Liloia.com

Renovation Rebates

Here are a couple of good deals for fledgling DIYers:

Ryobi Tools is offering a $50 rebate when you purchase a mitre saw and the table that goes with it. If you have to buy them for a project anyway, do it before November 1st and save some cash.

And Sears is offering free delivery on appliances over $399, up to a $65 rebate. Both deals were a big help this week. The $115 we saved is the difference between glass doors and wood doors on the kitchen wall cabinets. Just don't forget to send in the rebate forms! (Most people do.)

Finger -- Nail

I had to take an online Safety Training class today for work and this picture was one of the shots. All I could think about is all the lathe and nails laying around the floor and how many times I have already inadvertantly stepped on a nail. No punctures yet, but a few close calls.

In happier news, my cousin Chris is coming this weekend to help out for the week up at ILM. I am really looking forward to seeing him and getting a chance to hang out. Oh, and having another adult around to get more done is nice too.

Free to a Home

I've been thinking of all of the items hanging around our property which are free for the taking. Heck, if you can get it out of here, we'll buy you a beer. But you only have until Tuesday when the Sears guy carts everything out of here.

-- '70s-era washer
-- '70s-era dryer
-- old gas stove #1
-- old gas stove #2
-- structurally-sound 20' by 30' metal barn roof (no barn attached)
-- wall-mount white sink
-- stainless steel sink
-- two working toilets

-- bathroom sink with base cabinet

The Door to Nowhere

Sometimes people do things that seem to make sense, but turn out to be shake-your-head ridiculous. When our front porch was enclosed, someone added a lovely new exterior door on front of the house. Now you say to yourself... of course the front of every house should have a door! Well, not really.

The front porch is a good four feet above the front yard -- and a strange little front yard it is. Though we have five acres in the back and on the sides, the front is just a small, bushy strip with a drainage ditch next to the road. It's set down a few feet from both the road and the driveway, so if you were to park on the driveway in order to enter the front of the house there would be a couple of issues:

1) You would block the driveway for all other incoming cars.
2) You would need to climb down a short-but-steep incline into the front yard.
3) No one built stairs on the Door to Nowhere, so you have to pull yourself up like a gymnast to enter.
4) The front living room door is ancient, with a key that no longer exists. That door will stay as decoration, but the primary entrance is via the kitchen.

The Door to Nowhere is more than just silly, it's going to cause some structural complications when we start putting in the sleepers to level the old sloped (for water runoff) porch floor. In order to level the floor, the sleepers have to go up past the sill of the Door to Nowhere, and it will no longer open. Truly, since it goes nowhere, that's not a problem, but in the interest of making things right, the door will probably have to come out.

Which leads to...

The Door to Nowhere is not spaced in such a way that a window can be put there easily. The Door to Nowhere was centered on the porch. Centering is a wonderful idea in most cases; however, it means that removing the door and putting a window in the spot will create a row of four windows... two spaced evenly, a third centered, then the fourth off to the left. The picture shows it best.

The Door to Nowhere just became the Door to Frustration.

Inside Out House

Inside Out House by taragl

We spent most of Saturday moving the seven-feet high, 20-feet wide pile of plaster, lath, paneling and drywall from the ground under Trevor's bedroom window to the 30-yard dumpster.

"Creative" exterior wiring strung on poles made it impossible to position the dumpster any closer to the house, so we needed to violate a cardinal cleanup rule, O.H.I.O. (only handle it once), by dropping trash out of the window, then carting it to the dumpster.

Sunday we puttered around the yard, cleaning and cutting grass since Dave sprained his thumb muscle and was ordered to rest his hand for a week. All of the kitchen cabinets are down except the sink base. Free vintage (probably working) 1978 washer and dryer to anyone who wants to cart them away.

Short Sunday

No pictures today, so tired that we forgot. We worked a shorter day today so Trevor could come home in time to play with some of his friends before it got too late.

A few things we got done today:
- More of the 18 days of weedwhacking that needs to be done
- Exposed all of the exterior walls
- Removed some of the old insulation
- Removed the drop ceiling in the bathroom
- Started demolition on the bathroom walls and fixtures

Coming up next (probably Wednesday or Thursday)
- Clean out all the remaining lathe and insulation
- Rip out the bathroom walls and floor
- Pull down the ceiling in all three bedrooms and landing
- Take out nails everywhere

Once we do that the upstairs should be just about done, and then we move onto the downstairs demolition. We should be able to finish that next weekend and start onto the next step, framing out new walls/upgrading existing walls with new headers/studs.

Office into Trevor's Room

Office into Trevor's Room by taragl

We removed the plaster and lath on all of the interior upstairs walls yesterday. Plaster dust was thick in the air.

We found some "interesting" wall interiors... clues to what might have been the original layout. We think the bathroom was about two feet wider on the left than it is now -- there are holes and pipes in what's now Trevor's room.

