1st floor bath and laundry room.

So he came up Saturday morning and we headed off to Home Depot to pick up some plywood and framing lumber to work on the floors and shore up the joists supporting this area of the floor that will have to support the weight of the stone and washer/dryer. We got back home and began messing around near the laundry room door trying to figure out how to fix a section of flooring that had obviously sustained some water damage over the years... One thing led to another and the more we tore back, the more rot we found. The rough framing of the door had even rotted at the base! EEECK!

So we headed back to Home Depot and picked up a new door and a new reciprocating saw (I might have to start a tool rental business to finance all this!). Once we had the door out of the frame and had started tearing old flooring and rotten framing members out, it of course started to rain like mad. Just great... doesn't the weather always seem to know when you have a leak in your roof or foundation or a giant hole in the side of your house? So we rigged up a rough shelter over the door with a couple of 2x4's and a tarp (like something you'd see on Survivor) to shelter us as we continue to try to fix what is now a gaping hole in the side of the house...

Needless to say, it was not the work I had planned for the day! Keep in mind we were planning on having the door replaced when we have the windows and siding done, but I can't work on the floors or get ready to tile the laundry room when the floor is rotted-out!

I took some pictures after we were done, but we were too busy and freaked about possibly being there all night to take any "in-progress" pictures...

So "what is the cost of caulk?" Apparently it must be more expensive than a new door, floor, rough frame opening, and a whole day's work, because I can't imagine why someone wouldn't take the couple of hours and 25 bucks worth of caulk to protect their home from the elements every 10-15 years.

But, we did get some of the original planned work done on Sunday (despite the distraction of the Bears game and offers of jambalaya and apple pie by my parents). I managed to get the 2nd layer of plywood installed in the bathroom as you can see here. The piece closest to the door had 6 cuts and took me 3 tries to get right... took a whole sheet of plywood for just that one piece! YIKES! But about 200 screws later, the floor in the bathroom was ready to go. Now "all" that's left is to install the water-proofing isolation membrane and the stone... We're getting there but it's easy to get distracted by 100 other things that need to get done around the house!

Pictures of Hawai'i

2006-09-22T11:14:00.000-05:00

Well, we finally got around to downloading our pictures and putting some of the highlights online. What a beautiful and unique place. The snorkeling was great, we got to swim with sea turtles, and we had an all-around good time. Norwegian Cruise Line is just "ok" in terms of service and food, in our opinion. It is also quite a different crowd on a Hawaiian cruise versus a Caribbean cruise. Much older crowd, not as much nightlife going on, etc. But we had a great time and we're already excited about possibly going on a Wronski-family-cruise in the Spring. Click on the picture to go to the photo-stream of our Hawai'i pictures...

Textured paint and why you should never use it...

2006-09-15T12:52:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long delay in posting. Coming back from Hawaii we've had to play catch-up with various everyday things like work, lawn care, etc and that isn't nearly as exciting to read about as demolition of construction news...

Textured paint might be the single worst thing ever invented. If you are looking for a house and see textured paint, walk away. If you are thinking of using it in your home... don't even think about it unless you think you'll NEVER want to change the color or style. In order to remove this heinous material you actually have to sand the walls flat. "Not so bad" you might say? Well, it took us 2 straight nights of solid sanding to sand the walls and ceilings of a 5x6 bathroom. We'll see how it comes out after a new coat of paint, but SHEEEEEESH! Our arms, shoulders, abs and back are all sore from this tiring task, so keep that in mind when you say "doesn't that look nice" the next time you see a Tuscan plaster finish in a magazine.

In other news, as we get to the point of tiling and laying the floor, I decided I'd better seek and find a little more how-to help on laying this tile and getting some opinions on ways to go about laying the subfloor/underlayment for natural stone and I happened to come across the John Bridge Tile Your World forums. Having been an early adopter of the internet, I've been surfing as long as anyone and this is by far the most helpful, courteous, and accurate professional forum I've yet to find. There are professional experts in tile laying, plumbing, structural issues, and general construction everywhere on this forum, yet it is actually geared towards the knowledgeable DIY'er. If you are considering doing a DIY tile project, I recommend you read this forum religiously and ask any questions there, because their answers will be more complete and knowledge/experience-based than anybody you'll ever find at a tile store or worse yet, one of those big Box stores (HD, Lowes, Menards, etc). I also recommend getting his book on tile as a complete guide to laying tile and all that goes with it like planning, design, layout, etc. You can find the book on Amazon.com or at the Tile Your World On-line Store. Do your research, plan your project, get your materials and go to it.

