You done yet?

A lot's been done in the past couple of weeks. We painted the bedroom. Wednesday the kitchen floor was put down. We have a toilet now. Yet, there's still so much to go. Everyone keeps asking me, "so is it almost done?"

Depends on how you define done.

We're using the new family room now. but the light over the table is a simple bulb currently. We've got the new kitchen floor. but there are no countertops on the new cabinets. The bedroom and the old family room are awaiting carpet, and the dining room contains piles upon piles of temporarily stored crap. We've got buit-ins to build, dining room wiring to do, more painting, and lots of cleaning.

That's just the obvious stuff, and that's also just the inside. There's grass to plant, construction stuff to clean up, yada yada yada.

So yeah, we're almost done. But really, I'll call it done when we rent a Rug Doctor and shampoo the dust and grime out of the carpets. It'll be done when we've moved into the new bedroom, our office has become an office, and our canned goods no longer have a need for temporary refuge in a sweater box under the bed. It'll be done when I no longer get up from the computer desk and hit my head on what was once the dining room chandelier.

This weekend was a productive one. Our new family room couches were delivered, some college dude came and took the old one off our hands, and a custom-ordered area rug arrived. Unfortunately they all came in that order, making logistics somewhat of a concern. But we like the end result.

In addition to the deliveries, I managed to start Mantown this weekend. Mantown is my workshop. My castle. My refuge. My fortress of solitude. The place where I'm planning on spending most of my time once my kids hit their teenage years and start having "female" issues. Every guy needs a Mantown in their house. When my sister and brother-in-law renovated, he decided last minute to build his own Mantown by taking over a corner of the basement, framing it up into a box with a door, and sticking about 75 electrical outlets on the wall so he could charge his cell phone, camera, volunteer fire department gear, and cordless cigar humidor. With mine, I made sure to include an escape hatch, the double door that sneaks me out to the back yard and around to the driveway where I can make a quick getaway. So this weekend I built myself a workbench and shelves, and began hanging tools on the wall. I had the foresight to tell the builder not to hang drywall in there, but rather hang pegboard directly onto the studs. It was a moment of brilliance. Every square inch of wall space can have tools hanging on it. It'll the anal retentive woodworker's dream. Heck, I might actually even build something in there. But let's not get crazy.

Another question often asked of me is if there were any good horror stories during the build. Well, other than the water leak on the morning of July 4th, it's gone quite smoothly, oddly enough. Everything's been in budget, even. Although I have to say the plumbing's been an adventure. From the kitchen sink clogged with whole grains to the toilet that leaked as soon as it was put in, I'd say it could have gone better. But no, there's been nothing devastating, no horrors on the order of a Romero film.

Today and tomorrow are Bob The Builder's final days on the job. Installing trim, doorknobs, and window hardware. Cleaning up tools, insulating a crawl space, and hanging the shower door. He's got just odds and ends now. Pretty soon we'll be able to move furniture in. And that's when I find out who my real buddies are. I still haven't figured out how we're getting a 300 lb. eliptical machine from the basement up to the 2nd floor. I wish we still had that crane.

I succeeded in not blowing myself up

Okay, after installing 75 or so outlets, switches, and fixtures over the past three months, I managed to squeak by with only one potentially deadly explosion. Not all bad for an unlicensed non-professional, I think. And considering the plumber just called me as he was installing the shower faucet asking me if I knew where the direction book was (he needs directions? He's a plumber!!), I figure I'm doing ok.

So last night I was wiring the under-cabinet light in the dinette. The hockey puck-shaped light screws to the underside of the cabinet and plugs into a surface-mounted outlet. This surface-mounted outlet has a metal case with what I found to be a rather sharp edge. The edge must have pinched the black wire coming from the wall because when I hit the switch after I installed it, BANG! sparks everywhere, and an outlet that looked like it'd had a face-off with Elmer Fudd's musket. Back to Home Depot.

Speaking of which, I'm even more a regular there. I'm like Norm from Cheers:

Mornin', everybody.
Miiiike!
Hey Mr. Daninhirsch, what's cooking?
Me, after blowing up an electrical outlet last night.
(insert laugh track).

Where'd I put that extended warranty?
So here's some information that's more a note to myself than anything else, but may be of interest if you're shopping for furniture. We bought couches over the weekend at Macy's Furniture. Included (for an additional $129) was their fabric care warranty. For 7 years you are covered if you get a stain on the couch. You call a number, and they suggest how to clean it. If you can't clean it, they come out to try. If they fail, they replace the upholstry with the same stuff. If that fabric is no longer available, you get your purchase price back on the furniture. Now here's the interesting bit. After 7 years, if you never use the warranty, you call a number and they give you the $129 back as a gift card to Macys.

I'm putting in an appointment for August 5, 2013 into my calendar....

Nice rack
At last it's time to take care of the one thing this who renovation has revolved around...hanging the TV on the wall in the new family room. Having done no research whatsoever, I happened to be in Best Buy the other day and, while there, picked up a "universal flat panel TV mount" for $80. It came in a box that was about a foot long. That was a mistake for two reasons. First, it turns out that the center point where the TV will hang is in such a place that this unit would only touch one stud, so I needed a wider model. Second, it turns out that Panasonic places their mounting holes on almost the complete outside corners of the TV, and this bracket wouldn't even come close to reaching the corners of my 37" screen.

So when all else fails, read the directions. I pulled out the TV manual, and it said to check for a certain model of mount designed for the TV. On Amazon, that mount was almost FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!

Scared for a moment that the whole purpose behind the entire renovation was a failure, I began surfing eBay for alternatives.

Gotta love eBay. There are TONS of mounts out there, ranging in price from nine bucks to over three hundred bucks, and probably even higher. but they are all designed for my TV, and sold direct from the manufacturer (or so they say). I couldn't find much difference between the $9 one and the $200 one, so I tossed a bid in for the cheaper one and it's on its way.

The dumpster is gone!

Whoopie! Just thought I'd mention it. Oh, and the chipmunks that were living underneath it are pissed!!!

Bad customer service, part II

So here's a fun followup to the flooring order debacle. We hit the point where we are ready for the new kitchen floor to be installed. When we last left off, I told "BOB", the scheduler at the flooring store, the couldn't install yet because there was a wall in the way. He said give him a call as soon as we are ready, and he could have the installers there within the week.

So on tuesday AM, I called and got Bob again. I got one sentence out, and he told me he'd have to call back because he was swamped. Okay fine. The rest of the day went by and I didn't hear back, so I called him again around 4:30. He was perfectly pleasant and said, "let me get in touch with my installers and I will call you right back."

Never heard from him the rest of that afternoon. So I then let Wednesday go by, until 4:30 when I called the store again and got someone else. I asked for Bob, and the guy said, "he's in the bathroom, can I have him call you right back?"

Okay fine. But never heard from him.

This morning, I called John, the sales rep who came to the house (the guy who successfully got the other flooring delivered for me). I told him that this guy Bob has done an excellent job convincing me he's an idiot. So I asked John to get the install scheduled and to have someone, other than Bob, call me back. I told him I did not want to hear from Bob again as I was done dealing with him.

A half hour later the install was scheduled for next Wednesday morning.

I've worked at a flooring store during high school. I manage a customer service team for a living. This is basic simple stuff. How dumb can someone be?

Meanwhile, I've been hearing stories about the allegedly nightmarish service at home Depot. Let me just say that that is nuts. Home Depot has been awesome through this. we've gotten kitchen cabinets, a shower door, and several other things special ordered with only one minor, quickly-fixed mistake on the manufacturer's part. We are getting carpeting through them. The day we were at the store, the salesperson took our info and told us that "the measuring guys" would call us first thing wednesday morning to schedule an in-home measure. At 7:30 that morning, they called, said they would be here between 9 and 11. They got here at 9:30, with a really cool proprietary laptop thingy in hand. As he measured, he entered dimensions on the laptop and it automatically drew an accurate picture of the room. He told me HD would call back to set up an install by Monday. I have complete faith that they will.

My kingdom for a bronze toilet handle

I have a question for the folks on the show Trading Spaces. How, exactly, does one transform a room in 48 hours, AND expect paint to dry?

Last night I put the third coat of paint on our family room (now called "the reading room") walls. The first coat went up about 6 days ago. I would love to see one of those rooms redone by the folks on Trading Spaces and see just how bad the paint job is. The camera may add ten pounds to anyone on it, but it also hides a lot of paint on the ceiling, bubbles, drips and bumps.

I also installed three new kitchen cabinets and sealed the grout on the bathroom tile last night. So it was a slow evening. I keep having to remind myself that we have no hard deadline, and even though the sheer volume of items on the renovation to-do list seems to be enough to employ a team of 12 for 6 months, it can and will be done. Granted exercise, social engagements, and basic hygiene must be pushed aside for now, but it can be done.

