ok,

As anyone can see I kind of like my place. 8^)I have to say its been great working on it.I have learned some interesting things about renovation, construction, and restoration. But, Milwaukee is really not looking like its the place for me long term. I am hopenig to soon have my old job in Chicago back.. Yea, you are all thinking but then you have to do all of that icky driving again. Well, I have an answer to that problem. In it I get to blog about a different house 8^) Yea, the theory is I take the profit on the current place and get one close to work, with less work needed to be done on it. I get to say I did all this stuff once.. I also get to be working somplace I like. The old house is not my most important hobby, work is too imoprtant a part of my life. I was raised very luthern, that means I identify who I am with what I am doing.. If I hst my current job ( yes ) then eventually I hate me for going to it and being there.Its better to get this under controll now, and improve my total quality of life than keep having to pick on or the other. I want both, that means moveing. So, now comes the big final push. The place needs to be made saleable. Including the Attic, and the 1/2 bath from hell. That includes getting the mantel and front door stripped and refinished and thesitting rooms squared away. The includes make damm sure ther are no cracks in the plaster and the windows all work as I expect them. It also mean haning a lot of trim and getting the ceder up outside where it needs to be. I think I can have this all done by next fall. Perhapse even late summer. It will probably take a few months to sell the place, but after that its smooth sailing for me with a nice short 30 or so minute commute and a job I love going to with people that I like working with and living a life worth having.

Ivan

Saturday was excellent.

I went to Chicago for something other than work.

There was the stop at Salvage 1,  I really like salvage 1.. They rule. 8^) I got a few pics I will post them later this week.. Really I promise. 8^) Another salvageplace opend a few blocks from salvage 1. They are a lot smaller than salvage 1 but quite nice. I have mantles on my brain lately as eventually the sitting room will be a project I have to take care of, and that means a mantle. 8^P This would be so much easier.. But the animals that stole it got away with it. Why? Because I was stuck in a position where I could do nothing about it.  grrrrrrr…  Well, at least there are some options out there for a replacement. 8^P

Then there was the much needed stop for dinner at the best damm persian place I know of.

http://www.noonokabab.com/

The food at noono kabab is so good its not even funny, if you are ever close enough to go there to eat then just do it you will not be going wrong. 8^) It is one of the things I really miss about not working down there.

Finally the main event was Varttina at the Old town school of music. I have been listening to them for a few years now and am a huge fan.  This was my first chance to see them live and it was totally worth it.  The venue is really really small and has very good accustics so they could have easly gotten away playing unplugged.  The live show was easly among the best I have ever seen.  I was super happy to get to see Aijo performed live.  Ok, I also have to admit they are even hotter in person than in the videos.  8^)

So, needless to say I had one very excellent weekend.. 8^)

Ivan

ok,

I have to say I am liking wordpress. Its nice, I can walk away from a post afor a while and come back and finish it and not be timed out resulting in lost data. Better yet I could write off line and upload the file as a post. Then there are the plugins and the premade skins. I am not sure If I like the current one too much. When I get a chance I will see about making a custome crazy house blog skin for myself. 8^) Also, I am looking at a few photo album choices to get the digital pics around a bit better. 8^)
I am also working on a way to insert youtube videos in a nice way. Apparently editing the HTML directly is a no go, and I dont feel like shutting off the wisiwig editor.  Seems to me we should be able to have a plugin that takes the vids direct link url and turns it into a inline.

real link to latest video

Meanwhile back at the house….

