Walnut anyone?

After the cats had one too many accidents on the dining/living room carpet, we decided to change the floor to wood, american walnut to be specific. You can see the before and after pics.

Before


After


Before


After



The wood didn't go in without a hitch. After pulling up the carpet we discovered two large cracks where the concrete was higher than the rest of the floor. Unfortunately we had to grind down the humps.


Rotating laser so you can see how level or unlevel a floor is.



One of the two cracks that ran across our floor.



Grinder in action.


Humps nice and level now.


The glue for the wood floors.

Finally the kitchen is done!

The kitchen is finally done. After replacing the microwave, fixing the garage door, and replacing the tilt door hardware, we are finally done. You can see the before and after photos below.

Before


After


Before


After

Heavenly Shower

Since everyday can't be like a vacation, at least you can bring some of Westin's comfort back home. We finally replaced our builder grade showerhead with a speakman showerhead that is just like the heavenly showerheads at the Westin. Just $36 at Lowes.



Old showerhead


New speakman showerhead

Finally some color

After years of living with white walls, we've finally decided to put some color on the walls. After about 10 testers, we finally decided on 3 colors.

Sabbatical

One perk of working at Intel is the sabbatical where you get 2 months off. Being our first sabbatical, we decided to travel for a good 6 weeks. The first stop was a cruise down to Mexico. After that was 2 weeks in Italy and then another 3 weeks in Africa (South Africa, Zambia, and Botswana). Here are just a few pictures from our amazing trip.

Cabo

Venice, Italy

Venice at night

Florence, Italy

Roman Forum, Italy

Coloseum

Capetown, South Africa

Franschhoek, South Africa

Cape of Good Hope, South Africa

Zambezi River, Zambia

Victoria Falls, Zambia

Botswana

Chobe National Park, Botswana

Another dead Tivo!

The great thing about tivo is that it totally changes the way you watch TV but that's only when it's working. We had to unplug the tivo today and unfortunately it didn't work when we plugged it back in. Apparently the only way to fix it is to send it back and have a refurbished one sent. This is the second time we've had to exchange it. Luckily we finished watching all of the Lost episodes we missed while we were on sabbatical. Unfortunately we didn't finish watching all of the other million shows we had tivo'ed.

Woodshop 101

More work was done on the kitchen. This should have completed all of the remaining items except there were still problems. The new garage doesn't really roll up or down well and the tilt out drawer hits the other cabinet doors below. I also asked that they fix the trim around the fridge but nothing was really done. So instead I took matters into my own hands. You can see some of the handy work below. Basically the trim wasn't aligned with the cabinet and it moved when you closed the fridge. I added some metal brackets so that the trim would stay in place. Any craftsmen would probably think this was sacriligious to use metal with the wood but it's a good thing I'm not a craftsmen. All I know is that the trim looks nice and doesn't move now.

Ikea (Ick-Kia)

Nothing like visiting Ikea or Ick-Kia as Minja would say in Finland, to get some cheap assembly required furniture. We picked up a few bookcases, shelves, and eventually a desk once they come out with the beech color that matches their bookcases. Unfortunately, we had a little accident on the last speedbump about 1/8 mile from home. The trunk lock slammed into the box and punctured the bookcase's faux wood backing. Luckily you can't really notice it with the shelf in and the doors closed.

6 weeks and in the "sweet spot"

So the official word from the eye doctor is that my vision is at least 20/30. My left eye seems near perfect while my right eye is more like the blurry eye chart at times although not quite that bad. The doc mentioned that my eye is 0.5 diopters off still but that both eyes are in the "sweet spot" where he wants them and that the vision will be getting better over the next few months. We'll see if that's true.

When 16" is not really 16"....TV stands

So here's the new TV stand from room and board. They actually shipped us the smaller unit so this one will be going back whenever they get around to delivering the longer one. Overall, the unit is pretty nice in that it has lots of ventilation for the hot components. I also took a lot of flack for measuring the inside depth of the cabinet in the store even though the info says the depth is 16". It turns out that the inside dimension is really 18". Might not seem like it matters but my receiver just fits. On a side note, our Tivo started freezing and rebooting during some shows. Basically the hard drive has some bad sectors that cause it to freeze up. Since the unit was under warranty, Tivo next day aired a new unit to us. Hopefully the unit is problem free this time. Nothing more frustrating than a tivo that freezes up.

What to do with all that space?

More Kitchen work....almost done.

Well the garage has finally been installed sort of. There's a chip on the door so they'll need to order a new one. This is like the 4th garage now. At least this time they won't need to remove the frame. They'll just install the roller part.

This time the appliances actually fit under the garage. It doesn't get any closer than that. Here was the 1st attempt.

They also put in some skins to hide the screw holes that they created with the undercab lights.

Action shot of shaving away some of the trim around the fridge since the fridge bulges out.

Weird seeing the fridge without the blue. Man you can really those those fingerprints.

One problem we had was getting the fridge to be sturdy. For some reason it would rock even after being leveled. So in order to stop it from moving, a little wood is used to wedge it in.

Here's the new false door. The old one looked like crap.

Everything should be in HD!

Well our HP Plasma arrived just in time for the superbowl. Too bad there weren't more shows in HD. Everything looks so much better.




Here's a picture of the Terk directional antenna we are using to pick up HD over the air. The antenna works pretty well but then again we are only 2 miles from the TV towers. Check out www.antennaweb.org to find the towers near you.

2 weeks and counting

It's been two weeks now that I've had the eye surgery. The vision still isn't perfect but it's definitely getting better. I can probably even see well enough to drive legally. We also just got hooked up with an employee discount for a plasma HDTV through a friend of a friend. No idea when it's coming but we've ordered some new furniture for the TV and the family room. Hopefully they'll all arrive around the same time.

Here's a pic of the TV.

You too can see like Heath

Today is exactly 1 week after having PRK done on my eyes. You can click here for a comparison between lasik and PRK. Basically PRK is like Lasik but without the flap. Oh and the amount of pain and discomfort is much higher with PRK and your final vision takes weeks as opposed to days. My vision is still a little blurry or hazy but it's a lot better than before. I won't know how good until a few more weeks. Meanwhile, the pain and discomfort is mainly gone now that the bandage contacts are out of my eyes.

Forget the kitchen, we just got Tivo!

Okay so after resisting years and years and succumbing to the Tivo hype, we finally broke down and got it. Well actually Santa delivered it from South Africa with the lifetime service no less. So is it really worth a few hundred dollars to not have to remember to program the VCR or wait till the show is done to watch it from the beginning? In one word, YES! I think the coolest feature about it though is being able to play Eric's MP3 collection on the Stereo. There's this SW, galleon tv, that runs on your PC that enhances a lot of Tivo's home networking features.

So if you've been resisting Tivo, I recommend getting one or waiting for the HD Tivo Series 3 that was demo'ed at CES this year.

Day X. Finally a little more progress

We were just getting use to having a normal kitchen without any work going on. Some of the cabinet pieces that were damaged or missing have finally come in. Here you can see the filler pieces around the fridge. One thing that wasn't accounted for was the fridge bulges out a little so they need to trim the filler pieces a little more.

Here's what the area looked like before.




So it turns out that the granite hangover actually did have metal bars routed into the granite for extra support so the bars we had on were unnecessary. So as a result, we had them removed. I'm sure many knees are thanking us now. The drywall has also been fixed up and textured.