May 08, 2008

Finally carpeted the stairs

Back when we bought the house, the very first thing that we did was rip out all of the carpeting. This of course included the stairs, which were covered in blue plush from head to toe:

Flash forward four years, and today we finally got them taken care of. Originally we had planned on putting pergo on them (and we still wish we could have) but alas pergo and bull nosing do not mix. So our next plan was to sand and stain them to match the pergo, but the quality (or lack thereof) of the stairs made that impossible. So we agreed the only choice was to re carpet them.

We wanted to change things up a little bit, so I decided to fill in the numerous marks and paint the risers and sides while I was doing the foyer:

It's been about fourteen months since that project, and with a one year old the wife had enough. She called Empire and the guy came out yesterday, took some measurements, made a few calls, and came back with an estimate of $250. Some paperwork and an oddly named berber carpet called "butter brickle" here we are:

Before:

After:

Going to take a while to get used to it.....

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May 07, 2008

No idea why I like this commercial so much

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May 01, 2008

Pictures from Connor's first birthday last week


Excuse me, I believe you have something of mine

There's more in his photo album.

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April 28, 2008

Busy weekend

Saturday we had a birthday party for Connor's first birthday. The pictures haven't been uploaded quite yet, so I'll have to post about that later on.

Sunday I seized the rare opportunity to get somethings done around the house while Jen's mom was in town, and could help watch Connor. Namely fixing the creaking stairs and replacing the broken garage door opener.

The stairs have been creaking and making noise for years now, so I finally had enought and went crazy on them. The shims were all loose underneath (you can access them from the basement stairway) so I pounded them all in nice and tight. Then I went construction adhesive crazy...killed two tubes of the stuff, but they are almost silent now. So I probably lost a couple hundred braincells from all the fumes, but I probably didn't need them anways. I mean I can still count to yellow, and my favorite color is R.

A few days ago, our garage door opener decided to shred it's main gear. After talking with some people who said this was a common issue, we decided that rather than replace the gear and bushing we would just replace the whole darn thing. So after looking around we picked a belt drive unit from sears.

It's scary to see just how small the box is. I've never installed a garage door opener before, so I really thought it would be at least a little bigger.

The whole installation went pretty smoothly, except for me dropping the old opener as I was removing it. The torsion spring prevented me from lowering it to the ground, so as I was trying to figure out what to do gravity decided to expedite the process.

My only real gripe was with the installation directions...Step 3 tells you to put up the header bracket for the new rail....and then step 4 tells you that if you have an old "clevis" style bracket (which I had) that you could use that instead of replacing it. Of course by that point I had removed it already....so I was a little annoyed.

So it's all installed, got the down force adjusted to back off a 2"x4", and everything is done. Sure is quiet compared to the old chain drive we had. In the end it took me about 3 hours to put it in, plus now we have fancy "anti child crush" sensors on this model.

Submit to Stumbleupon! Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 09:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 25, 2008

Free Radon test kit if you live in IL

http://www.radon.illinois.gov/RadonTestKit.asp

Worth doing....we're currently looking at having a mitigation system installed due to some higher than comfortable levels in our basement (6.9 by the sump pit).

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April 24, 2008

Today is Connor's First Birthday

From this:

To this:

The best part? We finally get to turn his car seat around so he can see out while we drive.....no more rear facing. Heck his legs were bending at the knees....he was so ready to be done with that.

But yeah...a whole year, it's a little mind boggling still. I guess nobody is ever ready to be a parent though, if we knew what to do all the time life would be boring wouldn't it :)

Submit to Stumbleupon! Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 04:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 23, 2008

You just had to pick today to die didn't you..

I'm not really upset that the old, loud, noisy garage door opener died...we had both discussed replacing it just to get something quieter. It's just the timing that is bad. With work, school, and tomorrow being Connor's first birthday I have no clue when I'm going to find time to buy a new one, much less install it.

It really did a good job of shredding itself, when I opened it white dust was everywhere. I'm sure when it was designed, Sears didn't even think the plastic gear would last thing long. God I love planned obsolescence.

Submit to Stumbleupon! Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 21, 2008

haven't been postin

Lot's of work, and I have a paper due Friday on mortgage fraud. just no time to really update right now.

Submit to Stumbleupon! Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 08:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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