Naked Floor

Our latest venture into the Home Improvement realm is our Kitchen and Dining room tile floor. The people that we bought the house from put this floor down themselves and did a very poor job at it. Grout was coming up in chunks, entire sections of tile was not stuck to the backer-board at all and could be lifted up with little effort.

So with that in mind, with a whole lot of help from grandma, we decided it was time to get rid of this nasty ass floor. After getting a quote from Home Depot, and attempting to get a quote from another place right down the road, we went to Whisnants Tile & Trim. They came out, did an in home estimate and came back with a quote we were satisfied with.

We opted to take up the floor ourselves to save us several hundred dollars in labor. Little did I know when making this decision how hard it would be to get up! And did I mention dusty?

We started the removal on a Friday night after I got home from work. I was anxious to get started and see how difficult a weekend we had ahead of us. It was very slow going at first while we figured out what worked and what did not work. Once we were in the swing of things, we had all of the tile, and backer-board up before 7:00pm Saturday night.

Sunday held a lovely day of screw removal for my lovely wife Jennifer. Cause not only did these people put the floor down incorrectly, the one thing that they manged to do RIGHT was the 600 screws in the floor. Jen was a trooper though and got them all removed, and we were able to get down to the sub-floor by Sunday afternoon.

Unfortunately, or not so unfortunately, we found out our dishwasher had been leaking underneath the tile and had cause some water damage to the base of the cabinets, and the sub-floor directly in-front of the dishwasher. I can only say that I am very happy we caught it before it turned it to a much more serious issue. I would have hated to come home and found Jennifer in the crawl space, having fell through the floor while loading the dishwasher.

Another problem also presented itself over by the back door to the kitchen. The bottom kick-plate to the door is not caulked properly and was leaking underneath the tile floor when it rained. We’re pretty certain what we have to do to fix that, we want to make sure we have all the issues resolved before the new tiles goes down, and we can no longer tell there’s a problem!

I’ll post pictures of the new tile floor, and talk about how much we love not walking on crunchy grout after its installed.

2006 Pumpkin Carvings

2006 Pumpkin Carvings

Originally uploaded by dandjwhite.

Jennifer and I did pumpkins over the weekend!

Hers is the one on the left, mine is on the right. I never would have thought it was that difficult to take pumpkin pictures. I took over 20 just to get one half way decent one.

Blogger Beta to WordPress

I can’t begin to tell you how much converting to blogger beta sucked! The interface was nice for a while, but still did not allow for the kind of customization that I was wanting. So I did some hunting around and found WordPress to be to my liking. Alas, the importer for Blogger does not work for Blogger Beta. Here are the steps I had to take to get all my blogger beta posts into wp.com.

1. Visit daria.be and signup for a blog. (Don’t ask, just do it.)
2. open your blog site up and add the following to the end. (/feeds/posts/full?alt=rss&max-results=1000")
3. Save the resulting file as an xml.
4. Import that xml file into your new daria.be blog via a rss feed.
5. Export posts to a wordpress file.
6. Go to your wp.com blog and import the wordpress file you exported from daria.be
7. Enjoy your new wp.com blog, complete with all of your blogger beta posts, comments and tags!

Fall is.. Falling?

Spring has sprung, fall has fell, it’s the middle of winter, and colder then hell. Well, it’s not quite the middle of winter, but the fall part sure is right! We went to the mountains over the weekend and I managed to get a ton of fall pictures that we were both very happy with. If you take a look at our fall photo-set, I think you will enjoy them a lot.

The more and more I learn about taking pictures, the more I want to go out and take more pictures! Jen buying me this camera last Christmas was the best present she possibly could have gotten me. We actually printed some of the pictures out and framed them for the wall in the hallway that had been so barren. It’s a slow process but we are definitely getting to the point where we both feel like the house is “together”.

