Nice, shiny dining table and chairs...

Here is our new dining room table. This pic doesn't show the center-leaf. Also, we have 6 of the chairs total, but only 4 around the table. Not sure yet where we're going to put the other 2 chairs, but I insisted we get them considering every time we have my parents over (or other random guests) somebody ends up sitting in an office chair and rolling around...

The floor...

Here we see Katie and I relaxing in front of the television with boxes of flooring sitting, waiting to be pounced upon, but why haven't we? The flooring has to acclimate in the room(s) it's going to inhabit for about 48 hours or so. We had all the carpet removed by the general contractor on a Friday and we moved all the boxes in that afternoon. It was very loud and echo-y in the living room and Mer's office (officially, a dining room)! These boxes were everywhere.


Here are a couple shots with the flooring installed. There are still a few minor pieces that need to be cut (small patch-in triangles that are less than a few inches in size each). They will go around the hearth, which is to the left of the TV in the shot immediately below. These two pictures are taken at pretty much opposite angles of eachother, looking across the living room.



At this point, Meredith's gotten most of the edge moulding (quarter-round) installed around the rooms and we've special-ordered some 78" transitions to go in the wider openings between the entryway and the living room and the living room and Meredith's office. Another one will make for the entire trim around the hearth.

It's coming together nicely and we should be done with the floor as soon as the transitions get in (8-10 business days, lol).

I put the dining room table together last night. It's one heavy bugger! It looks fabulous though, and Meredith's put one coat's worth of food-grade mineral oil on it already (we should have bought 2-3 bottles of the stuff @ IKEA like Mer suggested). I also got a couple of the chairs done as well. I should have no problem getting the remaining chairs built this evening.

I might even get the two remaining bar stools assembled as well.

One of the last unknowns to deal with is this bar. We still haven't nailed down how we're going to finish it. Right now it's just a double-thickness of 3/4" plywood that's 14" deep and 8' long sitting in the half-height wall between the kitchen and living room. It's sturdy as a brick outhouse. We were at Home Depot looking at tile options over the weekend. The cheap and easy way out would be to buy about 8 of the super-big tiles and rent a wet-saw to trim them out. That could clash a little -- not to mention make an already large fixture down-right behemoth. We're talking gargantua vs. godzilla here -- the thing really is massive. But, I kinda like it, and it certainly ain't going anywhere. Another thought was to use smaller tile, but that certainly makes for more work overall -- not much, but greater than option 1. Then there's the ol' formica treatment. The only problem is that the surface isn't particularly smooth, so it would require quite a bit of preparatory work. Lastly is to put down a wood surface like a 1/8" finish-grade plywood (ash/oak/birch/etc) or a wood veneer, but quite frankly a veneer would require the same prep as formica.

Suggestions?

The saga continues....

It's funny, really. I mean, heck, you can't really fault the general contractor. Their goal is to keep costs as low as possible in order to maximize their profits. But I have to say, their subs were crap. I got the impression that our project was an unwelcome interruption from their otherwise well-planned workday. I can't tell you how many times I called the foreman (who was rarely onsite) to ask where some crew was only to be told, "Well, they had an emergency job that they had to take care of first thing this morning, but they'll be there as soon as they're done."

Riiiiight....

Translation: "Your measley job is a drain on my already overburdened resources. We'll get to you when we're damn-well ready."

I'm okay with that though -- we've seen the last of the work crews. Although it took way longer than I could ever have expected. I was thinking about it over the weekend... If I had performed all the work necessary, except for the actual plumbing re-route, it probably would have been done in one week's time, instead of four. And that's forgiving the fact that I work slowly and methodically.

But enough about the amount of work done and how long it took, let's talk for just a minute about the workmanship.

Plumbers:

• They were chronicly tardy. Even after the first day when they realized that it was going to take them forever to get from their office to our house.
• I was up in the attic yesterday, and the line they rerouted from the water heater to the kitchen is drawn straight through the attic. It looks like a giant, crooked chair-rail. I don't know what the plumbing code is, but I'm guessing it's supposed to be strapped down in a few places -- which it doesn't look like it is. Not to mention that any other water supply lines in the attic run straight up from the attic floor or their source to the rafters, over to their destination and straight back down again. Very professional, very high-quality.
• They were in a huge hurry to finish and wrap up on any given day. Which means clean-up was not very high on the priority list.

