Do you ever get tired of having catalogs sent to your house? Things you just couldn't care less about, and if you did, you would go to their web site? Here is a web site to visit:
Catalog Choice
It is a non-profit, free service that makes it easy to request specific catalogs stop being delivered. Unfortunately, you can't just say "stop all of them", but it makes it very easy to do when you are going through your mail. Just plop all those catalogs in a pile and when the pile gets high enough, go in and request a stop for each.
Save the trees! Save them mail carriers!
Monday, November 26, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Fall has fallen
I left the camera on and drained the battery, so I don't have pictures, but watching the end of fall is amazing. The trees in the pictures from a week ago have lost every leaf. However, some of the trees are a little more tight-fisted and refuse to give up their foliage. Last night saw temperatures around 23, so I think that was the trigger for the forest to give up and go dormant.
There is a 30 foot Crepe Myrtle tree out front. Until yesterday, it still had almost every leaf. This morning, with absolutely no wind, it is dropping leaves at a rate of 10-20 per second. Constantly. It looks and sounds like a pretty rain shower, dressed in yellows and reds. By noon it will be as naked as the rest of the yard. It really is gorgeous to watch.
There is a 30 foot Crepe Myrtle tree out front. Until yesterday, it still had almost every leaf. This morning, with absolutely no wind, it is dropping leaves at a rate of 10-20 per second. Constantly. It looks and sounds like a pretty rain shower, dressed in yellows and reds. By noon it will be as naked as the rest of the yard. It really is gorgeous to watch.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Another remodel
Last year, we have a deck converted to a porch while we were in Utah. This year, we had our master bathroom remodeled. It is nice to have a builder (Steve Kjellberg) you trust so much that you can have all this done in your absence. Unfortunately, he thought we were coming home a few days later, so we still have some trim work to be done.
We had the entire roomredone. New tile, cabinet, fixtures, lights, etc. The shower was enlarged a bit.
There are two of these new cabinets, one on each side of the door. You can see a bit of the new floor tile.
And here is the deco tile that was used. It is around the bath, shower, and mirrors in the cabinets. Quite pretty!
It is hard to capture everything without a mongo-wide angle lens, but these pictures capture the "style" of it.
We had the entire roomredone. New tile, cabinet, fixtures, lights, etc. The shower was enlarged a bit.
There are two of these new cabinets, one on each side of the door. You can see a bit of the new floor tile.
And here is the deco tile that was used. It is around the bath, shower, and mirrors in the cabinets. Quite pretty!
It is hard to capture everything without a mongo-wide angle lens, but these pictures capture the "style" of it.
Fall in Raleigh
The drought has been terrible in Raleigh this year. The city is down to a 115 day water supply. My dad said that the leaves on the trees were starting to turn brown and drop. Then Raleigh got a nice, long rain over a few days. Nothing to make much impact to the drought, but the trees sure seemed to be happy. We got home just in time for the color. All of these are from right in front of the house.
Being gone through the entire growing season means fields of weeds and lots of messy plants. As an omen, there was one gorgeous rose blooming on some plants Julie's dad gave us years ago.
It is good to be back in Raleigh and see friends and the neighborhood.
Being gone through the entire growing season means fields of weeds and lots of messy plants. As an omen, there was one gorgeous rose blooming on some plants Julie's dad gave us years ago.
It is good to be back in Raleigh and see friends and the neighborhood.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
In for real
No pictures today, but great news. We have moved all our stuff and have been living in our new house since Monday. The condo is empty and has been completely cleaned. Hopefully it will sell soon.
Getting settled is a lot of work. Now I remember why I move so very infrequently. It has been a week of almost constant moving and putting away. Long days, measured simply by piles. Piles of stuff left at the condo, piles of stuff in the garage at the house. Piles in each room. We are now down to zero piles in the condo, a few around the house, and a garage that can't begin to fit a car in any of the three bays. Oh well.
A few more things have been done on the house, but I discovered one of the most important. Back on July 11th, 2006, I noted that our construction was official because we had our own Port-a-Potty. Now it is gone. I guess the work is over.
We are heading back to Raleigh for a short stay. While we're gone, our punch list will hopefully see great progress. Then we can really settle down in time for the skiing and holidays.
Getting settled is a lot of work. Now I remember why I move so very infrequently. It has been a week of almost constant moving and putting away. Long days, measured simply by piles. Piles of stuff left at the condo, piles of stuff in the garage at the house. Piles in each room. We are now down to zero piles in the condo, a few around the house, and a garage that can't begin to fit a car in any of the three bays. Oh well.
