Living Room Painting Project

Finally some updates. Here is the living room mid-stream. Thankfully my buddy that I was working with on his shed let me borrow the extra hand stand things shown here. This allowed us to pin the plastic to the ceiling then tape the rest. It kept the dust down. Not perfect but less.



Here is the dust removing machine. This would be the box fan we had in Pineville before we had air conditioning. This also was in my apartment in college because we never had functional AC.



Here is what I'm imagining a crack party to look like. I'm thinking this is about 2 kilos. Drywall mud dust is so so tiny and fine it gets into everything. This was the results from one sanding piled about 2" tall.



Fast forward to all sanding done several times over, used a swifer on the walls for the first pass (it worked good too), 3 times around with a damp cloth then once again the next day just in case. You can see one stripe of "frog tape" we are using this time. Its supposed to have truer edges and not bleed through. Pop corn ceilings are hard to seal tape against.



The cut in all the way around.


Making my way around the room. I realize it looks a lot like mud but its actually called chocolate swirl. It spreads more like mud.


All done, hopefully. The coat tonight went on pretty quick, took a lot less and we did it a different way. I would cut in only about 3' at a time and Mandy would roll the wall right behind me. This did keep the "wet edge" and when we left it down stairs tonight it looked perfect. Hopefully it will look good tomorrow and I can get some trim for those 2 walls and we can decide on another paint color for the common wall to the kitchen. Then well be working on it Saturday with any luck.

paint!

finally got a coat of paint on the walls. so much better looking now. actually looks like walls instead of infinite white nothingness.

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does this look bad?

had some technical difficulties this morning. i was going to town with the nail gun and missed a stud and the hammer jumped in the way. poor hammer.

looks like i'm due for a new xbox in less than a year of owning it. at least it has a 3 year warrenty. its working now but is dying a slow death.

even more progress made

making good progress on buddy's shed

rewire project

got some serious progress on the living room rewire project. was going to help build a shed today but it was raining so that got cancelled. so after i got a much needed haircut we came home and completely finished one wall and tore into the other wall. should be done today. hopefully.

come see the britton's super scary electrical code violations! its the scariest house yet this halloween!

netflix, i swear this is how i found it! did my movie "year one" come in? no but we did get "the duchess of duke street: series 1, disc 2". well thank goodness i was wondering when we'd get this acclaimed BBC miniseries! guess it was bound to happen eventually. damn...

moving right along i'm taking the wall apart

Post Disney better pics

In absolutely no particular order. This is because uploading puts these pics everywhere and they are hard to drag into place. So here you go:

The train station

A Mickey pumpkin


The headless horseman. Oh yea, crazy creepy. Luckily I was able to catch somebody elses flash. I've got a few more but this is about the best one.

One of the grave diggers dispersing after the parade. He was creepy walking by himself with a the lantern and a long "dead" stare.


I'm seriously getting better at this. This time I used a "knee-pod" to hold the camera. I was able to hold it to a 1/5th of a second which is fairly significant to do with no tripod.

The entrance to Expedition Everest

Me holding the special red tag to help track the time for the wait on the ride. We always get a picture with these thanks to boB doing the same thing. This was Expedition Everest.


Oh, my thing this time was to take the funniest picture I could during the ride. Since the fingers in the air rock on look wasn't working I went for terrified. I think I pulled it off pretty good.

Remy in Chef's De France. I don't know what the deal was but he was responding to everything she said. My only guess is he's on a timer that triggers with light. None the less it was cool.

The Jammin Chef's. Formally the Jammitors.

Another scared look on the Tower of Terror.

Stupid Muppet itching powder!

See ya real soon. Like, Christmas because we already have reservations!

2 whipped pups

we've had a big day as usual. we hit animal kingdom early and rode expedition everest 3 times and kilimanjaro safari. then we headed to the studios to catch up with my supervisor from work and his family. we ran into mulch sweat and shears and they really played up to the video camera (i'll post it when we get home). then we walked right into the super at lunch. so we chatted a bit and me and mandy got something to eat. we caught back up with them and rode the tower or terror and rockin roller coaster together. it was pretty good. they were going back to swim and we walked around a bit more. i did find out i'm most like buzz lightyear according to disney anyway. so back to the hotel to get our bags and change before we get on the bus to head to the airport.

day 3 - magic kingdom

whew what a long day yesterday was. we hit MK early and were there until 2 or so. then we started hunting for a shirt for mandy we've seen. we have looked everywhere since sunday. this time we did the monorail hotel loop and checked every hotel on it. still no shirt. eventually we left and came back and took a break. then back to the kingdom we go after freshening up a bit. we tried to meet up with my boss that is here but we never could. we stayed for the "not so scary halloween" party and got to see the headless horseman ride through. everybody was dressed up. some should have been that weren't and other shouldn't have been that weren't. none the less we had a good time and are pretty tired this morning.

