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](http://iwantsandy.com/help/jott) to recognize each other), but there are a few limitations and problems.
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](http://iwantsandy.com/help/guide) 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:
1. Laundry/utility room — We ***really*** want to be able to do laundry *at home* again!
2. 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!
3. 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](http://www.meetupalliance.com/site/terms), 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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregator) 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. 😉
(Originally posted via Jott. Completely re-written, added pictures.)
Rick and his crew showed up again this morning to continue tile installation. Meanwhile, I spent about five hours this morning re-installing the electrical boxes in the peninsula counter. This was made extra difficult because I had to drill/saw/chisel out about 10 cubic inches of solid wood for each of the four outlets:
Once I finally got the electrical boxes moved up, I cut some small pieces of plywood to fill in the gaps that were left underneath.
The tile crew made a *lot* of progress today!
– Grouted the shower/bath surround. (Looks great, but I forgot to take a picture.)
– Very nearly finished the countertop–only a few pieces of the skirting are yet to be installed.
– Kitchen backsplash is done except for the (missing) quarter round. (The quarter round should arrive here on Tuesday or Wednesday.)
– Hardiebacker has been affixed to the floor except in the kitchen. (There were too many people standing in the kitchen, working on the countertop and backsplashes.)
– Rick started laying floor tile in the nook, hallway, and half of the laundry/utility room. This is both good and bad–Nice that it’s done, but we can’t walk on the newly installed tile until tomorrow! For the time being, we can only get into the laundry room via the garage. But at least we can still get in and out of the house! (The front and back doors are still accessible.)
There are some more photos in the [tile installation day #2 photoset](http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonicchicken/sets/72157603416120944/) on Flickr, but in a nutshell here are a few shots of the kitchen as of tonight:
Rick, our tile setter, had his crew at our place bright and early on Saturday morning. There wasn’t much that we were able to help with, and those guys were moving so fast that there was no place we could work without being in their way. We hung around for a while and took some pictures before we went out to run errands for a few hours. (It felt *weird* not working on the house!) Here are a few pictures from [tile installation day #1 photoset][tile day 1] on Flickr:
[tile day 1]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonicchicken/sets/72157603407916488/
There were a couple of problems with the cabinets, one of which I’ll have to fix: The peninsula outlets were centered on the backsplash *frame*, so the bottom of the outlet box barely cleared the tile ([picture](http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonicchicken/2097121874/in/set-72157603407916488/)) once the mortar bed and tile were laid down.
At the end of day #1, the shower/bath surround is all tiled, including the quarter-round trim. The granite countertops are all laid, although the bar top has yet to be done. The backsplash over the baking center is tiled, except for the quarter-round trim (which won’t arrive until mid-week). The Hardiebacker has been “glued” to the floor in the bathroom, laundry/utility room, hallway, and part of the nook and entry.
Rick and his guys will be back tomorrow. It’ll be interesting to see how far they can get, since they don’t have to spend a lot of time setting up tomorrow.
We got our faucet out of the kitchen finally. The guys are plugging the hot- and cold water and sewer lines right now. We’ll cover it up and I’ll post some pictures when we’re all finished.
I just found out about the service called Jott today. It’s very slick, one of the really cool things it has is a service to send a voice message from your phone straight to your Blog and in fact that’s what I’m doing right this instant. This Blog post came via my voice from my cell phone. listen
The text above is a transcript of a voice message that I “posted” to the blog via [Jott][]. It’s reasonably accurate–if you want, you can check it by clicking on the “listen” link above and comparing my spoken words to the transcription. The punctuation, grammar, and capitalization are not quite correct, and that’s a major drawback for a language geek like me; therefore, I probably won’t “Jott” to my blog very often, and when I *do* use this service I’ll be sure and edit the raw post as soon as possible!
We did more prep work for our tile setter last night, mostly on the kitchen counters and backsplash. We could have avoided most of this if we’d had the foresight to get our tile and cabinet people together *before* the cabinets were finished. Yet another “20/20 hindsight” moment on this project…
The plywood tops of our peninsula cabinets didn’t extend to the wall or the end of the bar, leaving a gap of almost 2″ on either end. Our tile setter needed the gaps closed up (or nearly so), in order to lay down a bed of mortar for the tile. We had a piece of 2×6 laying around, so we ripped it in half and screwed a piece of 2×3 into place through the top of the cabinet.
We had to pull the scribe pieces off the upper cabinets flanking our range and hood. These were installed to cover the joint where the cabinets meet the drywall, but we’re going to install backsplash tile over the drywall. We’ll re-install the scribe to cover the cabinet/tile joint once the backsplash is in place.
We trimmed 5/8″ from the tops of the lower cabinets on either side of the range to allow for the countertop tile to wrap over the ends. This was a bit nerve wracking, since I didn’t want to nick the cherry face frame with my circular saw. Careful depth adjustment and a steady hand did the trick, though. I couldn’t find my hand saw to finish the cut at the wall, so once again the [Sawzall][] came to the rescue.
[Sawzall]: http://preview.tinyurl.com/2slzpn
Finally, we cut the hole for the kitchen sink. This is one of the least finicky things we did, but when we remodeled the kitchen in our last house this is the one thing we really screwed up. So we took a *lot* more care than was necessary in placing and cutting the sink opening. Hopefully we didn’t overcompensate for our mistake of six years ago! So far it looks good, but you never really know until the tile is in, the sink and faucet are installed, and the cabinet doors/drawers are opened. We’ll see…
Probably the most annoying thing about all this prep work is that we had to shut down our laundry and kitchen again. Our washer and dryer are parked in the untiled part of the hallway, and our kitchen facilities are now limited to the faucet (but no sink), toaster, coffee pot (gotta have it!), microwave, and refrigerator (standing in the middle of the kitchen)–No sink, disposal, dishwasher, or range. The old faucet will be removed on Thursday, and on Friday night I have to disconnect the three electrical outlets I had hooked up in the kitchen. But the good news is: we should be able to commence the finishing work on our kitchen Sunday afternoon/evening!
I use this platform to share things that are of interest to me or things I'll want to reference later. Occasionally other people like these posts, hence "Shared Interests".
What might you find here?
Problems I've solved (mostly computer- or network related).
