!), digital cameras, DVDs, and other items I enjoy or are on my wish list!Recently in Home Improvement Category
A month since my last post! I'm just not feeling bloggy. Here's an update:
My son is married! Greg and Lauren tied the knot in a simple ceremony on August 8. I flew in Thursday evening and flew back Friday evening after a nice lunch for just the 3 of us after the ceremony. They took off for the weekend on a short honeymoon to the wine country about an hour away from where they live. Then, on Monday, Greg started his new job as an attorney working for a mid-sized litigation firm. Whew - big changes!
My new shoes: The brown Ros Rhommerson Cynthia shoes I wore at my son's marriage ceremony are comfortable - as long as I don't walk in them. Ack!
The muscles in my feet, ankles, knees, and lower back just weren't up to walking in 2 1/2 inch heels! Now, the black Hugh Puppies Sara shoes with a 1 1/4 inch heel don't hurt me nearly as much!
I don't think the problem with the brown shoes is the shoes - as I said, they're comfortable. I do think the problem is that I'm so used to wearing fully-padded New Balance walking shoes with basically no heal height, that the muscles needed to walk in 2 1/2 inch heels just aren't up to snuff! Because of that, I haven't yet worn the black shoes with 2 1/2 inch heels!
Our home: We're having 5 of the windows in our house replaced on Tuesday - livingroom, kitchen (front window), craft room, bathroom, and TV room - by American Vision Windows.
After that's done, we're thinking about hiring a painter to finish painting the outside trim (a project started last summer but not finished) and paint the house (we're still not happy with the medium grey colored stucco). I'm now thinking a creamy light yellow which will work fine with the white trim.
Bryan brought a girl for dinner! My stepson brought his latest girlfriend Brit to our house for dinner last night - something neither Bill nor I can remember him ever doing before!
Together, Bill and I have joked that, since Billy got married on 7/7/2007 and Greg got married on 8/8/2008 that Bryan may get married on 9/9/2009.
In fun, we mentioned that to Bryan several weeks ago and he responded that maybe 12/12/2012 would be the date he gets married! Of course, there's no rush for him to get married! I just thought it interesting that he brought Brit over for dinner.
Crocheting: No crocheting in the past 4 weeks or so. Just not into it right now.
Quilting / sewing: I bought storage containers and many more fat quarters at JoAnn Fabrics (I couldn't resist the 99¢ sale!) to add to my fabric collection. The weather has been hot so it's taken some effort to get around to washing and ironing all the new fabric - but I just finished this afternoon.
NASCAR: Kyle Busch won his 18th race of the year last night! As I type this, he's working on his 9th Cup series win! Tony Stewart hasn't (yet!) won a race, but at this moment he's one of the 12 drivers qualifying to be in the Chase for the Cup and he still has a chance to win this year's championship!
Well, let's see, the past 2 weeks have been a bit eventful!
My son is getting married! Yup, I'm gonna have another daughter(-in-law)! Whoop!
Last year, my stepson Billy got married on July 7, 2007 (777 or 7-7-07 or 07-07-07 or 070707) - a popular day to get married last year!
Greg proposed on July 19 in a field while they were picking raspberries and, practical people that they are, they decided to skip a big wedding ceremony (and all that goes with it) and get married right away - on Friday, August 8, 2008 (888 or 8-8-08 or 08-08-08 or 080808). Eight to the Chinese culture is a very lucky number. Neither of them is Chinese, but I'm sure their marriage will by a good one! Lauren and Greg make a great couple!
Greg asked his current boss, a judge, to marry them. The simple ceremony will be at the courthouse.
Parties (more formally known as wedding receptions) will be held at family homes in Oregon and California for family and friends local to those areas. We haven't set a date yet, but at our house, the party will be a small affair with close family and a few close neighbors.
Then, on Monday after the wedding, Greg starts his new job as an attorney for a mid-sized litigation firm. How cool is that?! Married and a new job all in the same 4 days!
On the home front: The new refrigerator fit perfectly! Whoop! We love the clear shelves and drawers - and can now see what's inside the drawers and we can stop forgetting what's in the them!
Bill and I are heading to the lake tomorrow! A whole day off together!
On the crochet front: Two more lap blankets are done (no photos for posting yet) and one more started.
On the quilting front: Yes, I said "quilting"! I began piecing blocks together on July 12 and have finished 4 since then! Also no photos yet.
Categories: Crochet General, Home Improvement, Self Improvement
I opened the refrigerator yesterday morning to get my lunch packed and discovered many of the items were cool, some warm, and a few still cold. Ack! We need a new refrigerator!
Luckily, we use an even older refrigerator in the garage as our "drink fridge". Bill calls it our "beer fridge" It holds water, soda, iced tea, and of course beer - both non-alcoholic and alcoholic versions! The freezer holds chicken, steak, ground turkey, sandwich rolls, bread, and other frozen goods that don't fit in the kitchen fridge.
So, I emptied the garage fridge of drinks and moved all items from the kitchen fridge to the garage fridge. Thank goodness we hadn't done a CostCo trip lately so there was room in the garage freezer for most of the items in the kitchen freezer.
