June 9, 2008
· Filed under renovated
I don’t know about flowers, but I definitely got a lot of dirt and stuff in my hair this morning. Before weeding this annoying thing with pink flowers had taken over everything. Originally I thought it was some sort of flower, but then it started spreading. After wards I found a princess hydrangea and a couple of other plants you couldn’t see behind the weedy stuff. (below) 
That took me about an hour and now I’m 3/4 of the way through the flower beds to weed and try to figure out what’s where. I also found a clay pottery house, a bird feeder, and lots of bugs. I’m also putting up on picasa another name that flower album so that y’all can help me identify the other stuff that I’ve never seen before. (
June 8, 2008
· Filed under lighting, projects, renovated
I may be a chemical engineer, but apparently I’m still capable of changing o
ut a light fixture. The hideous yellow hanging thing in the kitchen had to go because everyone kept walking into it. The lumpy shade was also cracked, and it was held up with some classy rope and twist ties.
H
ere’s what it looked like half-uninstalled: Pretty scary, but not all that difficult to unscrew the old wires and fixture and insert a new one. Luckily, I picked a new one up at rejuvenation in portland a few weekends back (http://www.rejuvenation.com/ ) which was an awesome store by the way. I got two other fixtures; one for over the sink with two lights that has 4 connection wires and may be beyond my level of expertise.
The other one is to replace the fluorescent chicklet of doom (not to be confused with the altoids more commonly found in dorm rooms at the UR.) I have yet to actually pull that one down to see how it’s attached and whether the new one will fit under it. So yesterday was just to replace the icky yellow hanging 70s thing. And I did, and this is how the new one looks.
Notice how the stripe on the light fixture matches the stripe in the tile (!) And doesn’t look to anachronistic like the ikea light over the sink. I found out it’s from ikea because that was the label on the instructions I found over the sink.
That and some ongoing linen closet painting and such was my saturday. The lawncare has also been overwhelming since I wait too long between mowing and weeding. Yay weekend-not much other news, I’ll go back to unpacking now 
May 24, 2008
· Filed under projects, renovated
Or more precisely, shiny happy dishes. It’s the inaugural run of my GE GLD5960N dishwasher. Everything is all loaded up and running rather quietly (quieter than my previous two rental units at least.) I will let you know just how clean everything ends up. I’m happy about the energy star rating and feel less guilty for running a 3/4 load. They were just piling up too much, so I dug out the box with the dish detergent and loaded it up.
Also(!) All the kitchen boxes are now unpacked. The new cabinets finally have stuff in them, with a decent amount of room to spare. Besides unpacking, my project for the day was mounting the under-cabinet puck-lights for the side island. Teeny tiny screws that I had to pre-drill because my cabinets are made of some devilishly hard blend of particleboard. There was much dropping of the screws and cursing, but everything is finally up. The tile guy set the last of the tiles yesterday (to be grouted and sealed tuesday), so take a look at just how fabulous the side counter area looks:
Note how the mixer matches the stripe (honestly, I didn’t plan that!) I’ll try to get another pic and put it up when it’s not so sunny so you can see just how well lit this area is now. The bonus is that the light-switch on the wall will turn that outlet off and on, so if you ignore the plugged in part, it looks near professional.
This is another thing I have to thank the previous owners for leaving behind. I salvaged it before the demolition of the old cabinets, and think it’s working pretty well. They’re also LED lights, so low power and low energy bill too.
Now I better get back to flattening the unpacked boxes and tackling the next room in the house… sigh.
May 23, 2008
· Filed under house, random
I survived another week. That shouldn’t be a premature conclusion, since it is friday and I made it to work. I count attendance as survival. Nothing like a nutritious breakfast of vending machine pop-tarts and coffee to start the day off right. Much data crunching to be done, and not so much noise since everyone with vacation is taking today and/or tuesday as fun time. I will be working from home this afternoon (catching up on mandatory training certifications and unpacking). Which doesn’t really count as vacation, but monday is definitely a holiday. They’re predicting 68 degrees and a chance of rain. Any suggestions for what hapless meat product I should grill? I’ve still got plenty of propane, but haven’t broken out the grill since I moved. The only tricky part will be getting out of the back door without letting the cat out. There’s currently no door knob on the inside, and I had to amputate the spring thing that automatically closes the storm door. It’s a fenced backyard though, maybe I will just take my chances and hope she doesn’t get far. Perhaps I will do steaks. That would be tasty.
