I Suck At Installing A Thermostat

yesterday, karen and my favorite sister-in-law (janine) did some sisterly bonding. the two of them had plans to spend the afternoon together, which included a little trip to the salon for pedicures.

so while they were out and about, i attempted to do some projects around the house. the main project for the day: install a thermostat. now, i suck at installing a thermostat.

interestingly enough, the last thermostat i tried to install was at my bff's (kerry) place in salem. at the time, kerry had been looking for a programmable thermostat and karen and i just happened to have an extra one... a result of when we had our second floor added onto our existing home. unfortunately, i never got to finish that installation because of the unexpected wiring at kerry's place. kerry's uncle has since finished installing the thermostat.

anyway, karen and i recently purchased a new programmable thermostat to replace the existing thermostat on the second floor. the existing thermostat is not programmable and was installed by the contractors who added our second floor. there was nothing wrong with the current thermostat. it worked just fine. for karen and i, however, it was more a matter of being efficient and saving energy. (we like to help the environment that way.)

of course, people may now be thinking... why didn't karen and i just replace the thermostat with the programmable thermostat we gave to kerry? well, for anyone who knows me... i'm quite particular about things. the thermostat that we gave to kerry would not have looked right had it replaced the non-programmable thermostat because it was much smaller in size. (there would then be a lot of touch-up paint.)

so naturally, karen and i decided upon a new programmable thermostat that was of comparable size to the non-programmable one. granted, there still would be some paint to touch-up, but it would not be as much. and because i like neat gadgety type of gizmos, karen and i settled on a the thermostat with the touch screen lcd. sure, we may have gone a little overboard in picking a programmable thermostat with an lcd touch screen, but it looked cool.

anyway, the new digital programmable lcd touch screen thermostat was installed with ease. the only real trouble with the installation came with moving the location of the thermostat wire... which of course happened to be on the other side of the stud. (and by stud, i am not referring to myself... although if you want to refer to me as one, i will not object.)

as of right now, i am quite happy with the new thermostat. apparently, there is a whole slew of functions that the thermostat can perform. unfortunately, understanding those functions requires reading the operating manual that came with the thermostat... and well... those instructions are never fun to read. so needless to say, i have only programmed the date and time for the thermostat.

i just hope the thermostat actually works and can control the heating and cooling system of our house. just kidding. for anyone curious, yes i did test to make sure the thermostat would turn on the heat and the air conditioning. i am particular, remember?

anyway, karen was thrilled to see the new thermostat installed.

I Suck At Working On The House

for anyone who is curious... karen loves the television show, the golden girls. that show... and probably the cosby show... are possibly her favorite shows of all time. i suppose you could say that the golden girls are to her, what buffy the vampire slayer is to me.

what generally happens during most of our days is that karen will come home from work and unwind for a little while before going to bed. she will either watch the cosby show on the tvland station before going to bed, or she will watch a few episodes of the golden girls complements of the fios dvr.

as it turns out, she actually did both tonight. while she was watching the cosby show in bed tonight, i decided to write a post or two for my blog. in fact, this is generally when i have time to do other things... like work on a website for my favorite sister-in-law (janine) or take out the garbage or whatever. it's not like i dislike watching the cosby show or anything. i just feel like i can be more productive doing other things. plus, to quote my favorite niece (kaleigh)... "i'm not tired".

actually, one of the reasons why i am still awake now is because i am somewhat afraid to go to bed tonight. by afraid, i don't mean i have some type of phobia or anything. i'm actually just a little anal because i did not want to get my pillow case dirty with blood. for you see... i suck at working on the house.

before karen went to bed to watch the cosby show, she decided to watch a couple of episodes of the golden girls... complements of the verizon fios dvr. the golden girls is on all throughout the day... so there are always at least a handful of episodes recorded daily by the dvr.

anyway, while she was watching the golden girls, i decided to finish one of my projects around the house. the project involved adding sheets of plywood to our attic. the sheets of wood would function as a platform, or floor, whereby we could store things... like rubbermaid containers of clothes... or christmas ornaments... or even our fake christmas tree. without the plywood, there would just be the wood joists in the attic... and well... storing anything on a joist would not be good... particularly because if something happened, the weight of the item could cause it to go through your ceiling. (i actually slipped on the joist and stepped through our ceiling once when our house was just one floor... it wasn't pretty.)

