Matt & Natalie

One problem with traveling is that you leave your home and other possessions unattended. We returned from one such trip to find the driver side rear view mirror missing from our car. I do love our house and where we live but this is a the time you really miss having a garage.

Broken Mirror

Being inherently cheap I began calling every body shop and dealer in the area that may be able to fix it for me. Every one quoted nearly $500 for a new mirror and matching paint. This seemed really high to me. Google and AutoZone told me the mirror itself was only $75. Google also provided a nice step by step instructions on how to do it yourself including a list of required tools.

I ordered a new mirror and borrowed the tools to do the job. Following the instructions I basically had to take the door apart to take the old mirror off. It’s only held on by a single bolt. It really was not as bad as I thought it would be. I was slightly annoyed that I had to use so many different tools. Seriously pick a screw type. Here is me getting into the door.

Door panel

Once I knew I had the right mirror I had it painted by a shop close to the house. They charged me $75 for the work. Not an amazing price but they completed the work same day. Not waiting for stuff is really great. Anyway here is the mirror painted pre-install.

Painted Mirror

And here is the final product.

Finished mirror front

Finished mirror back

All told I spent $155. That is certainly greater than the 0 it should have been. Learning to do something like this is easy and kind of fun. That’s the bright side. The down side is who ever relieved me of my mirror in the first place didn’t leave a note. Even to say sorry, I’ve got no insurance and I suck. Nothing…

I comforted myself by imagining my mirror running a long scratch down their paint job as they hit it. Feeling a bit guilty thinking that way I managed to convince myself that they did do the right thing. I’m sure their long and apologetic note blew off my windshield and was lost before we got back. I have to believe people still do the right thing.

Where has the summer gone? It’s nearly half way over and what do I have to show for it? Ummmm how about a BRAND NEW BASEMENT DOOR! Imagine that was said in my best Price is Right new car voice. This was the situation I was looking at.

Old Door Inside

Note the classic wooden style, windows, and copious amounts of what can only be described as lead paint. Resisting the urge to snack on some paint chips further examination revealed 70+ years of water damage that has entirely destroyed the bottom sill.

Water Damage

I’ve never really replaced a door on my own. Especially not an entire door. To complicate matters my house is made mostly of bricks. All of my previous construction experience involved the easy to cut/screw/modify/shape wooden construction. After a few weeks of casual research and reading (and many co worker conferences) I worked up the courage to actually buy a new door.

Easy right? Since when? As our house was built in the 30′s there wasn’t much in the way of building codes. Or standards. The door opening in the basement was just larger than the 30″ required for a modern door. Anything smaller would have been a very expensive custom order. So whats the problem? The new door is of course too tall for the opening, and made of steel. Did I make a mistake?

Of course not! All is according to plan. The door is was pre-hung which means it included framing on all sides including a bottom sill. The door itself was almost a perfect fit. Surveying my available arsenal of power tools I selected a circular saw… and made the door shorter.

Make it shorter

Removing the bottom sill the door was really close to fitting. Good but not good enough. I was worried that if I ever installed tile in the basement I would be nearly 1/8th of an inch too low. I needed more clearance. I couldn’t cut the door.. and I had already shed the dead weight. Power tools were failing to solve this problem. It was time to use a lesson my dad taught me many years ago. Sometimes you just have to use your hands and the right tool. I’m not sure if it was the right tool but a block plane seemed to be a good choice. And of course you operate that with your hands.

Even Shorter

I may have used the power sander once it was close to where I wanted it. I couldn’t resist. Because I had infinite confidence in my abilities, I chose to modify the new door entirely before removing the old one. Here is the big hole in the house.

No doors

Time to install. I set the door into the opening and it fit perfectly. Add 1 package of shims, 1 hand full of concrete screws, 2 cans of sealing foam, and some language you’re glad no on else heard, and you’ve got an installed door.

One new door hanging

Now for the easy part. I selected a Kwikset knob and double deadbolt for my lock set. Reading the instructions made quick work of it. And here it is.

New door inside

What I didn’t take pictures of was me fabricating my own sill. As you recall I cut off the one that came with the door. I need one that was low profile and still seal. I found one at the Depot that was close. It was of course 36″ long. As you recall my opening is now less than 30″. See previous fathers lesson… tool selection.. hacksaw.. sharpie… straight cutting eyeball… hands to operate them. Result: A perfectly fit door sill.

Here is the new door from the outside with fancy new trim.

New Door Outside

So the breakdown is this. Old door removal and replacement 4 hours and about $160 in materials. The trim was another 4 hours and $80. For reference I had two contractors quote me more than $1000 to do the job. I think it was worth doing myself.

