I finally did it… I got tired of paying for my crippled ColdFusion hosting account so I’ve moved my blog over to wordpress. I have also taken the extra step of splitting up my personal blog from my programming blog. I have gotten increasing amounts of traffic for both areas and felt it was just time to separate the two out. Officially the URLS are now:
In one of my future posts I plan to include my methodology for moving my blog over including redirects for search engines so that I don’t loose my page rankings and any other links that are out there.
Well here it is… the plaid wall that I’ve been working on for the last few weeks. It took a lot of work and about 5 rolls of masking tape but I am rather pleased with the final result. Which is more…. Wil loves it.
How to paint a plaid wall…..
1: Paint your base color (blue)
(let dry)
2: Tape off in both directions with 2 inch tape, leaving 4 inch squares… paint your square color (green)
(let dry and peel tape)
3: Using 1 inch tape, tape off for double stripes in one direction here the gap I left overlapped both the green squares and blue lines so that the red would hide the transition. Paint with the double line color (red)
(let dry and peel tape)
4: Repeat step 3 in the other direction
(let dry and peel tape)
5: Using 1 inch tape, now tape off for the single stripes in one direction. Line this stripe up with the middle of the green squares. Paint with the single line color (yellow)
(let dry and peel tape)
6: Repeat step 5 in the other direction
(let dry and peel tape)
7: Using four small art brushes and 4 small containers of paint (one of each color) touch up anywhere that needs it.
I finally finished up the great room. The wall is all gone, and the wall’s and ceiling patched up. The floor has all been put back in place…
and thanks to my friend Chris (who loaned me his finish nailer and air-compressor) the base boards are all in. The floor took about a weekend and a couple of evenings to put in but since most of the baseboards were already cut (and I numbered them when I took them off) the baseboards only took about an hour to put back in. I still need to fill in the nail heads with color matched putty and caulk the top edge but otherwise everything is done.
Well the last week has been busy. Last weekend and this past holiday weekend I spent closing up the walls and ceiling, (drywall, mudding, taping, painting) and then reinstalling the kitchen island in it’s new location. Here are a few pictures…
Wall closed up…
Textured and painted… (You can still sort of see the patch on the ceiling but that’s mostly due to the fact that the paint doesn’t quite match the existing. We a spot like this in the kitchen as well. This should all get cleared up when we have the house painted later this year.)
Some pictures of the island in it’s new home…
The kitchen island wouldn’t have been such a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that in addition to the electrical outlet, it also contains our central-vac kick plate. Since the island moved about 12 feet from the middle of the kitchen to it’s new home in the bay window I needed to extend that length of pipe for the vac. Lucky for me I found this great 2″” flexible PVC pipe that allowed me to extend the line without having to build all the pipes and connectors using standard PVC. In fact because the system does not contain water I decided that I wouldn’t’ even bother using PVC cement and instead just duct taped the overlapping connections. This has the added benefit of being easy to take apart if something does get stuck in there in the future. The electrical was easier to move since I was able to pull the line down and move it so that there was just enough wire to reach the new location without having to install a junction box. I suppose if I had needed to I could have put one in the crawlspace, but I was very tired of being in the crawlspace. Between the duct, the pipe, the electrical, the vac, the speaker wire. (Oh yeah I ran speaker wire to the ceiling before I closed in the walls.) I’ve been down in the crawlspace about a dozen times in the last month. It’s not really that bad down there, I just don’t like it.
Just put in some new mini can lights to replace the chandelier that I moved to the new location of the dining table In this picture the 3 in the foreground and to the left are the existing lights, the three to the right and back toward the red wall are the new lights. I had never put in these lights before and was happy with how easy they go in and how I didn’t have to really open the ceiling up to put them in.
Here I’ve pulled up the floor and moved the island out of the way the next step is to pull out the fridge and dishwasher (not good considering my history with plumbing)
Unfortunately the floor did not go under the island so all of this is necessary, oh well gives me a reason to replace some scratched sections of floor.
