St. Patrick's Day!

Top seven reasons why my update is so untimely:
1- We bought a giant house.*
2- We have been working on it.
3- Geoff has been too lazy (something, I don't know) to switch over computers so he has just been logging in the laptop. I have no pictures nor anything else useful on the laptop.
4- Books. I read a lot of books.
5- My mom was down, and we went swimming and....I should really get those pictures from the other camera...
6- Attention span of a fruit fly.
7- Also, I started this a while ago and then the internet went out. Did you know if you have a business account with Comcast they promise to have your internet back up within four hours? Awesome.

I am just a wee bit late, but we went to the St. Patrick's Day parade last weekend** and it was awesome, as always. I probably had stories about this at one point but now it has been many days and I don't want to dig through the 15000 pictures on my HD to figure out which ones are new and blah blah blah.

Here is Jenni and Hazel at the parade.
Parking/traffic was atrocious so Geoff dropped Hazel and I off and went to find a spot. This meant that we got to ride the train to the car. Hazel was thrilled about it. She loves the train. I loved that the ride was only about three blocks.

We also went to a doggy birthday party recently. It was awesome. Dog chaos extraordinaire. Hazel wanted to dress "fancy" for the party. We took a bunch of pictures.
Hazel almost never lets me put her hair up, but she looks so lovely when it is up. Plus, it doesn't get nearly as ratty. Since it was a dog party, Hazel wanted to take a dog. But, since our dogs are old, cranky and sick we took the Tinkerbell dog instead. The birthday party was actually a lot of fun. Hazel was entertained with the trampoline and swingset (she was, as usual, the only kid there for most of it (two older kid showed up later)) and we were able to socialize with grownups. Plus, we played Rock Band and Hazel rocked the singing. Drums, not so much. She sang 'Eye of the Tiger' and passed with 82%, I was so proud...

*I will be using this (combined with #2) for a very long time since it absorbs our entire world.

**Proof that I started this forever ago.

Q1V Update #3 - With Pictures!

Okay, so it is Friday. Geoff and I had all week off and my mom was here and we worked on the basement all week. My goal was to have the basement in move-in condition by the end of the week (Ha!!). Technically, I still have two more days to go so maybe it will happen (double-ha!). We did, however make some excellent progress.

A couple of numbers:
Outlets installed: 21 (I think, it is hard to remember exactly)
Lights installed: 6 (+ the porch light should be installed tomorrow)
Three-way light switches installed: 4
Feet of wire used: 200+
New furnace vents installed: 3
Old furnace vents re-worked: 7
Trips to the various home improvement stores: 12 (3 in one day!)

A fancy outlet that Geoff installed, before we had one crappy (two-prong) outlet in the floor, notice the hole, now we have a double-gang outlet box in the wall. Aaaah, technology.
Hazel and my mom cooked a lot. This day they were making bread. Hazel spilled a bunch of flour and decided to eat it. Gross. Also, they made caramel popcorn balls one day. They were delicious. Mmm....caramel popcorn. Today they made carrot cupcakes for Gloria's birthday. They were delicious.

Notice my awesome photo placement? That is sheer laziness. Or exhaustion. Geoff installed a floor outlet in Hazel's under-the-stairs room. He was very proud of it.

Dave was super-awesome with the duct work. And very enthusiastic. We had horrendous ducts before (see the giant 12" ducts in some of the older pictures). Now we have lovely 6" ducts that either hug the ceiling or actually travel through the joists. Fancy.

Dave, in action.

Another shot of the lovely ducts. And one of the six lights Geoff installed. Four in the main room, one in each of the bedrooms. The main room has two lights on each half and each half is controlled by a three-way switch. It is very tricky. And fancy. And awesome. Which are apparently the only adjectives I know.

Geoff thinks we are doing a great job.

This was the first outlet I ever wired. Turns out, I am pretty good at the wiring. Granted, this is not super-difficult. They are fairly self-explanatory. Once they are explained to me. I just can't twist those dang screws forever into the box. Because I have weak wrists. Boo hoo.

And those are the pictures I have. Lame. We should be ready for ceiling insulation, wall insulation, and drywall really, really soon. And then it will look like progress is happening fast. Maybe we will be in move-in condition by the end of the month. I am going to stay optimistic.

Q1V Update #2

Okay, so the remodeling is going great. If by "great" you mean, exhausting, dirty and we no longer really have heat on the side of the house that we live in.

Actually, it is going okay. Geoff, and his dad who has been helping, have installed about 15 outlets (give or take a couple) plus put in the boxes for 6 or 7 more.  Plus 6 lights (not really installed because we would need a ceiling for that) have been wired and then some switches and....I don't know more stuff. Who knows what they are doing up in that there ceiling.