And yes Mom. The door opens. Observe proof:

New door open

Flat Stanley

A few weeks ago a rather flat visitor arrived through our mail slot. For those of you not familiar with the Flat Stanley concept this is the deal. Stanley is very flat. So flat in fact he (or she) can be folded into an envelope and mailed all over the world seeking adventure. My niece’s 2nd grade class were sending Stanley’s out to learn about geography.

Living in what I would argue is a very interesting place we were happy to take our guest to some of our favorite places. Traditionally Flat Stanley returns to the sender with a letter and perhaps a picture or two. Our Flat Stanley and our niece are far too special to us for such a mundane response. Instead Natalie crafted a scrap book of our adventures.

The book itself returned with Stanley back to Alaina and her class. But you can see what the book looked like in the photo gallery.

As long as we’ve lived in this house we’ve never liked the front lawn. It was mostly weeds when we moved in and stayed that way. We were going to wait until we put in a new side walk and other things before we did any landscaping. Like every other idea it’s well below the kitchen on the priority list. So I broke out my EcoGardner shovel and garden rake and got to work. $10 for a full set of tools at Lowes has to be one of the least expensive tool purchases ever.

Ok here is how it started.

Starting Lawn

This is normally where I’d have many photos of me messing up something and starting over. This project traded complexity for simple hard labor. So lets fast forward to the finished product. I do have to mention this took 4 trips to the hardware store and 3 more trips to the nursery.

Flower Bed

Natalie’s pots. I can’t take any credit for these, outside of drilling drainage holes in the new pots.

Front Door Pots

Here are some close up shots of our new plants.

And last but not least, new grass.

Its time for a new home project. This week on my old house its a fireplace fix up. Our 80 year old fireplace has had little upkeep in its life. Lucky for us back in the day things were built to last. I had suspicion that some of the brick mortar in the fire box was loose. Not wanting to burn down the house the only option was to get to cleaning.

The Fireplace Starting Point

Reading online there are many methods of cleaning off years of soot. Armed with a bucket, scrub brush, and a box of Trisodium Phosphate I got to scrubbing. Hours later and I ended up with this and some mild back pain.

Clean Fireplace

Once clean I could get a sense of the repairs needed. The mortar was in worse shape than I had thought. There were several gaps where mortar was entirely gone.

Missing Mortar

To the hardware store I go. New mortar, trowel, and mason sponge. Observe my professional repair. If moving electrons ever fails me for a job I guess I could fall back on masonry.

Fixed Mortar

The snowball has now started down the mountain. Although the fireplace is clean and once again safe to use it’s not as pretty as it could be. When we bought this house I foolishly promised my wife I’d fix it up how she wanted it. Reminding me of that promise she pointed out her dislike of the tile in front of the fireplace.

Original Fireplace Tile

Building up some momentum we ventured back to the hardware store to go tile shopping. We found some slate tile that we both liked. Those along with grout, tile adhesive etc I thought I was prepared. I was wrong but hey what else is new. For an area so small I assumed I could remove the tile with hammer and mason chisel. I was right. Behold, old tile gone. This was surprisingly easy.

Old Tile Gone

Not knowing anything about tile I assumed that I could skim coat over the existing concrete base and then lay tile on top of that. I don’t have any pictures of this because it was a large failure. There was no way I could level out the surface. I needed to put down a piece of cement board to get things level.

Back to the hardware store. I got the cement board brought it home, cut it to size and laid it in the opening. It looked great. Only problem is that it was too tall. To my dismay I would need to remove all of the old concrete in order to set the tile at the proper level. Again lacking any sort of power tool that could do this job I resorted to the universal fix it tool. A 4lb hand held sledge. Along with the my trusty chisel I began removing concrete. Lucky for me I was able to get under a slab and break it up into pieces. Many hours later I created this pile of rubble.

Fireplace Rubble

Its hard to see but its probably 4 buckets of concrete and tile. So now I had created a new problem. With the old concrete gone it was too low for the tile. Back to the hardware store, and a bag of concrete later I poured a new base for the backer board. I’m good at a few things. Turns out concrete isn’t one of them. It was uneven an had a few high spots. Worse was it was too high again for the tile. I may have verbalized my frustration with a strong four letter vocabulary.

Taking some measurements I found that I could still salvage the situation without another major demo job. My half inch backer could be replaced with a quarter inch backer. If I could remove the high spots I could make it work. Without hesitation I returned to my friend, Sir pounds a lot. My hammer and chisel returned to save the day. Chipping out high sections I leveled out the base. Here is what the board looked like.

Backer Board

Finally with the backer board down I was ready to lay tile. As the experts recommend I laid out the tile in the opening before cutting or glueing. I was replacing 4″ tile with 1/4″ grout. I bought 4″ tile and 1/4″ spacers. you would think things would line up. I was about due for something to go right. This was not it. Putting the tile in the opening I was an inch and a half short. Not sure why. I checked the measures and the spacing. Looked at the old tile and couldn’t figure out where I had measured or added incorrectly.

