sorry i haven’t posted in forever.

having said that, this week will prove to be post-worthy

in many respects as we are going to finish the bathroom

(finally) and hang some doors.

i know what you’re thinking, what did the doors ever do?

well those doors deserve it, no matter what you may think,

and we’re going to all stand around and laugh as we let

those rotten doors dangle on their hinges like the naughty

doors that they are.

also this week we have family descending upon NWA.

brothers and brothers’ friends will all be here for the

big 20-year reunion.  in fact, i probably won’t even see

the brothers for more than about 2 hours of the near-week

that they will be here because of said reunion.  but it should

make for interesting photo-graffy and stories.

when i get the bath done and the doors hanged i shall

post again, but right now i’m still reeling from the

big monday night football double-dose last night.

first game: definitely worthy of MNF

second game: lamentable at best.  and i’m still

wondering why i stayed up so late to watch it.

matt lienert my a$$.  what a waste of time.

at least when you watch arkansas players in the

NFL they perform.  sunday night kenny hamlin

was all over the place, got 7 tackles.  jamaal anderson…

well, sorry about the loss, baby, but got some sweet

pre-season action and some sacks.  i don’t know

what to say about matty…practice harder(?),

take that spot from jones-drew(?).  but the point

is that lienert was supposed to be the next freakin’

brett favre or something like that.  and last night

was just sad.

enough about football.

more posts this week.

Hogs @ bama on saturday…
GO HOGS!

i have a new name for the ‘worst character ever’

and it’s not ‘towlie‘, it’s TILE-Y.

i think i threw down a few pix of the tile in the

master bath just before i had actually done the

grout…

let’s all think about that word…’grout’.

it’s almost offensive.

it sounds dirty.

hell, it sounds like some sort of CONDITION.

‘hey man, you’re not lookin’ too well, everything ok?’

‘nah, man i got the GROUT. it’s tearin’ me up.’

‘duuude, sorry, yo.’

well, when we did the grout (eeeeeuw)

in the master bath i ran out of one kind and

in my haste ran to the store, grabbed a thing of

‘white tile grout, unsanded‘ and went back to work.

well the stuff i got was ass. (sorry mom)

it was more like a tub of ‘tub and tile caulk’.

totally vinyl, still pliable (two weeks later).

so tonight i am getting rid of it.

here are some smashing pix of the work.

grout removal

it’s not obvious from the pic how different

the old (good) grout and the different (crappy)

grout looks and performs, well here’s a better

view :

and if you ever have to do this little task,

don’t go and buy the $10.00 tool to the left,

(and i know most of you are pretty familiar with tools)

use your 5-way. it’s only about 10,000%

more effective.

almost there on the kitchen.

last night we put the remainder of the

shelving up and erin got after arranging

all of the dishes and such.

i promised pix. and pix i shall deliver.

kitchen cabs 1

kitchen cabs 2

and here’s a bit of a close-up of the bracket we went with.

now if we can get the hood up, this little portion of

the project can be wrapped.

no…not ‘rapped‘.

finishing the last few tiles in the master

bath is next on my agenda, and i better

get started.

more like ‘post ghosties’.

you old-school MAD readers will ‘get’ that last.

sorry i haven’t posted in a while,

we are still making progress but since it all seems

to look too similar the photos have been lax.

the upstairs bath is just about finished,

we only lack the shower curtain to make it

fully-functional.  the downstairs is slowly

becoming clear of clutter and tools.

we are going to put the shelves up in the

kitchen tonight so i’ll be sure and get some

pics of that to show everyone.

we also installed a new light over the dining

room table area.

then we installed another light over the dining

room table area.  moved the previously-installed

fixture to the foyer which i will hook up tonight.

soon we are going to get some help on cabinetry

from one of our family’s old friends/acquaintances,

the venerable SMG Alan Dunn.  also known as

‘the best damn carpenter EVER’.  the SMG has

more tools than a NASCAR race and could make

a board look like a sheepshank.  we’re hoping to hire

him to do the AV wall cabs and another piece in the

bedroom where the olde vanity was (in the bedroom).

