What else could it be? This is Crash, my golden retriever. He weighs 115lb (not overweight, either, he’s just that big!), he will beat you to death with his excited tail, and is generally a furball of happy.
You may have noticed the last four posts resemble an old adage.. It wasn’t intentional, at least, it wasn’t when I posted the first one. Something new, something old, something moo, something gold. Cheesy, yes. I just hope that someone enjoyed it!
Do you hear about one-day projects? 24 hour turnarounds? Things to do in a weekend?
Have you ever looked at the instructions, and the expenses and decided that it is way too expensive, or that there is no way you could ever finish the job in the time suggested?
I know I have, on many occasions. So many things I could have accomplished if I had twice the time allotted. Or twice the money suggested.
This project is slightly misleading, because the most expensive part was actually the cheapest. On Saturday we took two trips to Harrisonburg, firstly for a wedding and the second for dinner. On the way out the second time, I noticed sitting in a driveway a large piece of furniture with a sign saying “Free You Haul!” This was to be the cornerstone of our Sunday activities.
We’ve been meaning to clean up “the green room” for a while, it is where a lot of our stuff is stored, it is also where my desktop is, and was a work room before we realized there was nowhere near enough space. We’ve also been looking for more storage options, because while bookshelves are good, they aren’t the be-all and end-all of our problem. This item, which turned out to be a buffet, seemed ideal.
And so that is how my Sunday morning started. We got in the truck and drove the mile or so to the place, were excited to find it still in situ, and loaded it. We drove home, unloaded, and assessed.
The two end doors were off, and needed to be reattached (we pulled them right back off again after we started actually planning..). There was putty or something along the top and the sides, which appears to be filling in a design, but it would have been too time consuming to take it all off and so we elected to sand it smooth and just paint it, like the rest.
This is what we started with. Two drawers, and three doors to a long combined shelf. According to the stencil on the back it is made of Walnut. It was light enough (until we painted it) and in relatively good condition. We presume it to be fairly old, as the center and right-hand doors don’t seem to fit quite right. We may never know!
Anyway, this is what we started with. We began by eating lunch. An excellent way to start, in my opinion! We then headed to Harrisonburg where we visited Walmart (Crash needed food) and then Home Depot where we purchased unto ourselves a quart of red paint ($14), a spray can of chalkboard paint ($5) and a roll of masking tape ($3). Total cost was approx. $24, including tax.
The first job was to sand down. There was a layer of varnish, easily taken care of. We also pushed back the layer of…whatever it was…to about where the fascia was showing through in most places.
Next Kelly painted the doors while I started painting the top surface. Crash hung out and supervised.
With one layer of paint on, we moved inside to start working on cleaning the room.
Two hours go by…
We came out to check how it was going. It was supposed to take around two hours to dry, and parts of it needed a second coat. While Kelly was working on that, I masked off the doors and broke out the chalkboard paint. Kelly wanted blackboard surfaces to write on so she could write lists of what was in the drawers and such, and be able to rub things off and such without having to completely relabel things, or be crossing things off on paper and being messy. She has suggested the same thing for a future kitchen, but the idea of chalk dust and food in the same vicinity makes me a little uneasy. This will, however, give me a chance to see how it works in practice (without the food!) and be able to make a more educated choice.
Now, the chalkboard paint is a spray on. It dries to a point of touch-up after 20 minutes (which we utilized), and after 24 hours is safe to draw on. Something to keep in mind if you are planning it for a child’s room, or similar. Don’t give them the chalk until the next day! For us, we didn’t have any chalk and so Kelly was planning to pick some up while at work, which meant it would be around 22 hours anyway.
Around this time we organized food. Two medium pizza’s from Dominos, please! Good times. I finished mine on Monday.
We touched up the doors and finished clearing a path in the green room to where we wanted to put the thing. The plan was to put it under the window (where we had storage boxes and such).
Crash approved.
Once the chalkboard paint was finished (another 20 minutes later), we reattached the handles and then reattached the doors.
We gave the other paint a few more minutes to dry while we checked clearance for moving it inside.
Now in place in it’s new home, it actually looks pretty good. The plan, for now, is to use it as an art/storage cabinet where it won’t be seen by a lot of people. If it moves to a more public location after we move then we may need to consider at least touching up in places that we rushed.
Looking at the photo time stamps, we took about 3.5 hours from arriving home with the supplies (we picked the thing up at about 11 in the morning, arrived home with paint and such at 2:45. We moved it into the house around 8:10-8:15).
Not bad, really..
One of my facebook friends (someone I went to school with many years ago) apparently was hacked or scammed or something, and sent out messages to me and to all my friends. I will probably take a look at my security settings for that reason later, but I wanted to post a couple of images that came up as a result of it.
