Yeah, right.

Just a quick update. AC is installed and blowing nice cold air. Painting of the kitchen, bedroom, game room, and 1/2 bath is finished as well. Carpeting was installed today. It's finally starting to take shape. Plumbers are due tomorrow to install a gas line. Once they're gone, the stereo wires will be in-walled, walls will be patched, and the living room will be painted. That leaves the hardwood flooring. It gets refinished late this month.



What a lot of freakin' work!

Yeah, it's a ton of work, but there will come a time shortly where you'll kick back, flip on the Rotel and put your feet up to while away the evening listening to the Axioms and slowly wasting yourself with the grip of the grape. (I believe this trip requires a white). At some point during that slice of heaven is when your thoughtds will turn to that 50" TV you want

Seriously, enjoy the labor. It will bear fruit for years.

But then comes the inevitable punch out list which in my house is always evolving. For example, "Patch and paint hole in West wall" is now "Move Entertainment Center a scooch to cover opening which I'll get to sooner or later".

craig-

wishing you continued success and progress on the new home. that "kick-back" time ray is speaking of doesnt last very long. there always seems to be something that needs to be fixed or repaired. but it becomes a labor of love, and the sense of self fulfillment is well worth the effort.

i hope the rest of the 'renovation' goes smooth, and your home, soon becomes your castle.

bigjohn

great stuff...put up some pics if you can or want to.
I have moved into my place since March 15 and learned a lots of things:
groute tile
seal tile
use a drill
install cork flooring
drill through concrete to install wall mounts and fixtures
install a vent hood, cooktop, slide in oven
run wires through baseboard
patch holes
tape and patch flat cable wires to walls
build kitchen cabinetry

its definitely a humbling experience..and back breaking ...but it definitely is rewarding.

Just broke down my 1st level bathroom because I thought the builders choices was less than spectacular. Have to figure out what to do with it.

I've sent you a PM with a link of my work in progress.

cheers

ps:the only manual labour I did before this was moving my fingers to type on my keyboard. If any one is interested in seeing the pics on my new place just PM me.

Well last night was one of the best nights yet in the new place. The carpeting is completed, and it has transformed the upstairs. All the work we put into painting those rooms has proven not to have been in vain. The rooms look incredible! I walk into our bedroom and am amazed at how good it looks.

We stayed up until 3am this morning setting up the game/computer room. Seemed dang nice to be able to start unpacking some boxes! First things first, the Axiom M2i's are setup and playing on my computer!

We've taken a few pictures...when I get a chance I'll setup a webspace with all the pics.

Thanks for all the encouragement guys!

Do you have stuff to hang on the walls? There's a really great underground art gallery in Pomona (really!) that an artist friend steered us to. I bought 4 paintings by unknown local artists for under $200.

yeah, we've got quite a decent amount of stuff for the walls. Though more is always good.

Roger's mom is a nature photographer. We've already got 3 pieces by her, and she's giving us a fourth as a house warming gift.

He website is kind of lame, but the pictures are BEAUTIFUL.

Check it out www.photonature.net

Some very beautiful stuff Spiff. I just took a quick look but was knocked out by summer 13. It appears to be Monument Valley and she caught a couple of lightning strikes. Cool!

I also liked autumn 7, and autumn 10. Very peaceful.

Does she fiddle with those in phototshop, or how does one create those colors?

being an amateur photographer, i would say she has to dally with them a little. especially that photo of the prairie on the opening page.. the sky is almost neon.

but, retouched or not, she has a great eye for what she does. really fantastic shots. that is the level of ability i wish to reach.

bigjohn

Filters, my man... filters!

One of my favorite shots that I've taken was the perfect sunset shot with a person in the foreground - perfect except the sunset, due to smoke from a fire or something wasn't as orange as I would have liked. So, on goes an orange filter over the lens. But wait, I hear you say... wouldn't that make the person look like an oompa-loompa? Normally, but if you pop off a flash with a gel the opposite colour of the lens filter (in this case, blue), the flash neutralizes the colour added for anything close enough for it to affect - your subject, and leaves it untouched for anything outside its range (the sunset)... add a polarizing filter for a bit of contrast enhancement and voila!

