I’ve got a week and a half off for Christmas, and one can only socialize so much. We’ll be spending considerable time working on our remodel, of course.
Speaking of the remodeling project, I noticed that I haven’t post much this week. I’ve been busy at work, getting everything done before the year-end shutdown. We’ve also had quite a bit going on at home!
Our plumber has the kitchen sink, disposal, and dishwasher working–hooray! He’s also done most of the work in the new bathroom, although two small parts have gone missing so our new shower and toilet aren’t hooked up yet. But he did get the vanity sinks plumbed, which is significant because one of those sinks receives the furnace condensate — No more toting 5-10 gallons of water out every day! (And no more mopping up when I forget to empty the bucket. 
)
Rick, our tile setter, has finished his work. In fact, he grouted the entry about an hour before my wife’s office party started on Friday night. His work is fantastic, just like last time. He has some small touch-up work to do after the holidays, and we still have to seal all the floor grout and the shower.
Don and J were out this week and took care of a whole bunch of stuff — hanging doors, installing vanity cabinets, building landings and stairs for the exterior doors, etc. Don’s still got to come back and finish installing the medicine cabinets in the bathroom and re-hanging Caira’s bedroom door, but the door got a bit warped and we’re still waiting for it to get flattened out.
Between our trades’ work and our own, we’ve very nearly finished our kitchen. This truly is the “heart of the home”, especially for our family. Barb and I are both pretty competent and enthusiastic cooks, and our teenage children are heading down the same path. So it was more or less inevitable that we would focus our finish-work effort on the kitchen first. The punch list for this room is now quite short:
Eric (cabinetry)
- Trim cabinet openings for dishwasher and wine frig.
- Crown molding around hood chimney.
- Re-install scribe along range backsplash.
- Install baseboard.
- Install foot rail along bar.
- Adjust several doors and drawers which aren’t closing properly.
Rick (tile)
- Replace two pieces of cracked bullnose skirting.
- Install bullnose piece between bar top and cookbook shelves.
Us
- Hang the pot rack.
- Install two pendant lights over bar top.
- Wire up the blower for the range hood.
- Push the range back flush to the wall (fiddle with gas supply hose).
- Clean the floor and seal the grout.
- Move refrigerator into its cabinet.
- Adjust wine frig and dishwasher (once Eric is done).
- Run the water line for the ice maker and filtered water tap.
Our tradespeople are gone for the holidays, but I expect to finish at least half of the “Us” list today. Our camera batteries are dead, so perhaps Barb can pick up some fresh ones today and I’ll do a follow-up post on our progress, complete with pictures.
I’ve been using Delicious Library to catalog our DVD’s, CD’s, and books for almost two years. It’s great for keeping track of your library, especially if you loan your books and such out to your friends–just drag the item being loaned onto the person to whom it’s being loaned.
DL will also keep track of video games, which doesn’t do me a lot of good since I don’t own any. But I do have a modest collection of boardgames that I’d like to catalog (and track!) in DL. I sent this feature request to Wil Shipley soon after I started using DL. Lo and behold, this morning I read the following (from “Transitions and Epiphanies”, about 1/3 of the way down):
…I start asking if the world even needs an app that catalogs books and DVDs
and now boardgames when we could all be under five feet of water in a few years.
(Emphasis added.)
I’m running the current version (1.6.6) of DL, and there’s nothing to support boardgames in there, so I think this is a new feature being added to the upcoming version 2. I’m firing off an email to Wil begging to beta test the new version.
Our current project actually consists of two separate permits–one for the addition/remodel, and another one for Barb’s quilt shop. We’ve been focusing on getting the house done, so much so that the permit for Barb’s shop is about to expire. I called the Sacramento County Building Department to request an extension, but it turns out that you have to make such a request in writing.
I was hoping that we could get some work done on the shop, get another inspection and keep the “permit clock” ticking. So we’ve put off asking for an extension until very nearly the last possible moment. My permit is only a few days from expiring, and now I find out that I have to deliver a letter to get an extension?!? During the holiday postal rush, of course. I guess I’ll just deliver the thing personally. grumble, grumble…
Our hood is wired up, so we have lights on our fancy new range!
I was so pumped about the range in my earlier post that I forgot to mention that we got our washer and dryer hooked up again. Being able to do laundry at home is another one of those things that people take for granted. (Hmm, I think I’m going to have to do a post on that theme.)
At long last, our range is installed! Barb didn’t waste any time putting it to use.
We’ve got the hood mounted to the wall, but it’ll be few days before that’s hooked up. Our HVAC installer will be out on Tuesday or Wednesday to finish the ducting, and I should have the power hooked up later tonight. (At least the lights will work, even if there’s no point in running the fan.)