Construction:
These guys were pretty with-it. They did a decent job and they worked hard. Their biggest problem was they were devout company men -- "I don't do nothing I'm not supposed to do without a word from the foreman." And to be honest, I'm completely fine with that. Except when the communication from the higher-ups is less than stellar. We started off on the wrong foot when they walked in and started going on and on about how they were supposed to be replacing a bunch of studs. When I started explaining the difference between what their verbal work order was and the actual task at hand, they went for the phone. Again, I'm happy they did, but that was a frequent occurance. The joys of not having written specifications.

Drywall:
What a cluster-! This guy was in such a hurry and he was so disorganized that it took him the better part of a week to drywall and texture roughly 70 square feet of space (keep in mind a single 4x8 sheet of drywall is 32sf). At one point he had completely finished one section and cleaned up all of his tools and materials when Meredith pointed out that he forgot to texturize another area. And again, in his haste, he didn't clean up at all -- left dried texture all over the backs of our washing machine and dryer. Oh, and when he pushed the dryer out of the way, he separated it from the vent. I'm sure he saw this, because we have a rigid vent that is impossible to miss, but what did he do? Ignored it.

Oh, and back to the construction -- when the same crew came out to install the plywood for our bar, he was totally unprepared and ended up having to borrow my tablesaw. And all of his screws were too long for the double-thickness of plywood, so he had to cut them all off, except he missed a few and I'll have to go back and clip those off so that somebody doesn't give themselves tetanus when they rake the top of their knee across one of the screws!

But like I said, we're done with the work crews. Any more screwups will rest squarely on our shoulders.

We've finished the bulk of the installation of the laminate wood flooring. I'll post pictures of that soon.

Here are some photos of the flooring we did in Meredith's office. I'll try to get a picture of the anarchy that is our living room in its current state posted tomorrow, along with a pic of the bar, which is as-yet unfinished...

Here's a bit of a "before shot" of the corner where her desk sits:



And here's the finished product...



Another shot of the finished room from a different angle... pay no attention the the back of the desk sitting in the middle of the room.

Spending Money...

is soooooo painful. But it's so fun! At some point there was a transition -- a dramatic, house-altering transition -- from a simple plumbing repair into a major redesign. And I know exactly what the catalyst was....

When that damn plumber cut up through that beam in our ceiling, it sealed the fate of our house, and instantly dictated an irreversible cascade of money fluttering from my wallet.

Now, I must start out by saying our insurance company is fabulous. As is our builder. Because of some choices that he made on this spec home, we had a few very valuable elements of our house that this insurance claim has covered -- including the carpet from the living room and dining room.

So, where's it all go? In the last 6 weeks, we've been very busy -- and mind you this all happened right after returning from vacation...

• Of course, I'll start with the fact that we repainted the living and dining rooms. That technically happened before the incident, but it's worth mentioning as a starting point. During that exercise (and pretty much any exercise of that nature), Meredith and I were brainstorming ideas for how to improve the house. Such ideas included installing laminate flooring and a long-termdiscussion about our furniture needs had also resurfaced.
  
• Immediately after we discovered the leak, the insurance company sent out crews to localize the leak, remove about a 15 square foot section of soggy carpet, and drop off some fans and dehumidifiers to dry us out. While all that was taking place, we shifted the furniture away from the half-height wall between our living room and kitchen, creating a smaller gathering area inside the living room and creating some new traffic paths through the room. I think it was at this point that I said, "Gee, wouldn't it be cool to put a bar here between the kitchen and living room?" That invariably led to more discussions about the size and quantity of our current furtiture arrangement AND now we're talking about actual carpentry and additional furniture (barstools).
  
