The light at the end of the tunnel may be a freight train!

After about 5 weeks of non-stop remodeling, we have turned two smallish rooms into one 23′X11″ kitchen. I am so close to being done that I can almost taste the sweet glory. Here are some pics.

Unnecessary Safety Warning!!!

Have you ever noticed all of the ridiculous safety warnings out there? Warning, HOT! Watch Your Step!

These seemingly obvious statements have unfortunately arisen out of necessity. Someone burned their mouth on coffee and sued the bejeesus out of McDonald’s. Now we all have to suffer the annoying labels. Someone tripped over the bright yellow step that everyone else used with ease. Now we have to be distracted while we approach the step and possibly trip over it ourselves. My favorite warnings are on children’s items. Kids are inherently squirmy, curious, and careless-hence all of the warning labels. One of my favorites is the picture below.

Now, the FAIL label was added by some cynical person, probably a Farker. The label only adds to the hilarity of the photo. Many of us who have kids have possibly witnessed the event pictured above in person, and maybe some better FAIL moments as well. I invite you to let me know if you can top this unfortunate pic.

Mincing Words

Last Friday I received a phone call from my brother.  He needed an opinion on something that was said to him earlier in the day and he wanted to make sure he didn’t misunderstand a statement made to him.  Okay, I said, lay it on me.

“So I am leaving the gas station after work.  I had filled my tank and purchased a pack of cigarettes.  As I am walking to my car, the guy filling up next to me says, “Whoa, gas and smokes!  It must be payday.”"

I am completely flabbergasted  by the audacity of this guy.  I ask my brother what he said in return.  His reply: “I didn’t really catch what he said until I was driving away.  Then I called you.  I am thinking about going back.”

My brother is a rather strong individual.  He works in construction, and mostly specializes in demolition work.  He was dressed the part on this particular Friday no doubt.  That doesn’t give anybody the right to make fun of him.  I am still awe-struck by the big brass ones this guy must have to say something so rude to someone who has a trunk full of tools designed for dismantling things and is much larger than himself.

Home Remodeling Fun

I have been working on a kitchen remodel for about two weeks now. The experience has been enlightening. So far, I have completed the demolition of an entire wall (I combined two rooms to make one large kitchen), removed the plaster and lath board from every wall and the ceiling (the room is now 11′ x 23′ x 9′ tall), installed and wired recessed lighting (6 cans) and removed all of the flooring. It has taken all of my spare time on the past few weekends and most evenings throughout the week.

So far my hands hurt, my back hurts, every muscle in my upper body aches and I have inhaled enough plaster dust to make a coal miner shutter. The entire experience has been difficult on the whole family. Try raising 3 kids aged 6 and under while not having a fully functioning kitchen. The mess is beyond anything I imagined. There is plaster dust throughout the entire house-including the bedrooms upstairs! I have done everything I can to prevent the dust from escaping to the rest of the house but to no avail.

You may read this and assume that I am miserable and wish that I had never taken on this gargantuan task. But you would be wrong. Oh so wrong. This has been a major learning experience for me. I have had to pull almost every favor I have in reserve for the next several years, but I have enjoyed every step of the process. There is something strangely rewarding about knocking down a wall. Swinging a sledge hammer releases some primal hormones buried deep in the brain and makes you feel like you have accomplished something no man has ever done.

So here I am two weeks into a project that is supposed to last 6-8 weeks and I haven’t stalled yet. I am looking forward to every little step ahead of me. I have to finish wiring the entire kitchen. I have to hang drywall on every wall and ceiling (and then do all the fun mudding and taping). Then we have to paint the walls and ceiling. I have to install sub-flooring and then the floor itself (we chose to go with cork flooring), I have to paint and install the new cupboards (yes, we are finishing our cupboards all by ourself for a substantial savings over the finished products you see in Home Depot). Each task is a lesson in life. A new fact stored in my brain that isn’t a song lyric or an obscure movie quote. A skill learned (maybe not perfected, but learned still).

How much does the average kitchen remodel cost? Think about one with layout changes, plumbing moved, gas lines re-routed, walls removed, three layers of floor ripped up, plaster demo and the subsequent new drywall installed, new lighting throughout, new cupboards, new french doors installed…and then think about the contractor bill that would ensue. I imaging that $10,000 would be a low number for this job. Then think about the fact that by utilizing knowledgeable family and friends, and doing all of the labor myself (again utilizing family and friends) I am going to do this all for about $2,000! That sum even includes the purchase price of several new tools and dumpster rental. More people need to buckle down and do this stuff for themselves. Or maybe, I need to start doing it for a living since they won’t.