I'd like to take a moment to submit some suggestions for those of you thinking of redesigning a bathroom. The one thing we learned through all this is that if you want your bathroom to have a specific design or look, you can't just "go with the flow" picking out the shower, faucet, etc whenever the builder calls for it. It is in your best interest to select everything at the same time, buy it, store it in the garage, and stop shopping. Like most products these days bath fixtures have begun following the same scheme of planned obsolescence that iPods do. A decade ago, brass was in. Last year, brushed nickel was all the rage. Now, it's oil rubbed bronze. But don't blink, because bronze is about to succomb to the power of copper. Now isn't that ironic. Copper. The same stuff that runs water through your walls and gets hidden because it's so ugly, is now used to make beautiful faucets. Pricey ones too. We're talking kids-are-going-to-community-college pricey.

When the build started, Fred the plumber told us we needed to pick a shower. So we got a shower, after mulling over design and color. Then he needed a shower faucet, so we went down the brushed nickel route (cuz it was the style at the time). Later on, we decided on a floor....and cabinets....and lighting. Suddenly the brushed nickel look wasn't the look we wanted, and we decided we needed to consider bronze. So now we have a bronze faucet and a brushed nickel shower head. DEAR GOD. Ty Pennington's gonna kick my ass. But wait, that brushed nickel trim on the shower door....does it balance things out, or make the situation worse? And what about our toilet handle...can you get a bronze toilet handle????

You know, the heck with it...I'm gonna get the fish tank toilet.

I want to ride my bicycle....

This renovation has been an all-consuming, exhausting project that has at times caused me to forget about things like work, family, and showering. However, either through my own self-realization or with a good smack upside the head from my wonderful wife, I am getting better and managing to take a step back and enjoy the important things in life.

Yesterday was one of those important things, a majorly proud moment for daddy, up there on the list with a kid's medical school graduation, marriage, and Nobel Prize acceptance. We took the training wheels off, and Natalie is now an accomplished bicycle rider.

She and I took a jaunt over to North Park, which I believe is named not so much for it's park-like setting but it's quantity of massive and generally unused parking lots. Natalie donned her Disney Princess elbow and knee pads, buckled her Disney Princess helmet, hopped on her "Foxy" bike with the purple tassles and sparkly paint, and and I ran alongside her, holing her seat and explaining the scientific principles of balance and velocity. Within minutes, my hand moved from her seat to her back. Seconds later, I had only two fingers just below her neck, showing her I was still there. In another moment, my hand was gone, and she was still vertical. And laughing and screaming hysterically with the thrill of new-found freedom. I continued to run alongside her, sweating profusely and barely keeping up, giving her this tip and that tip and reminding her about handy things like brakes. Finally I stopped running and Off she went, into kid-hood, her training wheels, tricycle, and stroller all distant memories.

Within minutes she graduated to the next stage of bicycle riding...chatting incessantly with others while riding around. A seven-year-old girl was also riding her bike in the same parking lot, and the two of them bagan talking to each other about the colors of their bikes, the meaning of life while they rode. Yack yack yack....until finally the inevitable happened. Too much talk, not enough paying attention, and they both crashed into each other. They got up and laughed about it, and took off for more.

Enjoy it, Natalie!

Flashbacks through carpeting

Last night we had the pleasure of ripping up the carpet in our old family room. This was a gray berber carpet with absolutely no life left in it anymore, in a room that's been used as a playroom, an office, a living room, a potty-training room, and a general dumping ground for all things Fisher-Price.

As we ripped it up, I was reminded of a Simpsons Episode, where Homer comes across a box of baking soda in the fridge and bets he can eat the whole thing. "Wow, the absorbed odors of a million meals," he says. Almost immediately, Homer is overwhelmed by the flavors of meals past, and has some interesting hallucinations. We hear a sound bite of Johnny Cochran's famous "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit" slogan, and see a hamburger with fries floating against a techno background of computerized numbers. Nixon's resignation speech accompanies some disco music, a mirrored ball and a pie. Finally, as we hear Neil Armstrong take his famous first step on the moon, a meatball sandwich bobs above a psychedelic background. The sandwich starts spinning, and we are transported back to the present, where Homer lies in a stupor on the kitchen table, with baking soda foaming out of his mouth and nostrils.

As we ripped up the festering mess of a carpet, we were reminded of the time Natalie puked. Of the time the sippy cup of milk leaked. Of the juice spills. The leaky diapers. Oh, the memories. Good times, good times.

And no, we were not greeted with hardwood floors underneath.

(credit to snpp.com)

Abandoned...

Bob informed us that he was done, for now, until we got around to painting rooms. He said he'd come back once we've painted and finish the trim, and the little things. Things like door handles, faucets, shower doors. But I'm thinking this is what it's like when the kids go off to college. Suddenly it's silent, and no one around to clean up the mess except ourselves. But like that proverbial freshman back with a load of dirties for the washer, Bob will be back with a laundry list of things to do within the next week.

Speaking of dirties, our current decorating motif seems to be a bit of early post-Katrina, without the mold and wetness. Every room is beyond disheveled. It's like we just moved in, but the movers didn't bring in boxes. Instead they just backed the van up to the front door and dumped. as I sit here in our former dining room, now office, I look behind me to see our KitchenAid mixer stacked on top of a DVD cabinet, along with a six-pack of Coke, a telescope, a baking dish, a drafting board, notes for the plumber, and a fake plum. and that's just in the corner. In the new dining room, all the furniture is more or less in place, but the contents of the china hutch cover every square inch of the dining table.

And those are the neatest rooms.

We've got a long way to go.

Progress amid chaos

Okay, so I've been out of touch for a while. It's been a non-stop, insanely-paced week. my parents came in, and we tackled a huge number of major projects this week. We:

-installed the floor in the family room
-installed the floor in the dining room
-Wired all the switches and light fixtures
-installed the tile floor in the bathroom
-painted the family room
-painted the bathroom
-installed the bathroom cabinets
-worked with Bob to stain the trim and dig a drainage pit
-moved a whole lot of furniture around

Electrically, I only managed to nerf up one circuit, hooking up a couple of outdoor lights without remembering to deal with the switch wire. Oh well, they are fixed now. Dad also made a challenge for himself when he discovered he wired the lights in the mudroom in such a way that would have made Thomas Edison go, "huh?" After an hour of pondering wiring diagrams, he finally came up with a way to get them successfully wired and we were done.

So, about the flooring. A lot of people asked about the fact that we decided to put a laminate (think Pergo) floor into the family room and dining room. In the end, I have this to say. It's about as hard to put in as I expected, and much harder than the ads say it is. In the ads, you simply click the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. In reality, you need three people and a minor in geometry. You also definitely need a miter saw AND a table saw. The stuff looks fantastic once it's in, and it's certainly a lot easier than a hardwood floor. It's also extremely durable, and really, really slipperly. My kids love careening into the furniture.

Paining the bathroom and installing the bathroom cabinets gave us a real sense that we are close to completion on this. The bath looks awesome. Can't wait to poop there. Should have a sink and toilet by aug 5th or so. Of course, we ended up selecting a really nice set of bronze wall sconces, which means the brushed nickel faucet I bought on clearance needs to be returned for one that matches the sconces....and of course we'll probably spend three times as much. The cabinet was a close call, in that once part of it was 24" wide and 24" deep, and the door frame is exactly 24" wide. If it had been a more humid day, I think the wood would have swelled too much to get it in the room.

Meanwhile, we've moved into the family room, and are emptied out the old dining room to bring the computer up desk tonight. Progress!It's now sunday night, Dad and I are completely exhausted, and I need to go to work tomorrow. Thank goodness...I need the vacation. While we made tremendous progress this week, the house is still a complete disaster. Imagine moving into a new home, but rather than using boxes you simply put all your belongings into a dump druck, dumped on the floor of your new home, then covered everything with drywall dust. That's what it looks like here.

But it looks like we're on schedule to host a LOST premiere party in September. In fact, there might even be seating by then.

One last note of thanks to my 12-year-old niece Tova. My parents dragged her along, and we put her to work. "Amp Girl", as she's known by those in the electrical world, was given the tasks of testing circuits, laying flooring, and painting. She worked like a dog. Funny thing is, she told me her mom (my sister) wouldn't let her do anything when they renovated their house. Sucker. Little did they know what a good day laborer they had in the family.

Really Poor Customer Service

So we purchased our family room and kitchen flooring a couple of weeks ago through a local flooring company that has this "shop at home" deal. A salesman came over with his floor samples and we bought directly through him. We purchased an in-stock laminate floor that we would pick up and put in our family room ourselves, and also purchased a replacement vinyl floor for the kitchen that would be professionally installed. We told the guy that the kitchen floor couldn't be installed until August when a wall was taken down and new cabinets were installed.