• Then the plumbers came to perform the repair. It wasn't really so much of a repair as it was a replacement -- they ran a new hot water supply line up from the hot water heater manifold into the attic and over to a wet wall in the kitchen. Except that they were having trouble bringing the line down the wet wall between two 2x12 header beams. And they didn't really feel like going to Home Depot to pick up a long-shanked boring bit. And they were in a hurry. Plumbers should be forbidden from owning a Sawz-all! The plumbers ended up cutting through about 2/3 of one of the 2x12 beams. And not just a little notch -- they cut a 1-2 inch gap out of the board so they could reach up in there and pull down the new line. I was not impressed. Nor was I there (damn). The plumbers finished up their job and promptly told Meredith, "The general contractor will take care of all that." And then split.
  
• Drama ensues
  
• GC comes out and says "We'll need an engineer to look at that."
  
• Insurance company upgrades this from a simple plumbing repair claim to an all-out home repair claim (and thusly we were upgraded from a CSR to a full-on adjuster).
  
• Engineer comes out and says "Yeah, that looks bad -- I'll need to run some numbers."
  
• [Engineer runs numbers]
  
• Per the engineer, the beam will need to be supported or replaced. According to the adjuster we have a policy that would allow us to claim FULL REPLACEMENT and have the beam completely replaced.
  
• We elect for a simpler, less costly and more timely repair. Did I mention school was just starting at this point?
  
• Apparently the insurance company chewed on the plumbing contractor's ass for a while because the owner of the plumbing company (or was it a foreman, I wasn't there) decided to come from the home office (San Antonio) to see the damage.
  
• It was about this time that we got word back from the carpet valuation lab that our carpet was worth more than we expected. We had been mulling over the idea of electing to refloor with laminate wood flooring instead of carpet, but that would have cost about 50% more than we expected to get for the carpet replacement. That budgetary constraint was now lifted and we pulled the trigger onthe laminate.
  
• Because of all the drama, we talked to the insurance company and they agreed to a minor enhancement in place of electing FULL REPLACEMENT. We requested that instead of a simple
  6" sill between the kitchen and LR, that they construct a bar that'd be 14" wide. That means we would now absolutely have to buy bar stools. Oh, and replace the large sofa with something smaller and more cozy.
  
• Somewhere in there, the crappy dishwasher that came with the house died. It wasn't related to any of this, but it seems fitting to include it as yet another expense during all this mess. We got a great deal on a fabulous dishwasher and we have officially stopped pre-washing dishes before they go in the DW. I never thoughtit possible.
  
• Anyway, about two weeks ago, we started mulling over a road trip to IKEA in Houston. Their website has some nice furniture that's not too Modern, but still contemporary. We figured we couldn't really swing the trip at the time, so we wandered the furniture stores of Austin looking at love seats and comfy chairs... We toured the furniture mile down Lamar. Lotsof stuff was seen. Much of it was attrocious.
  
• I'm not really sure how we ended up at CostPlus / World Market, but we did. And they had this really nice chair and love seat that were pretty much exactly what we were looking for. Done. It was inexpensive and it looks great. No, really -- we'redone.
  
• Late last week, the GC came and ripped up all the carpet in the LR and the DR (Meredith's office). We're on bare concrete at this point (and may I just say, ick). We got the laminate moved from the garage into the LR so that it could aclimate and my gosh, was it loud in there without any soft surfaces to muffle the noise!
  
• Turns out... we ended up on a road trip to IKEA this past weekend. I'm not really sure how. It started out as a "let's get out of the house this weekend - the LR is a noisy mess with all the carpet up and boxes and boxes of laminate everywhere." So we decided to go visit my folks in Bryan. And then we decided that since we were so close, we could make the IKEA trip. So I checked to make sure mom wouldn't mind and we threw the kids out at the side of the road when we drove by there on Saturday morning and were at IKEA by12:15pm. I think we left somewhere around 4 that afternoon.
  
• While we were at IKEA we looked at lots of cool stuff. I bought a hanging lamp that's kinda cool (pics to come). And we got some neat things for the kids... but somehow we managed to buy a new dining room table and set of 6 chairs. Guh. Solid Beechwood.Butcher-block style tabletop.
  