And once you've laid out your plans and have your materials, give me a call to borrow my tile saw. I did a little quick math in my head and decided it was time to think about buying a wet saw. Since we're figuring on remodeling this current half-bath/laundry room and 2 other full baths, at $45-50 a day for some worn-out saw/blade that might not be produce as quality a finish (particularly important with natural stone), I decided to buy the Felker FTS-150 tile wet saw and got a much better deal on a far superior saw to anything I would ever be able to buy at a Home Depot or Lowes type of store. This saw is able to cut up-to 19" tiles (or a 13" tile cut diagonally) in addition to making delicate cuts and custom corners like adding a bullnose finish to a square edge (instead of paying 2 or 3 times the normal price per tile for a prefinished bullnose tile).

If you are ever in need of a wet saw, let us know and you can rent it from us for about $50 for however long you need it (assuming we don't need it). This just covers the cost of a blade, nothing else, so it's not like we're trying to make money off our friends, it's just to keep the saw in the best condition possible.

A few other updates from our various homeowner adventures:

After attacking and stinging both Chompers and Dusty at different times, it was all-out warfare on the wasp nest in the ground when I decided to take Jenni's uncle's advice and light that bad boy on fire. One night I took a can of lamp oil and poured it down the hole and lit it on fire... Ain't seen a live wasp/hornet since! Justice fo' tha DOGS!

We initiated getting a second quote on our windows and siding. We found a guy through Lee Lumber and Marvin windows who seems very professional and knowledgeable about just about everything to do with windows and doors. We'll see what the price comes back as, but it's a toss-up between him and the guy who did my parents' house at this point. Hopefully we will have a decision in 2 weeks or so and work can get started as soon as they receive the materials.

The company I work for is in the news a lot right now. There is a huge battle on-going for what would be one of the single largest leveraged buyout transactions in recent memory. Several investment firms are bidding to buy the company back from the shareholders in a move that would make the company private instead of public. What this means for me isn't quite clear yet but I don't feel it would affect my job status, but it may have some financial ramifications to it, most likely good, but as of yet, undetermined. Our stock shot up $7 per share You can read about it by following any of the links here: Freescale (FSL)

Once the bathroom fixtures arrived, we officially became hillbillies since we have a toilet both in the yard and the living room!

The chipmunk warfare has begun. Chipmunks have steadily burrowed and caused sinking in the foundation of our patio and before we think about getting it mud-jacked back to being a level surface, we need to do something about the cause of the sinking. This morning I trapped and killed our first of what will likely be many chipmunks. Rest in peace, little guy.

Sorry still no pictures from Hawaii or of the latest "state of the house". Will have some soon.

Back from Hawaii, basking in the glow of our tans...

2006-09-06T14:47:00.000-05:00

We returned home on early Tuesday morning from our fantastic 7-day cruise of the Hawaiian Islands. I'll have pictures and stories later, but as you can imagine, after missing a week and a half of work makes one a pretty busy person in catching up.

Some highlights of our trip? Snorkeling in Honalua Bay on Maui, renting a Mustang Convertible in Maui and driving the Road to Hana as well as making the full loop of the island, the Volcanoes National Park tour was pretty amazing as well, and the Cruise ship pulling just offshore of the active volcanic activity on the Big Island at night was a spectacular start of the cruise.

Aside from that it was a lot of relaxing, seeing the sights, and trying to get in as much "feel of the islands" as possible. It was a great trip and Jenni and I have our list of things to do if we ever get back.

In terms of the house? Well, we haven't received the toilet and lavatory we ordered before we left, but we've yet to pick out the stone tile as well. We're still trying to adjust back into our routine at home (and the LONG grass that needs to be cut in the backyard)...

More later.

The wall is no more, but now we have water

2006-08-24T09:56:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a pretty disappointing day as we learned the support column for the structural beam could not, in fact, be removed. So now we have to decide what to do with that beam and none of the solutions we currently can come up with sound all that appealing. We can replace the beam with a more modern and stronger beam that we can hide in the ceiling, or we can leave the support column where it is now in the middle of the traffic flow area of the kitchen/family room...

