Progress, one board at a time

Day 3 of the flooring install was fairly productive, but ultimately, shorter than I had hoped. Here's what we've got so far:

The angles around the stairs are proving to be the buggers I expected. I made the incorrect assumption that the stairs were even and the trim I'm using to cover my angled cuts would hide all my mistakes. However, I wasted almost an hour of cutting, measuring, fitting, remeasuring, recutting, and refitting the second trim piece along the front of the bannister to realize that I'll need to adjust my plan. Like our walls, the bannister is not quite even.

All in all, though, I am making progress, thanks in no small part to the tremendous help I have gotten from Jeremy, my sister's boyfriend (or is it fiancee, or life partner, or lover, or ?). Once we got our bearings working with the pneumatic flooring nail gun, we got going at a pretty good clip, though I still make an occasional miss fire. (#%$&#*^!)

To celebrate this progress, I went to the liquor store and found, for the first time I have seen in Northern Indiana, Fat Tire Ale from New Belgium. In a word, yum. Thanks for reading. Salud!

And so, it begins

Flooring install, Day 1:

After nearly two hours at Menards on Saturday, hunting, fiddling, playing with tools, and generally looking like I knew exactly what I was there to get, this was all I needed to get started. Knee pads, slap hammer, staples for slap hammer, 2" finish nails, some brads for a borrowed nail gun and a nail set pack. I pretty much already have or have borrowed the other tools I need. But I did buy the wrong staples for the slap hammer, so I made one trip back to Menards to get the right ones. All in all, that's not too bad. You always expect one extra trip back to the store for something. Thank God this isn't plumbing, or I would have put 200 miles on my truck going back and forth. That, and I absolutely loathe all things plumbing and pipe-related (lookin' at you gas lines). Does that make me a homophobe? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I went to Lowe's to buy my underlayment - 30# roofing felt. I would have gotten it at Menards, but they keep all their felt outside and the last thing I wanted was to unroll my underlayment and discover it was soaking wet from sitting out in the rain. Not a good thing for underneath a wood floor. I'm starting in the corner of the window well area there, and right off the bat, I will be cutting a hole for the register as well as the angled end cuts around the stairs (see below). My hope is, by the time I get past this section, the rest of the room(s) will seem easy.

Here's the opposite end of that wall where it dies into a 60-degree angle where the stairs jut into the main level. How, you may ask yourself, did I know it was a 60-degree angle? Why, with that little, blue, $1 grade school protractor I dug out of Isaac's bookbag. I measured the angle on the underlayment and made a perfect cut on my first try. It can only go downhill from here. Today, after I snap my chalk lines to mark the floor joists, I will face-nail the first row of boards in the window well area, then I'll dummy (read: set, but not nail down) as much of the floor as I can and make as many of my cuts as possible. On Monday, I'm renting a pneumatic hardwood flooring nailer and, hopefully by the time I get it home, I can start slamming boards down right away.

Tomorrow: The best laid (floor) plans of mice and men...

Green stuff, outdoors and in

Picture time - first the garden, then a before shot of the floor.


On the left, there's bi-color sweet corn in the

foreground and green beans in the middle, both of which are growing very well. Behind those are the two transplanted tomato plants (left) that went into shock but seem to be coming back and two transplanted pepper plants (right) that are a litte iffy as well.

The pic on the right shows regular yellow corn in the foreground that is not really taking off, especialy compared to the bi-color next to it, zucchini in the middle that is exploding and cucumbers in the back that seem to be coming along nicely.


Here's a shot from the other side. The bare patch up front (left of the pepper plants) is carrots. They're just beginning to sprout, but only one row so far.


Behind that is a smaller patch of lettuce, but only one little sprout has popped up so far, and that may end up being nothing more than a weed. We'll have to wait and see. One of my projects for this upcoming week of vacation is putting up a chicken wire fence to keep our hoppity neighbors at bay.



And here we have the before of our indoor green project - installing pre-finished bamboo hardwood flooring. Bamboo is one of the most sustainable building products you can use. Since it's a grass, it takes very little time to grow lots and lots of it and, in my opinion, looks really cool. Now, I'm not some kooky enviro-nut, but I think it's a good idea to use renewable resources. Plus, I got a pretty good deal on the wood from Lumber Liquidators and, as I said before, the stuff looks totally bitchin'.


I'm starting in that far left coner by the window and I've got a tricky area around the stairs there that will take a lot of measuring and cutting (and cussing, and whining, and crying, and cussing). I'll post some shots of the in-process work, which will begin today with a bunch of prep work. The pic of the wood there is a little off - it's actually not quite that red, more of a brown. Now, off to Menards to buy underlayment and other fun stuff. More to come later...