This picture the 3 stacks on the left are the old floor and the 1 on the right is the new WRONG floor. We have to take this floor back and replace it with the correct stuff. Technically it’s the same style and color however it has a different locking mechanism because the manufacturer changed to a new system in 2007. Lucky for us they were able to located 1600sqft of the old style in a warehouse in Atlanta. It should get here next Tuesday.
I finished up removing the wall this weekend. The final task was to move the HVAC duct that runs up to the master bedroom. I had been putting this off due to the hot/humid weather we had been having. I didn’t want to mess with the AC while the weather was so bad. Here are a few pictures of where the wall use to be…
I wanted to reuse the original riser duct that goes from the crawlspace to the 2nd floor but was unable to find a transition piece (oval to 6″ round) that curved the correct way at the top. In the end I replaced that piece with 10″x3 1/4″ duct and new transition pieces for both the top and the bottom. This should have the added benefit of improving airflow through this duct. The drain pipe has also been moved in this photo and now sits in the column just to the left of the duct. I’m just glad that I shouldn’t need to go back down in the crawlspace for awhile.
For anyone who has ever dreamed of flying like a bird or diving to the depths of the seas and living like Captain Nemo these two links might be for you.
The first link here is to US Subs: http://www.ussubs.com/submarines/ where they manufacture luxury (yes luxury) submarines. This is an illustration of their top of the line “Phonix” model which is a 213′ luxury sub, capable of descending to 3000 feet. The price tag… well out of my league (in the millions) but if you’ve got that kind of cash sitting around and want a new home where your neighbors won’t bother you well this would be perfect. As a bonus it doubles as a normal (but slow) surface yacht.
This next link is to something a little more in my price range. The tiny 1 person helicopter called the mosquito, from Innovartortech www.innovator.mosquito.net.nz/mbbs2/ . This little guy can be had for under $30,000 in kit form and if configured properly doesn’t even require a license. After I get my fixed wing license, I am seriously thinking of building one of theses. What a fun project.
We were up in Snoqualmie on Friday and stopped into this little antique and book-shop. I found a little treasure back in the corner. It is a wonderful four volume set published in 1909, so at this point it’s almost 100 years old. It is a complete set written by Clinton A Snowden called “History of Washington, The Rise and Progress of An American State” It covers Washington area history from it’s discovery to the formation of the State of Washington which occurred in 1889, only 30 years before the publication of this book.
The books are in fair condition with little damage. The 4th volume is in the worst condition with a rip in the crease between the front cover and the spine. I am thinking about having them re-bound. I have several others that I would like to have rebound as well, including one of my favorite books of poetry that has long ago seen better days.
I love old books like these for reasons like this;
I started reading the first volume and in it Snowden makes a reference to the fact that the location for Washington DC was originally chosen because it put it near the population center of the country. He goes on to comment on how since westward expansion the “current” population center is somewhere in souther Indiana and may even someday cross the Mississippi river. I found this part particularly funny because it has been within my lifetime that the this has happened. When I was born the population center of the country was very near my home in southern Illinois and crossed into Missouri when I was in high school. Snowden was not far off in his prediction, predicting that the population center would be somewhere near but east of Kansas City.
It is interesting reading a history book that has a perspective that from our point of view is itself part of history. By this mean, the book was written prior to both world wars, the rise of communism etc. etc. What made me think of this was this line
“It (Oregon Territory) is possibly capable of supporting a population as dense as that of the German Empire, which now amounts to more than sixty million people.”
What I find fascinating about this is that it is a sentence constructed from a mind that has no knowledge of what would be future events. No prejudice and no reference to the two world wars started by Germany. These events that for us any mention of Germany conjure to mind, where not available to Snowden.
I also picked up one other book that day, a copy of “Van Loon’s Geography” published in 1932. Which was apparently a gift either to or from Gordon N. Johnson for Christmas 1932.