Welcome to another blog post, transcribed by Jott. I’ve been using a service called IWantSandy to keep track of my calendar, appointments, contacts, etc. It’s pretty cool, and it works with Jott (once you set up Jott and IWantSandy to recognize each other), but there are a few limitations and problems.
Update: continuing post in the “traditional” way…
Jott will only record 30 seconds, and you can’t speak too quickly, so that was all I was able to “post” via Jott. But the 30-second message limit shouldn’t be a problem when using it with IWantSandy. Sandy is quite capable as an “e-ssistant”, although some functions require more precise syntax than can currently be achieved with Jott. (The biggest problem I’ve run into is the inability of Jott to transcribe an “at sign” (@), which Sandy uses for tagging.)
Check out IWantSandy later today. (The site will be down for a while this morning for maintenance.)
Louie, who did our gutters, came by yesterday and installed the last of our downspouts. Rick was also out yesterday afternoon and got the kitchen tiled, including all the appliance bays. Lots of finicky corner- and edge cuts, plus he had to deal with the floor transition. When Barb and I got home, we spent some time discussing tile designs for the entryway with him. Between the fiddly tile work, the time we spent talking, and the fact that we didn’t come to a decision on the design, the entry didn’t get tiled last night.
No worries, though. Rick is going to have one of his guys out today to grout the floor tile that’s been installed so far, (about 90% of the total). Priority areas are:
Laundry/utility room — We really want to be able to do laundry at home again!
Bathroom — One of the chores that’s beginning to annoy me is dumping the water from our condensing furnace. Once the bathroom tile is grouted, we’ll be able to install the vanity, and then we’ll be able to plumb the condensation line into the drain system. No more hauling 5-gallon buckets of water, hooray!
Kitchen — We’ll be able to install some of our appliances once the kitchen floor is grouted, although we’ll still have to wait for the backsplash grout before we can bring in the new range.
Looks like we’ve got a busy weekend coming up. We’ll be putting in baseboard behind some of the appliances (like the refrigerator), and installing as many of the appliances as possible. If the backsplash in the kitchen is grouted by Friday, we should have or kitchen up-and-running over the weekend. w00t!
On Tuesday afternoon, Rick tackled some of the trickiest work on our floor tile–the area where the new floor meets the old, which are slightly out of level with one another. But Rick worked his usual magic and smoothed out the transition quite nicely. About 75% of the floor tile has been set now. All that’s left is the kitchen and the last 10′ of the entryway.
Speaking of the kitchen… The floor transition there was too severe even for Rick to fix, so I had to plane down the high side a bit. My Makita power planer paid for itself once again–it got the job done in minutes, and it came out great! The belt sander would have been far messier and probably wouldn’t have done as well, and doing this with a hand planer would have been a bear.
We can’t walk on the freshly set tile, and all of the exterior doors open onto tile (by design), but Rick has been very thoughtful with the installation. He’s always managed to leave us at least one (and usually two) ways to get in/out of the house, and tonight (the final night!) will be no exception. So we’ll get through tile installation without having to impose on our friends, crashing out at their homes. (Good thing, because we’ll certainly need to sleep somewhere else when the wood floors are refinished!)
The plan for the next few days is: Wednesday, finish setting tile; Thursday (and possibly Friday?), grout all the tile; Friday, install baseboard behind appliances, fixtures, or wherever it will be hidden/difficult to do later; then over the weekend we’ll set up our laundry and kitchen!
Our tile setter came by this afternoon and finished installing the floor tile in the laundry room and the bathroom. The kitchen counter is done, too. He did some prep work on the floor between the front of the house and the kitchen, so we can’t walk through that area. Fortunately, we can still get into the kitchen via the garage.
I was just looking over a pretty typical Terms of Service page, when I came across this more-or-less standard clause:
13. Modifications
We reserve the right at any time or times to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently,
all or any portion of our Platform with or without notice. You agree that we shall not be liable to
you or to any third party for any modification, suspension or termination of our Platform.
I thought to myself, “This is a perfect candidate for a web feed!” I don’t know how many of these I have agreed to, and I almost never revisit the T&C pages once I’ve subscribed to a service. But it would be incredibly simple to set up a “T&C’s” folder in a feedreader and subscribe to a service’s T&C feed (assuming that one was available). Even if you were subscribed to a hundred (or 1,000!) services, presumably the terms and conditions don’t change very frequently, so it would be pretty easy to stay up-to-date with these feeds. As an added benefit, you would have a record of all the services (and their T&C’s) to which you have agreed, collected in one place.
If you think this is a good idea, drop a comment here. Even better, tell your service providers about this. If this picks up any traction in the blogosphere, I think it’ll become second nature to service providers–it’s an almost trivial solution to a problem that perhaps hasn’t been brought to their attention, yet. 