My own personal Candy Striper

It’s been more then a week since my wisdom teeth were removed. As much as it sucked to have them cut out I’m glad that Jen talked me into doing it. I’ve already noticed a decrease in the number of headaches I am getting. The wounds are mostly healed. This morning while laying in bed I felt something poking my tongue from the top hole. I went and checked with a flashlight and there was a long stitch hanging down. After a quick tug, it was no more!

Jennifer has been delighting in telling me of all the alleged things I did while on my happy (or not so happy) pills. I think she is making up a great majority of it. Time will tell. My money is on her slipping up in the details! Regardless of my behavior over the last week Jen has been amazing. I couldn’t have asked for a better nurse maid. =D

Thanks for taking care of me Jennifer!
Buckets-

Tarzan, I am not.

Attic
Originally uploaded by dandjwhite.

I thought that I was going to install the keypad for our new alarm system this weekend. That was until I got into the attic and saw that I was going to have to monkey my way across the roof trusses. I did not like being up in this attic. I don’t have any problem with how my parents attic is setup. With theirs I have a big walkway down the center to make my way across.

As you can see with this one I would have to balance my way across, making an effort NOT to stick my foot through the ceiling. Then someway find the interior wall that we want the keypad on and drill down into the pocket. I was confident I would have been able to do this had our attic been like what my parents was like. I’m kind of stuck, I really don’t think I’m capable of making it out there and doing it all without falling through the ceiling.

Oh well, worst case scenario we move the panel to an interior room and put the keypad in a closet.

Percocet

Also not such a good thing after all!! I figured out about 5:30 this morning that it’s what was giving me the nightmares every time I drifted off to sleep. So I went without my 6:30am dose in order to get some sleep. They hurt pretty bad when I woke up. So back I go on the nasty bad drug.

I swear, I don’t see how people can become drug addicts.

Sleep

It seems all the sleeping I mentioned last post might not have neccesarily been a good thing. I have not been able to sleep for more then thirty minutes straight the whole night.

Wisdom Teeth

I had my three wisdom teeth removed today. I don’t really remember much of what happened today. I remember getting to the office. Going back to the chair and having the IV put in. Next thing I remember is Jennifer trying to get me into the car from the wheelchair. Right now I’m not in a lot of pain, except for where the lower right tooth was. Jen tells me that they had to break the tooth to get it out and that’s why it will hurt more.

I think my jaw has stopped popping, but I can’t be 100% sure till I have full range of motion back. I’ve done nothing but sleep today. I did manage to drink some water and a slim fast earlier. And just recently had a small bowl of ice cream and another slim fast. Not really all that hungry though.

Percocet is good shit

—- —- —- —- —-
Oh what fun it was to take David to the surgeon. He took his little happy pill before it was time to go to the appointment. That little booger started kicking in on the way there! David claims not to remember his demands to drive or his orders about which lane I was to drive in on the way to the office. He is claiming no knowledge of his singing along with the radio in the Doctors office either. But to be truthful, he wasn’t alone. The nice nurse lady was also belting out a lovely rendition of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” from behind the glass. Between verses of the songs he took little naps to recoup that spent energy. He also tried to trick me into letting him use the water fountain! Strict nono!

The surgery was fast! They took him in a little after 10 (they were late getting started), and I walked back there to get him at 10:40ish. He was also great fun on the ride home. I can honestly say this husband of mine has NEVER requested I turn the heat on before. He was freezing! He only asked twice what had happened to him. He declared much more then twice that he didn’t remember anything. And I’ve never heard anyone whine so much about wanting water in my life. Poor thirsty Davidface. He is doing good now, as long as I remember to keep him dosed on those pain pills. Cant open his mouth all the way, so getting anything on a spoon in there is still painful. I’m hoping that will ease up for him tomorrow. All in all… seems to be a success so far!

-Jennifer

New Closet Shelves

New Closet Shelves
Originally uploaded by Nighthawke.

Our last project of the weekend was getting some shoe shelves put up in the hall closet for Jennifer. She figured if we had them we would be more prone to putting shoes in the closet as opposed to stacking them all over the living room. A 2X3ft space is really hard to work in by the way.