Joe and Jamie’s Blog

As it gets warmer out the days just seem to fly by. I have been incredibly busy this summer with extra tasks at work and the web business getting busier. I find myself in front of a computer for 20 hours a day sometimes. I have started on some new ventures that will later be announced, hopefully these will bring in some cash a bit faster than the rest.

Other than driving myself nuts lately, I actually have accomplished a few personal things that needed to be take care of around the house. Jamie painted more in the attic (yes thats is still going on, since March), I finished up the electric, patched the new wallboard area, mounted hooks, took down shelves, removed the spoiler from my car which was broken and falling apart.
You can view the past articles here:
2008/03/23/a-little-housework-remodling-the-attic
2008/03/24/continued-house-work-in-the-attic
2008/04/14/progress-on-the-attic-project

On the brighter side, we still aren’t smoking, been since May 12th, so thats like almost 2 month cold turkey for both of us. Luckily we did, only way we can afford gas now! Check it out: 2008/05/12/no-more-smoking

One more thing before I go. I have just have to get this out and rant a bit here. We are saving to go away on vacation in about 2 1/2 weeks (can’t wait). Saturday I brought Jamie’s car to get inspected since it expired come today (Yeah I know way to wait for the last minute). I figured okay it’s just $21 and that’s nothing. ERRR WRONG. With my luck the tires were worn on the inside tread where I couldn’t see it so I had to get new ones, and then an alignment because that is what caused the issue. So my $21 day went to $600. Needless to say, that’s less money for vacation now. FUUUUUN. This kind of stuff always happens.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there. Today we planted some new annuals outside to spruce up the backyard for spring. It’s what we do every year for mother’s day weekend, it’s what my mother considers her present. I have some pictures below of all the nice flowers.

On top of that, Jamie and I painted some more in the attic (finally did more with that project) and also my father and I ran the electric from the basement to the attic so we could splice in the line up there and add a second breaker. We first had to drill the hole between the walls and get it downstairs, following a CAT-5e wire we ran a few years ago as a guide. We miscalculated the first hole by half and inch and put a hole in the corner of my sister’s ceiling, but we patched that with some Plaster of Paris and re-painted it.

We used Romex SimPull 600VA wire to a 20 amp breaker, pretty standard for a bedroom load. Apparently the idiots that wired this house put 1/2 of two rooms on the second floor and the entire third floor all on the same circuit breaker. You’re talking 3 air conditioners over 5,00 BTU’s, 2 TV’s 3 computers/laptops, clocks, lamps, monitors, laser printers, etc, etc all on the same breaker. PRETTY darn silly, but not our fault. We discovered this last summer when my sister got her air conditioner. She never had one before so once she had hers on, plus the addition of my laser printer and it’s spooling, the breaker tripped whenever you tried to print a page. We had to remember to turn off the lights or the a/c before printing. But this is all rectified now. Oh and while we were at it we pulled a backup CAT-5e line just in case I ever need it if I remodel the house network or put some storage servers in the basement.

This weekend was incredibly eventful at the house. I actually woke up earlier than I do for work both days and did a lot around the house. We cleaned out one side of the attic and painted it with the new colors. We were able to use all the colors on certain areas that we planned out so we got to see what each one looks like. They are pretty nice, I think they will do well being light colors in a small area. The fresh paint just makes everything look so much nicer and cleaner. I mounted the pole for the coat rack and finally patched the whole in the drywall, still need to plaster it though. I primed the new railing we made on the left and boy did that new wood soak up the paint. We went with an interior flat enamel paint that is very low-lustre so it will help reduce glare and shine to hide some of the imperfections in the ceilings. The walls are antique white (light tan/beige color), the trim is going to be that blue color (forget the name) and the railing is brown (also forget the name). I know in the photo the brown looks like the walls but its a nice light brown, kinda looks like the color of hot chocolate or a melted milk chocolate bar. Let us know what you think about the colors.

After a few weeks of Jamie getting on my case about moving the attic redesign project I finally got off my keester and did some work.

Here’s some back story:

Jamie and I live at home with my parents. Yeah go ahead and laugh, but we are saving a lot of money in the long run while we both go to school. It also allows us to get into a better financial situation so that when we do move out it is to a nice area and not the ghetto. We have the entire third floor of the house to ourselves. It’s the attic, but completely finished and not like 3 foot ceilings or anything. The room is big enough for two people easily, just running out of room for dressers and desks. The outside of the room used to be a computer/workspace for my father, but we moved his computer stuff into the basement since he has a laptop now that he uses in the living room. We are going to move half the dressers outside the room, leaving more space for us to move around and allow us to get a bigger bed. Two people sleeping on a twin is NOT FUN AT ALL. Outside the room has two parts, divided by the stairs to the rest of the house. The other side not directly outside the room is smaller due to 2 slopes of the room. We are going to put storage bins and hang our jackets over there to utilize that space.

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the before, but some of these pictures will show you what the layout was and where things were. I’ll explain along the way.

Here is our room currently. There are 4 dressers, 2 computer desks, a DVD shelf and a stand with photos and nick-nacks. Talk about cramped. On both sides of the room there are what we call outcoves (not sure if thats a p.c. term). Those are full of our storage bins and laundry, but we can barely get at them because of dressers in the way.

Here is a picture of the outcoves outside the room. They are a great use of space since the slope of the roof makes it impossible for the walls of the room to meet the outer walls. You would have to be 1 foot tall to fit in those, we have to crawl, but hey, storage bins fit great!

This is the spot outside the room next to the door. It used to be my father’s computer desk. I am going to make a clothing rack there now because closet space is very limited as well.

This shot is outside the room from the angle of the doorway. The dresser to the left is our new 5th one, but that was not always there. That was put there after some of today’s demolition of a fixed shelf I did. This is where I wish I had the before picture, but its not hard to imagine a shelf I guess. You can see the crappy clothing rack I have now; damn thing falls over like once a week.

Here is the left side of the upstairs outside the room. It’s the part where you have to cross the stairs to get to with the double sloped roof. You can see the desk I removed as well as all the pieces of the shelf (too lazy to bring them downstairs at midnight).

Here’s a closeup of the old shelf. My father builds things to last so it was pretty tough getting it apart.

This is where the old shelf was. It was also good to have there so you couldn’t fall right off and down the stairs. We are going to put in a small wall or backer of some sort behind the dresser to secure it or us from falling. You can see the old spot on the wall on the right where the shelf started and went across to the gray poll on the left.

Here’s a front shot of the new dresser and where the shelf used to be. See what I mean how you can just fall off down the stairs!

Now it’s time to kick back and relax with my Molson Canadian and trusty Peak bottle opener, courtesy of 107.1 The Peak (one of the radio stations I do work for). It’s the last one, so I bought myself some Molson XXX for next. If you can’t tell I am a fan of Canadian beer. Well that and Heineken.

Tomorrow I’m off to Home Depot to get some wood to create the backing to that empty spot as well as pick out paint colors with Jamie. She wants to go with a blue, chocolate brown, and some tanish color. It sounds bad, but it looks good.