While I was out shopping and getting cement board, drywall, etc for the bathroom and laundry room, Jenni calls me in a panick about Dusty having caught a bird! WHAT THE? How does a dog catch a bird? Is this further confirmation of the barking cats theory of small dogs? I guess she caught and killed a dove and Jenni couldn't get her to drop it. So after calming her down and instructing her to get some work gloves and take charge and make her drop it, she had removed the mangled bird from Dusty's grasp and was off to bathe the 2 rascals...

But back to the house... On the bad news relating to the support column, I decided to take my new Dewalt circular saw and tear out the wall (except for this god forsaken support column). After about an hour and a half of figuring out where to disconnect the electrical from the main circuit and cutting and twisting of framing 2x4's, the wall was gone. We now have a lot of open space and as a bonus, we have access to the ceiling to be able to add recessed lighting to both the kitchen and living room!

This morning we awoke very early to the loud sounds of thunder and after getting ready for work I figured I'd check out the basement... water... WHAT THE HECK? The sump pump hadn't failed but for some reason the outlet it was plugged into was no longer functioning, so after plugging it into another outlet, it was working just fine. We didn't take on too much water, just some water in the areas around the sump wells. Thankfully I think I caught it in time to avoid any real damage to anything. We'll see when I get home.

A week of planning, contractors, and more planning...

2006-08-23T10:48:00.000-05:00

With Jenni and I being off to Hawaii next week for our cruise, we've spent the past week attending a wedding in Iowa (great wedding for our friends Christy and Sam), meeting with the siding and window contractor, shopping for windows, shopping for windows some more, and having a structural engineer come out yesterday afternoon to check the load rating of the main structural beam and support holding up the second floor.

Good things first:
- After tearing out the bathroom and being concerned that Jenni and I couldn't agree on the design of it, we actually had a pretty similar vision of it and have ordered the pedestal sink and toilet from The Great Indoors last night. We managed to save $150 (about 15%) through various coupons and deals they had going. We ended up picking the Kohler Memoirs (Stately design) series and should receive it in about 2 weeks. We also agreed on the hardware (like the oil-rubbed bronze) and tile we are going to use there and in the laundry room. We have it narrowed to about 3 or 4 stone species of travertine in either a honed or brushed finish.

- The structural engineer was out last night to look at the feasibility of removing the support for the main structural beam running through the family room. I really want to hide the beam in the ceiling but can probably live with it if we can just remove the support post that will be an eyesore if it has to stay. It will save us thousands of dollars as opposed to replacing the beam with a stronger alternative hidden within the ceiling. The good news is the guy felt the 2 2x12's were sufficient to span the 15-foot opening between exterior wall and support inside the wall (stand-alone support beam I want to remove is 12 feet from the exterior wall). He's supposed to call me today to confirm.

- After a lot of shopping and thinking (and indecision while standing in front of the contractor) we have decided on the windows for the most part. We are going to use Marvin's top-line of windows in either a pine or oak interior wood finish depending on the final cost difference. The most dramatic change will be in the addition of a 4-panel sliding French door as access to the back yard. The door is about 10 feet long and will provide tons of light and airflow. We're both really excited about how the finished product is going to look, despite our concerns over what we'll end up paying considering the windows are almost all going to be custom sizes.

The bad, slow, and frustrating:
- We were 8 hours late leaving for Iowa on Friday night because the plumber we had coming to work on the natural gas line for the grill showed up at 4:00 pm after he was supposed to be there at 9:30. ARGH. Threw our whole day off, even though it was just 3 hours of work.

- We are still struggling with the fact that every choice we make seems to be tied to the decisions we are trying to put off (such as floor color and kitchen design when deciding how to lay out the windows and doors). Everything is tied to everything else.

- Tearing stuff up is easy... putting it back together just how you like it is a much bigger task! LOL! We are going to try to finish the drywall and priming work in the downstairs bath before we leave for Hawaii so we can do the floors and install the bathroom fixtures as soon as we have them the week after labor day. Lots of patching and plastering still to be done.

We will have pictures along the way, but for now it's back to "planning and purchasing"

The wall exposed...