• On Sunday, we started installation of the laminate and it's looking pretty good. Still got a long way to go.
  
• Yesterday, Meredith bought some barstools. They're contemporary and they'll fit in nicely with the new chairs. However, they're oak, so they fit in with the flooring, too. A bit ofan unplanned but welcome transition.
  
• I have to figure out how I'm going to cover the bar. The carpenters are only roughing in a double-thickness of plywood. It'll be my job to cover it and add some edge trim. Stillnot sure if we're going to do tile or wood veneer or formica...
  

Anyway, I think (hope) we're done. We've still got a long way to go to be done with the work, but I think we've managed to get all the purchasing out of the way. And just in time, too.

My wallet has disintegrated.

Lovely, no?

A couple quick things...

First, here's a picture of Katie.

And, then... just because I figured I should, I threw this photoshop together. It was fun and it only took a second. It's a pic of Griffin and Hays doing a little whitewater rafting. I'd say that based on the scale and all, it was only a few minutes ago that they came barreling over the edge of that cliff in the background. They must have survived...

(the originals can be found here and here.)

An oldie, but a goodie...

This is one I did several years ago:

Griffin was about five, I think. We got this trampoline for Christmas and it was freaking cold outside, but the kids wouldn't stand for having a trampoline and not jumping on it.

I can't believe it's not butter!

Well, I wuz wrong. Blogs are cool. And Blogger certainly is feature-rich.

Excuse me... I need to go pull the crow off the grill.

About Time

I've never really been a leading-edge thinker. Heck, I'm not really sure if I've ever even been considered much of a thinker at all. I have to say that when it comes to the 'Net that I have been here a while. Heck, I registered this domain (www.hedrick.org) in June of 1996 -- six months after I started work at a (dot)com. Over the years, that website has had many faces (and lots of pretty cool graphics -- photoshopping is a favorite pasttime of mine).

But I've always been a technician -- never much for the drama or design or creativity. Which is probably why the site's been languishing for years now. There was a while when my lovely wife had taken on the responsibility, but she's even less a geek than I am. Which meant that certain tools had to be in place to make it easier to post and update. And then, probably about 4 years ago or so, I stopped hosting the site myself and handed it off to the great folks at Verve Hosting and they've done a fabulous job. But that means that the tools I had in place didn't work so much any more. No biggie, but it means that updates were taking even longer... and then they trickled to a stop.

Well not any more!!!

It's time to jump on that proverbial bandwagon. I've had mixed emotions about blogging for quite a while. Hell, I can't even really stand the term "blogging" much at all. But here I am. About a million times over the last 3 months (summer, really) I've said to myself, "self, it sure would be nice if there were a place you could have written that down."

And here it is.

Suffice it to say, I don't think I'm going to go into a whole lot of effort to back-port the last 3-months of consciousness, so let's see if we can sum-up. This is basically in reverse chronological order, starting at the beginning of summer.

• June started out mostly quiet, except that a friend of mine, Steve Harper was trying to launch hhis new book and I was (am) doing his website for him.
• Vacation to Ouray, Colorado, was fabulous. Including the wi-fi cafe and chocolate bar.
• Our house had a slab leak in the hot-water supply to the kitchen. While insurance is taking care of this, it has really cascaded into basically remodelling the entire living room. And oh the drama (never let a plumber into your house with a sawz-all!!!)
  
• My grandmother's husband, Charlie Carmichael, died and my dad and I drove to Hobbs, NM, to attend the funeral. Interestingly, while we were at the funeral, I didn't have any sort of weird flashbacks or deja-vu about my actual grandfather's funeral. I'll chalk that up to being young, stupid and in shock (back then).
  
• Meredith's 20th high school reunion was a blast, but not so much the event, as seeing all her HS friends, who've become my friends but yet, we don't see them often enough.
• I missed the Capital City A&M Club's Coach's Night event.
• I got invited to the Brazos Valley A&M Club's Coach's Night (and what a great table!)
• A very close family member has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Well, that's the long (and short) of it. This being a FIRST POST, it's gone on a little long and rambled a bit, but I hope that is not the case for the future.