And some overzealous demolition (removing a doorway that should have stayed) may turn out to become a better layout for the master bedroom.

Construction Site Trevor

DSCN0119 by taragl

Last night, we began removing plaster and many layers of wallpaper from Trevor's room and the office. I had my reservations about removing the plaster and lath -- why tear out a perfectly good wall -- but my suspicions were confirmed when we started demolition.

In about half the room, the plaster keys had broken and the plaster pieces were cracked and bowed out from the wall, simply hanging by the wallpaper. Any attempt to remove the wallpaper, or hang drywall over it would have brought down the entire section of plaster.

A few pieces of wallpaper (several layers thick) came down in huge sheets, which I saved for later deconstruction. There's a light blue layer in there with very pretty flowers which I'd like to mount and display when all is said and done.

Tools that are a godsend: flatbars, mallets, yellow construction boots and halogen work lights

Tools that need to go back to the designer: safety goggles which fog up and dust masks which don't seal

Our House

House by taragl

We bought our first house tonight. A 1912 farmhouse with three bedrooms on five acres of land in the center of an island in Lake Champlain.

It needs a lot of work, but we aren't the type to shy away from a project.

Today: Closing, getting keys and a celebratory dinner at Parima.

Tomorrow: Measurements & plans, testing plumbing & electricity, mapping circuits and maybe even some plaster coming down.

Orkut and Friendless

At this point, is Orkut pretty much only an place to receive suggestive scrapbook messages from unfamiliar Brazilian men? Does anyone still find any use for the site whatsoever?

I'll admit, I'm a friend snob. Several friend requests show up in my inbox each day from a variety of social networking sites -- from the DNC's PartyBuilder Network to MySpace and Orkut -- and most of them get declined. If I haven't emailed you, talked about you, been to a party where you had just left, or stopped by your blog at some point in my lifetime, I'll probably decline your friend invitation.

Orkut is the worst offender, with random strangers two continents away requesting friend status on a daily basis. On MySpace, at least the requesters are in the same state (is that better... or perhaps worse?). And PartyBuilder started off swimmingly -- with requests from people far and near who I knew through work -- but quickly devolved into a contest of "Get the Most Friends."

And if you're a friend snob like me, you've got that awkward moment when you hit "decline" and the asker receives a message that essentially says you're a recluse with no life and who refuses to shut off Stargate:Atlantis to make new friends. Which is not true. It's Battlestar Galactica. These sites are about connection; there's no point to having 6,500 people on my buddy list who I am not, and will never be, connected to.

On the new new social networking site I've been exploring (no, I won't tell you where it is, because there are 500 of us so far and I'm enjoying the bliss of an online community in its infancy), I have no friends. I was a bit appalled at first, because a quick cruise through the profiles showed me I'm one of the few members without a single buddy. But that's a good thing. I might actually be able to find some connection with the few people I will eventually add.

Sharing

Maybe I'm missing something, but how do a husband and wife share music on their iPods?

Conversations with Tara

On bad actors:
"I sometimes like to flip over to the Lifetime Channel movies, so I can see how my friends from 90210 are doing..."

On Sea Monkeys:
"...you know, they don't actually live...in the sea and they aren't monkeys at all! They are more like....shrimp that live in a cup.....Cup Shrimp if you will"

Spiky Balls

IMG_9003 by taragl

This looks like a normal claw machine, but it's actually a game called How Many Tokens Will an Eight-Year-Old Put Into A Machine Before He Realizes It's Broken?

The answer?
Five.

Trevor's Rock Sculptures at Moe's

Trevor's Rock Sculptures at Moe's by taragl

When Mom and Dad start talking... and talking... and talking over dinner, there's not much to do but fill a table with rock sculptures while you wait for them to run out of air.

$218 Phone Call

Port Orleans Riverside at night by Princess Shari

Stories that sound too good to be true usually are, but sometimes you get a surprise.

I've seen talk of a set of mythical Disney discount codes during my travels on the Internets. They're given to Annual Pass holders and Vacation Club members, and eventually trickle down to the commoners.

Recently, a few of these mysterious codes were released to the public and I decided it couldn't hurt to give one a try. I called Disney's Central Reservations Office and simply asked, "I have a reservation already, can I apply one of the discounts to it?" The Cast Member was coy, "Do you have the code?" I did indeed have the code.

She had bad news, which became good news, then morphed into even better news.

Bad news: The discount was not available for the value resort I had booked. (Think nice motel with an eclectic and frenetic Disney theme.)
Good news: She could upgrade us to a moderate resort. (Think theme hotel with six pools, hot tub, butterfly garden, fishing river, carriage rides and boats to the theme parks.)
Even better news: She could also give us back $218.

That was one good phone call.