May 2005 - Posts
It was a busy weekend here in Pigeon Point. Saturday said goodbye to the kitchen (many thanks to our demolition crew: Eric, Sasha, and Justin; you guys rock!), Sunday we junked the furnace, and Monday we trashed the foyer. Up until this weekend we were
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I’m almost too exhausted to write this weeks poll. Too much time working on the house this weekend. Actually, a lot of time, but I’d be happy if the weekend kept on going. Most people in last week’s poll chose what I intended to be the most expensive
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Today we'll gut the kitchen. The walls are a comin' down soon! We've moved as much as possible out of the kitchen, the only thing really left is the fridge. Everything else is getting torn out and put into the dumpster. It's a gorgeous day and we hope
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Today we got another form letter from Patrick & Lisa wanting to buy our house. It's an identical letter to before, but their timing still isn't right. Maybe they should wait until the dumpster is gone & we've demolished the entire first floor.
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I noticed this weekend that everyone on my demolition crew seemed to have a different approach to bringing down the lath and plaster. Jon #1 liked using his hammer, which has a pretty straight claw on the back side. He’d bust up the plaster with the claw,
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Demolition day was yesterday and we continued pulling out lathe nails today. We cleaned up the back yard and put more stuff in the dumpster and then my body said it was time to quit. At 4 o'clock I was about ready for a nap, and Nick was dying to take
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No big surprises this week, at least from my point of view. Nearly 40% of us are living in houses that have recently had, or are pending, their 100-year birthday. 22% of us live in pre turn-of-the-century homes – wow! 22% are in homes built between 1920
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The demolition went very smoothly today. Thank you so much to our wonderful crew of helpers: Jon, Jon, Sean, Eric, and Thomas. I think anyone would hire this demolition team. The chute to the garbage cans that Nick built worked very well. He built a chute
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It’s 5:30am, and I’m wide awake. At 9 a bunch of our friends and family will be here with wrecking bars, and they’ll demolish part of our home. On purpose. Today is the day we pull down the lathe and plaster in our living & dining rooms in preparation
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One of our best qualities is our "can do" attitude. I had no problem figuring out the permit and ordering the dumpster. When Nick sent me the pictures this morning, I was pretty excited. After coming home and looking at the dumpster in front of our house
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I listened to this story on NPR this morning about blogging . It wasn't about house blogging in particular, but one thing struck me as particularly interesting. The woman being interviewed is a writer, and she talked about how blogging is a great way
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This is the 2nd day this week I’ve stayed home from work in the morning to deal with house-related tasks. Yesterday I met with Paul Pollets from Advanced Radiant Technology about our planned system. He came over to see the project and answer some questions
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Much better than cold feet, that's for sure. Nick met with Paul Pollets, from Advanced Radiant Technology, today to start the process for the radiant floor heating. Now all I keep dreaming about is the day when I walk around the house barefoot and the
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It was a busy weekend here, but mostly not in front of the ProjectCam . (Although we realized this morning that we forgot to aim it on Trissa as she planted in the backyard. Ooops!) Mostly we spent our time getting ready for next weekend, which is the
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My sister sent me a video for my birthday last month and I watched it yesterday. It's called Alone in the Wilderness, and it's about a guy who builds a log cabin in Alaska entirely from scratch using only hand-tools (many of which he made himself...)
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Last week's question asked “How old were you when you first learned some basic carpentry skills?” We found that a majority of us (38%) learned to swing a hammer at a very young age, before we were 6 years old. Another group (42%) learned to pound nails
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I wish we could have shared the pie with some of you- we definitely don't need to eat the entire pie by ourselves! Here's the recipe. We got it from Nick's mom (thanks, Nancy!). My mom used to make a similar pie- I'll have to compare the recipes and see
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Trissa baked this rhubarb pie tonight – it’s cooling now and I can hardly wait to dig in! I'm pretty happy that even in the midst of our demolition, we can still bake pie. It’s been a busy week with work and not much has happened around the house. With
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The "to do" list tonight was to find out about getting a dumpster to haul away all of the lathe and plaster, and find out where to buy our doors. Tasks completed. Here's what I learned: The dumpster will be pricey: there's the delivery fee ($30.90 ) the
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Their indoor habitat all but destroyed, our cats are determined to misbehave. They jump up on the fireplace mantel, they doze on the cloths pile in the laundry room, they fight constantly, and they enter the house via the open upstairs window after first
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As you can see from the Project Cam, I got the rest of the fir floor pulled up on Sunday. Oh, do I ache today. No more kneeling for me for a couple of weeks. Many thanks to my friend Jon, who came over and helped for several hours on Sunday. Jon was impressed
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New at Pigeon Point Project is our "Tool of the Month"! This month I've picked my much loved nipper/pliers. Read about them here. Nick used ours to pull out all these nails this weekend! If you want to submit your own Tool of the Month, let us know!
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The independent hardware stores and lumber yards apparently don't stand a chance with us house bloggers. Home Depot outsells Lowes 49% to 43%, and this is definitely within our margin or error. These two behemoths are roughly tied. Check out the complete
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Overall it was a good day. I woke up early at 6:30, thinking about the new webcam . It didn’t take long to get it up and running (I’d been up until midnight playing with it and getting it to work on our wireless network), and I think it’s a cool feature
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Pigeon Point Project is now LIVE . Last night we went to Fryes and picked up a wireless webcam. It's now set up in the living room, uploading a new picture to the site every five minutes. We're not sure yet the extent we'll be publishing our live-action
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I made a little progress the last two evenings. All (well, the majority) of the furniture is redistributed to the upstairs, the rugs are going to a new home this evening, and the old loveseat is on our front porch. Hopefully the ad on Craigslist will
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The bank lady called and the appraisal came in way above what it needed to be! Woohoo! Once she gets the title pulled and verified (next week?), we can go in and sign the papers. First floor renovation, here we come!
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It's Wednesday and I'm already pining for the weekend. Not enough seems to happen during the week; I come home all ready to work on SOMETHING, but then dinner happens, and a beer happens, then tiredness sets in. I did pull a bunch of siding off our back
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The weekend began with us sleeping in, and it took a while to kick into high gear. We’d been up late watching movies in the media room with friends after an awesome dinner (out, at a restaurant…), and I think we rolled out of bed around 10. The bank appraiser
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There is no clear winner this week , and I thought there would be. The standout winner is "Other" with 29%, so apparently there are some home-improvement magazines that I missed of great import. What are they??? I'd love to add yet another subscription
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