So a day after we place the order, the store calls us to ask if they can come the next day to install the floor. We tell them no, and explain the above to them. Okay, so the sales guy failed to tell the store the part about waiting until August. No biggie.

Yesterday, the installer called our house to say he was on the way there to install the vinyl, and needed directions.

Huh?

So I called the store back. Before I could ask anything, the guy who answered the phone asked if there was ANY way they could install today, so as to not mess up the schedule, and not to worry, the guy is a totally trustworthy born-again Christian, and blah blah...

When I finally got a word in edgewise I told him that he couldn't install not because we weren't home, but because there's a WALL IN THE WAY.

Meanwhile, the in-stock laminate floor we ordered for some reason still wasn't at the store to pick up after over a week. Each day I would call the store, and they'd tell me "tomorrow." Early this week, I called the salesguy and asked him to check into it. Yesterday he told me it's in the store warehouse, ready to pick up. He said the warehouse guy put his hands on the order, and it's definitely there.

So I called the store back to find out how late they were open, and the guy at the store tells me the order isn't there. I not-so-politely told him to get his butt on the phone with his sales guy and tell me something that actually makes sense.

Today, I called the sales guy once more, and dropped the L-bomb. I told him if he didn't have the order available for pickup by noon I was canceling the whole thing and going to Lowes.

An hour later, the flooring was delivered, free of charge, to the house. This entire time (two weeks), it was in a warehouse in Penn Hills, about 20 miles from here.

Later this afternoon, I got a call from the store, informing me my order is in and ready to pick up.

Sad. Really, really sad.

So, what have we learned?

The following is a feeble attempt to provide some advice to those thinking of attempting their own renovation. This is not a step-by-step, but rather a list of things you might not have known about, or would be surprised to hear.

Have an architect in the family
Lucky for us, my dad is a retired architect. Granted he's probably responsible for this project happening in the first place because, if it hadn't been for that damned home improvement gene he gave me, we'd probably have bought a new house by now. but instead the sawdust in my veins caused me to convince my wife that renovating was a good idea. Let's hope I'm right. So far it's about 50/50.

Whatever it costs, you don't have enough
Some say a figure of $100 per square foot is a good rough figure when you start planning. I'd say that's not far off. But then you go to Pottery Barn, or a custom cabinet maker, or that place that sells the showers for ten grand, and all bets are off.

Turn your garage into Ikea
There's no avoiding it. You will lose at least one garage bay due to temporary relocation of crap. Stay on top of it. Don't let it get disorganized, because the moment you do you will need something at the bottom of the pile. So why mention Ikea? If you've shopped at Ikea, you know that browsing the showroom involves following a single pathway through the entire store. Use that same concept in your garage. No matter how packed it gets, make sure everything remains accessible even if you have to wander through a maze to get there. If you let stuff pile up, that wall sconce you need will be under the three-hundred pound sofa table.

Use every cubic foot of space you have, creatively.
Think about it. You have a home that needs more space. so what's the first thing you do? Make your house even smaller for the next few months. Couches get moved to the basement, toys get stacked under the crib, dogs get tethered to the piano. It's chaos. And then, when the builder asks you at 9pm on a Thursday night if he can tear down that wall in the kitchen tomorrow, you've got to find even more storage space at the last minute. Just where do you think you're going to put that collection of cow-shaped tea kettles, bub?

Here's a real example. I had to stash our entertainment unit away to make room for the demolition of a wall. So the stereo cabinet got emptied and stored in a corner next to the piano. which, by the way, is behind two couches and an ottoman. The receiver is on top of the stereo cabinet, and the speakers are on top of that. The 400-disc changer got stashed in my daughter's closet. The VCR went under our bedroom VCR, making the TV rest only inches from the ceiling. The DVD player is under our bed. The TiVo, well, that's still connected to the TV, but sitting on the floor in the hallway. The trick is to a)remember where you stashed everything, b)keep it a livable space, and c)don't expect that you will ever be done finding places to stash stuff. If Carnegie Mellon University taught me only one thing, it's that living in a two-room dorm with three fellow students, all of whom came to school with more crap than your average Wal-Mart, forces you to get creative with storage.

Get a Home Depot Rewards Mastercard
This isn't a Home Depot store card, but an actual Mastercard. A point back per dollar spent, plus 2 points for each dollar spent at Home Depot. We've done well with that. As have the good folks at Home Depot.

Get one of these
I came across this tool, the Skill iXO palm screwdriver, at a Home Depot sale. It's incredibly useful. Worth every penny.

Get a portable accordian file
You have no idea just how much paperwork is involved with this. Bids, receipts, special orders, estimates, brochures, swatches, catalogues, photos, sketches, drawings. If I hadn't thought of setting one of these up from the beginning it would be chaos. And making it portable means I can take it to Home Depot with me so that, when I come across a great sale on bathroom tile, I can whip out the sample of the bathroom vanity color to compare it against.

Another advantage of this is that you always know what you've spent, and can compare against your budget.

The disadvantage of this is that you always know what you've spent, and can spend many sleepless nights wondering how you're ever going to pay for it all.

Murphy's law always applies
As we began tearing down a wall this past week, we never once thought that there might be, say, a heating duct inside it. Naturally, there was. And if you think that last thirteen-foot piece of wire is enough to reach between the last two outlets, it will of course be six inches too short. And If you are handed a set of vinyl siding samples with three price ranges, the only good colors will be in the more expensive range.

If you're planning to replace your carpeting...
...consider potty-training your kid before the new carpets go down. It's a perfect opportunity.

Eudora Enamel

Natalie hit a major 5-year-old milestone this week when she lost her first tooth. She was so proud. Of course this sort of thing is as important to a 5-year-old kid as completing construction of the first space shuttle was to NASA. It's no small accomplishment. So naturally, we celebrated in style.

Natalie was looking forward to the tooth fairy. During the days leading up to the big loss, she would wiggle her tooth back and forth, each morning exclaiming over her toast that she thought it wiggled just a little bit further today than it did yesterday. It finally came out in the middle of lunch at Rotelli's Pizza. The waitress kindly provided her with a little take-home salad dressing cup to carry it in, which Natalie cradled like a young ring bearer cradles a wedding ring on a pillow.

That night, we explained to her the rules of a Tooth Fairy visit. Natalie had to go right to bed, with the tooth tucked under her pillow. In the morning, the tooth would be gone, and in its place a gift in exchange. You see, the Tooth Fairy uses the teeth she gathers to build her castle. And, while the going rate of construction is about a buck a square tooth, a new kid opening up a new castle building account got an extra bonus with that first tooth (can you tell we've been dealing with this renovation a little too long?).

While we were explaining all this to her, my cell phone suddenly vibrated. Or, at least Natalie thought it did. I proceeded to have an imaginary conversation with our local Tooth Fairy, who was calling for directions to our place. When I asked the Tooth Fairy for her name, she told me it was "Eudora Enamel". She also told me that, although her castle was complete, she was looking for more teeth to build a hot tub and would be willing to pay a little extra for some prime Pittsburgh Chompers. She explained that I should lock the doors, but make sure nothing was in the way of the fireplace because that's how she would get in. I told her to be careful, because the chimney's been raised about 4 feet higher because of the renovation, and I didn't want her cracking her skull open in the dark.

After Natalie went to bed, we sat down in front of the computer and made up a nice pink envelope, with a picture of Eudora and a personalized message ("keep on brushing!") and snuck a few bucks under her pillow. The next morning, our little hockey player was beaming with pride, toothless grin a mile wide, waving her envelope in the air. She told us that at first she didn't believe the tooth fairy was real, wbut when Eudora ACTUALLY CALLED, well, she knew everything was kosher.

Progress, Setbacks and you wanna tear that down when??

This July 4th weekend was spent mostly twisting wire. I went room to room, installing outlets. 32 to be exact, with about eight more to go, followed by a variety of switches and light fixtures. Considering that an outlet takes anywhere from 5 minutes to 15 minutes to wire depending on the number and guage of the wires coming into the box, I'd say that's pretty mediocre progress.

My worst fears were realized this weekend, when we had one of those violent 12:15am thunderstorms. As the lightning flashed and the rain streaked down, the only thing I could think of was, "is it dry in there?". You see, from the beginning, we found that the corner where the addition hits the rest of the house (the corner just to the left of the pile of drywall being loaded in this pic) presented something of a challenge for us. There's not a lot of area for a gutter to be hung and rain from both the new roof and the old roof all flows to this corner. As Bob was building the structure, that corner was constantly leaking to the point where I thought the floor was going to cave in.

So as I lay there listening to the rain, I figured I would sleep better knowing we're all dry.

We weren't.