Geoff and Dave are (currently, as I type) re-working the ducts (see the no heat in the first paragraph) and it will be awesome. Plus, I learned that I can turn off some of the 8 million ducts coming off the furnace. Awesome. Dang, that Dave is awesome. And so handy. Hooray for Dave! And Geoff! Dave is used to staying up all night working but Geoff is delicate and wakes up early (ish).

I am playing the part of the guy you hire outside the Home Depot for six bucks an hour. Crappy manual labor that requires no skill set. Basically, I have cleaned up fifty tons of plaster and lathe and sheetrock and insulation and wood paneling. We emptied the truck and trailer on Saturday and it is full again. FULL! Oh, and I have pulled about 15,000 nails. A lot of nails.

I have pictures but the camera, it is sooooo far. And I am exhausted. Lucky for me, I am now taking over for my mom with the kid (because that is also exhausting) but at least I am clean.

Also, Hazel had a dance recital yesterday and it was awesome. I will post pictures in a separate post.

Couple pictures of the kid

We went to an art opening for a friend at the Main Library last week and Hazel looked particularly lovely. She looks great in dark colors.
And also in whatever she is wearing here. I am pretty sure she is being a "dinosaurus rex".

She is definitely being a bunny here. She wore this costume all evening. She is hilarious in this costume. Everything is funnier when a 3-foot-tall bunny is doing it.

Another day (Friday?) she was a spaceman. I wish I had a better picture of it.

Must go sit by the kid now.

Wilde Family 1st Quarter "Vacation" Part 1

I have to burn through a lot of vacation this year. About a week a quarter. This is harder than it seems because I hate taking time off work when I am not actually going anywhere. Plus, I am whiny and ungrateful.

Anywho, this quarter instead of going somewhere (boo) we are working on the basement (woo and boo). 'Woo' because it needs to be done and 'boo' because, you know, working on the basement sucks and not going somewhere double-sucks.

My mom was kind enough to make the trek down from the Wyoming to watch the kid (the basement is not exactly Hazel-friendly so we are hoping to make a bunch of progress. I am going to document what we do, (a) so I can look back and see what I did on my Q1 vacation and (b) because I would be documenting a real vacation.

Yesterday (Saturday) Geoff worked on the ceiling demo and then we took a load to the sanitary landfill*. I didn't get to help for a good part of the day because I went to lunch with my friend. (hee hee hee). After the sanitary landfill, Jenni was kind enough to feed us. Hooray!

This was an in-progress shot from yesterday: Notice the random light fixture hanging down, the boards running east-west (left-right) and other assorted stuff.
A better shot of boards running east-west (they held the drop ceiling**) and remaining lathe-and-plaster to remove.

Ummm.... This is like the same shot but from this morning. Apparently the air was cleaner.

Yesterday we also made a lovely guest room upstairs for my mom. And if I was not exhausted after only two days of manual labor I would go take a picture of it. We also put up a shelving unit and organized some stuff upstairs.

Today we pulled the carpet off the stairs to upstairs and then removed approximately 60,000 nails. Some were regular size (like an inch) but some were like 3 inches. I thought it was over kill. And it over-killed my back. Ack! My back! But, look how lovely it looks without the disgusting carpet. Which was mostly just cat hair and dirt.

More demolition and lots of cleaning up today. This room actually looks great in real life. But it is hard to get a picture of it.

A view from the opposite direction, see how lovely the ceiling is? All free of east-west boards and no more lathe-and-plaster over the wall/door and the floor is mostly clean, also Geoff pulled a duct down (it is leaning against the door). Trust me. This is progress. And I cleaned the storage/utility room. And it looks fan-freaking-tastic. I am very proud of this. I filled half the trailer and a good portion of the truck with crap from this room.***

I have no Before pictures of this, so trust me. It was gross.

Also, we have a lot of hoses. And they are now in the utility sink...

So, there are the first two days of Q1V**** If I am still able to move tomorrow, I will update with the progress. Hopefully, we will get wiring done tomorrow.

One more side note, which would be an asterix except I am at the bottom: A lot of what we are doing this weeking (wiring, ductwork, insulation, etc) is not really visible or impressive(?) to anyone but us. But, trust me, it needs to be done and it will be better for us in the long run. Hooray for electricity!

*Because we would NEVER go to the dump.

** Who puts a drop-ceiling in the basement!! Morons.

***Jenni: we will make another sanitary landfill truck tomorrow or Tuesday so you can still borrow the truck. But, I really need to clean the stupid basement. Especially because it was something I could actually accomplish.

****Quarter 1 vacation is so much to type, plus I need a slogan for the week. Or something. Man, I am beat.