Turns out I was right all along. It was new tile that lied. The box said it was 4″ and the tile out of the box I measured was 4 inches as well. I got a bad feeling this tile was in expensive for a reason. Measuring a dozen more tiles not one was the same size. 3 and 3/4… 3 and 7/8… and even a few that were 4″. We promptly returned the tiles to Lowes as I refused to use them.

We venture out to a dedicated tile and stone store. We found a few square tiles that were much like the original slate that we had picked out. However we both spotted some hexagonal travertine tile that were a nice dark color. Perfect for hiding ash from the fireplace. Doing some quick calculations I was confident we could make it fit.

We purchased the tile and got home. It now dawned on me that instead of cutting maybe 13 square tiles I’m now going to have to cut about 50 two inch hex tiles to make a strait edge. Not only that but this edge was going to show. Which means they needed to have the edge rounded and cut side polished. Also there are now two cuts that can’t be done with a score cutter.

Back to the hardware store. New tools include a wet saw and various wet dry and papers. I set up in the back yard cutting tile after tile. When done I sat on the back steps with a bucket of water and sand paper polishing tiles. This was basically all day. I never polished rocks as a kid and now I know why. It is beyond tedious.

Laying out all the tile there was one tiny corner piece missing. Ever time I tried to cut it on the saw it would chip and break. I resorted to my other favorite tool, the Dremel. Add one cutting wheel, a pair of gloves, and safety glasses and you’ve got a custom cut tile.

All of the tile cut and ready next step, actually put it down. A quick instructional video on the internet and I was ready to go. The tile went down with little fuss. A day later I could seal the stone as it is a porous variety. Waiting another day for the sealer to set I could proceed with grout.

Mixing up the compounds I was ready to go. The grout went in without issue. Except for the fact I was about one scoop shy of having enough. Back to the hardware store for another bucket of which I used one trowel full. What a waste. After a few wipe downs we have new tile.

New Tile

Another day of cure time and we could return the other accessories for the final product.

Done Fireplace

It only took 8 weeks or so. What ever. It’s done. I declare victory.

I’m the worst at updating this site because I have a very short attention span. You all can now rejoice that I have a new gadget to play with. My new Motorola Droid cell phone. Its all kinds of awesome. It can even update this page! So look for more frequent dates…. until I get bored with the phone anyway.

The Opera

The Opera….   Dreaded words on the ears of man.  I heard these words back in the fall of 2008 when I bought tickets for Puccini’s Turandot.  I was told it was an Italian Opera (sung in Italian) about an Asian princess and her ill fated suiters.   Natalie was very excited because she was familiar with the music and enjoyed it very much.

I like to keep an open mind and enjoy most any live performance.  This was no exception.  The stage was well designed and the performance was excellent.   I really do enjoy the Kennedy Center.  The whole story was thankfully written in english in the program.  This made it a whole lot easier to understand what was going on once the performance got started.  They had a small projector screen at the top of the stage with subtitles which gave some assistance as well.  I found myself not even looking at the subtitles by the end of the show.  It’s true what they say about the Opera.  You don’t really need to understand the words.  The music and actions on stage are universally understood.

Gulf Shores

A few days later we traveled to the sunny shores of the Gulf of Mexico.  Some call it the “redneck riviera” but we called it Gulf Shores AL.  We flew in to Pensacola grabbed our rental car and drove the hour to our beach house.  We met up with a few friends from college for a week of relaxation.   The house we had was literally right on the beach.  From the back porch you could listen to the waves roll in and see dolphins jumping in the distance.

Not being a huge beach person I went with the other guys out fishing.  I’m not an outdoorsman but I’ve fished before.  Never in salt water and never wading out into the water.  We were fishing off of a point where two water ways converged.  The current was fast and strong but you could easily stand on the sandbar.   Redfish was what we were after but didn’t have much luck the first day.  We had seen sting rays, and catfish but none of the native redfish.  I started the good luck on the second day by pulling in a 24″ redfish. This was easily the largest fish I’d ever pulled in.  Even though the other guys pulled in much larger fish over the next few days I was still happy with my catch.  Jacob and Jordan played the part of fish monger and did the prep work for an exceptional feast of grilled fish.

It was a really great time.  The location was great and the company was better.  It’s always great to see old friends.  Especially since we live so far away, having so many people in one place at one time is rare.

Art and Baseball

In DC there is an art show called Artomatic.  Ever year an unfinished building/office etc is donated for a month to host a large open Art show.  Artists are given a section of a temporary wall or corner to display or create what ever art they wish.  This year Artomatic was across the street from the new Nationals stadium. We figured it would be a good use of a day to take in some art and go to a game.