Even after the roof was up, the siding was hung, and all was sealed in, we found that there was still a leak. Not a bad one, but is there such a thing as a minor roof leak? So the buckets came back, the towels and rags were laid down, and in the morning I called Bob.

I gotta hand it to Bob. In the pouring rain Tuesday morning, he and his roofing guy climbed up on there to inspect. But first, while standing in the pouring rain, he lit a cigarette. John Wayne woulda been proud. Anyway, he had a hunch as to what the problem was, so he spent all day Wednesday tearing it up and redoing it.

On the progress side, we also ordered flooring over the weekend, as well as some new kitchen cabinetry and bathroom countertops. but then we get into a whole chicken/egg scenario. What goes first? The floor? The paint? the cabinets? These all need to be worked out. Meanwhile, Bob is pushing to get this done, cuz he just got awarded another job.

Speaking of which, he called me Wednesday night around 9pm asking if he could tear out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room the next day (today). One one side of this wall is the fridge and a cabinet. On the other side is currently a bookshelf, the stereo cabinet, the TV, and a crapload of temporarily relocated toys. In the wall are various electrical wires. There was about 3 hours of unwiring, storing, and relocating work to do. I told him he had to be f'ing kidding me. So that happens Monday.

It's weird. We're really down to the wire now. As of today the siding is done (pictures to come), and the drywall finishing begins. Then Bob's got to paint the ceilings and prime the walls (which we will then paint) and after a few minor chores he's outta here. but then that's where WE come in. We're doing the flooring. We're installing light fixtures. We're getting the furniture. We've got a long way to go.

The dust settles

This weekend was a big one with the addition. It was drywall time. Nick and Paul, two Italian, round, and very, very sweaty gentlemen spent the weekend hanging all seventy-six sheets of drywall in the entire space. They arrived Saturday, 8am, did the mudroom and workshop in about ninety minutes, and promptly left for the day because Nick had a leaky toilet emergency back home. They swore they'd come back on Sunday to finish. The next morning arrived, and there they were. They spent the next ten hours working, sweating, and sweating some more, and did the whole danged thing. Now our kids love to run around the new space yelling at the top of their lungs, to see how loud they can make the echo sound.

Speaking of kids, Nick and Paul got a good kick out of them Saturday morning as the kids ate breakfast. Natalie and Jessica were playing the "I love you" game. This is when They say, "I love you sissy" back and forth to each other over and over again, and throw in a few for mommy and daddy. Something tells me they watch too much Barney. So Nick and Paul, the Sweaty Italian Drywall Hangers, got in on the game with lots of, "I love you Nick! No, I love you Paul! You complete me Nick! You make me love myself, Paul" for the next hour.

Or maybe the kids had nothing to do with that. who knows. I've never met these guys before.

So as the dust settles (literally), we prepare for more dust. The next stage of the game is taping the drywall. For those who don't know, taping involves spreading the white goop (that's a real term) on all the screw holes and joints, sanding it down, and repeating twice more over a period of a week until the walls are ready for priming and painting. This process creates an unbelievable amount of dust. Can't wait.

On another note, it seems I'm a regular with the Ladies Of Home Depot. In the past two months I've been to HD virtually every day. Yesterday I passed by the kitchen and bath section, and one of the ladies at the design counter yelled, "Hey Mr. Daninhirsch, what's it gonna be today?". A few minutes later at the special services counter, a woman looked at the address on my paperwork and said, "oh, you're doing the big addition!"

I once read an article, in Business Week I think, that stated part of Home Depot's business model is that they expect to get $21,000 of each customer's money in the customer's lifetime. I think I'm starting to see why.

Ugh! Nosebleed!

It was Memorial Day. Our friend Paula was having a BBQ, so we spent the afternoon there, enjoying the festivities. Eventually the time came to leave, so we hit the road for the five-minute drive back home. Halfway into it Natalie announced, "Jessica's nose is bleeding!"

We turned around to see this torrent of blood streaming from her face. Her shirt was crimson, her hands were covered in it, her car seat was streaked. My wife reached back to see what she could do, and I soon pulled over, slid back the van door, and attempted the old clamp-n-clot on her.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to hold the nose of a two-year-old for more than two seconds?

Well, after what seemed like a day but more likely was about a minute, we decided it just wasn't stopping. conveniently, we were only one block from the local hospital, so we decided a visit to the ER would be in order. Besides, bringing in a kid covered in her own blood was worth moving to the front of the line, no?

Thirty seconds later we were in the parking lot, and as I took Jessica out of the car I noticed the gushing seemed to have stopped. However, we were already in motion, and just decided to continue in to the triage area.

We spent the next 45 minutes in the waiting area, wondering if we should just say the heck with it, chalk it up to your basic nosebleed, and leave. Just as we were getting up to leave, the nurse called us in. we then spent another half hour again wondering if we should just leave, and as we got up to leave the doc walked in. It's like they were watching us.

So after almost an hour and a half, the diagnosis was a nosebleed. That's one afternoon we'll never get back.

Oh and what reminded me to write this was the bill from the hospital. While we are only liable for the $50 ER fee, the total bill to insurance was $364.50. For a nosebleed.

Some movie reviews

I've been meaning to catch up on a few movie reviews. As always, I try to review movies for the purpose of letting parents know whether or not they are appropriate for small children. I'll avoid getting into the details of the story, but instead focus on whether or not you, as a parent, will survive the afternoon without being dragged from the theatre by a disturbed toddler. Two outta three ain't bad...

Cars
Pixar's latest flick is a lot of fun. Zero scary characters, lots of jokes both for kids and for adults (including a vast number of inside jokes), and astounding animation. It's educational, as well, teaching kids everything they need to know about Nascar, the history of Route 66, and cow tipping. If you go, make sure to stay through the credits (ALL the credits) for some extra treats.

Over The Hedge
This movie was a blast as well. It was totally unexpected how good it was. Since some of you may not know what the story is about, I will summarize by explaining that it focuses on a group of small forest animals who wake up after a long winter's nap to discover that their home has been surrounded by urban development. Discovering that there's no food left to gather because there's no woods, they are convinced by a visiting racoon that there is a virtual Xanadu just over the hedge and into one of the developments, where suburban dwellers throw out more than they actually use. The movie is incredibly well written, the animation is crisp and clear, the music and jokes are fabulous, and there's even a lesson to be learned about urban sprawl and waste.

I do have one complaint about Over The Hedge, however, which is that the racoon starts off the movie being threatened with death by a big mean grizzly bear. The bear, played by Nick Nolte, is unnecessarily scary for little kids, and its lines were badly chosen ("If you don't come back in a week, I will catch you and KILL you"). The writers could have achieved a better effect making him more comical, while still getting the same point across. And they would have avoided making parents have to hold their kids down to keep them from running out of the theatre. But if you kid starts to run, hold him down, the rest of the movie is more than worth it.

Skip this paragraph if you don't want one small spoiler. I have to say they stole one of my running jokes. At one point an animal asks his friends what this big new thing (the hedge) is in their forest. Another answers with, "I don't know, but I will call it 'Steve.'" That's my line. I call everything Steve. Steve's gonna be the name of our next dog. Our kids and the rest of the theatre had to hush my wife and me after that, as we were laughing way too hard and no one really knew why.

Chicken Little
We rented this yesterday and previewed it before deciding whether to show it to our 5-year-old. After viewing, we decided against it. This is a very amusing, goofy movie that adults (especially SCRUBS or Zach Braff fans) will find very funny. But there's a lot of scary stuff. Animals panicking, aliens with spinning razor blades chasing panicking animals, and screams of death and dispair (though no one dies). Too bad, it's got some really funny stuff in it. If your kid can handle some mild violence, then this movie shouldn't be a problem. But if they still can't handle that opening scene in Finding Nemo, forget it.

Our Green House and Arnie Palmer's Poop

Boy, the things that can happen when you go away for a week. I schlepped the wife and squirts to CT for the week to visit the family and, while we were gone, Bob The Builder had the run of the place. As a result, the house changed color and some walls are now missing.

Bob started hanging the new siding, the color of which we agonized over for days. We were determined to replace the gawdawful baby-blue siding with something a little nicer, but didn't want to go with the tan, beige, or otherwise generic color that most of the other houses in our neighborhood have. We also didn't have the budget to go with anything pricey like James Hardie siding (made of concrete..never needs to be replaced or painted. Beautiful stuff), and certainly weren't about to go with the pink stucco look of our neighbor's house. So we opted for green. Which of course was the most expensive of the samples Bob gave us.

On the inside, Bob ripped out the kitchen walls to open up the new space. When we came home to see it, we were somewhat awestruck. Suddenly it's real. We've got a huge living space! And, oy, a lot of flooring to put in and furniture to buy.