2006-08-17T10:45:00.000-05:00

We removed the drywall last night from the wall between the kitchen and family room and the space already looks a lot bigger. We're going to have to relocate a ventilation duct and there is one support beam on the end of the wall, but other than that, nothing we can't deal with.

We had the siding and windows guy that worked on my mom and dad's house over on Tuesday night and he is giving us an estimate on the windows, adding 4 windows, changing the outside door configuration, and doing the whole house in a composite cementboard siding called MaxiTile, which he says is a newer and slightly better (and shorter lead-time on orders) than the CertainTeed siding he used on my parents' house. The funny thing was that he had their address in his book with about 3 other "show houses" addresses.

We put the garbage out by the street today and holy crap! I hope it all gets picked-up. Had a full recycling can, 2 boxes filled head-high and about 6 trash cans full of everything from drapes and curtains to carpet to drywall. Hoping it's all gone when I get home, haha. Forgot to take a picture, but it's a HUGE pile. We still have half a dumpster's worth of junk in the side yard as well from ripping out all the loose lumber and wood junk from the family room.

The pictures are in...

2006-08-15T11:28:00.000-05:00

I have uploaded some pictures to flickr (click on the picture at left to go to the photostream), a web-based picture sharing site that you don't have to register for. I put some descriptions in there, but I also included some pictures from the past couple of days showing the demolition work we've already started and our first "bonfire" in the back yard fire pit.

Closing, moving, and general mayhem

2006-08-14T12:15:00.000-05:00

We were done closing on our house on Friday at 9:15 am so I headed in to work (took a half day) and then was able to leave very early. We pack up our cars with fragile stuff like computers, electronics, glasswares, etc that we were concerned about being in the moving truck and we headed for the house...

Upon arriving at the house, we were appalled to find the previous homeowners STILL THERE packing things up, frantically trying to clean (which they did a horrendous job of). It's one thing for 8 people to live in a single house, but these people were pack-rats of the highest order and there was such a thick layer of dust on everything in the house we were afraid to touch anything even after they were out! They assured us they would be out by morning as I told them I would be there early in the a.m. with the truck and ready to unload. Patti and Fred helped us with a load of stuff later on Friday after my near-death experience on Route 53 when a large shop-sized broom flew off a roofer's truck and struck my windshield at 75 mph... Luckily there was no damage as it hit broad-side, but it easily could have killed me had it come through the window stick-first. After making the truck pull over and berated them for a few minutes, I was back on my way.

So here is how the rest of our exhausting weekend unfolded after these Friday shenanigans:

Saturday:
6:30 am: Wake up and head out to get the moving truck from U-Haul. (was a 5-speed manual transmission 26-foot truck that required 3 shifts just to get to 15 mph, what a beast)
7:30 am: Arrive back at Tom's townhouse to load up what was left or my bedroom and some boxes from the kitchen.
8:15 am: My parents and brother Derrick arrive and help us load the heavier items. Went pretty fast and smoothly.(aside from having to transport 7 tomato plants in the their pots) We were out the door and on the way to my In-law's house by 9:15, where they had graciously allowed us to store our stuff for 2 weeks.
9:30 am: Packed up EVERYTHING into the truck from the garage (including our new 400 pound grill that we are dying to try) and were out of there by 11:00 or so. It went really fast with 8 people passing everything into the truck while I organized and packed the truck from floor to ceiling.
11:30 am: We arrived at the house only to see the previous homeowners had left stuff in the garage and all kinds of junk lying around. What the hell? We managed to get a hold of them through their realtor and found out they were supposed to be coming to pick things up later Friday night. They eventually arrived but could not haul away quite everything. As of Monday morning we have a free extension ladder and wheel barrow as well as a lot misc. lumber and unwanted junk that is still sitting on the edge of the driveway or in the side yard. At this point, my friend Shane joined us to help and thing went pretty quickly. By 1 pm we were done with the heavy-lifting and by 2:00 we had moved 2 of the 3 leather couches into the basement and had located most of the essentials in the proper locations (beds in bedrooms, boxes in the right places, etc).
3:00 pm: We headed to the RAM Brewery for lunch/dinner with my parents and brother and we were able to catch the last 2 innings of a White Sox victory over the Detroit Tigers over beer and tasty upscale bar food.
6:00 pm: Arrive back at the house to find the previous owners there loading up the last of their junk, including tools, some garbage they took with them and some various other items. As I said earlier, they didn't get everything, but enough was enough. On that note, however, when you have a big family and local extended family helping with the move, how does it take you more than a full week to pack your stuff, load it into something, etc? These people were at their new house messing around with bedroom arrangement while they had piles of crap still sitting around their old house! What is wrong with these people? They were very nice people, but very clearly not a motivated or organized group that had any kind of plan for how this whole thing was going to or should work.
8:00 pm: The previous owners finally gone, we start organizing and getting our plan for the next day ready. During the move we had ripped-out the nasty window valences and found them to be so dusty that we couldn't touch them without incurring an "explosion of dust." We went around the house tearing them out and cleaning in our aftermath, eventually coming back to the kitchen, only to find the refridgerator filthy and the freezer even worse. Having not been defrosted, we turned it off and began scrubbing, as the frost melted and we contorted ourselves as we cleaned this thing inside and out. GROSS. It took the 2 of us 2 full hours to clean this thing going non-stop!
12:30 pm: We'd had enough and finally hit the bed after showering-up and taking a few minutes to relax and plan our Sunday.