regardless, there already existed one sheet of plywood in the attic which was done by the contractors who added our second floor addition. it turns out, that one sheet of plywood was not enough for our storage needs. so, with the additional area in the attic, we decided to add more sheets of plywood on top of the joists. as i had already added the additional sheets of plywood earlier, all i would have to do while karen was watching the golden girls was to attach the plywood to the joists.

so with a corded drill that my favorite brother-in-law (pj) lent me (because my cordless drill battery had died... completely), i climbed into the attic and started screwing the plywood to the joists. everything went fine until i was trying to attach a sheet of plywood near the edge of the roof. the angle of where the roof meets the joist creates a very tight spot. to get near the edge of the roof, i had to actually crawl face first toward the edge.

lying on my stomach near the edge of the roof, i looked to see if it was even worth attempting to attach screws to that side of the plywood sheet. it wasn't. i did not think there was going to be enough room to maneuver the drill anyway. so i shuffled backwards to what i thought was far enough and then sat up. thump!

i've hit my head numerous times. the number of times that i have hit my head sort of explains why i am the way i am, i guess. sadly, i knew this time was a little different. i felt the warm feel of blood on the top of my head... a result of hitting my head on a roofing nail that penetrated the shingles... and the roof. just to be sure, i even touched the top of my head only to see blood on my finger tips.

needless to say, i muttered "this is not good" under my breath. although i can't really see the wound, karen tells me the gash looks pretty good. perhaps i can try to impress people now and say i received it in a bar fight. karen did her best to clean the wound up for me because i could not see it.

so anyway, with the newly created gash on my head, i was afraid to go to bed and get my pillow case all covered in blood. plus, i may be somewhat paranoid now with the whole natasha richardson story about how her skiing accident led to her death. i figured i would wait a couple of hours to see if i get any headaches or whatnot as a result of my little accident. i don't know. perhaps i am paranoid. i may have to learn to sleep on my stomach tonight. we'll see.

I Suck At Staining

on saturday, karen had plans to meet up with her cousin (karlene) at their grandmother's house. their plan was to continue scanning the oodles and oodles of old pictures from nana's photo albums in order to distribute them to every interested relative.

so needless to say, i had the house all to myself. in order to feel somewhat productive, i decided to work on the house. in particular, i wanted to stain a few pieces of molding. unfortunately, i suck at staining.

before i could even really begin my staining project, my mother called asking if my father and her could stop by. my mom wanted to use my computer so that she could... of all things... check her email.

my mom has an old basic dell computer that my brother got for her for christmas many years ago. neither of my parents use the computer often. because they do not use the computer that much, having high speed internet did not make sense. so instead, they opted for the free dial-up modem. the problem: dial-up... very slow. it's like that comcast commercial with the talking turtles (the slowskys).

anyway, my mom had spoke with some of my relatives in hong kong and learned that pictures had been sent to her email address. viewing the pictures, however, would have taken forever on her computer with the dial-up modem. knowing that i had fios internet, she asked to stop by for a visit.

after visiting my son (braden) at the cemetery, my parents arrived. the first thing i noticed when they arrived was that my father had a bucket with him. my father wanted to take some rocks with him to use at their place for some unknown project. (my dad gets these projects in his head some times.) for anyone curious, i currently have a huge mound of rocks sitting in my driveway. i also have a huge mound of dirt sitting next to the huge mound of rocks in my driveway. both piles were remnants of a late summer project that never really got finished. so needless to say, i was quite thrilled to be able to get rid of some of the rocks.

needless to say, i had to show my mother how to use my computer because connecting to the internet through my computer is much different than connecting to the internet through a dial-up modem. from there, i had to walk her through the basics again of... well... web browsers and how the little finger icon generally means that the text can be clicked on and whatnot.

my mother generally forgets things on the computer. she will write down the instructions on how to do something (like check her email)... only to never look at the instructions again. it's very frustrating because i have to repeat myself... many times. perhaps that is why i tend to lose my patience with my mom whenever it comes to teaching her things on the computer.