But the real fun happened yesterday. A truck came and delivered seventy-six 12-foot sheets of drywall (yes, that's 76 sheets). I need this truck. Its boom was able to pick up the sheets, carry them over the corner of the house, and pass them through the hole in the third floor without ever leaving the driveway. That would be really handy for getting the kids off the swingset and in for dinner.

By the way, I've been meaning to tally up the wiring project. Turns out we put in 1300 feet of wire, and about 70 boxes (outlets, switches, etc). Once this is all said and done, I think I'm going to start doing lectures on how to properly budget for a home improvement project, cuz the magazines don't do the subject justice. For example, yesterday we went to the local bath gallery in search of a sink, toilet, and shower door. I was stunned to find out that a door for our $350 shower would cost $890. Luckily we found a nice one several hundred dollars cheaper at Home Depot, but that was still six hundred bucks.

Toilet shopping was fun. My wife had no criteria really - she just wanted something with a seat that would automatically lower when I left the bathroom. That aside, it was up to me. Turns out there are a few basic criteria, to finding the right toilet. First, do you want a round bowl, or an elongated one? My wife couldn't understand the benefits of the elongated bowl. I had to delicately explain why the extra space in an elongated bowl is handy. For guys, anyway. Well, at least for me. Ya know what I'm talkin' bout? Do ya? Am I right? Yeah man....

Sorry anyways, the next question is height. There's "standard height", and "right height". Right height is about three inches higher, allegedly saving you squatting effort (and thus valuable time), shortening the target distance, and perhaps keeping your legs from falling asleep when you get engrossed in a good story in Reader's Digest. The drawback supposedly is that toddlers' legs tend to dangle. Well, screw 'em, this is my throne, not theirs.

The last characteristic is how many golf balls can flush down the toilet in one shot without clogging it, or what I refer to as the "Arnold Palmer Crap Quotient". And believe it or not that number tends to be in the mid twenties. Now I'll tell ya what, the day I crap 25 golf balls is the day I stop eating my mother's stuffed cabbage.

Kaddish For Fez

Alas, Fez the gecko has passed. It happened quickly in the night. We think. Or perhaps it happened days ago. geckos don't move much, really. He coulda been dead for days.

We're currently visiting the family in CT, and staying at my sister's house. This morning, as I was finishing up my shower, I happened to look out the window to see my twelve-year-old niece Tova walking across the back yard with a small box in her hands. She seemed to be searching for something. My first thought was she was looking for bugs to feed Fez and his lady-gecko-friend. But then I saw Tova's dad following behind, carrying a shovel. Uh Oh. Any time a dad with a shovel follows a kid with a box, it can only mean tragedy.

I quickly threw on my clothes and shoes and headed outside, in time to witness the first shovelfuls of dirt being laid atop the cigar-box coffin containing Fez, the gecko with a sex drive that knew no boundaries. Tova then disappeared around the corner, came back with flowers and laid them atop the gravesite. She finished it off with stones, spelling out Fez's name in the gravel. It was all very touching. Tears flowed, we said Kaddish, dads thought about wasted money on gecko surgery, and older sisters thought about weirdo younger sisters. A classic tale.

It seems that, after Fez had impregnated Art again last week with twins, Art decided she's had enough of this trailer-trash, stay-at-home-mom lifestyle. Evidence showed that she offed Fez by burying his water bowl, forcing him into massive dehydration. Whether there was an insurance policy to collect, or perhaps another younger, peppier, and perhaps richer gecko with even bigger testicles off to the side, only time will tell. But it meant the end of Fez, and most likely another trip to the pet store for dad.

Here lies Fez.
Fez was a gecko.
A gecko with big balls.
Huge balls. And an inside-out-ass.
Father of three.
Husband to Art.
Fez lived a good, but short life. Got his groove on at least twice.
Rest in peace, Fez

A stress free vacation

While the cats are away, the mice shall play. At least I hope not. We're headed on a week's vacation to see the family in CT, thus giving the mice (if there are any left) and the ants the run of the place. While we're away, Bob The Builder is going to be insulating, ripping down the walls of the kitchen, hanging drywall, and hanging the siding. We'll be lucky if we can find the right house when we get back.

Head Shop?

This is great news. Our new bathroom vanity will be delivered on Tuesday. Looks like I'm gonna spend a lot of time in the bathroom....

A washing machine for humans

You know, this thing makes a lot of sense. We do it to our dishes. To our clothes. Why not to ourselves? Most importantly, I think this would reduce a lot of bath-time stress in our house. Instead of the kids splashing around, arguing about who gets the Ariel Mermaid doll, thrashing around in an attempt to avoid removal from the tub, and tracking wet throughout the house, we could just lock 'em in one of these and walk away. Come back ten minutes later and a day's worth of sunscreen, ice cream sandwich-stained fingers, Crayola-painted knees, a dribbled Hi-C would be gone.

Make sure to check out the first-hand (translated)account from iSpot.jp. It's very amusing.

Happy anniversary, honey, I got you an electrical inspection!

Yes, today's our 8th anniversary. Thanks to everyone for your cards and letters. We'll just assume they were late coming through the mail and we should see them in the next day or so.

So we made it through the itch year, unless you count the addition to the house as the itch. One big itch. So anyway, I took today off to finish the gruelingly long project of electrical wiring. When I felt I was close to being done, I called the number my electrician had provided me to set up a meeting with the electrical inspector. I figured he'd give me a time in the next several days. Well, it so happened that he was about five blocks away from the house when I called him, so he said, "sure, be there in a minute."

That was a good thing. It got the inspection out of the way with no time to stress about it. You see, this electrical project has been fairly daunting. I'm no electrician, but I've picked up tips here and there, and my dad and I felt we were up to the challenge of wiring the whole addition ourselves, leaving the heavy-duty dangerous stuff for the electrician. So as mentioned in previous posts, we spent an entire week mapping out wiring routes and schlepping to Home Depot, spending hundreds of dollars on wire, romex connectors, boxes, light fixtures, and the like. At first it felt pretty crazy. Every time I whipped out the HD Mastercard I felt like this whole project was just bleeding us of money. But after a while, it was water off a duck's back. Eh, another hundred here, another hundred there. All told, we're into the electrical for probably twelve hundred bucks. Meanwhile, most of the advice I got from the electrician when I called him was, "oh, I wouldn't have done it like that. Yeah, the inspector might have a problem with it" Gee thanks. Next time, a few more specifics please.

So back to the inspection. What a racket. This guy shows up, I explain the whole project and what we did, and start the tour. He asked me where our grounding rods are. I said, "our what?" He said grounding rods are pounded into the ground several feet from the house, and a ground wire is run to them from the circuit panel. I told him this house was built during my Bar Mitzvah, so I couldn't even guess where they would be. Somehow he accepted that as an answer and that they probably existed. The whole tour took all of ten minutes, most of which time was spent counting the number of outlets, switches and lights we put in. I assumed that was to make sure there weren't too many on one circuit. Wrong. It was to determine how much to bill me for the inspection. You see, the base inspection price of $80 includes X number of "boxes", and for each additional there's a separate charge. So in total the inspection was $125. Hey, that's almost the price of a box of wire. And after a week of worrying if the wires were stapled neatly enough, or if they were stapled far enough away from the face of the stud, or if there were too many circuits or not enough, or if the right kind of wire was used in the right place, he looked at none of that. Just counted boxes.

In the end, he told me I need to make one small change. You see we're moving the kitchen table into the new family room area, making it sort of a dinette. That was a bad thing to tell him, because it means that any outlets near the table need to be 20amp instead of 15amp (which means running a thicker wire). It seems they think perhaps we'll be making smoothies, playing with our daughters' Lite Brite, and powering a generator simultaneously at the kitchen table, thus drawing too much power to our table while we drink our smoothies. Dang. I shoulda told him it was just a family room. Well, could have been worse. I could have told him about the nuclear accelerator I was planning on building in the workshop, but I avoided that subject.

Another milestone that occurred today was being able to retrieve our collection of pots, buckets, and tupperware from the new space. Bob The Builder completed the roof, so it's no longer leaking every time it rains. And believe me, I know EVERY place that it's been leaking, since it's rained almost every day for a month now.

Latest varmint

Boy, between robins, geckos, and mice I'm not sure if this blog is about parenting, renovation, or hunting.

The critter of the day is ants. No big surprise. Summer is about here, and the house is wide open due to various missing walls and such. We're currently being visited by some of the largest carpenter ants we've ever seen. Their size makes them easy to kill, but I gotta wonder. Why is it that you never see ants come from one location. For example, I killed one on the kitchen countertop, one on the stove, and one on the closet door. Scan the room...all clear. Then all of a sudden, there's one in the middle of the floor. How did he get there without me seeing him walk across the room? he wasn't there a second ago. Does he have a teleporter? Was he beamed here from some alien planet in another dimension? It's al very mysterious.