Last night, Bill went to a Sears outlet to find a replacement refrigerator. After a freezer door fell off one refrigerator, he left. Since Bill found our new stove and I'm home from work today (4-day work weeks during the summer!), it was my turn to find a new refrigerator.
The area in which the refrigerator fits is smaller than a majority of the refrigerators manufactured today. The space is 65 1/2 inches high, 35 inches wide, and about 30 inches or so deep. The deeper and/or wider the refrigerator, the more space the door needs to open all the way. The old refrigerator was 65 inches high, 30 inches wide, and 31 inches deep. The door couldn't open all the way without hitting the stove, even with the garbage can out of the way.
I found a Whirlpool refrigerator at Western Appliance that should fit fine. It is 66 1/4 inches high (but the floor model was 65 1/2 inches so we're hoping we can adjust the feet if needed), 32 1/2 inches wide, and 31 1/2 inches deep. The shelves in the door are adjustable so I think they can be situated in such a way that we can open the bottom drawer on the right side without too much trouble.
Categories: Home Improvement
I mentioned previously that we got a new stove in May. Both the old and new stoves are 40 inches wide, have a small oven and a large oven, and have 4 burners. The difference is that, for years, only the 2 right-hand burners and the large oven worked. In April, the back burner on the right side stopped working.
We've been enjoying 4 working burners since the new stove arrived! Whoop!
Categories: Home Improvement
As I mentioned previously, I cleaned out my closet Friday. The 3 piles of clothes turned into 8 bags of clothes. The box of hangers will also be donated.
The helpful cat (my girl Cleo!) stays.
Categories: Home Improvement
Hubby bought himself a new toy Monday night! Today was the first day I could see it since mornings are dark and evenings are dark!
A 2008 Chevrolet Colorado LT Crew Cab in Ruby Red. With the higher gas prices and about 9 miles per gallon, random things going wrong here and there which needed fixing on his 1997 Chevrolet Silverado Z71, and a $200+ registration fee coming due, he wanted a new, more dependable truck with better gas mileage. So, here it is!
Most of the time, his toys are more expensive than mine!
His: New truck, motorcycle, table saw, etc.
Mine: Small digital cameras, sewing machine, fabric, crochet books,… - even the Dell XPS 400 desktop computer I bought in April 2006 was only $2,245.
Categories: Home Improvement, Other, Self Improvement
On Saturday, after troubleshooting a loud grinding/spinning noise coming from my PC, I decided to buy an external hard drive to use as a backup drive for my PC. So, a visit to Amazon.com was in order! After much research on Google, I ordered an external drive - and two wanna-have items!
- Western Digital WDG1T7500N My Book Pro Edition 750 GB USB/Firewire Triple Interface External Hard Drive
- Shrek the Third (Widescreen Edition)
- 50 Sensational Crochet Afghans & Throws
Then on Sunday, I spent about 4 hours online researching digital cameras. I want one I can easily carry around in my purse. I again talked myself out of buying a SLR-type digital camera (the Nikon D300 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)
The carry around camera: Canon PowerShot A570IS 7.1MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom, and Canon PSC-85 Deluxe Soft Case
, and Kingston 2GB Secure Digital Memory Card
The replacement camera: Canon PowerShot SX100 IS 8.0 Megapixel Digital Camera with 10x Optical Zoomkit with Transcend 4GB SecureDigital (SDHC) Card + USB 2.0 SecureDigital (SD) Card Reader + (4) AA Rechargeable Batteries with Charger + Digital Camera Case
How exciting! I'll hopefully have the A570IS camera before December 27 when I visit my son!
Categories: Home Improvement
[NOTE: The following is my opinion about our experience with installing Pergo laminate flooring. I am not an expert. I do not represent Pergo. Your experience may vary. I am not responsible for any problems you may encounter.]
On occasion I see that visitors to this blog are looking for information about Pergo laminate flooring in general or Pergo Global Passages flooring in the Dolce Mahogany color in particular. In September-October 2006, we installed Pergo Dolce Mahogany laminate flooring in our master bedroom as a 16-year Anniversary activity (yes, we're odd like that!), and I wrote 7 entries in this blog during the project.
Recently, I received a message from someone with questions about our experience with our Pergo floor and the installation process. I thought I'd include the questions and answers here as a set of Frequently Asked Questions (with answers!) that may help others with similar questions. It was nice re-visiting our Anniversary project from last year! Leave a comment if you have additional questions.
The links below are helpful:
- The Pergo website has installation info:
- Bob Vila video about Pergo installation
- A1 Flooring has lots of Pergo installation materials to look at (search for Pergo)
On to the questions…
Q. How is your floor holding up in the past year since it was installed? Are there any noticeable scratches? Any other issues to be aware of?
A. No scratches to date. The floor is supposed to be pretty resistant to that.
We noticed that our vacuum cleaner left skid marks (rubber(?) plastic(?) wheels) so we don't bring it in there. The skid marks came off easily. I used my fingernails, but a washcloth may also do the job.
