Off Topic Creighton Galleries

One of my favorite artists, and a good friend has recently opened an online gallery. If you are looking to purchase an original painting, or just enjoy art, please take a look at

Creighton Galleries

I am lucky enough to have this one hanging in my home.



Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Off Topic Bathroom Remodel Part 2

The last post was getting a little long, so I decided to start a second part. It looks like the remodel should be done sometime next week.

Paint and cabinetry happened today.

So, a little about this custom cabinet.

Here it is in place, except for the shelves. Now that i see the cabinets, it is obvious that the door he chose is perfect.


The only thing different than what I wanted was that the upper shelves on the two sides of the cabinet do not have doors. I can always add them later though if I decide.

This next picture shows one of my requested features. Since we will have a pedestal sink, I wanted a shelf that pulled out to serve as a faux counter top for us to use when we get ready. A plug was added just above this pull out shelf inside the cabinet so that we could have our toothbrushes charging inside there.

I'm totally loving that red wall!

The middle cabinet has a long cupboard, and is a bit deeper than the two side cabinets. It will be used for storing paper products at the bottom, and hanging our bathrobes out of sight. Once the shelves are in place, the ones on the right side will house rolled up towels. The shower door will open towards the cabinet so that we can just open it, reach over and grab a towel.
Both the right and left cabinets have pull out hampers as seen in this picture. Once the entire bathroom is in, I may decide to switch one of them out for a garbage can. I like the idea of having that hidden away instead of sitting out in the open.
From the sounds of it, there will not be any more work done before Monday. I'm thrilled with the way things are shaping up!

March 9, 2008

The project is closing in on completion. Here is a panoramic tour of where we are at today.



Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Off Topic Bathroom Remodel

I have been needing to do work on my bathroom since we moved into this house 10 years ago. It has been on the list of home improvements, but there was always something more important. Well, a couple of months ago the linoleum began to split where the water damage was on the floor near the toilet, so I decided we couldn't wait anymore. We found someone that we liked and trusted to do a fairly major remodel for us, for under $20,000.

Here is the one picture that I have where you can kind of see the before.


As you can see the door swings in, and what you see is the sink with the dated tile and medicine cabinet. That will be replaced by a custom built floor to ceiling cabinet. The windows will be blocked by the cabinet, but left where they are. It will include shelves, drawers, two built in hampers, and a long closet for hanging our bathrobes.

The wall the door opens to was empty, and where we had our hamper. door is going to be reversed to swing into the hallway instead, and a pedestal sink put on that wall. on the right side you may see a glimpse of our shower curtain. The tub was removed, and will be replaced with a long shower and bench. That will involve moving the current drain, and building a couple of walls and installing a shower door.

To the right of the door opening was the toilet. It was against the wall so that when you sat on it, your legs extended in front of the door opening. The toilet will be making a quarter turn to face the new cabinetry.

Within just a few hours this morning, the demo was complete. Here is the wall where the sink was. They will be adding insulation that wasn't currently in the exterior wall.



This picture shows the floor damage by the toilet. Luckily the joists do not need to be replaced. You can also see in this picture the area where the new super sized shower will go.


The door is going to be replaced, so they pulled that down. That is my biggest challenge now. You may be able to see the hole near the plumbing for the toilet, which gives access to the smaller members of my family to the crawl space under the house. Georgie has already made his way down there. Luckily he comes when I call him. I'm trying to keep the cats outside until Hubby comes home, and we can figure out a way to keep the cats out of the bathroom, or at least from going under the house. I'm waiting for a call from the contractor so we can go fixture shopping. As you can see the floor is pretty wet, so I'm not sure if we can just cover the wholes. They may need the wood to dry out. It seems that would be easier than trying to block the doorway.

Anyway, I will come back and update this post from time to time if any of you are interested in seeing the progress.

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2/15/2008

Well, Mr. Handsome but short plumber is back today. They sent a little camera down my mainline. There is a major breach near the house, and several small offsets down the line. At the end was a huge chunk of drywall that the construction workers had let fall down the opening to the toilet. That was what had caught on the tree roots and near the house, and the snaking yesterday just shoved it down further.

They are going to push the drywall down to the air vent, and then break it up. We chose to make the $850 spot repair, rather than the $3500 complete mainline replacement. There are some offset points, but it took them over 60 years of settling to offset the little bit that they did. We wont be here another 60 years, and it would be way to much of a financial burden to take another $3500 on top of the current remodel costs. We can always go back and do the mainline after we recouparate from paying for the remodel.

I went shopping for fixtures the yesterday, and found some great oil rubbed bronze ones that I love. Unfortunately we are having to switch to a single water turn on in the shower, rather than the separate for hot and cold that we had prior. Apparently you cannot have that type of faucet anymore, even if you are currently plumbed for it.


The nefarious tree root.



The shower head

We aren't going to have a tub, so we are only getting the shower head and the water turner oner thingamajigy.

The sink faucet

The laying of the new pipe.

Puppy love featuring the lovely Clementine.

And done!

February 21, 2008 update

Well, it's been awhile, and a lot has happened. For fun I had some emergency dental surgery on Monday, just to keep things interesting. Anyway, it's actually starting to look like a room again.

Here is the shower enclosure.

Here is the exterior wall where the cabinet will go. Bye bye windows.

And here is the wall the sink will be on, with the outlet and light fixture wired.

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2/22/2008
Well, today they were only here a few hours. I was working, and it was raining, so I had the dogs in the office with me to keep them out of the contractors way. They have liked everyone but this one guy that came today. Sasha keeps growling at him, so I keep her a little closer to me when he is here. Anyway, they said that the company hadn't given them a trash bag and they didn't want to drop stuff all over my floor can they borrow one. I get up to get it and see that they have put NO paper down, and have mud and drywall dust tracked all over my floor! I said, No paper today? And told them what a mess it was to clean up after them when there was paper, let alone without it. Well, they borrowed my mop and cleaned it up after at least, but what the hell? This subcontracting company doesn't give their employees paper or garbage bags to work with?

Anyway...They hung my door today, and did the second pass on mudding the drywall.

Hubby isn't happy with the door. I didn't get a choice, the contractor picked it based on the rest of the bathroom decorations. I like it though. If we have a party, we can tell guests the bathroom is the white door down the hall, so they don't accidentally end up in one of our bedrooms. I think it's very pretty.

The door on the left side is what all the rest of the interior doors in our house look like.

They applied the second coat of joint compound on the wall seams, but only covered the nails once. As you can probably see here though, they put it on pretty thick. I'm going to be checking it tomorrow to make sure that it didn't shrink too much. If they does, I will call them on it.

In this shot you can see my shower bench. If I had anything to do different at this point, I would have had them put a light in the shower. I thought it would have been against code, but I guess there are lights that they can do that with. We may add one later if we need it, I'm afraid it will be too dark back there.



Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

1/28/2008 - 2/1/2008 Round Trip Options

Another volatile week, and today was a rough day. Gonna keep this short and sweet.

1/28
GOOG puts loss 1.50
GOOG puts gain .50
GOOG puts gain 3.30
GOOG puts gain 2.20

1/29
GOOG calls loss .30
FSLR calls gain 1.00

1/30
GOOG puts gain 2.10
GOOG puts gain 1.00
GOOG puts loss .20
GOOG puts gain .70
GOOG puts gain .50

1/31
GOOG puts loss 1.30
GOOG puts loss 8.20
POT calls gain .35
PCU calls gain .10
POT calls gain .60
PCU calls gain .50

2/1
GOOG puts loss .3
PCU calls gain .05
GOOG puts loss .80


Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.