In short, I am ‘friends’ with two dogs. The first is Fetch, he is the dog of a couple of friends, Ben and Bethany, and his response was rather amusing. I may be biased (though I didn’t write it), but I found the second response funnier – that of Crash.
Enjoy!
And …
And why won’t you go away and let me sleep?
Well, at least it has been a while since I had trouble sleeping. I just hope it isn’t related to the new firmness of the bed.
Good news and potentially bad news! The good news is, I replaced the severely damaged boxspring that was under our bed and built a new one. The still good news is that it cost around $80 and took 3 days (not working 8 or 9 hours a day either, probably could have finished it in 2 had I worked my butt off). The bad news is that now our mattress has a much more solid support and in turn has become more solid. I’m not sure if that is related to my inability to sleep or if I’m just not nearly tired enough, but it’s entirely plausible.
The design of the new frame thing is simple: I bought 6 pieces of 2″x6″(x8′) and 12 pieces of 1″x4″(x8′) and cut to suit. It’s a queen-sized bed, so the dimensions were supposed to be 60″(W)x80″(L). Turns out the mattress is something like 78″ long, but I’m not going to complain endlessly about it.
With some help from Randy and the use of his circular saw, electric drill and sander, I constructed a basic design. It has a 2×6 frame with two paired 2×6’s down the middle for extra support. There are then 12 slats screwed down on top. To compare this to the old boxspring design, it looked like there were 10 1×2 pieces for slats, something smaller than a 2×6 but bigger than a 1×4 (no, it wasn’t a 2×4 or a 1×6) down the middle, and a not-very-rigid frame around the edges. I’d patched several of the slats on one occasion, and two of these had broken again.
Anyway, here are photos:
This was the break at the foot of the bed. I’d repaired it before, but it’s one of the common landing points when Crash jumps up.
This one is looking from the foot towards the head. You can see a couple of the patches I’d made, as well as the big break in the piece down the middle. Again, all the pieces broken resemble the points where Crash typically lands on the bed.
I kept thinking through the process that I should be taking step-by-step photos, but a) they aren’t really necessary for such a simple thing, and b) by the time I actually got around to doing anything about it it was too late to bother, so I waited until it was done (and then nearly forgot).
This is the frame as it was, completed, sitting in the garage waiting to be brought inside and placed on the metal frame that holds it above the floor (came with the bed, I’m not responsible for that part). You can see the 2×6 around the edges and the double 2×6 down the middle.
Carefully note that at this point the ends of both the mattress and the base are pushed against the wall of our room. This is the difference between the 80″ long base and the “80″“ long mattress (ha ha..).
I’d take a wider angle view of the complete bed, but the rest of the room is….camera shy, at this point in time ;-).
In other news, I have some more train photos going up on my Flickr account, and I’ll try to get some new scenery photos up too. I’m hoping to write some kind of ‘newsletter’ or just slightly generalized (with a touch of personal) letters home to New Zealand to family and friends. I’d really like to go home to visit some time, but that (as always) depends on money and our ability to save enough of it. It’s hard to prioritize so often, when there are things we desperately need that cost money, along with things we really want, in conjunction with little things that are really nice (but mount up quickly..). IT WILL HAPPEN. I SHALL HAVE MY SUMMER CHRISTMAS ONCE MORE!
I was going through my photo collection (it’s HUGE) yesterday and found some photos and a couple of videos of Crash, our 100lb Golden Retriever, from within a week or so of getting him from the SPCA, aged 3 months.
He was always a big dog, and I’m slightly surprised to think that in the photos he seems so little. It was also amusing seeing some of the photos and videos, looking at characteristics he had then that he still has now, and things he doesn’t really do any more. Mostly just the way he lays down awkwardly twisted..
So I was walking my dog yesterday afternoon, when I ran into a family friend. She asked how the job was going, and she asked if I knew a particular person (as I get from time to time – almost everyone in the county either works for Rosetta Stone or knows someone who does. At best it seems there is something like 3 degrees of separation for any person living in Rockingham County or Harrisonburg and employees of Rosetta Stone). It was a rare case where I remembered enough of the name to look them up on the internal directory, and ran across their blog.
I took a brief look at some of the posts and I’m already intrigued. I may spend some of my spare time (I get a lot of that at work, with reimaging and other things I have to wait for) going back through the archives. If you like computer stuff, take a look, but on the surface at least there seems to be something for just about everyone..
http://blog.aharbick.com/2010/11/build_assuming_a_paying_custom.html
Yeah, it was a fairly boring day today. I sat around and looked at Craigslist and eBay both for jobs and computer stuff. I’m partly pricing rackmount servers and/or equipment with hopes of starting towards the wish-list, partly getting ideas and otherwise just looking to see what is out there.
