i showed some photos of the beam

being raised and patched in the last

post. but one thing we did during

that time was build an area for all

of the audio/video equipment and

speakers and such. we call it the a/v

wall (or ‘av wall’ for short because i’m

too lazy to incorporate that backslash into

my typing skill set).

but the wall as it was had an ancient version of

sound baffling. which is probably better for you

and the environment (in it’s make-up) than the

stuff they make now, but it doesn’t perform as

well. it seems to be made up of lightly compressed

wood fibres. as much of it as i’ve handled, it’s

definitely not a fiberglass product. but this stuff

lines the wall and ceiling where we’re putting our

av wall, so removing it to get to the stud locations

and the electricity was first. ‘clean slate’ for av

then we had some walls going up on each side.

these will house the speakers and the sub.

then there’s going to be this fabulous bench seat

(adding the bench) that will provide some additional seating

and help frame the screenwall. then we’re going

to bring down the ceiling (nearly finished av structure)

just above the seat for some additional lighting

lights cut in and (again) to help frame the

screenwall opening. and TA DA!

call those sheetrock boys, cause we’re ready to finish .

we also decided that the back porch was a bit

sparse with two foldable camp chairs, so we

invested in some happy plants and the decided

we needed more happy plants and some furniture.

but i’ll post those pics later.

as promised…some photos of the…

ah crap i’m watching a fantastic

DVD of ocean’s 13 (straight from

asia) (didn’t see the flick in theatres)

so i’m all distracted.

here are some newer versions of the place.

enjoy. (ye…i’m lazy. go and beat my effigy

for not posting earlier)

half-inch drop

that’s what we’re dealing with for getting that

drop-down in the dining area (which sagged

one half of an inch[duh]) so it took a bit of

‘doing’ to get the sucker to be straight.

prep the patch

post in place

she’s up!…didn’t make a sound

straight as a string.

i love that expression, but we literally used

a string to level that thing, so it ‘better be’.

more after the oceans is over

this week we have the drywall

finishers @ the condo to put the

final touches on the mudding and

taping job that erin and i attempted.

any of you out there that do this

for a living get a big gold star.

erin and i laboured over the spackling

of mud on all the little dents and

dings in the walls that happened when

we removed the wallpaper.

we had been doing it for more than a

week while working on the AV wall.

then we decided the pros would do a

better job and probably do it faster.

well, in less than 4 hours those cats

had nearly the entire place completely

mudded and taped (ok, that photo isn’t

our condo, obviously, but that’s what a

nice mud and tape job looks like finished)

and had gone back over our spackling to boot. (applause).

i’ll have some pics for you later.

but when this portion is done, then it’s

time for flooring and moving in because

i love the view out the back, but it’d be

nice to see this one as well…

the view from the front.

ok so i honestly don’t recall what we

did next. it was all such a flurry of

activity and destruction that i’m now

resigned to just following cues from

the ‘date picture taken’ arrangement

(in the windows explorer window) of

all of this ‘recording’ of our project.

at this point we’re trying to get ready

for the sheetrock dude to re-texture

the walls and ceilings. so the upstairs

(as the first ‘danger area echo’) recieved

a nice ‘once over’.

master bedrooom 1

clean mbath
clean guest bed

you might remember this bit of innovation

above the stairs? ’storage’ ?

in typical purging fashion, we had to take steps.

taking (removing) steps…

and we were able to get some of the debris

out of the great room downstairs. cleaner greatroom.

and we got this bathroom: first floor bath 1

a little more streamlined: first floor bath

naturally all of the stuff in the greatroom had

to go somewhere, so until we got rid of it:

the back porch became the repository.

notice the smashing cover-up job.

the least we could do to try to preserve the

serenity of the view… ahhhhh.

some will notice that there are two indespensible

items on the back porch…steel, and BBQ.

in fact, the impetus to finish this place

(at this point) is to preserve the sanity of

the kitty, and to fire that bullet bbq up!

