Showing posts with label house. Show all posts
Showing posts with label house. Show all posts

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Fencing Things In

Wow, I haven't written on here in more than 3 months. I've been crazy busy with my Google Summer of Code project and spent most of my free time on this. Quite a bit has happened since then and I'll try to catch up in the next couple posts.

So, at the beginning of the summer, my dad and I started the project to fence in the backyard with a privacy fence. We chose treated lumber for the posts and rails and used cedar for the pickets.

All the pictures from the project are here, but I'll highlight some in this post.

Here's the holes from the post hole digger next to the neighbor's chain link fence. Annoying neighbor wanted to keep his fence so we ran the privacy fence right next to it:

Dad and I starting on the concrete work to get the posts in the ground:

The next picture is my favorite. While dad and I were making the holes for the post, we ran into what we thought was a gas line. After closer inspection, the end of it had a U-joint! After almost 2 hours of messing with it, we pulled out an 8 foot drive shaft that was buried in the back of the yard more than 3 feet at the deepest point. Here we are posing with our "trophy":

Setting the posts:

Got the rails up:

Dad pre-built a nice steel tube gate that we braced with extra lumber and concrete and hung:

After a good 5 or 6 days, we had the whole fence framed out. I spent the next month or so hanging up the pickets:


The dogs have certainly been enjoying running around the backyard with no supervision. However, I've recently started redoing the entire backyard since there's virtually no grass so the dogs are no longer allowed. More on seeding the backyard later...

Many, many, many thanks to dad for making this happen!

Sunday, March 30, 2008

50 Inches of Heaven

I'll be picking up the TH-50PX80U later this week!! More to come...

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Excuses

So, the website has been down and not updated for quite some time now. I can explain, I promise. So much stuff has been going on:
  • Started school which includes one evening of class and one lab. The profesor expects us to spend the rest of the time outside of class studying for his class.
  • Megan and I remodeled one of the living rooms. This consisted of stripping off two layers of wallpaper and two layers of trim, repainting the entire room with four coats, and removing the curtains. We spent a good two weeks on this working on it every evening.
  • Getting ready and preparting for house party on September 23rd.
  • Planted new grass in the backyard.
  • My Internet was down for two weeks. This made the site not only out-of-date but completely inaccessible. The cable company took forever to get out here and fix it.

Hopefully I'll be posting more frequently in the coming weeks. I'm planning on putting together some "before and after" pics from the all house projects. Stay tuned...

Monday, July 16, 2007

It's Alive

I got my PC setup this evening in the office of my new house. Just had to register the free DNS service I use with the new IP address here and the site is back up and running. I can't sit at my desk for another week and a half though cause I cannot put large rugs down on the newly finished hardwood floors yet. I need the rug so I can roll around on my office chair without damaging the floor.

Getting things in the house and unpacked has been a little slower than I was hoping because I screwed my back up pretty good. I've been self medicating with some old pain medicine for relief. I was able to mow the lawn this evening though. It was getting pretty tall and really needed to be done.

My parents came up this weekend and I was able to get a ton of things done. We got everything from my old apartment moved, redid the electric box (see spreadsheet for more details), got the cable and Internet turned on with cable wired to all of the rooms, a couple trips to Home Depot for supplies, and a lot of much needed yard work done. I'm sure I'm missing something.

This week I'm having my new living room and patio furniture delivered, the outside and inside sprayed for bugs, some roof and guttering work done, and of course more moving stuff inside and unpacking.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Site Down for Awhile

Today, I'll be packing up the computer that hosts this website and moving it to my new house. I'll be pulling the plug this evening and things probably won't be up until Sunday or Monday (assuming I don't run into problems).

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

I'm an Official Home Owner!!

Two days ago, I closed on my house at 8933 Craig Dr., Overland Park, KS 66212 (map). After all the weeks of looking, going back and forth with contracts, having inspections done, and lining up work to be done, it's finally done! Wait...no it's not. I still have to move all my crap and do the million things to the house I want :(

Right now, all of the hardwood floors are being redone and I'm slowly moving my stuff into the garage. The floors are going to be off limits for furniture until this Sunday so I have to put everything in the garage or basement in the meantime. Speaking of furniture, I got all new patio furniture, sofa, love seat, chair & ottoman, side tables, lamps, and coffee table from Nebraska Furniture Mart being delivered next Thursday (7/19/07). Mom and Dad are coming this weekend to help me with the move and do some work on the house.

By the way, I put pictures up from Wichita of Ember facing off with a bird and of Paul and Shonda's wedding.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Google Spreadsheets and House Projects

The process of purchasing a house and all of the little projects to get up to my standards has become quite overwhelming. The nerdiness and organized part of me decided to use Google Spreadsheets to keep track of everything like cost, phone numbers, supplies, and prioritizing all of the different tasks. Working for a company that does enterprise reporting, including spreadsheets, I've been pretty impressed. You can format and formulate as you would in Excel, including creating separate sheets, but it's all web based. They have even added charts recently. However, because I want a way to access and share with others, the publishing feature has been the most impressive to me. With the click of a button, I can provide a universally accessible URL to see my spreadsheet in many different formats. For instance, the following is my work in progress housing projects spreadsheet and examples of several different formats:

You can even embed the spreadsheet in a web page:

Thursday, May 31, 2007

My New Home

I had inspections today for the home I am planning on purchasing. Check out all of the pics I took.

If all goes well, I will be closing July 9th and all the way moved in by July 23rd.