The construction news of the day is rain. Rain, rain, and more rain. We seem to have a good drenching thunderstorm once a day at least. Every plastic bin or unused kitchen pot is serving double duty in the new space catching drips. I've begged and pleaded with the builder to do the roof and siding next, so I can stop stressing about it. I'm starting to dream about gathering two of every animal. We've got our first windows in, and Monday is a big day - the day Bob breaks through the hallway, creating a door to the bedroom. This means that not only do we no longer have to enter the new bedroom via the window, but it also means that Hilary can no longer sleep in when the builders come at 7:30am, because they're gonna be entering the work site from just outside the bedroom door.

It's a damned shame...

Throwing away a perfectly good superhero like that....

Stay away from the Country Wheat, it will clog your pipes

Running the plumbing for the new master bathroom hasn't been without its adventures. The shower was installed early on, and just by chance my dad noticed one fairly significant flaw. It turns out that the trap (the J-shaped pipe that comes out of the shower drain) was installed such that it extended about 5/8" below the ceiling joists of the floor below. While that would have made it handy to hang a chandelier over the kitchen table, it certainly wouldn't look right to have a pipe sticking out of our kitchen ceiling. So that's getting redone tomorrow.

Then, there's the problem of the wheat bread.

Fred the Plumber, who installed the new water pipes to the bathroom, at one point asked my wife for a slice of bread. Not being one to inquire on the dietary habits of plumbers, she never asked why the bread was needed, I guess she just assumed he was hungry for a snack. Well it turns out that the bread was used for an old plumber's trick. When attaching (sweating) new copper pipe to an existing water line, you need to ensure that all water is out of the old pipe. Hitting the pipe with a blow torch flame will draw water towards the seam you are trying to make, making it impossible to weld the two pieces together.. That's where the bread comes in. Stuff some bread into the pipe, and the bread will soak up any moisture. Once the seal is made, the bread just washes away with the water. At least in theory.

The problem is that my wife gave him a piece of Country Wheat, the kind with those individual grains that get stuck in your molars. turns out they also get stuck in the pipes. Or in our case, the kitchen faucet. Fred cleaned it out twice now, and we've still got no hot water to the kitchen sink. He's fixing that tomorrow too. Next time, Fred, bring your own loaf of Wonder.

So as of today, we've got our first windows installed. Quite a view. We hope to have the remaining walls completed by tomorrow or so. Now we get to the real juicy stuff, like choosing a color for siding. Man, I can't wait to ditch that baby blue crap.

Totally Wired

So mom and dad are here from CT. The plan was originally for dad and I to spend all week wiring the electrical throughout the addition. Unfortunately with the rain last week, Bob The Builder is behind, so we're still missing three walls. Grr. guess we will do what we can.

My Home Depot Mastercard is getting a great workout. Let's see, about 50 outlet boxes, a dozen or so light boxes, 18 recessed light kits, about 750' of electrical wire, a spool of Cat-5 wire liberated from a certain tech firm in the area (thanks Ken), several boxes of switches and outlets, and about a gazillion wire nuts. Oh, and a circuit continuity tester to replace the one my dad blew up when he accidentally stuck it in a live circuit. I know that only makes sense to those of you who know electrical work, so Paul and Ken, enjoy the chuckle.

We've learned a couple of things as we embarked on this effort to avoid electrocution. First, virtually everyone I've mentioned this project stated that the price of wire is outrageous. They are right. a box of wire that used to cost about $30 now costs about $100. Something to do with Katrina, construction in China, and a copper plant closing in Argentina. all I know is it would be cheaper to wire this house using conductive fibers woven from the hair of a Persian princess.

Second, we learned that there's a couple of really stupid electrical codes out there. Take the "arc fault" breaker, for instance. This is a new concept designed to protect morons in the bedroom. Basically in an arc fault circuit, if you plug a vacuum cleaner into an outlet with the appliance already on, it will trip the breaker. this means you have to trudge downstairs and reset it just because you accidentally kicked the cord out of the wall and plugged it back in without shutting the appliance off. To make matters worse, a typical circuit breaker is a couple of bucks, whereas this arc fault breaker is thirty bucks. And code mandates that you must have one for every outlet circuit in the BEDROOM. We have two circuits in the bedroom. Thus, $60 for these friggin things. Why the bedroom, you ask? I have no idea. Can't figure out that for the life of me. Well, after a wink and a nudge from the electrician it goes without saying that after the electrical inspection one might be inclined to return those $30 breakers and replace them with normal ones. Not that I would ever do that, mind you. Of course not.

Third, we learned there's new code for smoke detectors. You must have one at the top of every stairwell, and one in every hallway. they must be hardwired rather than battery operated, AND must be interconnected. This means when one goes off they ALL go off. That makes things real enjoyable when you blast your ear drums making toast.

But so far, we've managed to avoid electrocution.

In other news, the robin keeps coming back. I mentioned him in a previous article as the one creature who benefited from all the rain, by building a nest in our new family room. Each day we've brushed away the nest. Each day he build's another one, as if to say, F**k you! Here's a question. What do birds flip? think about it for a moment....

On a final note, I want to congratulate my wife for spending the most time ever in one vist to Home Depot. She, my dad and I spent 2.5 hours in the kitchen/bath area deciding on a bathroom vanity. And I only caught her with her eyes closed twice. You see, usually she glazes over the instant we walk through that sliding door by the big orange shopping carts. She was quite a trooper today. Some day I might actually be able to send her there to pick something up for me!

Monkey Heads For Dinner

A Calvin & Hobbes classic. Gonna have to try this one on our kids...

Forget the house, we're building an ark

So it's been a while since my last post about the house. That's because it's been a while since anything of substance has happened. Unless you count mud, plastic tarps, and a whole lotta dripping as substance.

Those of you in the Northeastern US are aware that it's been raining for the past ten days. A week ago last Thursday it started. The next step in the builders' plan was to tear the roof off the existing family room. Good thing they checked the weather report first. Instead, they wrapped the house in blue plastic and took a week's vacation. Of sure, they were here off and on to do what few inside things they could do, and in fact we got our shower installed a couple days ago, but basically it's been over a week of a whole lotta nothing except listening to raindrops. This morning was allegedly the last rainstorm, and the sun is now out.

Overall the builders did a good job of waterproofing the place. There were two leaks which I had to manage through strategic placement of buckets. But on Friday night the dam burst, so to speak, and it started raining inside the existing family room. More buckets, more plastic.

I must say, throughout the week it was fun to watch the massive stampede of suburban home-owning dads whip out their lawn mowers in a mad rush to get their foot-high grass trimmed before the next weather onslaught. It was not fun being one of them.

At least someone benefited from all this slack time. Yesterday I went out into the new space to check on things, and discovered that the two robins that used to have nexts under our deck now set up shop in the ceiling joists of the new family room space. They were just getting started, dumping plenty of mud and twigs in strategic places to get the foundation of their nests going. I chased them away with a broom and cleaned things up, but chances are good they will try again in the next couple of days.

I took it as an omen that there were two of them. just like Noah was told would happen.

The weather report seems to imply clearing starting this afternoon. Good thing. My mom and dad are coming in Tuesday, and we start running the electrical. If the rain holds out hopefully Bob might actually be able to finish the framing upstairs so that we have walls to run the electrical IN.

No new pictures to see. Hopefully I will have something of interest later in the week.

Thermogender Alteration - More on Geckos

Boy, this whole Gecko story just got more interesting. My dad informed me of a few things...

First, it seems that while all this "rectal inversion" was going on with Fez, the little guy somehow managed to INSEMINATE Art (whom we now know is female). Yes, Art laid an egg. Now, one must ask the question, "Did Fez injure himself during this act of procreation during a state of frenzied orgasm?? Seems likely, but then according to Wikipedia some geckos are parthenogenic, the females capable of reproducing without copulating with a male. According to the article, this improves the geckos' ability to spread to new islands. The gecko version of suburban sprawl.

The news today gets even more scientific. Apparently, you can control the sex of a newborn gecko by altering the temperature at which the egg is kept. If you raise the temperature you can bring about hatching in just four weeks and insure that the newborn will be a girl. If you lower the temperature, you get hatching in 16 weeks and insure getting a boy. I believe if you lower the tempurature past 64 degrees the gecko is born as a crochety old Jewish man with an enlarged prostate.

For more information, check out the Repashy Lizard Database.

Oh, the decisions one must make in child rearing. See, look at that. I took a topic that had nothing to do with the overall subject of my blog and turned it into one that did.

On geckos, ghosts, and parole officers

My 12-year-old neice has taken to raising geckos. First, there was "Art" (think about it for a second), and when she found it was looking lonely, she got a second one. "Fez" by name. As I understand it, Fez is quite the manly man, with testicles so big that it has trouble walking. But this story isn't about a gecko's testicles, it's about his ass.