Sunday:
7:45 am: Jenni decided that since she couldn't sleep anymore that it would be ok to just wake me up too... grrrrrrrr. Not only that, but her alarm clock from Baltimore decided to go off 5 minutes later inside some box in the bedroom, officially putting an end to my plans to get another hour worth of sleep.
12:00 pm: Having finished cleaning the kitchen, removing the cabinets from the wall we are going to knock-down and cleaning some of the other areas of the house that had been previously neglected, we headed over to Patti and Fred's house (Jenni's parents) to borrow their Minivan for a shopping spree.
1:00 pm: Done at Menards where we picked-up fire/CO2 detectors, a new sump pump, ant/roach/mouse poison and traps (don't know what we have, so we're gonna Nuke them all), and new locks for all the exterior doors. Head back to Elk Grove to get some Subway and hit Sears Hardware to get my Craftsman Quiet Glide tool chest and pick up all my dumbells and weight rack from the Townhouse before heading back to unload before heading to Home Depot.
6:00 pm: Having unpacked the van and placing all my food from the townhouse into the newly cleaned and cooled-down fridge and freezer, we head out to Home Depot for the REAL shopping spree. When you do a change-of-address the USPS sends you a packet with coupons. One of these coupons is a nice 10% of entire purchase coupons at Home Depot. Luckily, we had one of these coupons from Jenni's move back 2 weeks ago, wo we headed out to address the need for tools, exterior doors, paint, ladders, etc etc...
8:00 pm: After spending a lot of time picking out my nail guns, battery sump back-up system, circular saw, level, ladder, and a new Jeld-Wen door for the basement's exterior access, we head out of Home Depot considerably poorer, despite the coupon!
10:00 pm: After dropping the van off at my in-law's and returning home, we decided to start tearing apart the family room. The family room was covered in wood paneling and had 2 cedar wood beams going across the ceiling. It was a lot of work and the new crow bars and pry bars were put to good use. We finished by about 12:30 am and decided that we had to clean up before going to bed so we could leave the dogs in the house the next day. By the time we were done cleaning and showered up, it was 1:30 am... TIME FOR BED.

This morning we had a plumber come out and give us an estimate to have a gas line run to the exterior of the house. Luckily, we have a VERY good idea of how the kitchen will be laid-out, so we are having him place valves for the cook-top burners as well as an additional valve for a future patio-heater or turkey fryer. It doesn't seem like that much work to me (lay 15 feet of 3/4" black pipe and put 3 valves and about 2 turns in the 1/2" pipe to the outside of the house) but somehow it still comes out to $850 bucks! Good lord, I'm gonna be broke forever!

Next up is the wall between the kitchen and family room. Should be gone by this weekend.

We are finding that there is not much in this house that we are going to be able to "live with" for any considerable length of time, so we are going to have to suck it up and get this stuff done ASAP.

Closing in on closing day

2006-08-08T13:13:00.000-05:00

As we close in on our Friday closing day, a question for the universe:

For as much as you pay other people (lawyers, banks, title companies, realtors, etc), why does it seem like finalizing the details of a real estate transaction is a full-time job? Sheeesh, it seems like I'm on the phone all the time with these people!