anyway, while my mom was looking at the pictures sent to her email account, my father shoveled some rocks into his little bucket. not wanting to interrupt my plans for the day, both of my parents urged me to continue with my staining project as though they were not there.

so, i quickly threw on the pre-stain... waited for some time to elapse... and then threw on the stain. to say i get my anal nature from my father is an understatement. as i was staining the pieces of wood... my father was watching behind me, pointed to a point on the wood and told me "you missed a spot".

following my quick and terrible staining job, i went back to helping my mom on the computer... because apparently she forgot how to do something on the computer. when all was said and done, it was practically dinner time. thinking nothing of it, i asked if my parents wanted to stay for dinner. after all, i would have been eating alone otherwise.

naturally, my parents agreed to stay for dinner. so, i cut up a few vegetables and made an indian curried rice... complements of trader joe's frozen food section. my mom was excited. she had that silly grin on her face and basically said "wow, you cook? how come you never cooked when you were growing up?" i told her that reheating frozen food really isn't cooking. as it turns out, both her and my dad enjoyed the indian curried rice. thanks trader joe!

my mom enjoyed the indian curried rice so much that she wanted to know how to make it from scratch. in fact, my parents went to trader joe's on their way home after dinner to pick up a few bags of the rice to see what the ingredients were.

hours later, my mom called saying that she figured out how to make the indian rice from scratch. she was quite excited when she called. my mom likes to do things like that... figure out how to make certain dishes from scratch. we'll see if her indian curried rice is as good as trader joe's.

I Suck At Yard Work

with the nice weather yesterday, i decided to do something outside. that something: yard work. now, i suck at yard work. in fact, of all the possible chores to do, yard work is my least favorite.

there are many reasons as to why i dislike yard work so much:

reason #1) it's dirty and i hate getting dirty. sure, call me a primadonna, but i'd rather be covered in saw dust than in dirt. plus saw dust washes out of clothes... dirt... seems to wash out some of the time. not to mention... when you start sweating... sweat and dirt = disgusting.

reason #2) blisters and soreness. inevitably, yard work seems to consume a lot of time. because yard projects take a lot of time, i end up wielding some type of tool for a long period of time. and even with gloves, i always seem to get blisters. (okay, so perhaps i have delicate hands.) in addition to blisters, i generally end up feeling very sore hours later... also because i end up wielding some type of tool for a long period of time.

reason #3) depending on the time of day, i tan... and not just any tan... i generally get the ever stylish farmer's tan. granted, i suppose i could do yard work in the buff to get the well rounded tan, but i'd rather spare my neighbors the unsightly vision.

anyway, in an attempt to be somewhat productive during the nice weather, i decided to do some yard work. behind our back yard is conservation land. technically, i am not supposed to do anything to the land behind our back yard. there are, however, things growing on the conservation land and hanging over into our back yard.

the thing that is hanging over is some type of holly vine thing. if i were a horticulturalist, i could probably be a little more descriptive than "holly vine thing". basically, if you have seen any of those holiday wreaths made from twisted vines with little red berries sprinkled throughout the wreath, you probably have seen the "holly vine thing". sure, the "holly vine thing" may look pretty. unfortunately, it tends to kill other trees and plants.

behind our backyard are trees that are absolutely covered by these "holly vine things". the "holly vine things" grow from the ground... weave up and all around the trunk and any branches of a nearby tree... take all the sunlight away from the tree... and inevitably kills the tree.

thinking i would do something nice for the environment, i figured i would try to free some of the trees from the nasty grip of the "holly vine thing". well, let's just say that the project may have been over my head.

i chose a random tree near the border of our back yard and started shearing away. a little snip snip here. a little snip snip there. a blister (reason #2 as to why i dislike yard work) and a couple of hours later... i managed to free the single tree from the "holly vine thing". interestingly enough, it was pretty neat to watch the tree shoot straight up after cutting the vines from the "holly vine thing".

as exciting as it was to see the tree stand up again, there was just too many vines. i would have loved to continue my assault on the "holly vine thing", but i was simply too fatigued... which is sad seeing as how i just worked on one tree. there are a lot more trees behind my backyard.

nonetheless, i will try my hand again at defeating the "holly vine thing"... just not in the near future because my body is extremely sore right now... (again, reason #2 on why i dislike yard work).

