Walls-Be-Gone

Meg decided that she didn't like those little wall-looking-thingies between the kitchen and the dining room. So I had to get rid of them...

First problem: The blade of the knife I was using to cut the sheetrock snapped out. Over a week later, I still have a pretty nasty scar.

We are going to replace the kitchen and dining room floors, but in the meantime, there's going to be either a hole or a not-very good looking patch there. We kind of forgot about the floor when we tackled this thing :)

House Projects - Biggest Update since like forever

---Fan + Porch Light.
Since we moved into the house, the dining room's light kept blowing up every light bulb we put in it. We asked a neighbor, who is an electrician, to fix it, but he started and never finished, leaving a bunch of loose cables dangling from the ceiling from the longest time. After his "repair," the porch light quit working. I got sick of nobody helping us out, even when we were willing to pay! So I went on the internet and learned how to fix the thing; I installed a ceiling fan, and now the porch light works again. I called a city guy to check the work, since I was a little worried about some loose cables that the former owners left on the attic, and he said that once I capped those cables, everything would be fine, safe, and that it would follow the code. Awesomeness.



---Shower Tiles.
A few months ago, Meg decided to replace the tiles in the shower. We had some really ugly white and green tiles, and we replaced them with marble tiles. Matt helped us a lot. Without him, it would have taken us days.



---Water Heater + No Longer Looking Like Crap Laundry Room.
Last year, we noticed that the tiles we had installed in the laundry room were coming loose. When I checked what the problem was, I noticed that the floor under the tiles was actually wet. That's how we found out that our water heater was leaking. Awesome, huh? So, the floor was wet, and the water had reached the wall, which was getting a little moldy.

Enter new water heater.

We wanted a smaller one, since everything feels so tight in that room. We finally went for a tankless one, which is supposed to be more cost effective, as it saves on gas and energy, since it only works when you actually need hot water. Also, since it produces hot water "on demand," and it heats the water as it passes through the tank, the hot water never, ever runs out.

I also had to replace a portion of the wall, which was very wet, and we had to re-tile. The nice thing is that now we have all new appliances in that room, that we will have no more leaks, ever, and that we got a tax deduction that saved us from having to pay any taxes last year. The not so nice thing? Our water heater broke, I had to fix the wall, and re-tile the damn room.

We have so much more space in the laundry room now, that we could put in a nice piece of furniture we found at Ikea which we use for storing shoes. On top of it, Meg painted a huge chalk board.

My First Printed T-Shirt!!!

After like 20 failed attempts, I finally figured out how to burn a good image on the screen printing screen, and printed my first t-shirt!!! This is the "Yo Gabe Gabe" design, rip off of Yo Gabba Gabba, of course. I liked the stenciled Gabe, and I wanted to write something other than just "Gabe" under the picture (I didn't want it to look like an obituary or something), and I came up with this, after watching my first (and only) Gabba Gabba episode at Chad's.

The result is not great. The image is crooked, there is ink where there shouldn't be, and there isn't ink where there should be, but I did it! I'm doing more tomorrow, and I'll start my video tutorial soon, so people don't have to go through the crap I had to go through when trying to learn how to do this.

So, buy your "Yo Gabe Gabe" t-shirt. They're only $50 and they go to a great cause (me).

Yeah, I Know!

Me: Meg, did it rain?

Meg: Who rained?

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Utterly Uninteresting and Irrelevant Entry

School is out. I have two months until I have to come back, so I'll try to take advantage of the free time! Unfortunately, we're too broke to travel. We already reserved/paid for our Vegas trip this month, but other than that, I don't see us doing much on that department. Some stuff I need to do this summer:

- Finish the garden boxes and hopefully plant something

- Sell all that crap in my garage

- Make that dirt patch under my front window look nice

- Mulch e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e

- Paint the outside of the house. Years of sprinkler abuse have definitely taken a toll on the siding

- Get rid of that damn, immortal Chinese elm growing by our garage

- Visit all our friends that had babies and that I was too busy/lazy to visit but my guilty conscience won't let me ignore anymore

- Plan my school year

Some stuff I want to do this summer:

- Learn to do screen printing, start my business doing that, and make bank off it

- Have night-long movie marathon on the projector. I already tried it, but I fell asleep 15 minutes into the first movie (I have already watch the first half of Sherlock Holmes five times)

- Teach Gabe how to play racquetball and go hang out at the Weber State gym twice a week

- Hang out at cafes and talk about how much cooler the French are with highly educated, liberal minded people that somehow I will meet this summer

That's it for now. If I can think of something else, I'll post...

PS: Yes, it should say "electrolites" instead of "electolites" up there. I'll fix it one of these day.