So yeah, it’s been a while. I’ve been doing a lot of little things. Since my computer desk is actually attached to the wall, I removed the legs and put in angle support braces. I also cleaned up the cables and set up cable management ties and such under the computer desk. Now there’s a lot of foot room under there, even with my server and the under-desk file cabinets:

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I also got more of the floor done today. Zach came over and helped me out, which was great@! We got the rest of the main area of the family room done, as well as one of the closets. Of course, Zach brought Laura over! Zach also had an ulterior motive: he wanted to see how the laminate wood flooring went together and learn the secrets of how it went together and how to clean up small errors, and he accomplished that!

So I’ve got one closet left, and it poses a problem because I’ve got some support wood directly on the existing carpet. I’ll need to redo that, hopefully without having to empty the closet. And I also have the computer room to do. Of course, it’s only about 10′x10′ so it should go pretty quick, once I move the five drawer lateral file in there. And then, of course, the baseboard trim and the door casing trim.

Well, I just *HAD* to do it! I’ve started another project at home. About 15 years ago, I put carpet down in our family room downstairs. It was a light carpet and a great change from the dark carpet that we had. I had also drywalled the family room – it had walnut paneling and was very dark overall. Well, the carpet has been spilled on, peed on by our dog, tracked on by anyone and in general just got very dirty. Even our steam cleaner couldn’t clean it any more. I have thought about this for several months and I’ve decided to go with laminate flooring. The stuff that interlocks and floats. There was a great deal at Menard’s so I ponied up and got the flooring. It was only 69 cents per square foot. So I bought 24 packages, which will cover 480 square feet (I hope it’s enough). One of my biggest dilemmas was that I don’t have the space in the house to move everything out and put down the new floor, so I have to do it in sections. I’m working from west to east, which means the longest runs are first. Now, on to the pictures.

Here is how the carpet looks. It’s supposed to be a uniform color, but as you can see, it isn’t.

I started in on this on Sunday. First thing was to rip up the carpet. I had glued it down 15 years ago, but the actual carpet came up fine. I was not looking forward to scraping up the excess glue and pad, but then Tim at work said he had a good tool for this. As it turned out he was wrong – it wasn’t a good tool for scraping up this gunk…. it was the PERFECT tool! Here’s the floor with the carpet, pad and glue removed.

So after taking up the carpet, I laid down the vapor barrier and noise deadening pad. Then I laid out the planks.

Well, I had my brother Al over to help me lay out the planks. If you notice in the pictures, I had them attached to make one long plank. Well, after a lot of finagling I finally figured out this didn’t work. Al and my wife will both say I was very frustrated. I was short and snippy with them during this process. Well, after viewing some You Tube videos from Lowes and some other flooring companies I found I was doing it wrong. So I went out to Menard’s and got the tapping block and end bar tools to actually do the job right. And I went about taking apart the work Al, Casey and I did to re-do it right. And now it looks *MUCH* better!

More progress pictures to come!

Seen this before, but it’s worth posting again…

Let me get this straight: We’re going to be “gifted” with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don’t, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it but exempts themselves from it, to be signed by a president who also smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke.

What the hell could possibly go wrong?

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Listening to: Head East – Love Me Tonight
via FoxyTunes

Got a lot done today. The bathroom is now completely usable. There are little things to do but for all intents and purposes, the bathroom is done. I’ve got a small piece of chair rail to put up, some base molding to install and clean up some excess silicone. Also, I have the linen cabinet doors to finish and put up (just a coat of paint). Because of this, I probably won’t post any more updates to the bathroom remodel. Here’s the final pics:

Full day today. Got a lot done. Installed the entire vanity/medicine cabinet set. Wired in the new lights over the medicine cabinet. Installed the vanity top. It’s granite. One thing that really slowed me down today was the vanity top I ordered was cracked. It was delivered cracked. So I had to return it. Fortunately, Menards let me exchange the cracked granite top with their display model (that was not cracked!) for nothing more than some paperwork changes. Once again, Menards comes through! So I installed the granite vanity top, complete with all the plumbing. Installed all the plumbing, and it doesn’t even leak! Here’s the photos:

Didn’t do a whole lot tonight, but it LOOKS like I did. I guess that’s the way that remodeling goes. The real hard work makes it look like nothing is getting done and the easier stuff – stuff that is very visible and makes noticeable changes – makes it look like you’re working a mile a minute.

