As some of you might know, the stairway has been a project of mine for a while now. One of the things Jen never really liked was the banister at the top of the stairs. We were going to have to either replace it or remove it either way because it wasn’t installed really well to begin with.
So where’s what we had:
And here’s what we have now:
I took some pics of the process. Nothing to amazing, just a basic frame I threw up, attached with some 10d nails to the existing studs, and drywalled it. The only things of interest were that I used plastic corner beading, and was able to get the drywall super cheap at Menards (like 1.99 for a 4′x4′ scrap piece). In hindsight I wish I had put more screws in the corner beading.
It only has one coat of paint on it right now (Behr Castle Path) but I think it came out as good as it could have.
building a pony wall
Yes I'm stressed, I'm sorry I digressed.
I think we need to make 4 day weekends mandatory, because it was really a good chance to get a lot done, but I also found some time to relax and unwind a bit.
My current project right now is painting the foyer, stairway and upstairs hallway. You’d be shocked how hard it is to paint cove molding, especially when working in tiny areas like this. It’s not exciting but it’s gotta get done I guess.
Somebody asked me how I managed to get to the top of the stairwell to paint it….I was going to originally just use the ladder, but Jen suggested the board, which made reaching the middle bits a lot easier:
I somehow doubt this is OSHA compliant
And here’s the sad thing….the most exciting thing about this to me is I get to put these really cool new central vacuum covers up that Terri picked up for us:
Old on the left, new on the right
your just an empty cage, if you kill the bird
Today is a pretty good day. And yesterday was exactly what the doctor ordered.
I pretty much spent the whole day playing video games w/ Jen, and I tell you it’s amazing how much doing something fun can really help de-stress you. All I did was play Serious Sam 2 all day on the HDTV (awesome, btw) and then stuff myself with delicious food that Jen made for us.
Today I’m planning on heading out to Home Depot, I forgot to get the ceiling paint reshook when I got the wall paint done a few days ago, so I’m hoping that in a little bit the crowd’s will have died down. I’ve already put some spackle on some trouble spots. With any luck I’ll get the ceiling painted today, but i’m not 100% because I found a nail pop I missed that I had to patch in the ceiling drywall.
Oh well if that doesn’t work out, I’ll just work on installing the basement door. It’s the last one I have left to do in the whole house. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Here’s an interesting video, we’re all just a bunch of monky’s:
The friend nobody likes
I’ve been spending a whole lot of time working on the stairs in our house.
Originally we had planned on just ripping them out and replacing them, because they were carpet grade stairs. Now if you don’t know what carpet grade stairs means let me share with you.
Basically, it means the stairs are crap. They’ look like crap and while they are structurally sound, you could never salvage them if you removed the carpeting. The bull nosing is splintered and cracked right off in chunks, and there are knots all over. Considering we removed all the carpeting in the house years ago, you can see this posed a problem.
One thing I wasn’t expecting though were estimates for 2k to replace the stairs, and that was even with me removing the old ones myself. Plus since the drywall was already in place, I was given the impression that aside from installation damage, they’d have to be made a little smaller to fit.
So I’ve been working on them, sanding, priming, wood filling broken bits, using a hair dryer to scrap liquid nails out of the corners. Pretty much that’s what I’ve been doing lately…if anyone was wondering. On a side note…yeah it sucks. When I get everything done, we’re gonna paint the risers and stringers the same as the trim (swiss coffee) and then carpet the threads (tops of the stairs) with some type of berber, tight knit carpet. I have high hopes it will turn out good.
Stairs when we moved in
All carpeting taken off
Where I’m at today
And for no reason, some pictures of cats I’ve been to lazy to post:
Sexy moxie…bringin’ Rubenesque back
Insert “in ur” cat joke here
I love it
Oh no..to bad, so sad 
I must have a fever
Because that’s the only reason I can see for why I suddenly want an Xbox 360 for no good reason.
It all started yesterday, when somebody posted a link to about a deal they’re going to have. 1000 xbox 360′s are going to go on sale for $100 bucks. At first I was all like “hell yeah, quick don’t tell anyone about it so I can get one”. And then I thought about it a little bit…
First of all, I’d have to add a hard drive. So $99 bucks for a 20gb hard drive (20 gig’s for 99? wtf kinda deal is that??). That’s so I can play Xbox games, like Halo 2. Then of course I’d have to buy a better cable, which would tack on an additional $39. I mean with the TV we have now it would be just a freakin’ waste to not get high def.
So we’re up to about $250…even if I was able to get one. At that point why not just drive out to Microcenter and buy one with a $100 dollar rebate, and get the additional benefit of wireless controllers?
Then I remember we need to replace the roof, pay of credit cards, and other stuff…..hell I haven’t even finished all the games I have currently. Must be some subliminal advertising at work here.
People are f**king nuts when it comes to PS3
For that price it better make dinner and blow me
I really hate people sometimes. What bullshit.
ya know what
Almost more than spending 24 hours creating an excel spreadsheet, you know what I love?
Writing my own performance reviews. Seriously…who thought this was a good idea? Of course I’m only going to focus on the positive and not the negative. Believe it or not, it can be hard to think of nice things to say about your self after a while……while not mentioning the time you took 8000 people down for a weekend because you forgot to set the ACL to loopback in the router.
oh yeah, Jen will probably kill me….
spam increase
Ya know, it’s bad enough my email spam is crazy….but now I’ve got somebody spaming my website…..oh no…what ever shall I do.
I mean how could I possibly delete every single one of them easily with just the push of a little itty button. I mean it’s not like I completely control everything that happens here….
oh. wait. Yeah I kinda do don’t I? This is pretty much the part where I say suck it….suck it hard you idiots.
Finished Lego Star Wars 2
Really fun 2 player game, it’s a shame there are no more….it was a brilliant franchise.
100% baby…oh yeah!