I love playing with colour shooting film - the new 4 layer Fuji films with supersaturated colours are great for landscapes, Kodak's got a line of infrared films that do well for getting shots through things like water spray (waterfalls, etc), I've even played with orthochromatic film (truly black & white - very few greys - it's used to photoreplicate texts and the like) and tungsten-balanced film (good for concerts and other stage-lit performances). I hate to sound regressive, but digital photography with auto-seeking white balance really takes the art out of the photo.

It's painful to have to go back to lighting documentary-style after that... 1/2 CTBs and if the DOP is really wild, maybe even a straw on the backlight/hairlight... makes you feel like Michelangelo working as a house painter.

Bren R.

I'm sure she uses some filters on some shots. She hasn't a clue how to work Photoshop. I had to show her about 10 times just how to re-size a file. So there's certainly no digital manipulation to them!

Craig - Mom is a treasure and the pics are incredible. You need to suggest that 1 picture is nice, but another 25-30 would really fill in the empty space around Spiff Manor!!!

A bit of general input from an older guy. Based on years of tinkering, fixing and painting, I have neither the time or the appetite to continue doing those things. I have evolved to answering the incessant requests from my wife to continue doing these types of things by introducing her to "Ray's Homeowner's Repair Kit". The RHRK consists of only 2 components - the Yellow Pages and a checkbook. My muscles don't hurt, my knuckles aren't beat up anymore and time is available for golf. Life is good.

Well today turned out to be complete shite. I guess it's Karma for the great day we had yesterday with the new carpeting.

The plumbers arrived today and commenced to thrash our downstairs living room wall and ceiling in search of our gas line. After six large holes in the wall, and another six even larger holes in the ceiling they found the line. Then announced that getting gas into our kitchen would be impossible without tearing apart the entire kitchen and upstair floor.

Now we have no gas, and 12 big holes to patch. Yippee! To make this story even more painful, we had another plumber stop by previously to give us an estimate. He told us everything these guys did without making a single hole. We just didn't trust/believe him. We'd had three other people say it could be done. Clearly they were all wrong. Grrrrr....

So it's electric stove time for us. Bleck. I if you look really hard for a silver lining the electrician I spoke with gave us some good news. Rather than needing an entirely new breaker box, he should be able to simply add another 40amp breaker to our existing one. So far he seems to be the only decent/honest contractor we've dealt with. Are most contractors slow/lazy/dishonest people? Geesh!

You can address the last few sentences yourself. You have chosen to take on the role of General Contractor.

Wow - my heart goes out to you. The mayhem you described is unacceptable. In the future, once the contractor has made 3 holes call a halt and apply full flaps. They clearly should have known better.

The trouble is I don't know a thing about plumbing and they came highly recommended. I was pretty much at their mercy.

Are these ppl going to repair the holes in the walls before they leave and never come back or did they stick you with that job?

They left the holes for us. As he left he let us know that he wouldn't charge us for his time. Wasn't that nice of him?

$!$%&*

latest update...

Monday all my electrical work was done, and all my stereo wires were run in-wall. Wednesday all the holes (all 16 of them!) were patched. Last night we were painting the living room and ceiling until 3am this morning. At 7:30am this morning the guys showed up to start work refinishing our hardwood floors. We can't go back into the house until Saturday night. But at that time I'll FINALLY get to hook up my system again! I've been without my HT for far too long!

Speaking of your HT gear, I saw that Rotel amp at a local "high end" store. It is FREAKIN' HUGE! They have only the demo unit left, I wonder how low they would be willing to go? Know what wholesale is on that unit?

I don't know what their cost is, but I do know you can grab a used RMB-1075 for between $750-850 usually if you keep your eyes peeled on www.audiogon.com

I paid $820 for mine (including shipping).

Is there a 1085? I think this thing was 200 W per channel.

Ahhh...that's the RMB-1095. That is a monster!