Fingers crossed that the tile shipment comes in and the tile guy actually shows up and finishes the tile layout and grouts. I don’t particularly want to have it in process until wednesday, but the electrician won’t finish the lighting until June 2, so it’s not exactly critical path.
My latest online window shopping foray yielded the following flooring product for the kitchen. If you feel like donating, I may start a charity fund. I really like the idea of a smooth, vacuumable kitchen floor, so I’m voting for Forbo Marmoleum ( http://www.themarmoleumstore.com/default.aspx?menuid=898 ) in the color “Fairy Blue” 
I’ll go check out the samples from the interior design store and take some pictures of it next to the cabinets, but it manages to complement the “sandalwood” finish on those without making it look orange. It wouldn’t be a bad match with the blue stripe in the tile, either. The only problem is that unlike vinyl, I definitely couldn’t install it myself. Putting pieces together requires some sort of professional high temperature welding to attach the seams. And installation=$$. So for now I will stick with the white/marbly vinyl floor that has seen better days and doesn’t line up with my new cabinets. Back to the number crunching and e-mailing and meetings for now. Happy Friday!
May 17, 2008
· Filed under house
So, the movers showed up yesterday and most of my stuff is now at the new house. I’m a homeowner and everything. Kinda creepy last night sleeping in a strange house by myself, but on the whole it’s been a very action-packed and satisfying experience.
The highlight of the move was when sasha locked herself in the bathroom by prying open a drawer and blocking the door. Luckily, one coathanger missed getting packed and I was able to shove the drawer closed cm by cm while a tiny cat-paw reached out to attack my hand. If that wasn’t bad enough, I closed her back in as the movers arrived only to have her repeat the performance. The second time went much faster with the coat-hanger already out, and when I closed her in again, the drawers all got taped shut with packing tape.
I’d schlepped most of the stuff that wasn’t furniture myself over the last four weeks. This was on the theory that if I was going to have to pay both rent and mortgage in the same month due to the evilness that is my apartment complex, I was darn well gonna take the time to move slowly (and had less money to blow on a full-service move like when I came out to this coast last year). It’s nice to finally be reversing some of the entropy and finding things that I haven’t seen in a couple of weeks. Still MIA is the ipod charge-sync cable (critical! dead ipod!) and ~$40 in dollar bills that I swear were in some pocket somewhere. I did find both my checkbook and passport in time to take care of some leftover to-do items (paying the movers, passport renewel), so maybe everything will surface eventually.
If you haven’t heard me whine about it yet, it’s been in the upper 80s and sunny in corvallis the last few days. This is not the best time to be mowing the lawn and carrying heavy things, but I don’t let that stop me. This brings me to the list of things I don’t yet have at my house:
1)grounded outlets in the living room for plugging the TV in
2)Screens in the windows to keep the cat from jumping out (oregon has few flying bugs)
3)More than 1 fan
4)Coaxial cable for plugging the cable into TV (would be useless unti I get 1))
That’s about all the ramble I’ve got energy left for today. Stay tuned for kitchen pics (tile goes in monday!) and some magazine-worthy staged room pictures if I ever get unpacked enough. This is day 3 of the move-in extravaganza and I’m wiped. Gotta recharge/unpack enough to be functional on monday. sigh
That took me about an hour and now I’m 3/4 of the way through the flower beds to weed and try to figure out what’s where. I also found a clay pottery house, a bird feeder, and lots of bugs. I’m also putting up on picasa another name that flower album so that y’all can help me identify the other stuff that I’ve never seen before. (