Another day, another inch

(No, this is not a commercial for Extenze capsules.) The difference from one day to the next is rather amazing. Sprouts that were barely above the surface just yesterday are now vibrant, green and clearly visible all over our humble little patch of Earth.

The picture to the right is from Saturday, but already these corn shoots look twice this size and there are more of them as well. All four cucumbers are coming up, three of the four zucchinis, four rows of corn (!) four or five green bean plants and the first evidence of carrot and lettuce plants emerging. The tomato and pepper plants that we planted, however, are having a tough time of it and we may need to replant those. Everything that we started from seed seems to be coming along rather nicely.


Next up is the fencing to keep out our little cottontail neighbors who scamper across the lawn every late night when I come home from the Tribune. And, my Cor-A-Vent co-worker and provider of nature's finest fertilizer, Cindy, has a roll of chicken wire she's going to give us. Nice. All ten of my thumbs now have the slightest green hue.


As I mentioned earlier, we're also putting down hardwood flooring in the main/upper level of our house. I'm taking a week off of work to install it myself (!) and I am begging, borrowing, and possibly stealing all the tools I'll need for the job. We're putting down pre-finished bamboo and I'll throw on some pics of that process as well. It's gonna be kick-ass, if I don't ruin it first.

Sprouts and whatnot

Woefully long time between posts, however the garden has been planted and little green fellas are beginning to emerge from the ground, including two rows of corn out of four total. Either we planted the first two rows too deep or the crows were busy removing the seeds for us - not sure.

Pictures will be forthcoming. We've planted two kinds of corn, zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, green beans, two kinds of peppers, and a couple herbs - basil and something else.

I've also begun to prep the floor in the house for my major DIY project for this year, prefinished bamboo flooring. It's gonna look beautiful, that is if I don't jack it up. I'll post some pics of that little project as well when I get it going in two weeks.

Raw Human Emotion

We went to the Good Friday service at Clay United Methodist Church. We're not full members but have attended regularly for nearly a year now. The service was a powerful one.

They did five readings, progressing through the story of Jesus's crucifixion. After the final reading, the choir stood and we all sang Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? My 11-year old son, Alex, had been following along intently and joined in singing. Between verses, this passage from John (19:31-35) was read:

"It was Preparation Day, and to prevent the bodies remaining on the cross during the Sabbath, the Jews asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken away. Consequently the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with him and then the other. When they came to Jesus, they found he was already dead, and so instead of breaking his legs one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance; and immediately there came out blood and water.

Then we sang again. "Were you there when they pierced him in the side?" That was where Alex lost it. I heard him begin to cry, big tears and heaving sobs. And he continued to sing as well. Through his tears, I heard him sing, "Tremble, tremble, tremble..." The folks in the pew behind us, along with Michele and I, began to cry as well. I have never been so overcome by such pure, raw emotion as at that moment, singing those words on that day, hearing Alex crying his heart out as the significance of it all struck him like a thunderbolt.

Happy Easter to all.

P.S. - While we were all singing and crying, my nine-year old, Isaac, was stone cold passed out at my side, his head against Michele's shoulder. We feared that at any moment he would start snoring as the congregation was filing out in complete silence.

Fast forward to this morning at 12:30 AM, when we were awakened by Alex coming to report that Isaac threw up in his bed. For the next hour, we were cleaning (well, mostly Michele while I battled a powerful gag reflex) a most horrendus smelling substance from sheets and stuffed animals and hair, etc. About every hour on the hour, Isaac has had to charge to the bathroom and is one sick little boy.

He lamented amidst one such trip to the bathroom, "Why me? Why does this have to happen to me?" Being the wonderful, caring parents that we are, Michele and I told him that he was likely being punished by God and Jesus for falling asleep in church. He was not amused.

Relatives Growing Obscene Things

Since we can't plant anything until round abouts Mother's Day, there's not much new about the garden. It's still a patch of poop-covered soil in the yard. There is other news to share, though, and it's nearly as disturbing as my apparent fixation with excrement.

The picture at left is of John Barillo, husband to my cousin Tref. What he is holding may look disturbing, but Tref assures me they are called Cucuzzi, or Italian zucchini, however I still harbor a suspicion that they're actually alien breeding pods.

These long dongs are described as "a vining annual, with large pubescent leaves..." I knew there was something rotten in Denmark.

John and Tref also grow stuff in their basement. If their subterranean farming efforts are as impressive as these, I fully expect some delicious "brownies" coming my way soon. (To any potential readers employed in the arena of law enforcement or service with the DEA, the above comment was JUST A JOKE.)

Here's another joke somewhat related to farming that I heard this morning:

Why do they call it PMS?

A: Because Mad Cow disease was already taken.

/ducking/