I Suck At Working On The House

tonight, karen went out with my favorite sister-in-law (janine) and their cousin from lowell (karlene)... leaving me all by my lonesome. so naturally, i did what any person would do with a saturday night all to themselves... i worked on the house. unfortunately, i suck at working on the house.

working on our house can definitely be a grind at times. after all, i would much rather be vegging out, playing video games or what have you with my spare time. i can't remember the last time when i did just nothing all by myself. i am so looking forward to that day when i finally do get that chance. come to think of it, the last time i did nothing all day was probably january 19th of last year, when i organized the photo scavenger hunt for a bunch of my friends. oh well.

anyway, with karen out and about tonight, i got to play with wood... snicker snicker. i'm just kidding. basically, i spent the evening cutting pieces of base molding for our unfinished rooms upstairs. it's thrilling i know. for some reason, whenever i play with my trusty compound miter saw, i get sawdust everywhere. i am generally covered from head to toe in sawdust whenever i work with wood. tonight was no different.

needless to say, i'm now tired and covered in sawdust. but at least i was somewhat productive in getting things done around the house. truth be told, today in general has been quite the productive day.

as the light in our dining room went out, i had to go to home depot to find those special energy saving light bulbs to replace them. i hung 3 of the 4 paintings that karen and i received while on our cruise to the bahamas in our house. and i actually installed a few pieces of base molding in the bathroom. not bad for a day's work.

plus in terms of productivity and feeling like something has been accomplished, when karen and i went to visit braden at the cemetery, we met the relative of one of braden's neighbors. braden is buried near three other children who had likewise passed early on... about five months into the pregnancy. anyway, while we were visiting braden, a woman (barbara) approached us to let us know that she occasionally fixes the tree that we left for braden because it falls over a lot in the wind. naturally, we thanked her and introduced ourselves.

barbara, who has lived in the same house in norwell since she was the age of three, is the grandmother of the three children buried near braden. barbara's husband is also buried there at the cemetery too. for some reason, barbara was having a bad day today. she teared when she told us about her three grandchildren.

whether it was fate or blind luck that we happened to be there at the right time, i think barbara started to feel better after talking with us. i think she just wanted someone to talk to and i'm glad that karen and i were there for her. after all, i imagine it must be difficult when you lose so many family members. heck, i have trouble with the loss of just one.

all in all, it was very nice meeting barbara. i hope her day did get better. as an interesting note, barbara also enlightened us by telling us that one of the people involved with the make-a-wish foundation is also buried near braden. as bizarre as this sounds, i'm glad we chose the right cemetery plot for our son. braden is not only surrounded by friends he can play with, he can also make-a-wish at any time. neat.

I Suck At Working On The House

last night, karen and i completed another project off of our "to-do" list in terms of home improvement projects.

we have a long running list of projects that need to be done when we work on the house. unfortunately, i suck at working on the house. with the recent string of helping my friends and family with their home improvement projects, however, i may have been bitten by the home improvement bug again. so hopefully, karen and i can cross off more items from our "to-do" list.

the latest project to be completed: the corner cabinet.

when my brother moved, he gave karen and i a corner cabinet that was at his place. after all, my brother was not going to lug the corner cabinet all the way to texas, which is where he currently lives. so karen and i ended up with the piece of furniture.

my brother had gotten the piece of furniture from one of those unfinished furniture places. the cabinet has remained unfinished for quite some time. karen and i always meant to eventually stain the cabinet... we just never got around to it... until now.

(pictured below is the corner cabinet.)


when karen and i re-painted the living room, the process gave us a reason to revisit the cabinet project. after all, we wanted to "finish" the room off so that the room would actually look like a room instead of the construction mess that it has been for some time.

needless to say, karen and i ended up staining the cabinet. (we used the same stain that was used for the shelving unit in our kitchen.) and as usual, we did the coats of polyurethane and the wax.

i was going to switch out the hinges and use a more sleeker design... and by sleeker i mean hiding of the actual hinge itself. unfortunately, the cabinet door is not wide enough for those types of hinges. so, i had to leave the existing hinges on the cabinet. oh well.

i did, however, switch out the cabinet knob. the knob was an old wooden pull. the knob is now a nickel pull that resembles the pull knobs in our master bathroom... because we had an extra pull knob when we had the cabinets in our bathroom installed.

all in all, i'm happy with the way the cabinet came out. karen seems to like it as well. so that's good.

