I Suck At Hanging Out With Janine And PJ

last night, karen and i did something that we haven't done in quite some time: hung out with my favorite sister-in-law (janine) and my favorite brother-in-law (pj). now, i suck at hanging out with janine and pj.

awhile ago, there was a good stretch where karen and i would see them regularly. every weekend we would stop by to hang out. while at janine and pj's, i would generally get my niece (kaleigh) and nephew (pj) all riled up... before going home. needless to say, with busy schedules and whatnot, karen and i have not seen janine and pj (or our niece and nephew) in some time.

so yesterday, janine and pj invited us over for a cookout dinner. the cookout was definitely a good way to end the day. after all, i spent much of yesterday working on the house.

for me, the day began bright and early with installing shelving in our bathroom closet. recently, karen and i added actual doors to our bathroom closet (the doors were collecting dust within the closet itself because they were not installed for the longest time)... followed by the recent addition of molding around the doors. naturally, the next step was shelving.

as part of our ongoing attempt to reuse and be more environmentally friendly, karen and i decided to use what we could from our old shelving that had been in our itty bitty closet before the second floor addition was done. so in addition to having less waste in our landfills... which is always a plus, our cost of materials would be lower as compared to having to buy all new things.

it was actually quite interesting to reuse the shelving. to fit the shelving around the water heater that sits in our bathroom closet, we needed to cut our old reused shelving. the reused shelving is that bracketed wired shelving from closetmaid. so naturally, i needed to cut into the metal wires.

i've never cut into metal before with a saw. sure, i've made a few cuts into small sheets of metal with my mitre saw (which i don't really recommend because it will wreck your blade if you don't have the proper one installed). regardless, those pieces of metal were thin. the wire shelving was a little bit thicker.

with a newly acquired blade for cutting metal, i started cutting the wire shelving. sparks were flying everywhere. it was awesome! (and scary at the same time because the thought of setting the house on fire... or even setting me on fire... did cross my mind amid the dazzling array of sparks.)

luckily, no harm and no fire. as a mental note, i should remember to cut metal outside... just to be safe. upon completing the cut, the rest of the shelving installed pretty easily in our bathroom closet. and needless to say, karen is quite happy to have a functioning bathroom closet now. (interestingly enough, we have a ton of towels... which is weird because i don't think we have ever purchased any towels.)

anyway, following the shelving project, karen left for a wedding shower. my friend (meredith) is getting married this year on the fourth of july. so while karen was gone, i decided to do what any normal person would do: continue with home improvement projects. after all, i was on a roll.

among the other things that have been sitting in our house and collecting dust is molding for the windows in the garage. i purchased the molding a while ago and just never installed them... something i tend to do quite frequently due to my lack of motivation at times.

needless to say, i figured i would install the molding around the windows in the garage while karen was away at the wedding shower. for anyone curious, the molding karen and i selected for the garage windows were the primed casing type that is ready for painting. thus, the molding did not need our usual treatment of stain, polyurethane, and waxing. (primed casing is also cheaper because it is made of wood pieces joined together... as opposed to one long continuous piece of wood.)

as it was just the garage, it made sense to go with the primed molding. anyway, i labored through the installation. of course, it did not help that my nose started bleeding. (i tend to have frequent nose bleeds... a nasty side effect of cocaine... just kidding.) sadly, i even dripped some blood onto our garage floor.

eventually, i finished installing the molding around the windows in the garage. the installation wasn't pretty... at least in my opinion (and i am a tough critic when it comes to things that i do)... because like most things in our house, the walls were funky.

anyway, having done the bathroom closet and the garage windows, i was absolutely beat. so it was definitely good to unwind at janine and pj's. in addition to karen and i, janine and pj had invited their friend (gretchen) over. as an interesting side note, gretchen is neighbors with my bff's (kerry) mother. small world.

it was fun hanging out. at one point, i think we were all laughing in stitches watching a video that janine put together for my nephew's class. i should clarify... janine did a great job with the video itself. it was the content of the video (or a particular person in the video) that had us laughing so hard.

needless to say, we had a great time.