Snowing in the house.

Fig 1 - Tuesday night after work I was greeted with this sight - Christmas wonderland!

Fig 2. Wednesday evening I came home to this.

The last few days have been awful, the house was covered in a layer of fine white dust. Big and Little Luis sanded the mud for a tight and smooth museum finish. The walls look much better now, previously the walls and ceiling had a horrible texture application.

Fig 3. The rickety staircase is still up, the new one has not arrived yet.

The appliances arrived today, the build is moving quickly ahead. Even the kitchen cabinet fuck-up is being fixed (it was my fuck-up, I need to proof plans more carefully in the future). I must admit, our contractor is a great guy. His easy temperament, professionalism, good sense of design and ability to give me the bottom line has made this re-model relatively painless. He never goes into specifics unless I ask for them. All I need to know is if it can be done and the costs involved.

Fig 4. The kitchen has been put back together - the lid, electrical, plumbing, pony wall, ventilation.

In addition, Steven and his extended family are fantastic carpenters, plumbers, electrician, HVAC and drywallers. Another telling sign is the bathroom, they always clean up after themselves. Other contractors (i.e., Chad) make a mess in there (missing the toilet, pouring plastering mud down the toilet etc ...).

Fig 5. The appliances in the garage.

Kitchen Cabinets

I ventured to East County this morning to look at the cabinets. I had my doubts after seeing the sample last week, I was going to have a do-over and choose the skins myself. My concerns about the wood grain were allayed when I saw the mock-up. The wood grains were still too far apart, but seeing the doors together facilitated the grouping of the grains so that they appeared cohesive and thinner (those Gestaltist were onto something I suppose). Once the header and toe kicks are installed it will look clean and tight, sort of like my ass. My only concern is the finish. I want a more natural low sheen finish, I do not want a glossy finish. The last thing I want is for it to look like an Ikea showroom piece. or worse yet the typical North American kitchen (read: ugly as fuck and expensive to boot).

The corner unit is pretty cool. We chose to go with a unit that utilizes the hard to reach corner space. I hope the mechanism can withstand the wife's gorilla hands, she is tough on hardware.

As far as the house, nothing new to report. They are sanding and priming this week. The pictures are pretty boring so I'll spare you the photos of giant dust clouds and piles of white particulate.

The feeling one gets ... FUCK YEAH!

The feeling one gets when they finish a project at work is one of the best, especially when it is a Matlab application. Matlab is especially painful for me as I write line-by-line pseudo code, this makes debugging really, really shitty (ask LT, he loves rewriting other's line-by-line code). The program took three months to write and it finally works! FUCK YEAH! My laziness was the impetus for the present program. I abhor running three hour experiments, it is such a waste of a day when I could be outside instead. With the new program I can, hopefully, collect all the data I need in 20 minutes. I am crossing my fingers that this works, sometimes reality does not quite follow the scribblings in my lab note book.

What a great way to start off the weekend! FUCK YEAH!

Fast forward two weeks ...

The wife and I came back from vacation last Friday. Coming back home has been a downer - house is completely destroyed; missing the family; surrounded by bumpkins; sleep deprivation; jet lag; work; cabinet guy fucking up ...

It was a pleasant surprise yesterday evening to find a package in the mail. The package was from TC5 (no relation to TC3 of Quiksand and Rival Schools fame), who I hired as a research assistant at Duke. We have remained in contact since then, we typically quarrel about music, the Velvet Underground, Decemberists and Oasis. The package contained a piece of art she commissioned of us - the wife, Lex and me. The picture is quite appropriate and typical of the going-ons in our household (i.e., chasing and wresting Lex with noogies and headlocks). In the picture Jen appears to be a citizen of the planet Kamino while I look beefy, like Henry Rollings my neck is the same size as my head. This is a gift we will treasure. I have even picked a location in the house for this piece, right at the top of the staircase underneath the new Artemides eye ball light. Alas this will have to wait until the renovations are completed. Now onto house renovations ...

Since we left on our trip, Steven and his crew have been very busy. All the demolition, framing, plumbing and electrical is completed. Drywall is being completed this week. We are awaiting for the new staircase and cabinets to arrive. In the meantime, they have completely dissembled the old staircase. Nothing is supporting the staircase except for a 2x4 and gravity. It is amazing how vectors can work to your advantage every now and then. They usually work against me, especially during surfing and skateboarding. They removed the handrail and shifted it over to repair the drywall. The dog is nervous about this new staircase set-up. The pantry underneath the stairs has also been completed. We discovered a built in vacuum system in there that we had removed. I plan to use the pantry as a bedroom for the kids sort of like Harry Potter.

Here is a photo of the lower staircase.

The kitchen ceiling was torn out and pushed up 4 inches. The plumbing and electrical were redone completely. The previous contractors, Chad and his dad were careless. Just today Luis had to fix a pipe with nail shot through it. The surrounding dry wall was damaged from the moisture leakage. Chad, that dumb fuck, was not careful when he installed the crown molding in the ceiling. I am surprised the place did not burn down when Chad added eight 60 Volt lights to the 320 Volt transformer. Other things done but not pictured were pushing the dining room wall 4 inches, removing all the crown molding, re-applying dry wall and plaster, removing all molding and applying returns instead and destroying the Pony wall.