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September
30th, 2006. Wren
comes home. The sun room is now made to be her play room.
She takes over the rest of the house soon enough.  She
is just shy of 10 weeks old at this point. She whined a little
in the car on the way home, as expected, and when she arrived
in the yard, we opened her little carrier door and she went
right for the grass and...well, went. She knew right where
to go.
October. This
is when everything starts to be a blur. Now that we are settled
in the house, I started to take on paying jobs, which took
up time. But I still had stuff to do on the house, which
took up time. Then there's Wren, who had to be watched constantly,
which took away time from one of the other 2 things. Things
got done, but when they were done I couldn't tell you...more
than likely it was more in November because I do remember
not being able to get anything done during the first month
Wren came home. Of course I didn't just HAVE to let her take
up my time, I wanted it. Who wouldn't? Fixing the house seemed
secondary. Looking back at the photos (i.e. the record of
my trials and tribulations), I didn't take ANY pictures of
the house from the point Wren came home to December. Plenty
of Wren though. So I took a little break this month playing
with little Hannibal.
OK, that needs an explanation. We've given Wren many nicknames,
the latest being The Mini-Pooper. She occasionally does it
now, but at this age when we walked around the corner to see
her in her crate, she would be sitting up in the center of
the crate staring at us. No wagging tail...just staring. It
was right out of Silence of the Lambs when Agent Starling first
met Hannibal.
November. Back
to work, as it were. Imposing yet another slight deadline,
we needed things to be finished by Thanksgiving because Alisons
family was coming into town and we might have some of my
family come over.
First I needed to
seal the work room floor. There are 3 spots in the basement
where there is exposed concrete - work room, server room
and boiler room. It didn’t matter to me that
the boiler room floor is sealed because, you know, it’s
the boiler room. How much traffic is there going to be. The
other two needed it. I’ll probably end up sealing that
room eventually. By sealing the concrete it protects it, otherwise
it erodes away. I needed to do this now before I move even
more stuff downstairs, build shelves, etc. So I had to move
everything out of that room and into the theater room, including
all the 12’ long trim pieces that I’ve been collecting
for other projects. I primed and painted 2 coats on the floor
over 3 days...then moved everything back in.
Now that that was
done I can put in the shelves. I got these really great (and
really cheap!) untreated wood shelves from Ikea. I wanted
to get these particular ones because in order to fit the
shelves against the wall I needed to cut half of the legs
so they rest on the footing. I put them along two walls in
an “L” fashion, and then bolted them to
the wall for extra sturdiness. Then for work benches, once
again I went to Ikea and got 2 kitchen islands, one for the
corner and the other for the center of the room with drawers
and cabinets to store tools. Let me tell you these things were
in the heaviest boxes I ever got from Ikea by a long shot.
They both have solid wood tops and legs...something you don’t
find that often at Ikea.
 At this point we were still using the smaller guest bathroom.
Even though all the stuff worked, we didn't have a shower curtain,
so we couldn't shower without getting water all over the place.
Now the tub is a curved tub that's 6 feet long in a 7 foot
space, so using a straight (tension or otherwise) bar to hold
the curtain is impractical and aesthetically unpleasing. What
I found was a flexible curtain track that I bent in the same
curve as the tub and hung it on the ceiling. However, if I
hung a standard curtain from the track, it would hang 1 foot
over the top of the tub. What good is that? So I got 12 feet
of nickel plated chain (so it doesn't rust) and cut 1 foot
sections, put a ring on the end of them and hung the curtain
from that. Now it hangs just inside the tub. The other problem
was the window...which is full size window inside the shower
area. We sort of needed to cover it up so I hung a trimmed
frosted shower curtain over it.
Something that was
missing from both sets of stairs was a hand rail. We had
one for the second floor stair, which I removed during construction
so we can get things up and down easier, but not for the
basement stair because we completely replaced it. I needed
to put these up, not just for convenience, but for code...at
this point I was tweaking this place so we can pass final
inspection. First up was the basement rail, which I had to
get a new one. Bought it, cut it to the right length, sanded
it down and put a few coats of lacquer on it and it was ready
to go. Anchoring it to the wall wasn’t hard,
but there were a few other things I needed to do before I installed
the other rail. It wasn’t until after the holiday that
I ended up doing that one.
In the mean time, it was time to set up the thing that I've
delayed setting up for way to long...
 
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