I Suck At Home Improvement

yesterday, i worked on a few home improvement projects. naturally, one would think that i was closer to getting my house finished and complete. unfortunately, the home improvement projects i worked on yesterday were not for my house... they were for karen's grandparents. so i guess you could say, i suck at home improvement.

sunday morning, i met my favorite brother-in-law (pj) at karen's grandparents' house which is located in hanover. generally speaking, whenever someone in the family has a home improvement project, pj is usually contacted. that is pj's thing. after all, it's what he does every day. just kidding.

i'm usually the one contacted for computer or other electronic issues. occasionally, i get called in to help with pj depending on the scope of the home improvement project. yesterday was no different as the main home improvement project was to install a counter top shelf. (there were a handful of other smaller projects as well.)

anyway, karen's grandfather, pj, and i then went to the local home improvement store (home depot) to gather supplies and whatnot for all of the projects. as i had just found out about the project the other day, i did not even know what the projects actually were.

needless to say, it took us a while to get everything at home depot. when he got back to karen's grandparents' house, we started all the projects. we actually completed quite a few... or i should say... pj completed quite a few. my main project was to install something in the shower to hold the shower head. yay!

the list of projects finished included:

installing the counter top shelf;
removing the casters from the existing cabinets;
drilling holes in the counter top for running wires;
installing the grommets (which apparently are what those things are called that get inserted into those counter top holes for wires... who knew?);
setting up the sewing machine;
setting up the computer (which runs windows 3.1... very sad);
installing the shower head holder;
installing two door pulls by the front entrance for karen's grandmother to grab hold of and use;
attaching a bracket to hold the planter pole upright;
and creating a small railing by the walkway for karen's grandmother.

i would say that the highlight of the day... aside from installing the counter top in the sauna of a room that it was going to be used in... was definitely the installation of the small railing by the walkway for karen's grandmother.

while installing the railing, pj somehow got his drill covered in... what can only be described as... stench. not only did he get this stuff on his drill, he got it on his sweatshirt... his hands... it was awful. the smell is indescribable. even when pj washed his hands numerous times, he could still smell it on him.

naturally, i had quite a chuckle watching him gag over the smell that he was covered in. yes, i'm a great brother-in-law. it was just humorous to watch him make faces.

pj even had the smell on him when we went out to eat afterwards. we went to uno's in hanover. lunch was very good. it was fun. i had a great time hanging out with pj... just sitting back, relaxing, watching the football game. i'm lucky to have a great brother-in-law.

I Suck At Working On The House

yesterday, my bff (kerry) came over for a visit.

kerry lives in salem. she offered to help work on our house this weekend as she was coming down to have dinner with her father. i'm happy kerry came over because i suck at working on the house. her coming down only motivated me to actually... well... work on the house.

i have a long laundry list of home improvement projects... still... even though the second floor addition was completed over a year ago. obviously, i couldn't ask kerry to do the more labor intensive items like running my table saw or anything like that... not that she couldn't of course. i would just feel more comfortable if i used the table saw and lost my fingers as opposed to her using the table saw and her losing her fingers. all right, so maybe i would not feel too comfortable losing fingers either way. but in general, i would probably feel worse if my friend got injured helping me.

so, karen and i had kerry do some touching up of the walls with paint. you can't lose a finger painting. if you do, then you're doing something wrong. not only did kerry paint, she helped karen hang pictures. hanging pictures is a relatively safe project as well. the only possible risk of injury is a hammer to the finger, which in the grand scheme of things is much better than a table saw to the finger.

for karen, it was particularly useful to hang pictures with kerry. karen has always been afraid to hang pictures by herself. after hanging a few pictures with kerry, karen realized how easy the process was. (granted, both karen and kerry had a slight problem with a frame that had two hangers attached to it, but i took care of that one for them.)