So it turns out that Fez has a medical issue. He came down with something known as a "prolapsed rectum" (or as my sister describes it, "He shit himself inside out"). So for all of you out there who worried as a kid that you'd laugh so hard that milk would come out of your nose, well, that's nothing. Imagine your tail turning inside out like a giant piece of popcorn.

Well instead of flushing the damn lizard down the toilet, the family decided to take it to the vet. Unfortunately Geckos are known for car insurance, not health insurance, so they had to pay out the ass for this one (yes, I'm sinking to new lows with this post).

Well, believe it or not, the vet put forth a valiant effort, performing surgery on the critter and declaring success. Stories of tiny little blood pressure cuffs, little IV needles and even one instance of mouth-to-mouth (Dammit Nurse Henderson, I'm not losing this one! Crash cart, stat!) abounded, but in the end (sorry) Fez's cheeks are right-side-out again and he is resting comfortably, though not sitting to well. He has to go back next week and have his stitches taken out (I'm not kidding) and a full recovery is expected.

Pet gecko: fifteen dollars
Sugery for gecko's prolapsed rectum, sixty dollars.
Seeing the recovered fella bounding around his tank playfully, tripping over his huge testicles without a care in the world, pooping up a storm and keeping his ass where it belongs: priceless.

In another story, Our two-year-old was sitting on her bedroom floor playing, and looked out her window to notice that the trees were blowing in the wind. She
said to mommy, "That wind is scary. Just like ghosts and witches are scary."

Mommy replied with, "There are no such things as ghosts and witches."

Jessica smiled and said, "Yes there is. BOO!"

On a final note, another quick update on the house. After three weeks of nothing but sunshine, the builders got rained out yesterday and today. Luckily BEFORE ripping off the roof of the existing house. So we made due by having the heating guy run ductwork. At one point Hilary overheard one of the heating guys say to his boss, "I'm taking a break so I can call my parole officer." Par for the course I guess.

Monday, we get our shower delivered. The plan is to lift it onto the roof of the front of the house and carry it into the new space. That could be interesting. Now, back to my mouse hunting.

Kids on Moms

Someone forwarded me this as a joke email, but since the subject matter is applicable I thought I would plagarize and post here. Credit goes out to whomever first wrote this...

Answers given by 2nd grade school children to the following questions!!

Why did God make mothers?
1. She's the only one who knows where the scotch tape is.
2. Mostly to clean the house.
3. To help us out of there when we were getting born.

How did God make mothers?
1. He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.
2. Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring
3. God made my Mom just the same like he made me. He Just used bigger
parts.

What ingredients are mothers made of?
1. God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world and one dab of mean.
2. They had to get their start from men's bones. Then they mostly use
string, I think.

Why did God give you Your mother & not some other mom?
1. We're related
2. God knew she likes me a lot more than other people's moms like me.

What kind of little girl was your mom?
1. My mom has always been my mom and none of that other stuff.
2. I don't know because I wasn't there, but my guess would be pretty bossy.
3. They say she used to be nice.

What did mom need to know about dad before she married him?
1. His last name.
2. She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he get drunk on beer?
3. Does he make at least $800 a year? Did he say NO to drugs and YES to chores?

Why did your mom marry your dad?
1. My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. And my Mom eats a lot.
2. She got too old to do anything else with him.
3. My grandma says that Mom didn't have her thinking cap on.

Who's the boss at your house?
1. Mom doesn't want to be boss, but she has to because dad's such a goof ball.
2. Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.
3. I guess Mom is, but only because she has a lot more to do than dad.

What's the difference between moms & dads?
1. Moms work at work and work at home & dads just go to work at work.
2. Moms know how to talk to teachers without scaring them.
3. Dads are taller & stronger, but moms have all the real power 'cause that's who you got to ask if you want to sleep over at your friend's.
4. Moms have magic, they make you feel better without medicine.

What does your mom do in her spare time?
1. Mothers don't do spare time.
2. To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.

What would it take to make your mom perfect?
1. On the inside she's already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.
2. Diet. You know, her hair. I'd diet, maybe blue.

If you could change one thing about your Mom, what would it be?
1. She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I'd get rid of that.
2. I'd make my Mom smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who did it and not me.
3. I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on the back of her head.

Say a prayer for GusGus

...and for his younger brother Thelonious.

About a half hour after my previous post, I heard the distinct sound of a piece of plastic scraping across concrete coming from the garage. I investigated to find poor GusGus with his hind legs crossed and stuck to the glue trap, desparately trying to claw his way to safety. At one point he looked me in the eye pleadingly and, I must say, I felt a huge pang of guilt and sadness, and was concerned I'd be bothered by nightmares for the next several hours. But then he pooped all over the trap, and I was done.

It was then I realized I didn't have much of a followup plan for dealing with this situation, so the best I could do was provide him a dumpster funeral. Looking back, that probably wasn't a great idea as the dumpster is going to be sitting in my front lawn for the next two months.

This morning I checked the traps under the couch and found his smaller sibling stuck to the glue trap (after he'd eaten the peanut butter off all the spring traps in the surrounding area again without setting them off). Thelonius was pretty much on his last breaths, and he's now gone.

But, young Jedi, there is another. I heard him in the garage this morning as I left for work. I haven't come up with a name for #3, perhaps "Microsoft", or "cordless". tune in tomorrow, when we find out if our hero is victorious, wiping out the scourge of the insurgency.

Mouse Hunt Part II

He's baaack!

So, the mouse hunt from a couple of weeks ago wasn't quite as successful as I might have thought. Though I chased him out the back door, he obviously slipped back in when we weren't paying attention, because a couple of nights ago I witnessed GusGus scampering across the living room floor. So the hunt was on again. The wife, of course, is ready to move out.

All you men out there, I have advice for you. Do not try to reason with a woman about her fear of small rodents. There will be no reasoning. Part of the conversation went like this:

"That's it! Call and exterminator!"

"I'm not calling an exterminator of one little mouse. I'll get some traps for a buck fifty, and he'll be gone."

"Then I'll pay for an exterminator!!!"

"With what money, oh stay-at-home-mom? (I'm not the best at comforting her, as you can tell. She almost stabbed me with that one)

"With my writing earnings!"

"You mean the money we're saving up to go to Disney with? So let me get this straight, you want to pay several hundred dollars to kill a tiny mouse, instead of flying to Florida to see a giant one?"

"No, the kids and I will go, and you can stay home with the rat!!"

While I managed to convince her to stick around, I wasn't overly successful with the traps the first couple of nights. First I tried these "humane" traps, which were simply little boxes with a trapdoor that shut behind the mouse when he crawled inside to get the peanut butter. GusGus ignored those. So I then went out and bought four of the old fashion spring-loaded ones, and placed two under the couch and two in the garage. The next morning, all four traps were licked clean of peanut butter, but none were set off! Damn, he's crafty. So today I bought two more spring traps of a different brand, as well as those awful glue traps. We did notice, as we shopped for rodent disposal tools today, a whole house fogger product used for disposing vast quantities of mice in a home, appropriately named "Revenge". Cute. Interestingly, the Revenge product line also has something called "Gopher Gasser". I'm thinking the product marketers for this company are a bunch of sick S.O.B.'s. I'm hoping GusGus goes for the spring trap, because I just can't see myself disposing of a live mouse with his feet stuck to a piece of plastic. Poor little GusGus.

Meanwhile, a quick update on the renovation. we now have no family room ceiling, as the builders tore it completely off in order to reinforce the ceiling joists in preparation for the bedroom to be built above it. Yesterday I spent a good portion of the afternoon attempting not to electrocute myself, tracing circuits and cutting wires that were routed through the family room joists and had to be moved to allow for construction. I think I did okay, as the wires that needed to be cut are cut, I'm still alive, and Hilary's hair dryer still works.

Now that part of the third floor is built, I'm realizing that this renovation is HUGE.

This week is going to be a pretty busy one. They should be pretty much finished with the framing and starting on the roof, and I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the week they start breaking down some walls. The heating guy starts doing his work Tuesday, and the electrician comes Thursday. The mouse will be dead by morning.

An Army Of #1

Been doing some toilet shopping. I'm noticing a theme here. Toilets are supposed to inspire one to think of greatness, of patriotism, of military life.

First, there's American Standard's Cadet.

Then, Eljer's TITAN (hmm, sounds like a few of my p...never mind)

But there are also lines that inspire regalness, and royalty.

Check out American Standard's Ugliest Bathroom contest. Perhaps I can submit my childhood bathroom, it's bright red formica counters and silver wallpaper with preprinted grafitti for next year.