That being said, we're really excited that the official moving day is almost here. We're moving on Saturday morning with the help of friends and family. Supposed to be a much-cooler 83 on Saturday when compared with the searing upper-90's of the move from Baltimore. It'll be such a relief to get into the new house and have our own place again. Not that I mind living with my buddy Tom, but it is a little uncomfortable when you add the wife to the equation. The dogs will probably be the happiest of all. Finally a yard to themselves to run-around, chase squirrels and generally wear them out.

Some dates to keep in mind:

Saturday, August 12th: Moving day!

Saturday or Sunday, August 26/27th: Jenni's graduation party at my parents' house - E-vites to be sent out soon.

Sometime in early September: BBQ at the new house. Going to have a pre-renovation party in early September when we get back from Hawaii so everyone can take a look at the place before we tear it up. The post-renovation party will be sometime in 2007.

Why is it always 95 degrees on Moving Day?

2006-07-31T13:48:00.000-05:00

Has anyone else ever noticed that it somehow manages to always be 95 degrees and 90% humidity on summer days when you are moving? On Sunday we moved Jenni out of her apartment in Baltimore and, of course, it was ridiculously hot and humid.

This bears the second of this 2-part question: "Why do moving vans never have functioning AC?" That's right. Not only did we spend all morning moving (with the gracious help of Jenni's friend from the lab, Dan) and sweating our collective butts off, but I had the privilege of riding all the way from Baltimore to Chicago in a 14-foot U-Haul with no air conditioning! Thankfully we drove mostly at night, but I think I suffered some permanent hearing loss from having the windows open the whole 700 miles! We made it with 3 stops and in about 11 hours, which is pretty close to our record considering the 3 stops we made is 2 more than usual. Not bad for a cruise-control-less, AC-less 14-foot beast loaded with junk. Driving one of those gas-guzzlers made me REALLY appreciate our Hybrid cars. I would put 100 bucks worth of gas into the truck and Jenni would put 15 dollars-worth into the Prius! SHEEEESH! How do these SUV-drivers afford groceries? We finally got to bed at 3:30 am and here I am at work trying to stay awake after consuming a diet high in protein bars, beef jerky, and diet coke. This morning when I got out of bed I actually felt drunk. It was like getting off a boat after spending a week at sea. My land legs had not recovered from the bouncing of the truck (either that or my inner ears are still recovering from the percussion of the wind blowing into the truck for 11 hours straight)

This is, of course, all in preparation for our BIG MOVE on August 12th. We're trying to consolidate everything into Jenni's parents' garage to help streamline the primary move, but of course, today's weather here in Chicago is supposed to be 99 degrees for a high, and we still have a truck loaded-up with Jenni's stuff from her apartment that is needing to be unloaded.

So, if you're in Chitown and looking for a way to burn calories the morning of August 12th, drop us a line. The more help the merrier!

Dealing in Wheeling

2006-07-27T15:39:00.000-05:00

Well, another day, another bored-bored-bored day of conference calls.

So, time to post some pics of the house we bought in Wheeling. We close on August 11, and plan to move in right away. We'll be trying to replace the windows and siding before winter hits, at which point we'll turn our attention to the floors and kitchen.

Here is the pic from the front:

Here is a pic of some of the lovely backyard "landscaping":

This house is a 4 bedroom 2.5 bath that was being inhabited by an older couple along with their son, daughter in-law, and their 4 children! So, we should have plenty of space once they move all their junk OUT! I've never seen such a cluttered and FULL home. Property value should skyrocket just getting all that junk out of the home!

With all these TV shows about how to fix your home up to sell with minimal effort, you'd think people would catch on? Oh well, just means we got a better deal!

Oh, and even better yet, here's the floorplan as drawn from memory after seeing it a couple of times and knowing the room dimensions from the realtor:

An update on my life...

2006-07-25T17:21:00.000-05:00

Well, where to start?