A few more things have been done on the house, but I discovered one of the most important. Back on July 11th, 2006, I noted that our construction was official because we had our own Port-a-Potty. Now it is gone. I guess the work is over.
We are heading back to Raleigh for a short stay. While we're gone, our punch list will hopefully see great progress. Then we can really settle down in time for the skiing and holidays.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Well, it's about damn time!
Finally. After 18 months of waiting, we have a house. We got our Certificate of Occupancy today, so we can officially live there. We start moving our smaller and more fragile stuff tomorrow and over the weekend. The movers come to get all the furniture on Monday. Yeah!!!!
A few more pictures:
Modeled after China's Great Wall and Tiananmen Square, but larger, our driveway and retaining wall.
We did this epoxy coating on the garage floor. It looks really nice, making the place look a lot more finished. Supposedly it will be much more resistant to stains, salt, oil and such.
When your driveway has more pavers than Tiananmen Square, it takes a lot to heat it for melting snow. The 1,000,000 BTUs of boiler are above. These are the pumps and controls for the glycol-water mix that heats the pavers. Do we need it? They pressure washed the pavers this morning and where there was shade, there was a thin, slick layer of ice at 10:00am.
This is Julie's work of art. She saw some pictures in magazines, pieced ideas together, and crafted an arched stone facade for the cook top and blower. It has nice little tile niches on each side for storing spices, oils, etc. It ended up taking a great deal of thought from the builder, carpenter, stone mason and tile guy to figure out how to could be built. Success!
Faux, faux, and more faux. We like how the walls take on more character with a faux finish, but it turns out that most of the things thought "faux", aren't. Faux painting is really about painting something to look like something else. This is an example of an electric plug in our kitchen's tile backsplash.
This, while thought of as faux, is really a textured paint style. This is our very purple downstairs powder room, minus it's mirror. The tile guy is over building the mirror as I type.
Another stylistic finish in an art niche.
But the most outrageous one is in my office. Hard to tell from the picture, but it is painted to look like the many layers of old weathered paint you might see on an old house or barn. The top layer is done over glue to make it old and crackly looking.
Well, that should be all for the "building our house" pictures. Now it is time to go move in.
A few more pictures:
Modeled after China's Great Wall and Tiananmen Square, but larger, our driveway and retaining wall.
We did this epoxy coating on the garage floor. It looks really nice, making the place look a lot more finished. Supposedly it will be much more resistant to stains, salt, oil and such.
When your driveway has more pavers than Tiananmen Square, it takes a lot to heat it for melting snow. The 1,000,000 BTUs of boiler are above. These are the pumps and controls for the glycol-water mix that heats the pavers. Do we need it? They pressure washed the pavers this morning and where there was shade, there was a thin, slick layer of ice at 10:00am.
This is Julie's work of art. She saw some pictures in magazines, pieced ideas together, and crafted an arched stone facade for the cook top and blower. It has nice little tile niches on each side for storing spices, oils, etc. It ended up taking a great deal of thought from the builder, carpenter, stone mason and tile guy to figure out how to could be built. Success!
Faux, faux, and more faux. We like how the walls take on more character with a faux finish, but it turns out that most of the things thought "faux", aren't. Faux painting is really about painting something to look like something else. This is an example of an electric plug in our kitchen's tile backsplash.
This, while thought of as faux, is really a textured paint style. This is our very purple downstairs powder room, minus it's mirror. The tile guy is over building the mirror as I type.
Another stylistic finish in an art niche.
But the most outrageous one is in my office. Hard to tell from the picture, but it is painted to look like the many layers of old weathered paint you might see on an old house or barn. The top layer is done over glue to make it old and crackly looking.
Well, that should be all for the "building our house" pictures. Now it is time to go move in.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Coming into the home stretch
Well, the house is nearing completion as the snow becomes a bit more frequent. We now believe we will be moving in right after Halloween (perhaps the 2nd). If you double click to see the bigger picture, you can tell we have had some landscaping. Mostly aspens, spruces, and Canada Reds. We even have a couple of hundred square feet of lawn. This is our first grass that we don't intend to spray with round-up. I wouldn't have done it, but I wanted a place where the dog could be outside and still avoid mud.
Lots of plants going into our Great Wall of Park City, the 750,000 pound retaining wall. This is a collection of shrubs with some vines to grow up the wall and some junipers to drape down.
Out front, you can see a million foot (hoof) prints in the dirt. These are from the local deer cruising through, check out the newly planted salad bar.
More faux painting. This is in the dining room. They are nearing completion.
The stone guys finished the stone arch going from the living room into the kitchen. The bright flash makes it a bit ugly. It isn't really.