Here is the before photo looking from the entry door.

Here I am removing the wall with the help of my FIL.

This is what the kitchen looks like now.  The dog is not a permanent fixture in the room.

Michigan Winters Suck (AKA other ways of entertaining ourselves)

As usual, winter in Lower Michigan sucks. It is bitter cold for a few weeks, then warm for a week. This means that the snow doesn’t stick around long enough to enjoy. I love skiing-both downhill and cross country-but can’t find the time to get out and do it in the few days we actually have snow on the ground. Even in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula they don’t seem to get the snow to stick around much anymore.

I don’t have the time to drive to the Upper Peninsula to go skiing for a day, and if I had the time, who has the money for the gas anymore? So, I have been forced to find a new way to entertain myself during the cold months. Yesterday I bought a Xbox 360.

That’s right, I spent a lot of hard-earned money on a silly video game system. Video games are a part of our culture, and I grew up playing the classic consoles like Commodore, Intellivision, Coleco-Vision and the popular Atari 2600. These games were a part of my childhood, a nice little slice of distraction.

A couple years ago, a good friend of mine asked me (while we played a Nintendo GameCube) if I thought we would ever stop playing video games, now that we were starting to enter our 30’s and becoming grown-ups. I simply stated that I didn’t ever plan on quitting. I am not harming anyone with my mild gaming habit. I only play after the kids go to bed so they don’t even really think about the possibility of playing. Now that the oldest has played a 360 at a relatives house, she will likely see mine and make the connection, so I suppose I will have to get a kids game. I will not have my first grader playing adult rated games like the second graders on my block who play Halo all of the time.

So there it is; I am a 30 year old adult male with a steady job and a wife and 3+ kids, a mortgage, car payments, and the whole lot. Yet I still like to play video games. I am still a kid inside and see no reason to change anytime soon. I am sure my wife feels otherwise.

Strange Things Happening All Over

Today, I was driving down US-31 near Muskegon, Michigan. I happened to notice the Adopt-A-Highway sign as I passed rather quickly. Apparently, the West Michigan Survivors of Suicide had decided to adopt that particular 3 mile stretch of road.

There are so many questions that popped into my head at that point. Here are a few:

1. Is it better to be cleaning up highway trash than being dead? I have to wonder…

2. Is this an exclusive club for people who have actually survived a suicide attempt?

3. Or can you have simply contemplated suicide at some point? Or maybe it is for people who have been affected by other peoples suicides…There are so many possibilities here that my head started to hurt and I considered driving into a tree. I wonder if I can join the club now?

4. Couldn’t they pick a nicer stretch of road to work on? The area they’re in is pretty boring and busy. They could have been up north a little further up the road with less traffic, and better scenery.

Usually a group like the Boy Scouts or some companies will get together and adopt a stretch of highway. This was definitely a new one for me. Oh well, things are strange all over these days. I hope I haven’t offended anyone who is thinking about suicide right now. If you are, I know of a group who may be able to help you.

I Know, I Know…

Per my usual, I have apparently given up blogging.  I haven’t really, it’s just that I have a busy job and 3 kids and a house that needs work…I don’t seem to find the time to write on here as much as I hoped I would.

That being said, I promise that I will post at least once in a while.  I am not sure who I am promising that to, since I have no readers.  Maybe I am making a pledge to myself that I will let it out once in a while to clear my head, to vent all my little frustrations.  We’ll see (and by “we”, I mean “Me” apparently).

See me later.

Into the Great (Un)Known

So, here’s the story. I am not a blogger. I actually despise blogging. I lurk occasionally at my wife’s blog to see if she has been bitching about me and I check one or two other blogs that my friends in other parts of the world author so that I can keep up with what is happening in their world. But I don’t particularly like blogging.

Maybe that is why I decided to give this a try. I have found in the past that many of the things I didn’t like were actually fun once I gave them a try. Or maybe it was something that I thought sounded really cool and I was jealous I didn’t think of it first. Whatever the reason, I acknowledge that sometimes my hatred is born of fear or ignorance.

So, that’s part of my crazy explanation of why I, the blog-hater, am now attempting to write a blog. Deep down I fear that my ramblings will go largely unnoticed, and that would hurt. Secretly I hope that I become one of the top blogs around so that I can brag about how I can do something that I hate better than those that love it. Kind of twisted huh?

Anyway, once I figure out how this world functions (and how to operate this stupid website) I will control you all. Now, what to write about…