Jenni has finally completed her PhD between about 3.5 years at University of Chicago and 2.5 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. Needless to say, it's been a tough 2.5 years of travel, phone calls, credit card bills, and it's been very difficult on Chompers and Dusty (our 2 dogs). The 6 years is about standard for a PhD in the life sciences, and based on her peers, I already know Jenni's going to be very successful in whatever endeavors she chooses to pursue in her career. Jenni has spent her graduate time working on yeast genetics in relation to cell death (apoptosis) as a means of understanding the signaling pathways that regulate cell death. This is a relatively new and unexplored area of cell biology and has direct relation to understanding certain types of cancer. She defended her thesis on June 8th and is going to officially graduate on August 25th from the University of Chicago! SWEET! Jenni becomes the second "Dr. Brace", beating my sister to the honor!

Ok, that's enough talking outta my ass for now!

So, what's Jenni up to now? She has chosen a lab at Northwestern University in Evanston where she will continue her work in yeast genetics, this time in a lab that already specializes in the field. It will be a huge boost to her work as she will finally have experienced researches in the field to work with every day.

So where does that leave us? Well, for those of you who haven't had an update since I worked for PrairieComm, a small private company that made TDMA and early UMTS baseband chipsets, that company was purchase in early 2005 by Freescale Semiconductor for approximately $22 million dollars. While this may seem like a decent price, keep in mind that there were 55 million outstanding options and considerable vested interest by venture capital firms that meant the net profit for everyone was $0.00. Again, consider that we had offers as recent as 2003 and 2004 to sell for the equivalent of $45-95 per share and you can understand why even somebody as low on the scrotum pole as me was bitter about not cashing in while we could. Excuse me while I go take my vicodin.

Today, I am still working for Freescale Semiconductor, Inc (NYSE: FSL), the former fab and silicon design arm of Motorola. Now a publicly traded and increasingly successful company, I work in the Wireless and Mobile Systems Group's cellular division as a member of the Software design team based in Lake Zurich, IL (otherwise known as closerToWisconsinThanChicago). Our group does hardware design, implementation, and verification. Personally, I work with the HW and SW teams to design the optimal interfaces to both the HW and to the client software, ensuring both HW and SW meet specification (according to the global standards of 3GPP) and assisting both teams with design and verification as needed. YAAAAAWN!

Jenni and I are in the process of purchasing a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house in Wheeling that we hope to be able to transform into a beautiful home. It needs some updating and some work, but that will be good to keep us busy. We had spent the better part of 2 months searching for a house, bidding on a 103 year old Victorian rehab project in Des Plaines before walking away at our stop-point in negotiations. After the disappointment, we took a couple weeks off from house hunting before I went out and saw about 8 places one Sunday early this month. I found a beautiful huge townhouse in Des Plaines that was about 2300 sq ft and had a full finished basement. I was sold...

Until I went back and saw this house in Wheeling for a second time. The second time around I was really able to see the potential. A few modifications here and there... new floors, windows, remove a little non-load-bearing wall here, and we could very easily have ourselves a beautiful single family home with a yard and no association dues... That was it... We made an offer the next day. Keep in mind Jenni had never seen this home, and she was just going on what I told her and on faith.

Well, a few weeks later, we're getting ready to close August 11th, finalizing our mortgage details, and now that Jenni has seen the home, we are both so excited we hardly sleep at night. Too much to do in too little time.

Over the next month we are going to be busy beyond belief. We are moving Jenni back to Chicago this weekend, followed by closing and moving on the 11th and 12th of August, followed by our friend Christy's wedding in Iowa the next weekend, followed by Jenni's graduation the next Friday and then we are leaving for Hawaii for a 7-day cruise that Monday to get us through the Labor Day weekend with barely any energy left, I'm sure.

So, that is where we are today, awaiting the finalization of our first single family home purchase, eager to start our "2nd Marriage", and anxious to start a rehab of the home to give us a place to settle down for the next 4-5 years. It will be nice to not have people living upstairs, no roommates, and a yard and garden to make our own.

Blog Entry Numero Uno

2006-07-25T16:37:00.000-05:00

Well, I have finally decided to enter the world of Blogging.

This "newfangled" idea of posting a continuous stream of consciousness sounded like such a great idea (since it is what I do anyway), that I decided to start a satirical blog... or was it an informative blog... Maybe it's just a really easy way for me to keep my family and friends updated on my life, my adventures, my thoughts when I'm bored outta my gourd, etc.

I got the idea from my college friend Alex, who has a kick-ass blog that keeps his friends up-to-date on his adventures in Fort Collins, CO.

http://www.chizang.net/alex/blog

So here goes... commencing blogging