Phone and ethernet are in and wired neatly.
Cable is in, but not terribly complete or neat yet.
Which just leaves us with all these. I am sure they do something important.
Two weeks! We are keeping our fingers crossed.
Lots of plants going into our Great Wall of Park City, the 750,000 pound retaining wall. This is a collection of shrubs with some vines to grow up the wall and some junipers to drape down.
Out front, you can see a million foot (hoof) prints in the dirt. These are from the local deer cruising through, check out the newly planted salad bar.
More faux painting. This is in the dining room. They are nearing completion.
The stone guys finished the stone arch going from the living room into the kitchen. The bright flash makes it a bit ugly. It isn't really.
Phone and ethernet are in and wired neatly.
Cable is in, but not terribly complete or neat yet.
Which just leaves us with all these. I am sure they do something important.
Two weeks! We are keeping our fingers crossed.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Moooooo se
Late this afternoon we got a call from one of our neighbors, Todd. He knows that I like taking pictures and I really enjoy moose. He said there was a family hanging out in the condos in the lower part of our neighborhood. Of course, I drop what I am doing and wander down.
This is a really mediocre picture, but it is the only one where I could get dad (lower) in the same photo as mom (left) and the kids (following mom).
Dad is pretty majestic looking. I think he was posing.
Dad is seriously big. He is a good bit further down the road than the car.
Whew. It's been a tough day. Time to hang out and rest on the nice squishy grass.
Meanwhile, mom is in charge of watching Steve while the kids eat a tree. The sad part is that the tree is in the back yard of our good friends Bill and Loris Benson.
Mom finally decided that dad had a good idea of lounging about and must have decided that I was little threat to the kids. I am shooting this picture from about 40 feet away. Normally I would not get this close, but I am confortably set on a flight of stairs and I am poised to run if mom gets annoyed.
Lots of fun. I just wish they would do this on a nice sunny day. It was 6:30 in the evening with light snow and the sun behind the clouds. Oh well.....
This is a really mediocre picture, but it is the only one where I could get dad (lower) in the same photo as mom (left) and the kids (following mom).
Dad is pretty majestic looking. I think he was posing.
Dad is seriously big. He is a good bit further down the road than the car.
Whew. It's been a tough day. Time to hang out and rest on the nice squishy grass.
Meanwhile, mom is in charge of watching Steve while the kids eat a tree. The sad part is that the tree is in the back yard of our good friends Bill and Loris Benson.
Mom finally decided that dad had a good idea of lounging about and must have decided that I was little threat to the kids. I am shooting this picture from about 40 feet away. Normally I would not get this close, but I am confortably set on a flight of stairs and I am poised to run if mom gets annoyed.
Lots of fun. I just wish they would do this on a nice sunny day. It was 6:30 in the evening with light snow and the sun behind the clouds. Oh well.....
Housing updates
Things are moving along nicely and the fit and finish is much improved. Here you can see the ceiling, lights, and cabinets in the dining room.
In the kitchen, all but one little strip of granite is in. The big appliances got installed this week. Most of the plumbing fixtures are in.
This is our master bedroom. It's all done other than the faux painting.
One side of the master bath. Clearly, we could use some mirrors.
Stair railings are all in.
The faux painting just started. Kind of hard to tell from the picture, but it makes a HUGE difference on how the room looks.
They are almost done doing the driveway pavers. Between the patio out back and the driveway, I would guess they have put in 100 pallets of pavers. They all get done by hand, one at a time.
You can also see the snow on the roof. It is snowing again this afternoon.
I think the house is about 2-3 weeks from being able to move in. The heat is on. Almost all of the lights work. Still waiting to turn on all the water.
In the kitchen, all but one little strip of granite is in. The big appliances got installed this week. Most of the plumbing fixtures are in.
This is our master bedroom. It's all done other than the faux painting.
One side of the master bath. Clearly, we could use some mirrors.
Stair railings are all in.
The faux painting just started. Kind of hard to tell from the picture, but it makes a HUGE difference on how the room looks.
They are almost done doing the driveway pavers. Between the patio out back and the driveway, I would guess they have put in 100 pallets of pavers. They all get done by hand, one at a time.
You can also see the snow on the roof. It is snowing again this afternoon.
I think the house is about 2-3 weeks from being able to move in. The heat is on. Almost all of the lights work. Still waiting to turn on all the water.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
More fall colors
This is just a collection of pictures I took today up near Snowbasin. It is about an hour from Park City. Jasper and I drove about 160 miles and did a fair amount of hiking.
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