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it is a small world after all damn it!

mandy enjoying small world

first pic from mk

day 3 magic kingdom

after an exhausting day 2 we are up and at the bus stop a little after 8. we were doing good getting on the bus then a wheel chair showed up. i'm not discounting the elderly or handicap but it takes some extra time to load them for sure. none the less we are loaded up and ready to head toward the park now with a fully loaded standing rooom only bus.

end of day 2 (EPCOT)

oh man are we tired. we always manage to slip in a 'beat the crap out of ourselves' day. this was it. rope drop in the morning, all day in the park, back for a swim, back to the park, all the way around EPCOT, then to downtown disney via saratoga springs and leaving at 11pm. we still have a mile walk to the room after getting dropped off. we'll be alseep 10 mins after laying down. we'll be back at the magic kingdom by 8:30 tomorrow for another long day. TTFN

moracco

mandy sayinf she felt like the start of the "locked up abroad" tv shows.

chefs de france

here we are getting ready to eat at "chefs de france". this would be mandy smiling making her best french-like face. you can also see a coca-cola' in the pic. see how i added the ', that makes it a french coke.

the living seas

mine, mine, mine!

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Soarin'

fast pass for soarin. good thing too it had a 45 min wait.

jammin chefs

the jammin chefs, formally known as the jammitors. i'll post an hd video when we get home. these guys rock.

day 2 EPCOT

off to day 2 at EPCOT. managed to get yp early enough, not quite early as we should but early enough. standing in line now at 8 to catch the bus. we probably missed it by 5 min from the look of the line, which is empty.

toy story mania

only took an hour

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pizza planet

i just heard, "i'm so happy". she likes her some disney pizza

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we're in!

on the bus not the short one

we are finally on the magical express on our way to the motel. shouldn't be long now. we might make the park by 1. not quite like the trip of lore where we left raleigh and almost made rope drop. none the less we'll have a good time.

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first pic from the oct trip

a little bit earlier shot here. we are driving to the airport@rdu on our way to the earport@mco. hopefully it won't be to long and we'll be in the air.

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I'm ripping out the wall!

I can't stand. I've finally lost it. They put the power/cable/phone jacks in the dumbest places in this house. The only place you could ever clearly put the TV is on one of two walls, directly in the middle of the wall, neither of which has a power outlet directly behind the TV nor the cable jack. So instead I must string cables across the floor so it looks like pooh in the living room. Since we plan to paint the living room....eventually, this is the time to fix it before we paint. Just like last year when it took 3 weeks or better to prep the master bedroom to paint it we are expecting the same out of living room. So I'm relocating the power outlets, cable jacks and putting in network jacks as well since this is 2009 and this whole "internet" thing is catching on. My TV and XBOX both have a network jack and the XBOX is currently on a wireless adapter. No more dropouts, no more cables everywhere, no more TV not hooked to the world! I'm moving everything and adding network jacks!

So here is the almost before pic. Why do I always forget to take pictures of the projects in their untouched before state. I've only ripped out the trim at this point.



This is something that has irked me ever since I started taking my shoes off at the door. They broke the trim where? Not in the middle of the room which would obviously be behind a couch or TV. No, right by the door so when you kick your shoes off the dirt is drawn to the seam thus exposing the trim cut. Let this be a lesson if you ever get the idea to trim your house out. Spend the extra $3 and get another piece of trim and split the damn thing in the middle of the room, behind the couch/TV where nobody can see it.


I swear, next time I'm buying a house just after framing. I'll do the rest. The same reason I design equipment parts now, don't like it do it yourself. Oh yes, this little project was started at 10pm 6 days before a 4 day Disney trip. What could go wrong?