needless to say, karen enjoyed hanging pictures with kerry and she actually feels more at ease at hanging them up now on her own. in fact, she has started hanging other pictures on her own... with an excited smile and a bounce to her step. thanks kerry!

when we were done, the three of us had lunch at a local deli in norwell (called "on rye deli"... yum!), hung around and had some fun. we also had some cupcakes from a place called "the gingerbread construction company". the gingerbread construction company is located somewhere on the north shore by kerry. and i must say... the cupcakes... very good as well (cue rachael ray's "yum-o" sound).

oh yes, we also watched a few episodes of veronica mars. kerry and i are trying to get karen into the show. kerry and i started watching the show a while ago when karen was in bon jovi's home state of new jersey visiting my friend (pam). as kerry and i did not get too far into the first season, we basically started watching the show again from the beginning to get karen all caught up. (kerry may have dozed off during one of the episodes.) but, i think it worked. karen now likes the show. yay!

I Suck At Surround Sound

the media is saying that yesterday was a historic day. i guess that's true. after all, the country was either going to have the first african american president or the first female vice president. americans overwhelmingly chose the former.

so in celebration of the historical event yesterday, i worked on installing surround sound in our living room... to hear the campaign speeches of course. too bad i suck at surround sound.

a long while back (close to when we first purchased our house), karen and i thought about having surround sound in our living room. at the time, neither of us wanted huge speakers or any other thing that was an eyesore in the room. we eventually found a set of speakers on ebay. (my only stipulation of course was that the speakers had to be sony... i'm a sony guy... i should probably buy stock in sony because i own so many products by sony.)

unfortunately, when we received the speakers, we did not have anything to mount the speakers to the walls with. so, we basically connected the speakers to our receiver and simply placed the speakers around the television.

the set of speakers sat that way, for quite some time... even when i did finally get brackets to mount the speakers to the walls over a year ago. (the brackets... also by sony.) one of the reasons, aside from sheer laziness, as to why i did not install the brackets was because karen and i had talked about adding a second floor, straightening the living room ceiling (as the living room was slanted midway through the room), and repainting the entire room. i thought it would be best to wait until all of those items were done before installing the brackets and the speakers... and thus finally getting surround sound.

as luck would have it, everything came together. after a quick trip to the store for supplies, i worked on connecting the wires from the speakers to the faceplate, and then connecting the wires from the faceplate to the receiver. i am so thankful that i ran the wires before the second floor addition was done. installing the surround sound was so much easier.

anyway, i tested the surround sound to make sure the speakers are functioning properly... and they are... so that is always a good sign. now if i can only convince karen that we need a new television for the living room...

I Suck At Painting

yesterday, karen and i did something we have not done in quite some time... we worked on our house. in particular, we painted our living room.

(pictured below is our newly painted living room.)


too bad i suck at painting. it's not that i hate the act of painting... well... okay, maybe i do. i think it's just that on my list of home improvement projects, painting is always near the bottom. i would rather build something or install something as opposed to paint something.

in this case, the living room definitely needed to be painted. our contractors finished adding the second floor addition to our house over a year ago. part of the renovation process was fixing the living room beneath the second floor.

prior to the second floor, our living room had a sloped roof midway through the room. the room looked awful. i believe the sloped part of the room was originally a porch that got added to the existing adjacent room. when our contractors added the second floor, they had to make up the sloped difference... and they did with extra wood and drywall and all that.

unfortunately, our living room went unfinished... until now. karen and i spent the entire day painting the room. i think it came out okay.

it's weird. looking back, i used to incessantly work on the house every weekend. i'd be cutting drywall, running wires, doing plumbing, etc. i'd sometimes work so much that i rarely saw my friends. i remember one time, i was in the attic and my friend (pam) stopped by. as i was a mess, covered in attic insulation, i could only say hello to pam from within the attic.

as time went on, i've gotten away from working on the house. there is still a laundry list of to-do's for the house and i've simply let the list get longer and longer. even when i was preparing the room for my son (braden), i worked only on his room. i didn't worry about the other projects.

after painting, i actually felt invigorated to tackle the long list of to-do's again. i'm not sure if that is a good thing or not. part of me is excited because i want to finish all the other projects and actually have a livable house. the other part of me is not that excited because i'm afraid that if i throw myself into all these projects, that i will not be able to spend time with everyone and simply enjoy life.