so i said in another post that ‘erin did all of this’

and these photos are of that fateful june 25th.

the thing about the kitchen is that is that it was

rather small, even for a galley kitchen.

so we must ‘create some space’.

kitchen demo 1

kitchen demo 2

kitchen demo 3

naturally you run into a few less-than-savory

elements in the kitchen… but hopefully all you

suffer is a damaged pallate, not infectious amoebic dysentery.

here’s what we found:

stove removal

love that little pile to the right.

mmmm…pet foooood…aggghhh.

and i’m surprised the joint didn’t burn

to the ground 20 years ago.

how BOUT that ‘lectric wahhring!?

and, (last lament) of course,

poor froggy.

and i swear that when we walked this place

before we bought it, this scene played out.

e- ’say, why is there a big piece of blue cabinet-top

for the sink cabinet floor?’

seller- ‘we put that there.’

e- ‘has there been a leak or any water damage?’

seller- ‘OH nO! we just put it there, it’s fine’

e- (dubious) ‘ohhh kay.’

well here’s what we found when we removed

the sink and the cabinet top underneath:

under the ’sink’

under the ’sink’ 2

and it kept ‘getting funnier and funnier EVERY time i see it!’

what lies beneath

by the dishwash

behind the dishwash

that ‘piece of wood’ sitting atop the dishwasher

is the bottom of the side panel to the sink cab.

so after yanking the dishwasher out, we found

this on the far wall of the kitchen.

the nast

but the sucker did come clean

clean kitchen

and there was much rejoicing

‘clean’ kitchen!

of course, the pesky laws of thermodynamics

dicatate that it all has to go somewhere, it can’t

just vaporize. (dang!) so that left us with

the aftermath

and to quote Dr. Ian Malcom:

‘now that is one big pile of sh!t.’

and we left that night with a bit of

debris lying about…

you can go to the ‘bne…’ tab and learn

a bit about us and know this… buuuut

b and e have been married for 11 years.

hardly seems possible.

not that we’re still together.

but that it’s been that long.

so for just this post i’ll leave off with something

sufficiently tacky/cheezy/juvenille:

so the kitchen had similar styling and wallpaper-ing.

so you know what’s going to happen next…

DESTRUCTO!

here are some before shots:

kitchen 1

kitchen 2

microwave ’shelf’

this is a close-up of the wallpaper and border

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make you want a nice egg creme?

ok here are some little-bit-better

photos of the demo/prep phase.

most of this was done weeks (heh!)

ago.

yet it still continues to be present.

it pervades.

demo brings debris
demo removes

and removes

and…removes

beginnings of a ‘clean slate’

naked stair

ok tomorrow we’ll begin showing the

smashing kitchen!

thanks for viewing!

just about the time that we closed

on this place, we began demolition.

as in:

b- ‘whew, i sure am glad the closing is over.’

e- ‘you wanna get a bite to eat?’

b- ‘actually let’s go see if the key is working…

and tear out the mantle on the fireplace!’

e- ’sounds good!’

erin did almost everything you see in these pics.

actually the monday after the weekend that we

closed, she had all of this outta there.

this is what we’re dealing with for style as-is:

poignancy

and here’s the solution…he he.

master bath purge

master bath, last tile standing

master bed cleaning

cleaning continuation

clean stairs

demo brings new perspectives

here are some of the more select photos

of the ‘before’ conditions in the new condo.

hopefully i’ll keep this thing organized

in such a way that ‘before’ photos will

be adjacent ‘in process’ and ‘after’ photos;

but we’ll just have to see how that works…

note the smashing decor upstairs.

if i had a player piano, some french

call-girls, a few dusty cowboys, and

a guy wearing pin-striped pants,

a green-tinted visor, vest, white shirt

and a garter around his arm (or maybe

this fine chap) i could open a saloon in this joint.

or maybe a TGI Fridays…

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