Sorry I've been so quiet!

Just haven't been that interested in blogging in general lately.

However, I should keep up to date as much as possible. The past few days I've spent a while grabbing all my posts off the old site and saving them to my hard drive. Time will tell whether they ever get put back online. I wouldn't hold my breath at the moment!

Peter and I have made an itty bitty bit of progress on the cupboards, although we realized on Saturday that we had made a fairly major mistake in cutting the side pieces. After some advice from Derrick, we were ready to move on last night. So, last night we started and made the frame for one section of cupboards. However, we built it wrong, so it's back to the drawing board tonight. We should be able to rebuild it properly tonight without too much problem. Hopefully we'll also come close to getting the box together. Peter gets to try out all kinds of new toys now that we're cabinet-makers! lol

We got word from the siding guy that he will finish the garage for free, which is wonderful. We're so thankful for that! We did get the rest of the Christmas lights up on the weekend - can't wait until tomorrow night to turn them on!

The view from our bedroom this morning ...

Funny story from last night

Peter and I had just finished cutting the 11 side panels for the lower cupboards. We started to look at how tall they were (31") and started thinking that maybe they were way too short. We cut them so that the countertop will be 36" above the floor - standard kitchen counter height, or so we'd read. So, we pull out the tape measure and hold it to 36". Hmmmm ... that seems really low. So, we were getting a little anxious, and the only consolation we had was that the books we had said that 36" was a standard height for a countertop. We were still eager to come to work this morning and check that, yes, kitchen countertops are really that low.

Didn't want to forget our momentary anxiety!

Confession time ....

So, despite having a long weekend, I did not accomplish what I wanted to on Friday night. *gasp* I have a good excuse, though, at least for not doing it on Friday night. Friday after work, Peter dropped me off at home and headed back into work. I diligently measured and cut the tile for the entryway, then spent 45 minutes scraping off the excess mortar that didn't quite get removed when I cleaned up last time. Then I went outside to get the buckets that we use for mixing the mortar .... and I thought .... where is the drill? We need the drill to mix the mortar, and it was ... in the car .... with Peter at work. *sigh* So, I couldn't actually lay the tiles, although I did get a fair amount of prep done. I could have done them any of the other days this weekend, but I didn't - no excuse there.

I did get as many windows and doors as possible insulated on Friday night (I ran out of foam), so that was great.

Saturday we put some more siding on the garage, although we were missing some special trim pieces so didn't get finished. We're going to try and pay the guy we bought the siding from to finish it. It's just too cold. Peter also put some of our Christmas lights up! It is our first Christmas with outdoor lights - I'm so excited! We'll have to get the rest of them up this weekend in time for December 1st :)

Last night was the most exciting of all the stuff we got done on the weekend. We finally took the plunge and cut out all the side panels for the kitchen cabinets. We also got measurements for the bottoms, and Peter put together his new jointer (needed for making the frames). Thursday night we'll hopefully get the bottoms cut, and Friday night we'll start the frame that the bottom cabinets sit on. Things don't seem quite as scary now that we've started. Looks like by next week we'll be getting ready to assemble!

Keeping myself accountable ...

So ... motivation has been lacking this week toward getting work done on the house! Since Peter's not home tonight and it would be really easy to plunk myeslf on the couch and not get anything done, I thought I'd post my goals for tonight and then I'll have to check in next week to say whether they were accomplished or not.

One goal for this evening is to (finally) put the last 3 tiles in the middle of the entryway. Yes, I've been languishing for over a week on putting three tiles in! I'll hopefully have enough mortar mixed to put in a few more outside the border, but I'm only requiring myself to get those three tiles set.

The second and last goal is to clean out around the windows and doors and spray the foam insulation in them. I don't mind putting the insulation in at all - it's sucking out all the sawdust first that's less fun. I want to get as many done as I can with the 4 cans of foam I have.

That's it for tonight. The quicker I can get those two things done, the quicker I can plunk myself on the couch and veg.

Tomorrow the plan is to completely finish siding the garage (déjà vu!) and get the knobs and locks on a couple of doors. If we have time we'd like to get the Christmas lights up on the eaves as well, but we'll see ;)

Keep me accountable! I'll let you know how I made out on Monday.

Nothing to report

Work on the house has been non-existent for the past few evenings. We are getting really burned out again (hmmm ... these episodes seem to be getting closer and closer together! lol) and Peter's been working lots of overtime. So ... we've decided that we'll finish the garage (and hopefully get the Christmas lights up!) on the weekend and start the cupboards with a vengeance on Monday night. Wish us luck!

Garage :)

We got home last night to a garage with a nice big white door on the front :) We quickly noticed, however, that there was no handle / lock on the outside of the door. After trying to figure out how we were going to get in (we had nailed a board across the side door to keep it from blowing) we checked the side door and the installers had actually unboarded it. Turns out the lock is on the inside of the garage door, which is something I've never seen before. It's kind of neat, as it's harder for people to break in that way, but Peter doesn't like it right now, as it's really dark when he goes in the garage.

Other than that, no house-progress last night (although I did clean up some of the kitchen!). I had great plans, but none of them came to be as I got quite side-tracked with my cross-stitching.

Tonight is craft night, and I'm pretty sure Peter is coming in here to work, so no progress again tonight. Today the electrician is supposed to go out and hook up the thermostat for the radiant heating - hopefully soon we'll have a little more control over the temperature in the house! lol

*sigh*

My previous blog-hosting site has decided they're not going to be in the blog business anymore, so I will be transferring all my previous stuff from there (http://peteandange.myblogsite.com) over to here. I have until November 30th to do the switch, so please be patient :)

Sorry about the change.