I Suck At Working On The House

today was supposed to be a day full of rain. damn those weather forecasters. today has actually been quite warm and nice out. sure, there were showers in the very early morning. since then, it has been nothing but sun and warmth.

because the weather forecast was supposed to be rain, karen and i decided to be productive and work on the house. i suck at working on the house. i actually love working on the house. the problem is actually getting to the point where i am actually working on the house and not just planning or whatnot. (it's a lot like working out. once i'm doing a workout, i love it. up until then, i dread working out or think of some possible excuse not to do it.)

anyway, today's projects included finishing the little things and hanging mirrors. the last time i really worked on the house was back when karen went to newport and i went wild with the miter saw to create trim for the master bedroom.

well, even though the pieces were cut for the trim, they were never fully complete. the wood had to be stained, polyurethaned, steel-wooled, polyurethaned again, steel-wooled again, and waxed. this morning, i finished the last stage (the waxing) for the trim. so now, the trim is ready for installation. yay!

in our "changing area", we have a closetmaid shelving system. one of the corner bases was never fully secured to the wall. as well, we had a drawer that was never assembled. well, karen assembled the drawer. i secured the corner base to the wall. so check a couple of more items off the list. (karen also did some raking today too, which resulted in a blister.)

as well, karen had given me an engraved door knocker a while ago for a present. the intention was to install the door knocker when the addition was complete. unfortunately, we had lost track of where we had put it... until now. karen remembered where the door knocker was and installed it. (pictured below is the engraved door knocker.) check! another thing off the to-do list.



lastly, karen and i took a little trip to home depot today. we had been talking about getting a mirror (or two mirrors) for our master bathroom. we could just never find the right ones to fit the spot... until we went to home depot. anyway, we chose two rectangular mirrors, which would be placed over each sink. according to the instructions, these mirrors were to "float to enhance" the beauty of the mirror or something silly like that. needless to say, we installed both mirrors in the master bathroom. so, check another thing off the list. (pictured below are the mirrors.)



all in all, it has been quite a productive day. hopefully, we can continue the momentum and get back into the swing of things to diligently work on the house like we used to.

I Suck At Working On The House

as i sit here in front of my computer, i just realized that my glasses are covered with sawdust. no wonder why my eyes have been itchy as though there was something in them.

anyway, i suck at working on the house. i can't remember the last time i worked on the house. it definitely seems like ages ago when i put trim around the bedroom windows and hung the roman shades in them.

it has been months since the contractors finished adding a second floor to the house. i've gotten so used to the second floor addition that i can't remember (or maybe i just like to forget) the tiny shack of a house that it was before.

regardless, even though the contractors are done, the trim work still needs to be done on the second floor addition. thus, what better time to work on the house than when karen is away in newport! i don't think karen particularly likes it when i work on the house while she is gone, not because she doesn't like the quality of my work. she doesn't like how i occasionally miss a meal or two as i play mad scientist with the table saw. thus, to prevent any worrying, i'll let all of you know that i have eaten my normal three meals today.

anyway, today i worked on finishing the base trim in the master bedroom. (pictured below is the threshhold i created from a piece of wood that separates the bedroom from the bathroom.)



with my trusty miter saw, the base trim was a breeze to finish. each wall has a single piece of base trim with the exception of the wall behind the bed. the length of that wall was too long, so i had to use two pieces.

from there, i decided to work on the threshholds to the bathroom and to the balcony. as neither home depot nor lowes sold trim that would fit the varied heights of the floor in those transitional areas, i had to create them from scratch. thankfully, i received a router table as a present!

after putting together the router table and attaching my router to it, i ran some strips of wood through it. i then had to put my dreaded table saw skills to use to make the wood fit the varied heights. needless to say, there was sawdust everywhere.

anyway, i think the threshholds came out okay. unfortunately, i did not finish the entire master bedroom. there's a small corner piece that needs to be created, as well as a lip for the threshhold leading to the balcony. other than that, the master bedroom seems okay.

now comes the fun part... cleaning up...