After “Lunch” Kelly and I went to the two local thrift stores to just look. Kelly bought a tree thing that had photos hanging from it (I think she’ll be using it for earrings and such) and some pants, and I bought a balancing-Kiwis puzzle.
Tomorrow I need to watch a training video for work that I’ve had for a while and haven’t gotten around to watching, and we’re also supposed to go and watch “Where the Wild Things Are.”
I’d like to visit Target and the Halloween store tomorrow if we can, and see if we can’t get Crash either a Bee or a Dinosaur costume. It would be hilarious if we can..
Speaking of Crash, we need to walk him shortly as it’s getting rainy and we’re going out this evening..
I woke up this morning, discovered I don’t like Fruit Loops, and set to work on my new website project (for which I am yet to purchase a domain, so I’m not talking about it at all!). I didn’t get very far, though I decided it is probably going to need to be a custom CMS rather than using something existing. I have a basic layout ready, I do need to work on it’s compatibility with Internet Explorer as it doesn’t show very well.
But that’s not what this posting is about. This posting is about my awesome puppy (who I need to take new photos of, probably tomorrow) who has proven over the last few days how much he can be trusted without a tether. On Monday I grilled my lunch and had him hanging out outside with me without a leash or tether, and he behaved well. The last few nights I’ve put his leash in my pocket and just untethered him to bring him indoors for the evening, and tonight he won the game (gah, I just lost The Game) by proving he can go outside, pee, and come back in without a chaperon. Of course, for the next few weeks I’ll have his leash in my pocket and be standing outside ready to run if I need to, but he has shown he can behave with less strict supervision. I’m looking forward to letting him roam free in a house at night when we finally move out!
I’m trying to make the best use of my morning time before I go to work rather than sleeping all day, in theory it will help me when it is time to leave my 2:30-5:30 job for full time work.
This morning I took Crash with me and went to Food Lion and bought breakfast stuff, lunch stuff, and some drinks. Breakfast will last most of the week, lunch stuff all week (with some to spare) and the drinks should last until next pay day. I filled up the truck, which should last two weeks unless I have to go somewhere much other than work, and after breakfast and lunch I took Crash on a walk.
Tonight I applied for another job, this time in Christiansburg, as an entry level help desk analyst. The pay is crap (for an IT job), but it’s better than what Kelly makes full time, and we always said that another job with similar pay would be enough to get ourselves off the ground.
We’re working on getting Crash to behave without needing a leash on, and today he hung out with me for about half an hour without a tether while I was grilling, and tonight stayed within hearing distance on the walk inside. He is still tethered and crated while we’re not around to watch him, naturally ;-).
Hopefully tomorrow I will get up and have breakfast, followed by an hour or two of programming on my current web-project, I also need to make a bunch of sandwiches to go in the fridge for the rest of the week. I’ll also continue to keep my eyes open on the various Craigslist pages and maybe checking out CareerBuilder and the other job site rounds, JMU, EMU, RMH, JenzaBar, DNR, etc.
But that is tomorrow, and tonight it is getting late, thus I shall sleep. Goodnight, world.
Yesterday was a long day.
It involved a 1.5 hour interview for a summer job and around 8 hours of birthday party, both back to back (seperated only by the half hour drive from the camp back to the house).
Kelly was particularly stressed as she’d expected at least a one hour gap between our return at around 4:30 and when people started arriving, and the first people arrived at about 4:35.
The fire was fueled further by the fact that among the first people were two rather unusual characters who didn’t fit in with our group very well but managed to set the tone and mood for most of the evening. Several people had their parts to play in them being allowed to ‘crash’ the party, me included, but I don’t think any one person can (or should) take the full responsibility for it.
Those two aside it was an awesome time with everyone together and hanging out. Crash and Bella had a great time playing, Crash ate a whole lot of hot dogs and demonstrated that he really can lay down on command … if you have food.
The mood of the party finally changed at around 9 when the weird people were taken home (at their request, I believe), and we were all able to relax again. Ethan helped me out getting the fire started, which was still going strong at midnight, and about 2am when I went to check on it before sleeping it was still rather emberous. I doused it with several large cups of water, and it looked like it was almost completely out, but when I took Crash out to pee this morning (wow, I didn’t remember that part..) there was a lot more ash than wood left and it had done what I wanted it to do – burnt itself out.
So now it is 12:00pm. I’m laying in bed with a massive headache, if it’s from lack of sleep catching up or too much sleep while trying to catch up, I don’t know. Crash has been amazing despite being in his crate since about 8 or 9 when I refilled both sides of his food bowl (it’s one of those double-bowled bowl things) with water. I really need to get up and let him out, we’ll probably play outside for a bit but that will last entirely based on how I feel. So far the prospects aren’t looking too good.