In the BEDROOM!?  what is this a freakin’ hotel.

scratch that.  more like a MOtel!….

vanity in the bedroom…gimme a break.

ok,

i haven’t posted in forever and it will

seem like there’s little to even report.

but we’ve gotten moved in,

everything in storage is now in the haus.

i won’t bore you with details of the move

save this: two hours 15 minutes.

i’d like to thank the academy-

wait, no… i’d like to thank dr. amanda keen-zeebert

and her husband konah. cheryl hughes and her sister

my an-brenna. u-haul and so on. it went swiftly and

was relatively painless.

and since we’ve managed a few things.

here is what i did today.

and here’s what the kitch looks like since finish-time:

and hopefully the bath will turn out well…

we shall see.

‘look this is not as easy as it looks.

so if you don’t mind not distracting me?’

this last week we have been working on kitchen

cabs and have gotten the floor upstairs near-to-finished.

master bed new floor II

it was 100+ degrees today and i spent a good portion

of the afternoon with a worm-drive circular saw

in one hand, and a tape in the other, with a

carpenter’s pencil crammed in my visor…

it was a bit humid.

i was a bit swarthy.

hell i was really swarthy: i went through about

a gallon of water in two hours.

i think it straight-up went from jug,

to mouth,

to shirt.

but we did manage to get the wood down and

tonight erin got the sealer on so tomorrow it’s

polyurethane and finish the kitchen sink.

over the last few days we’ve only managed to get a few things

done (or so it would seem) erin has been staying busy during

the day and we’ve both gotten to the point of being pretty

worn out all the time. but we have made some strides so here’s

the pix.:

got in some cabinets

installed some fixtures &

finished the chalk-board wall

finished some appliance install

and that’s about it. of course, we’re doing all of this with plenty

of help and watchcare …

here’s a shot of the temporary entertainment wall and

the sleeping accommodations. sneaky cat.

so for the last week we’ve been trying to

prep the place for some serious movin’ and

shakin’. so without too much ado, here’s

where we are now.

this weekend, starting friday, we started to

get some appliances in. they delivered the rest

of them

on saturday morning and in conjunction

with finishing out the downstairs water closet,

we got some things put in the kitchen and in

the ‘service corridor‘. and i promised some

pics of the back porch and the view…

so that’s where we are now. this week we’ll be

trying to finish the upstairs and get ready to

move on sunday…wish us luck

so here are some smashing pix of the new floor

treatment downstairs and some other bits that

we’ve been able to finish.  the floor turned out

pretty well, i think: new floor.  it has an aplique look more

than we’d like, but we are confident that after

some wear and use (new foyer floor with ‘character’ )

it will have the appearance that we’re looking for.

it looks twentythousand times better than it did.

floor comparison

but erin is going at the priming and painting with

an unprecedented fervor, and the downstairs kitchen

and water-closet are both getting prepped for use.

like creating the base for the sink: ready for rock .

plus we’re starting to add some finishing touches to

the a/v wall (av wall with lights) and the dining k-nook.

and taking care of some essentials 1.

so soon we’ll be moved in enough to live there after

we get some appliances and get our stuff out of mom

and dad’s ‘business’…need some help? are you sure?

whenever you look up some intel about the

joys of staining concrete floors there’s always

some pitch like this: ’stained concrete floors are

not only maintenance free, but can be attractive

and blah blah blah… experience the warmth and

glow of a professionally-stained concrete floor in

your new construction project today!’

well let me tell you about the ‘warmth and glow’

of prepping existing construction for staining.

first you need one of these:

4″ scraper.

then you’ll need to drink about three gallons of

water and add some smashing gloves to your mitts.

because when you’re finished scraping you’ll have

lost 5 pounds in sweat (feeling the ‘warmth and glow’)

and have added 5-6 nicely-formed blisters to boot

the blisters are warm and glow-ey as well.

so i went over this floor at least twice in its entirety

with the scraper and then brought in the big guns;

the floor sander cometh. i won’t go into the nuances

of how you and the sander will warm up to each other,

but with a few hours of concrete dust settling into

your eyes everything has a nice ‘glow’ to it.

‘is that you, grampa?…what are you doing here?’

‘come into the light…’ but with an afternoon of

sanding we had a nice clean floor . here’s another,

note the finished-out beam @ the furred-down dining

also there’s a great view of the sander with its happy

warm and glowing 500′ power cord:

clean floor II

then it was on to the staining, more on that later.