The last few days have been a blur

I'm surprised that I survived the last few days, its been non-stop activity.

Last Thursday, I met someone after work to give him a tutorial session on using Apple's Aperture. It was easy enough to answer his questions, and show him how to organize his Aperture library, but it made for a long day.

Friday after work, we prepped the yard for our sod project.


Saturday we put the sod down, and realized that we didn't have enough, but we couldn't do anything about it. The turf farm was closed till Monday morning. Saturday night we went to the Websters' house for dinner to welcome Vin back from his recovery in Richmond.



Sunday morning, we met Dave at Avalon and went mountain biking. After that, we ran to the grocery store, stopped home to water the sod, and went to Vin's to watch the Redskins just beat the Cleveland Browns.

Monday morning, Jenn went to work, and I picked up the rest of the sod and put it down, then went to work around 11. I'm exhausted and I need a nap. But its done, and we have a real yard.

Office renovation

Most of April and May was spent with the office in various states of disrepair. When we decided to have an office, Jenn and I though it would be nicer to remove the trim around the window, closet, door and the horrid access panel to provide a more industrial look. After removing the window trim, I decided to replace the two panels with one large door. It sounds easy, but it took a lot of time, working mostly at night. I'd sand, clean up, and put down some more joint compound to build up the edges where the trim was pulled off. Each layer needed to dry overnight so I could usually only get one step done at a time. I spent a Saturday building a frame and then mounting a drywall panel to it. Once that was up, the paint went up pretty easily.

First carpentry project

Sunday night, I completed my first carpentry project in my new house. It was a relatively simple objective: replace the sagging bottom shelf in a bathroom cabinet. Saturday I picked up the board at Lowes, and Sunday I measured and cut the board.

My first challenge was with my equipment. I had to cut two shelves out of a board, and had no sawhorses or clamps. I wound up holding the board with one hand on my folding camp table, and using a circular saw with the other hand. As you can imagine, the board shifted around. Also, I'm not sure how old the saw blade was (its borrowed), but it really made a mess of the edge.

I made a critical miscalculation in my measurements: I did measure for the shelf to fit into the groove on either side of the cabinet, but I also split the shelf down the middle to get it into the cabinet without removing the middle support piece. when I cut the shelf in two, I failed to adjust the size to account for what the saw would remove. As a result, it was not as good a fit as I would have liked. The split also required building a support underneath to hold up the shelf and keep it from moving around.

Although it did not come out as nice as I hoped, I was proud of myself for getting it as close to right as I did. I think I may regroup and try it a second time.