New Dining Room Floor

We spent the entire day installing new flooring in the dining room, kitchen, and hall. IT was quite a long day, but fortunately we were able to get it all in. Some pointers about installing laminate flooring.
1. Start on the side that is most likely to be seen. If that means you have laminate meeting carpet in the middle of a room, start there. People are much less likely to examine the stuff in the corner.
2. Have some people who are will ing to spend a large chunk of time helping you.
3. Put an entire row together first, then button that into the row already installed.
4. Have several cutting tools ready to go. For me this meant a jigsaw, a table saw and a miter saw.
5. Turn on some good music.

Labor Day

There are two different ways to celebrate Labor Day. There are the guys who go out and get there last summer vacation that they have been meaning to get to all season. Then there are the guys who go out to finish the project they have been meaning to get to all summer. In case you are wondering I did not go out for a final vacation. I spent the day working on prepping my dining room to receive laminate flooring. There is a half inch heigh discrepancy between the kitchen and dining room floors, which needed to be ramped down, to allow the flooring to be laid seamlessly across both floors. I also removed the wood under the new stove. Now it is just resting on the floor. After all this I was able to finish installing the light above the mirror in the bathroom. All in all I would say that the name fit the day.

8/31 New Stove

Being a Saturday I decided to take on a significantly larger project. We had a built in stove top with a separate oven unit. My wife wanted a single glass top unit. We finally were able to acquire a decent one last week, and thus this weekends project was to rip out the old unit and cabinet, and replace it with the stand alone unit. This turned out to be a much larger project then I was planning. 

First was the demolition. Unfortunately it was not your standard smash and tear demolition. I had to be careful to only take out the pieces I wanted without breaking up the attached cabinets. This required that I go and purchase a new jigsaw. Luckily I was able to get a decent one for only $16.  After some careful cutting, and a significant amount of hammering I was able to tear out most of the cabinet area that I needed removed. 

The next major obstacle was the electrical. The old unit was hardwired in, meaning there was not a plug built into the wall. I therefore had to buy some 220 wire attach it to the old stuff. Run it inside the wall, connect it to a new plug, and mount all that back onto the wall. The part that was the hardest was running the wiring behind the wall. 

The rest of the demolition was then completed, and we moved the new stove in from the garage. By the time clean up was all done most of the afternoon had passed. I spent the rest of the day doing random electrical work throughout the house. At some point I will get to tearing out the separate oven unit that is still installed. 

8/30/13 - Wood Pile

My work sponsored a family night at a local amusement park. So my wife and I were there till very late. Because we got home so late I decided to do a very small project. There is a large pile of wood behind our house from the basement demolition. I moved some of the worse, non-reusable pieces to the burn pile. Not much but it is better than nothing.

8-29-13 Bathroom Light

Today on the way home I stopped at Home Depot and bought a light for over the bathroom sink. The light box is already installed so I needed to wire it. I am planning on tying into the main light switch for the bathroom so both lights will come on at the same time. So I measured the distance of the light box from the wall (17"), climbed into the attic, and drilled the hole. I then took some wire and shoved it down. After some finagling, some mutilation of the light box, and lots of help from my wife, we were able to get the wire positioned correctly.

One Project a Day

I am changing the tune of this blog completely. My wife and I bought a true blue fixer upper. Thanks to a ton of help from various family members it is no in a condition suitable for habitation. However, there is still a ton of work to be done. I know that if I try to sprint through all of the sundry projects I will end up getting tired of it, and thus just give up for a while until I feel another boost of desire. Those kinds of waves will take forever to finish this house. Thus I am going to adopt a more "slow and steady" approach. I am going to do one thing a night for the house. Sometimes it will be a two minute project, like attaching a light switch cover. Sometimes it will be a hour long project. Every night after I am done I will get on here and put a quick post of what I did. Mainly it is a way to keep myself accountable, and so when I feel like nothing is happening with this house, I can look back and know that I have actually done something.

Disc Golf Order

I am setting up a bulk order of disc golf discs. I need people willing to go in on the order so we can qualify to get the bulk discount. You can get any combination of drivers, mid ranges or putters that you want, but it needs to be in sets of four. IE 1 Putter, 2 Mid ranges, 1 Driver

I can get different types of plastics as well. The pricing is like this:

DX plastic set of four - $25
Pro plastic set of four - $35
Champion plastic set of four - $44
Star plastic set of four - $50

These are cheap because they have cosmetic blemishes, which do not affect the flight properties of the disc at all.
If you are interested in getting in on this deal please email me and let me know what type of discs you would like and what plastic.
srobbins13@gmail.com