So tonight I had my brother come over and help me move the new vanity up to the bathroom. Man that was one heavy sucker! But it’s up there and nearly in place now. I also put up some wainscoting on the south wall and the west wall. Still got the trim to go and a bead of silicone caulk to seal the wall to the bathtub surround, but it’s up… along with the toilet paper spindle. Woo-Hoo! Toilet paper on the spindle! Here’s the photos:

Yeah, Day 3. I skipped over Day 2 as it was pretty much sand down and paint with white mildew resistant primer. Not much to see there. So after making everything white, I removed the old light/fan kit that had been there since we moved in (some 25 years ago!) and replaced it with a newer model from Menards. The new model can move 80 cubic feet of air per minute; I think the old one was worn out and only moving 20 or so. Big change in the amount of air moving out when showering! There was some fitting and such as the old air and fan unit was round and this one is square, but nothing really major. Tonight was painting the walls yellow… well, the official color is called Shortbread; it’s Dutch Boy paint with satin finish. We may paint another coat around where there may be splashes from the vanity sink. Here’s the photos:

It was inevitable. You see, I had remodeled our upstairs bathroom 10-15 years ago (don’t remember the exact date) and we got a LOT of the stuff that we wanted. However: times change, tastes change, trends change, yada, yada, yada. So, here I am again remodeling. Here’s a description of what we had: the walls were textured and painted white with an oak-look wainscoting, trim and chair-rail. The rest of it you can see in one of the photos. What I’ve done so far is remove the medicine cabinet (it will be replaced with a newer one), sand down the walls so the texture is now smooth (KC wants smooth walls now), replace some drywall that I broke during trim removal (I’m not perfect…..) and then spread drywall mud over the corners, seams and in some places over texture that I couldn’t sand down smooth. Here’s the progress so far:

That’s right. I’m losing it. Wow. So here’s the deal:

At work I’ve been using an Avaya 6424M+D phone for at least 4 years now. It’s a good phone. I’ve transferred calls, initiated conference calls, programmed speed dial buttons, and done other functions. Here’s a photo of the phone:

But for as long as I’ve been using this phone one thing has eluded me (for those of you who know this phone model, please don’t laugh too hard) …. redial. I don’t know why it’s been a mystery to me for so long. I guess I’m just dense. So today, after dialing a phone number manually about 7 or 8 times trying to contact someone, I finally broke down and Googled it. Yup. That’s right. Google gave me the exact model’s user manual link so I clicked on that. Here’s an excerpt from the manual:

Then I looked at the phone more closely than I have before and for the first time I saw the “Redial” button. It’s located here:

Wow. Did I feel like a noob… wait, make that an IDIOT! I immediately covered by telling the guy across my cube “Andromeda Strain“. I was looking for a keypress combination or a complicated solution when it was right there and easy to see. Sheesh.

Here is the link to all the photos I have from Taste of Chicago. It was really cool this year. Took the whole family. Lots of walking, but it was still cool! Here was the basic itinerary:

• July 3
  • Drove from our home to Princeton, IL, and got on the Illinois Zephyr to Chicago. The train left Princeton at 8:35am.
  • Arrived in Chicago at 10:45am. Walked from Union Station to our hotel, the Congress Plaza Hotel. We got to the hotel about noon; didn’t expect it but our suite was ready so we dropped our bags there.
  • Went to Taste of Chicago. Had LOTS of food and plenty of drink (water and Gatorade – no alcohol!)
  • At 3pm, got to see Steve Miller Band at Taste of Chicago – FREE! Wow! What a show!
  • Left the Taste and walked to Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) and went up to the SkyDeck. Awesome view from there!
  • Went back to the hotel, ate a late supper and crashed.
• July 4
  • Got up kind of late – it was nice to sleep in. The kids brought us breakfast from Dunkin’ Donuts.
  • The hotel agreed to watch our bags after checkout so we didn’t have to carry them. Great!
  • Walked to Navy Pier. Wow! Lots to see. We walked along the shore of Lake Michigan.
  • Walked all around Navy Pier. Ate lunch at one of the restaurants there.
  • Spent a lot of time walking around looking at the kiosks that had knick-knacks.
  • Took a water taxi to Shedd Aquarium, then walked back to the hotel from there.
  • Took a break in the hotel – air conditioning was welcome.
  • Walked to Union Station to catch our train, which left at 5:55pm.
  • Train to Princeton and drive home were uneventful.

Lots of sight-seeing, eating, laughing and good times. And a great time spent with family.

It happened this afternoon. Our neighbor called KC at work and she called me. George is down and out.

Now for the hardest part: the cleanup. Do I hear the call of any volunteers?

We had tornado warnings today. They were issued while I was at work and we all had to file into our “bunker” during the warnings. And I guess a tornado was sighted here in town. But that’s not my big news. My big news is that George fell down; well at least part did. George is the name my daughter gave the pretty much dead willow tree at the bottom of the hill in our back yard. And George is down. We’ve been waiting for this to happen since the other tree simply snapped and fell in the wee hours of the morning. Of course, that was just under four years ago! Here’s the damage:

So now it’s time to clean up. Do I have any volunteers?

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Now playing: Spatterdash – Learning to Crawl
via FoxyTunes