I was expecting the art show to be a floor of a building but this was 9 floors packed with all manor of things.  It was really pretty interesting to see what people produce.  I saw a few things I liked along with the ever popular Peeps diorama exhibit.  They used the popular marshmallow easter candy to create small scenes that were often very amusing.  It was interesting indeed.

We were pretty tired from walking through the giant art exhibit so it was nice to sit at the ball game and relax.  It may seem somewhat disturbing but ball park food is delicious.

The 4th

A day later we decided to celebrate the birth of our nation with a random excursion into the heart of Virginia.  With our friends Kerry and Cedric we traveled to Lexington VA.  Each year Lexington hosts a hot air balloon rally along with fireworks and various food vendors on the parade grounds of the Virginia Military Institute.

We got into town and ate at a quaint restaurant in the small down town.  Lexington is maybe 7,000 people so it reminded me a lot of my home town.  Still full of ball game food we welcomed the sight of more bbq fried foods and cotton candy.  VMI really has a beautiful campus.  We even saw the grave of Robert E Lee’s horse Traveler.  This is some good stuff I tell you!

As the light faded everyone gathered into the field to watch the balloons take off.  There was probably 20 or so that took off.  I’d never been up that close to a hot air balloon before.  Fortunately for Natalie and unfortunately for me all of the rides were already sold out.  So we had to settle for watching the fireworks instead.

The next day we ventured off to see the Natural Bridge.  Billed as one of the 7 natural wonders (of the world?  The US?  or maybe just Virginia.  How could we resist a 219′ tall 90′ wide naturally occurring archway that happens to be crossed by US HWY 11?  It was pretty cool.  Along the way we toured through the Natural Bridge Caverns.  The deepest commercially accessible caverns on the east coast. Quite the adventure.

And Stuff

While all this was going on we’ve been house hunting and preparing for more fun to come.

I’m not going to apologize for not posting sooner.  If you haven’t figured out by now I’m far too lazy for frequent updates you probably never will.  Anyway life is moving along as it always does.  Mostly too fast.  Between baby showers birthdays and travel in general we’ve had our plates full.

I think the only real news of importance is that we’ve started house hunting.  Well I started today anyway.  I need to work through the financing to see if we can actually afford to buy a house out here.  If we were back in the Midwest we could buy a castle…. with a moat….  and towns people, for the price of a two bedroom condo out here.  The unfortunate side effects of living is have a place to live in.  As to not meet an untimely end due to exposure.

Despite the soul crushing debt we are surely to acquire I’m starting to get more excited.  It will be really nice to have a place that is “permanent”.  I haven’t really had such a thing since I left home for college.

This post is delayed a few days(weeks now.. its been weeks) for a very good reason.  I’m lazy.  Yes its a reason and yes I think it’s a good one.  Now that is a established this is what has been going on.  Last weekend (again weeks ago because I’m even too lazy to start this post over) we decided to enjoy the last of summer weather in Shenandoah National Park.  It’s just under two hours a way from where we are with traffic and everything.  I think we are pretty lucky to live where we do.  National parks, museums, monuments, concerts you name it we’ve got it.

Anyway so we were hiking along and we heard a noise up in the tree a ways off.  What is it you ask?  That’s right a bear.  A small black bear to be specific. It had shimmied up tree after some unknown goody.  We watched him climb down and wonder for a bit before proceeding.  He didn’t seem to care too much that we were there.  A few feet down the path we found out why.  The bear had backup!  A second bear back in the woods about the same size.  I’m sure they were working as a team.  Having almost hit a larger grizzly bear with our car earlier in the summer I now consider myself a bear expert.

Besides the abundance of wildlife we did manage to hike down to a really great waterfall.

This weekend we decided to deviate from our routine and actually do something interesting.  Turns out we live in big metropolitan city with a multitude of things to do and see.  Who knew really?  Anyway we made the drive out to the Kennedy Center for a symphony concert.   I have somewhat limited exposure to such things but enjoy them greatly.  This particular performance was centered around famous movie scores.  The pinnacle of which is was the theme song for the Magnificent 7. It’s impressive enough on the TV but a live performance was pretty inspiring.  It kind of makes you want to jump on a horse and fight some crime old west style.

We’ve been to the Kennedy center once before for the Phantom of the Opera.  Both times I was impressed with the venue.  Apparently 1970s chic is still pretty cool.  Surprisingly tickets to shows aren’t that expensive (depending on the show of course).  Perhaps if we went to more shows it would help justify the absurdly high cost of rent on the coast.

Having actually done something on the weekend I was exhausted and thus required to spend the rest of the weekend sitting on the couch.  I would have gone out but the opressive heat this weekend prevented the idea from even forming in my lazy mind.