UsBrowns + Dozer...: 02.10

2.28.2010

Once upon a time...

...it snowed in Northern Virginia. A certain kitty complained and complained and complained until his owners would let him go outside to explore the white fluff. These were his impressions:
Slippery.

...cold, wet, miserable.

This is better. :)

Mr. D. quickly was ready to join us back inside where he decided his WARM white fluff was a better place for now. :)

2.11.2010

A little bit of everything from the week thus far...

Here's a quick catch-up of our week so far:
VA Blizzard 2010 version 1.0 (aka, Sunday the 7th). Our neighbor had someone plow his drive-way & he kindly did ours as well! We were ever-so-grateful... shoveling 250 feet of 30" deep snow was not how either of us wanted to spend the afternoon! :) Please note, in the far right side of the photo, you can still see the little yellow car... remember this for reference later. :)

Last night Peter started hanging the drywall around the plenum ~

Story-time: Dozer sleeps down in the basement at night since he has a tendency to want to play every.single.morning at 2am. His owners aren't too fond of that habit - so the basement has been the perfect solution! We let him out when we're ready to rise-and-shine rather than when he is. :) However, due to the current demolished state of our kitchen, the wall that separates the kitchen and the basement stairs is open and exposed. We figured, no-big-deal, he can't jump that high anyway.
WRONG. He can.
We learned this at 2am on the dot this morning.

Solution? One piece of plywood nailed over the open area.
Viola. Aaah ~ sweet sleep. :)

Peter tore out the toilet & sink in the bathroom today also. GROSS. I know I didn't HAVE to post this picture, but it will remind me of how much better things are when they're re-done! :) (P.s.: That moldy subfloor WILL be replaced. So will the cabinet.)

..just like the section below! This part of the entryway was soft and flexed a considerable amount when it was walked on. P. cut the soft section out~

~and replaced it with new! :)

Enter VA Blizzard 2010 version 2.0 (aka Wednesday the 10th). As if the weekend blizzard wasn't enough... more of the white fluff descended on us today. Remember how you could see the little yellow car in the first photo? Not anymore! Today's blizzard brought high-gusting winds (think > 40mph) ALL day, drifting the snow & piling it up next to anything in its way.

Shoveling the drive... must go to work tomorrow... :(

P. called my little snow gal "squat". I think she just has big hips. :)

I better get some dinner on the table. Send some warm thoughts our way... I'm hoping we can thaw out one of these days!

2.07.2010

Saturday PROGRESS!

We had a VERY productive Saturday!
My goal - tear out our entryway, coat closet and first floor bathroom tile... easy, right?!

The brilliant installer who put this tile in just tiled straight up to the toilet & then grouted around it, rather than lifting the toilet and tiling underneath. Frustrating!

After my first few lines of tiles, I quickly realized it wasn't going to be as easy as I thought.

A view of the tile from the front door ~

Fortunately, we bought some knee-pads awhile back that came in VERY handy!!

Tile is all up in the entryway and coat-closet...

Except for one minor detail! They screwed the concrete backer board into the sub-floor... hence, 100's of screws that need to be taken out now. (By this point my back and hands are SCREAMING at me)

Now, time for the bathroom. It's a small space, won't take long... right?

Wrong. After some much appreciated help from my hubby, we got the tile all up only to discover there was linoleum underneath. Lovely! The black dots all over it are the screws they had used to fasten the concrete board to the linoleum. More screws to take out... except these HAD to come out before I could work on peeling up the linoleum. (The others in the sub-floor I had left and figured I would remove later)

At 11pm we decided to call it quits for the night... here's how the bathroom looks as I scurry off to bed. I'll finish it up tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Peter worked some more on prepping the kitchen and ducting plenum for reframing/new drywall and eventually cabinets! He also rewired the outlets so they'd be in the right places for our new appliances.

Here's a close-up on the framing he is doing around the plenum. This will raise the ceiling about 4 inches... sounds like such a little amount, but it really makes a big difference!

Another view of his work~

Meeting tomorrow has been canceled due to 30" of snow... so we'll work some more on our place. :) For now, we need some sleep! Adios!

Snow Update ~

First things first, Dozer says "hi".

Peter went out to investigate our elusive fence... turns out, nobody ran into it - a tree fell and tore it down! :(

We had a beautiful sunset tonight. The snow stopped about 6pm - Our final count is 30"! Incredible!

You'd think we live in Minnesota!

Here's what we woke up to this morning. :) 19" of fresh fluff ~ AND, it's still coming down! They expect up to another 12" today. Whew. I think we'll stay hunkered down inside.

Mmmm, the perfect way to start our Saturday morning. Those may or may not be my pink Rudolph pajamas in the background. :-)

This is why I don't go out in public before 10am. :) It's a good one of P. tho!

Kitty likes to watch... from inside. That particular snow hump you see in this photo is 24" deep. (5" is from snowfall we had earlier this week)

Someone ran through our fence last night! We totally missed all the action. Went to bed with 100% fence, woke up to 60%. It might be a little while before that gets repaired!

My favorite tree. It's directly in front of our house and looks SO pretty with all the branches covered in snow ~ pictures don't do it justice. Maybe you should just come and see for yourself!

2.04.2010

Goodbye ugly walls!

Meeting was cancelled tonight on account of too much snow... So, P. made the most of another evening!
Here's what we started with tonight ~

Tearing out the wall by the fridge ~

Now it's gone! Remember from yesterdays post - the red wall that separates the kitchen and the living room will soon be gone also. Instead hanging cabinets w/glass doors on both sides will be there. :):) Maybe you can't tell... but I'm REALLY excited about this!!

P. tore out the overhead and lower cabinets and counter to the right of the fridge tonight too.

Here's how it looks now! :)

We have an appointment with the cabinet guy tomorrow - hopefully we can finalize our order and then purchase the flooring on Friday!

2.03.2010

Kitchen Demolition

It's D-Day! Let the dirty, dusty, demolition begin!
Our kitchen remodel is officially in process... we'll finalize the cabinet order this week, purchase the flooring this week, tear out one wall of cabinets & re-frame the plenum. YAAHOO!

This section of the wall used to be my pantry... key words...
"used to be". :)
Now, imagine the wall on the left side of the photo... gone! Now imagine cabinets hanging from the ceiling, with glass doors on each side. I'm SOO excited!

Stay tuned!

2.01.2010

Baking!

Sunday we had some of our mtg. over for lunch... I didn't take any photos of our company - but here's a few of the food! :)
Portuguese sweet bread ~ Mrs. T's recipe. This is only my second attempt at baking yeast bread! The last one wasn't so successful. :-D
~ Pre-baking ~

Post-baking! :) Pretty and tasty!

For dessert I made Sopapilla Cheesecake Pie. This was appropriately chosen since we had tacos for dinner. It received rave reviews!! Sooo easy!!!! Recipe here.

Ready or not, another week is about to begin! I can't believe that January is over. 2010 is already going at a blazing fast pace!! We're looking forward to our trip out West in a few weeks. We'll be visiting P.'s family in WA/OR - I'm counting down the days... :-)
Happy February to you!

Cars, Cars, Cars ~

Saturday afternoon we spent a few hours downtown at the WaDC Auto show. This post may bore some of our blog readers, but I'm sure it'll get my brothers' attention! (apologies if that apostrophe is in the wrong spot...)
Audi R8