A lot more Hawaii pictures

OK, here's a much better picture from the sign at Scotty's. We went back for dessert 2 days later. We were far to full from dinner to eat that night.


Ladies please resist the urge to fling yourselves at me and my woolly chest hair. This was our snorkeling gear setup. The was about mid way through the sun burn. Please reference future pictures to see this.


A Luau and a sun burn. Yes, we are quite happy and burnt to a crisp. Here we are again borrowing strangers talents to take a pictures. Of course I volunteered to take theirs so we could guilt them into taking our picture.


Here we are mid-zip line tour. This would be the roaming gnome from Travelocity coming out of Mandy's head. Clearly we didn't put a lot of thought into set up. However this is "The" official roaming gnome. The Travelocity people actually brought him by, took some pictures and certified the location. They claim he has a facebook page.

This is a much better shot of the Hula pie from Duke's. This is "why the sailors swam to shore". We downed it and it was good.

Here we are after the zipline. This is Sean and Steph. I'm still not sure where the extra hand came from with the 2 fingers behind Sean. I just can't place who it is. None the less they were a blast and stuck around for like 10 minutes and 5 pictures, only for me to learn later I had left it underexposed by 2 stops to get a long exposure of a water fall from earlier. Stupid manual settings.

This was after going to Duke's for dessert. We found a nice place on the ground in front of it and set the camera down and went to full manual. Yes, I moved completely out of P, Tv, or Av. This was full M, F10, 10 sec, 100ISO. I'm so proud. That little remote has been more handy than anything I've bought for that camera.

Gaylord's @ Kilohana

Here is one good pic since I've been home and had time to tweak it some. This is Gaylord's at Kilohana Plantation. It almost doesn't look real but this is it. I had to lighten the building some and then darken the sky. Not a work of art but not to bad.

leaving LA

made it back to LAX. had a very short layover and by the time we got through the massivly massive airportwe had time for coffee and to board. so here we sit watching people that have seemingly never been in a space with more than 3 people and understand the concept of take your seat and get the hell out of the way. hopefully we'll leave soon.

i hate delta

well, we got seperated on our flight from lihue to LAX again. this further backs up my idea i will try and never fly with these idiots again. we checked in fine last night but couldn't check in at the kiosk when they did finally open them. then, of course, they claimed they couldn't change the seats. however, i know good and well we were seated together when it was changed once before. i guess we'll see if somebody will change with us. i'm starting to hate flying. the only sunset i'll get to see this week will be from the airport.

the start of the waiting

so begins the process of goiong home. we are so early to the airport the delta counter isn't even open. they'll be here in an hour, then we can confirm if we even get to sit together for 5 hrs. i'll be adding delta/northwest to my "never fly on again" list.

mehnehune fish pond and the sleeping giant

waiting to leave

well here we are waiting to leave basically. we've checked out of the condo, its 11am here. we've returned our 'only used once' snorkle gear from a weekly rental. now we are eating breakfast at the coconut market place and waiting until 5 when we have to return the car but the flight doesn't leave until 8:50 so this next 24hrs+ is going to thoroughly going to suck.

high surf

some place on the north shore

Some Zipline Shots

This is me and Mandy "racing". I say that in quotes because I have her by 110lbs+ so I pretty much was the fastest all day.


This is a good one of Mandy. She didn't ham it up like I did.

hula pie

hula pie back at duke's by the koi pond

a room with a view

just a shot off our balcony. if you listen close, you can hear those stupid chickens crowing.

Mandy got all inspired in the black sandy beach by the old Russian fort. Pretty cool to see the sands and it was right where the river emptied into the sea so some local kids were boogie board surfing the flow of the water at that point. Pretty cool.



Mandy enjoying our favorite meal at Gaylords on the Kilohana Plantation. The meal is Chicken Kauai and it's so good it's just hard to explain.

more sunburn complaints

ok, remember 'Lilo and Stitch' when Lilo was walking around taking pictures of the burnt tourist? I was waitinng for that today. The burn has really set in and it sucks something awful. Honestly I think we'd cancel the zipline tomorrow if we could. Off to dinner at Gaylords.

Kauai Coffee

pic of a small portions of the fields of the kauai coffee company

spouting horn

sunburnt and bad

got WAY to much sun yesterday to the point of about being sick. we put sunblock on but apperently it was to late. probably just laying around today, might head up to waimai canyon.