And if you're REALLY into poopers, check out The Toilets Of The World site, starting with one in a hospital in Saint Peterburg, Russia. The open plumbing is used by patients to dispose of empty vodka bottles, newspapers, and cigarette butts. Many plumbing chases in the hospital have experienced minor flue fires.

Progress, turmoil and shower seats

Boy, what a difference one week makes. My last post was Monday, and a lot has happened since then. I posted some pics of the progress here. So far the basement and the first floor is framed, and Bob (the builder) has started some exploratory research into the family room ceiling.

During the exploration, Bob removed a portion of the ceiling drywall to discover one large kink in our overall design. Turns out that the ceiling joists in that room go left-to-right, not front-to-back. Whoops. Whoda thunk that an 11-foot by 20-foot room would have 20-foot ceiling joists. So, after a quick review with the architect (that'd be dad) we decided that to keep the floor of the new room upstairs from bouncing like a diving board, a little joist reinforcement was needed. No biggie. Bob then discovered that the ceiling slopes 3/4" from the left side of the house toward the middle. Not much that can be done about that, and it means that any coins we drop on our bedroom floor will be conveniently collected in one corner of the room.

Another interesting side effect related to the holes in our family room ceiling....this week the weather has been great, but the temps dropped to the 30's at night. With a gaping chasm in the family room ceiling, there's nothing keeping the cold out. We've woken up with frost in the kitchen the past couple of days.

So meanwhile, we've completely emptied the family room, meaning that I write this to you from our new computer desk location under the steps in the basement. I feel like a troll. My precious. The other rooms are still livable, though starting to get slightly cramped. It's gonna get real interesting in a couple weeks when we lose our kitchen table space and pot cabinet. I've already planned out our dinner seating arrangements for that point. I'll eat standing by the kitchen sink, Hilary will be on the front porch, Natalie can eat sitting on the toilet using the sink as her table, and Jessica will be perched comfortably on top of the fridge. Any guests that come over will be required to take us out to dinner. And it better not be Eat & Park!!

A final thought for the day. The shower was ordered today. I had a long discussion with the plumber over the benefits of shower seat location. If your shower head is on the left, do you want the shower to have a seat on the right (so the water can hit you) or on the left (so you are under the water? This turned into a discussion on Zen and the art of leg shaving. We decided that the overall feng shui of the room would be greatly affected by the seat placement, and in the end we opted for the right. Now the next big question...round toilet bowl or elongated? Oh, the decisions....

The Hard Room and The Soft Room

Jessica (our 2-year-old) has quite the system in place for remembering her current location.

The family room, which currently isn't so much a family room but a massive firetrap of plastic toys, is known as "the hard room".

The living room, (or as I call it, the Cheerio-laden-TV-slugfest-room) is known as "the soft room".

Why they are called the Hard Room and the Soft Room is quite simple, really. The hard room has this matted down thin berber carpet, and the soft room has a normal higher-pile carpet. Hard, soft. toddler logic.

So naturally, we dramatically messed with that logic this weekend when we completely emptied out the hard room of all possessions, as the walls are about to be demolished. We spent all morning Saturday emptying out the room, and Jessica never noticed as she was ensconced in Berenstain Bears on Noggin in the soft room. When it was all done, we called her in to inspect.

"Jessica, c'mere!"

"mkay." (pitter patter, pitter patter. Queue the sudden look of astonishment)

"Where my toys??"

"We emptied out the hard room so we can renovate."

"You bloke the hard room?" (that's how she pronounces "broke")

"Yes, the hard room is broken."

"The deck is bloken too!"

"Yes, the deck is bloken too. But guess what. When the renovation is done, this will become the soft room, and the OTHER room will be the hard room!"

"Woah, wait a minute dad. Yer totally messing with my head now. I mean, don't do that, don't completely blow my mind like this. I work long and hard to get a handle on my whereabouts, and you come in here and completely screw up the feng shui of it all. How can you do that to a little toddler like myself and expect that my chakra won't be completely misaligned? I need to take a moment."

(pitter patter, pitter patter). Back to Berenstain Bears on Noggin.

The Dandelion Child

Not much happening on the build this weekend due to rain, unless you count whatever topsoil I have left washing down into the neighbor's yard. It's starting to resemble the Lousiana Delta down there.

But back on the kid topic for a sec, here is a link to a story in the New Yorker by Paul Rudnick, entitled, "The Dandelion Child", about why gifted children can be dangerous to your lawn. Laugh-out-loud funny. Thanks, Bob, for forwarding this one. Made my day.

I hear there's a floor

You know, it kinda sucks to sit in an office all day when all kinds of fun stuff with cool trucks and power tools is happening at home. The report from my wife is they poured the basement floor today. So now, even if we decided this whole renovation was a crappy idea and killed the project, at least we have a basketball court on the back of the house.

Builder Bob informed me that by tomorrow there should be a big pile of lumber sitting in the yard, and framing should start Monday. He also informed me that by a week from tomorrow, he'll be ready to start "infiltrating" the existing house, meaning knocking some walls down. That's when the REAL fun starts.

Yesterday, as I met with the builder and the inspector over lunch to decide where the sump would be located, I took a look at what is currently the back of the house and realized something. The back of the house is brick. After construction, those brick walls will be interior walls in the workshop and mud room. Those walls are filthy from years of exposure to the elements. Great, another project to do. I spent the evening locating a friend with a power washer and scrubbing the outside of the house.

So, I'd like to take a moment to say a few kind words about the little guy. We're considering a laminate (like Pergo) floor for the new space. Naturally out first stop was home Depot. While they have a wide selection, if you want to take a sample home you must pay a buck for each 2" wide sample you want. The other day I went to Pittsburgh Discount Flooring, a place that also sells Pergo. When I asked for samples, he gave me free reign to take home a full 4-foot wide plank of each and every color I was interested in. For free. That's called service.

The Sump

Well, we had our first "gotcha" today. It seems our township has gone the way of many other over-built, paved over, concrete jungle suburbs and recently changed the building code regarding storm drainage (I say that like I was aware of the OLD code). The inspector popped by for a visit today, and told us that we couldn't drain the gutters and downspouts simply into the ground, because that would cause excessive erosion, possible property damage to the folks living below us (I like to think of it as offering "free humidity" to a neighbor) or, god-forbid, grass that would actually grow effectively in my yard. Instead, we must build a sump.

This is where we gotta actually do math and smart-person stuff.

We need to measure the square footage of the roof, and for every 100 square feet of roof that drains water we need 40 cubic feet of sump. A sump is simply a hole in the ground filled with gravel. The gutter runs into the ground and through a pipe that leads to the center of the gravel, where it pours into another pipe with holes in it and disperses the water amongst the gravel. And then, the water flows into the yard, where it can more slowly cause excessive erosion, possible property damage to the neighbors, or grass that would actually grow. So now, we get to take several hundred additional dollar bills into the back yard and bury it underground, never to be seen again.

Now I wonder what Mr. Inspector is going to say about my toxic waste containment bin I'm planning to put next to the shed? Perhaps I shouldn't mention it.

But who will wash your back?

So as the builder does his thing, the list of decisions we have to make grows. Currently that list includes:

* The shower, toilet and sink
* Flooring for all the new rooms
* Paint/wallpaper
* Windows
* Paint for ceilings
* Kitchen cabinets
* Kitchen countertop
* Doors for office
* Outside doors
* Furniture
* Siding and shutters
* Mirrors for above the bed (oh wait, that's another list)

I'm sure there is more, but that's just what I thought up during my last visit to the bathroom. So, this past weekend, we attempted to work on the first couple of items on the list. Speaking of bathrooms, let's talk about showers for a minute.

Being of the practical (and cheap) sorts, we decided it would be prudent to avoid the excessive cost of a big ol' whirlpool tub. We'd never use it, we'd never clean it, and it would cost a portion of our children's college tuition to fill it. We therefore decided we didn't need another tub (got two already), so a shower-only model was the way to go. We then learned there are more varieties of showers than there are ways to get dirty. And they can cost as little as a few hundred bucks, or approximately the same as your average Bentley Continental.

Take this one for example, which includes a foot massaging system and overhead speakers. There are showers with teak flooring, showers that utilize hydrotherapy and aromatherapy, and I'm pretty sure showers that include built-in geishas that will massage your buttocks with leaves of heather if you so desire. When we spoke with one distributor, she recommended a line from Aker. Aker was a shipbuilder who somehow got into the business of shower-building. To me that's a career move in the wrong direction, but I'm sure he's doing comfortably. Supposedly he took what he knew about shipbuilding, encorporated his knowledge into shower-building, and the result was a very fine place to rinse your privates. Who knew?

So after a fairly full friday of wandering to bathroom galleries we discovered what anyone who watches those home shows on HGTV knows already, which is that it's virtually impossible to make a decision. Oy, this is gonna take some effort.

I'm not even gonna get into flooring.