OK, I am actually going to get something done today. Its time to get the ends on the cat 5 done so the ethernet upstairs can become useful. 8^) Of course I did notice that in the middle bedroom while drywallign apparently the cable connection fell out of the box into the wall again. Yup, that means I get to cut a hole in a new wall to fish the cable back out and put it where it belongs 8^P At least it should all be below the baseboards height. Damm I am now appreciating 6 inch baseboards a heck of alot more. 8^)

The weather will be getting more winter like again by the weekend.. Funny its amost the halfway point in January and now its gonna be winter. I dont even expect it to last at this point. I predict a very early spring. Not that I am complaining the work in the attic will be much easier and start much more early if its warm. I would love to start the gutting on March 1 and have floors in before the end of april with the walls and junk up by fathers day. Then I can spend the summer launging around and worring about the downstairs window sash rebuilds. 8^) More importantly I can start gettnig compulsive about the new media center PC and high dev cable card tuner and monster projection screen up there and Ikea couches. 8^)

Wow, I am looking forward to the new living room. The current temp living room sucks. The ancient futon has reached the point where it plain old hurts to sit on it for the length of Heck, it hurts to sit on for the length of a tv show. 8^( Also the tv is like 4 feet away, it is kind of uncomfortable to look at. 8^P

This is going to be a spendy but easy year.

The total project list for this year looks like this

Attic renovation

second floor wall patching and covering up the last of the stupid cork board left by the previous stupid owner.
bedrooms, wall electrical plates and bushbutton switches

bedrooms and bathroom replacement windows, and putting in good sashes

Basbaords in all finished rooms

dining room bump out and windows levelnd and repaired

ceder shingles on front and stair well bump out

Downstairs ceiling refinishing, new picture rails in the downstairs and re trim the dining room.

Vestibule?

PEX heating system brought on line with new hot water heaters

That it between now and next October, next January I will look at finiancing the new kitchen and start the kitchen in Feburary next year. That will leave only two big projects left, the garage and the other two side of the house. I think I will pay to have both of those done for me. That will free me up for enjoying the finished house. 8^)

Ivan

OK,

A real post about real things.

So far I have been pretty happy that this winter has been very very warm. No complaints and no vrazy expensive heating bills. 8^) Ok, the few really cold days did give me a chance to enjoy the help of my fancy insulation from the project last summer. Heck, I used some of the radiant stuff as window plastic in what is now the master closet. 8^) It really helps. For his birthday my brother managed to get his car stolen. Again making me ask what the hell I am doing here. This winter there are things to be done. I desperiatly need to get the baseboards installed in all of the rooms that have been rebuilt. Study, bathrooms, bedrooms all need new baseboards, shoe molding and the crazy caps that are on the basebaords all over the house. I figure that I will do that after the downstairs 1/2 bath from hell has it’s new sink, and perhapse a full paint job. 8^P As soon as the weather gets better replacement windows are going in all over the place as well. If I dont watch out winter will be almost as busy as summer. This summer *should* be much easier than they have been though. I am only doing the attic this year. Its a big project though. But at least no plaster remains will be lingering in the downstairs, and it has to be done in chunks with lots of waiting between them. Some of the attic parts are way expensive. But thanks to waiting around I have answerd a number of how the hell do I do that questions. Like get the video cable from the home theater pc to the video projector. I finally have an answer So, I finally have an answer on that one. I have decided to go with a engineerd subfloor built to take the tubes for the radiant system, ( expensive ) and get the ceiling and outside walls blown with foam insulation by a contractor ( really expensive ) Once those steps are done then the rest will go pretty quick till I get to the home theater electrinics ( kind of expensive ) and the whole new living room from Ikea ( fairly expensive due to room size ). I will be ok as long as I remember not to go crazy on the paint job and try to put a crazy faux finnish on these walls. 8^P

Ohh and I do have a new video out..

getting this one done became an act of frustration… I had it mostly doen but needing serious work but sitting around on my hard drive till I finally decided that I needed to just get it doen before the end of the year. I also wanted it to be the last video made on that box and the new machine was on its way

Ivanhmmm looks like I have to figure out howto get youtube vids embedded into the pages.  8^P

yea,

The old engine was not working so well.  Now I am moved over to wordpress.

This should be much nicer.

The tools looke better and the front page needs some work, but that will give me something to do while not working on the house because its cold outside.

Ivan