We pick up anything that might scratch the floor if we were to step on it (such as clay cat litter that gets carried around the house sometimes in between the cats' toes).
We put thick felt pads (from Orchard Supply Hardware) on the bottom of every piece of furniture in the room, except the wheels of the bed (which are plastic(?) and don't seem to leave skid marks).
Bill (who is a machinist) does not walk in there with his work boots on (metal chips get embedded in the bottom of his boots).
Categories: Home Improvement
[I started this entry on September 28! I'm just not feeling the bloggy or email love lately... By the way, I had to turn off commenting (for now) on this blog due to receiving about 200 spam comments in a few hours.]
Just after we had new colored stucco applied to our house two weeks ago, our next door neighbor, Dee, stood in front of our screen door and called my name. I walk outside onto the porch and she says "Dude and I have a bet for dinner tonight." She points to the medium-gray-with-a-faint-olive-green-tint stucco recently placed on the walls and gables of our house and says disbelievingly, "Tell me. Is this the color of your house?"
I smile knowingly (I was in disbelief too). "Well, it is the colored stucco - not an undercoat waiting to be painted - but the color is not what we thought it would be based on the one-inch by half-inch color chip. So, you're both right!" Pause. "It is currently the color of our house but it is medium grey - unfinished grey looking - and we're thinking about painting over it in a few weeks after the stucco cures."
To top it off, it rained a few days after the stucco had been applied and it got stained from roof-to-ground dirty water splatter because the gutter downspouts had been removed in preparation for new gutters being installed - see the darker areas that have an olive green-ish tint in the above photos?
So, even if we decide we like the medium grey color of the stucco, we may still decide to paint because of the staining.
Adventures in Finding the Right Color for Our House
The trials and tribulations of choosing a color to paint our house is underway. The first green we tried turned out to be a light mint green color (above) on the test wall of the shed in our backyard. The second green so far is a medium mint green and the third color more grass green than sage - also not what we wanted. I'm bummed a bit by the waste of paint and time and energy of this color-choosing process. However, we're closer now than we were a few days ago to finding something we like.
The Garage Door
Our garage door is cream colored. It needs to be washed with soap, but it'll still be cream. Because of the expense to replace it with a white garage door, we'll probably keep it cream as I don't think the panels will hold paint well.
Trim
The medium and chocolate brown trim colors are slowly being covered with white - three coats of white - after trim areas are sanded and putty applied where needed.
The Side Gates
The side gate on the north side of the house was replaced. Since the side gate on the south side is shorter, Bill wants to replace it with a taller gate. And, since both will need painting/staining, I've decided they'll be the dark red-ish color of the backyard fence.
Prep Work
To prepare for re-stuccoing the back wall of our house, Bill removed the shade cover between the house and the shed and cleaned the area up by moving around the junk - err, stuff, that had been there. It looks much better!
And, all the plants in pots in front of the house, on the porch, and on the plant benches in the backyard needed to be moved. I tried to find shaded areas for those that want shade, and sunny areas for those that need sun. Most of the plants seem to have made it through.
So the gutters could be replaced, Bill trimmed about 4 inches off the side of the shade cover over the backyard deck and potted plant benches. He also needed to replace the brace he had attached to the house to hold up the 4th corner of the plant area shade cover with a fourth post - and cut through the one of the planter benches to fit around the post.
Categories: Home Improvement
In mid May, we attended a dinner party at the home of a customer of Bill's. The man and his wife have a small home with a large backyard - lovely large backyard - with lots of flowers and plants for me to admire! There was also a large, vine-covered pergola with a bench swing hanging from one end of it... I fell in love with the swing!!
Because Bill is such a loving and thoughtful and can-do kind of husband, he got busy within a week or so of the dinner party building an extension on the shade structure at the back of our backyard where he had earlier this year removed most of a large Bay tree when the neighbors wanted to replace the fence bordering our properties. Anyway...
We had some difficulty finding a swing or bench to hang from the shade structure - even online we didn't have much luck. I wanted a swing wide/long enough that I could lie down on it - so over 5 feet - and comfortable for a short person (me!) to sit in (feet touching the ground when sitting). I looked online, but the closest I found was a bench at Bass Pro Shops which doesn't have a store in California (yet). The swing project was delayed...
...until last weekend when Bill said we should go look at what Lowe's had in swings and benches. We didn't see anything that fulfilled my ideas of a proper swing until we wandered into the patio furniture area - where lo and behold there it was! A cushioned 3-person A-frame swing for $99.00. It is light enough that it can be moved anywhere in the backyard - and, therefore, can be moved as the sun moves (since I'm fair skinned and try to stay out of the sun).
It's wonderful. I've crocheted there, napped there, swung there, relaxed there. I can see my beautiful flowering garden plants, hear the birds, enjoy the Bay Area evening breezes after work while Bill cooks dinner on the BBQ. The swing is a perfect addition to our backyard!
And, the extended shade structure area won't go unused! Bill is using it as additional covered workspace for his 1947 Ford Truck restoration project - the one he's been working on for about 10 years now!
Categories: Gardening 2007, Home Improvement
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