Seasonal Plays

One of the sections of my Stock Traders Almanac regards seasonal sector plays. It is because of this section that I purchased the QQQQ calls in April, and have been trading them successfully ever since.

There are three seasonal index plays listed to start at the end of July. Biotech (BTK) play ends the begining of March and averages a 15.6% return the past 5 years, and 38.3% over the past 10. The Gold and Silver (XAU) play ends the end of September and averages a 20.8% return the past 5 years, and 20% over the past 10. Lastly, utilities (UTY) end the beginning of January and average 13.4$ return the past 5 years, and 20% over the past 10.

If you are not day trading, buying the index fund may work for you, however what I will be doing is finding a few stocks in each sector that I like, and follow them over the next few weeks to look at for day trades. Once I find them, I will start covering them in my Day Trading Research blog.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

In Review, week ending June 6, 2008

Oh my gosh, what a week! The market continues to be manic depressive, and the longer that it is the more we come to expect it. While listening to CNBC I heard at one point this week someone refer to the DOW being down over 100 points as a minor correction. It wasn't that long ago that would be a major event! Now the DOW needs to move closer to 300 points for anyone to start batting an eye.

But enough of that, now for my notes for the week.

My research blog has worked out well. I have gotten some good feedback from fellow traders at Ihub, and I am glad to share my work with them. One of the things that I decided was to try and earnings play this week. I had done a few earnings plays and found that the price of the options increased the closer time got to the earnings, a premium seemed to be built in. Running with that idea I made a few plays, and I have to say the results are less than sterling. What I netted from the experience was extra work time in research, distraction from playing positions that I know (the ones I have been watching daily for months) and a loss of 2.1658% assuming that the JTX calls that I am holding expire worthless (I didn't get the end of day out I was looking for, or the earnings I was expecting). While I don't normally like to give up on an idea so soon (I only gave it a week), I have decided that right now is not the time to continue on with that path at this time. I may try it again, but right now the market is too precarious to be adding a new play to my bag of tricks.

My goal has been to close my open option positions by June 12th. I have been holding a lot of red options that I picked up since I came back to day trading full time in April. When I have an open option position, I like to watch the level two of the option side by side with the underlying stock level two. This works out great for trading, but I was having a couple of problems. First of all, only one of my accounts has level two functionality, and with their platform you are limited to 6 level two's open at one time. That meant that I could only basically have full vision of 3 option plays at a time (and I usually have a few more than that going). Another problem that I had is that very often the option level two on Ameritrade would either stop functioning all together, or their would be a difference between what the level two was showing as the option price, and what was showing on other parts of the site. These problems had more than once caused me to make a bad trade just because I wasn't clear of what was happening with my option bid/ask.

A great person I met on Ihub that runs the The Lotto Pick Project was helping me out with level two's now and then when I asked. She was kind enough to lead me to the AlphaTrade trading tools, and I have to say I'm very pleased! I am currently only using the level two and charting functions, but even those are well worth the price of the service. I'm now set up with level twos on one computer, complete with awesome real time graphs and my Command Center for trading open on the other computer.

One of the great things about the graphs at Alpha Trade besides being real time is that you can pull up graphs for options as well as equity ticker symbols. I went for months without having access to option charts. I also recently found that Big Charts has option chart access for free. Anyway, at one point I realized that I was holding way too many option bags to keep an eye on all of them, so I spent a little time one evening and pulled up the chart for each of the options that I was holding, found out what the highest price was that the option had achieved in the past few weeks, and set a GTC (good til cancelled) bid. If something happened to the stock in after hours, I could always change the bid, but if there was some unforeseen spike in the underlying stock while I was paying attention elsewhere, I would fill for what I felt was a fair closing price. This was invaluable for helping me to eliminate some of my positions.

Overall my trading account value is down 8.16% month to date, but that of course includes part of my monthly "salary" which comes out the first week of the month. My trading account has seen realized gains of 7.99% so far this month.

In conclusion, here are a couple of new option links that I found that I will start looking into this week as round trip option trading resources.

Most Active Options

Options you should have bought

Option Chains

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Round Trip Options 6/2/08 to 6/6/08

I didn't have the opportunity to make too many round trip plays this week. The ones that I did all turned red, though the losses were very small. My concentration has been on closing out my open option positions before next Thursday in preparation for expiration week.

VIP calls .07 loss for 38%
SOLF calls .25 loss for 14%
SOLF puts commission loss, 1%

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Another rough day at the office.

Well, I closed out my first two earnings plays today. Unfortunately they both closed red. I guess it would have been too much to ask that I close green on a new trading strategy the first time I tried it.

I started grabbing GES calls yesterday. I could have gotten priced in better if I had waited until today. The market did a shake down in the after noon, and while stocks did recover some from their lows, it was not quite enough to get the interest going on my calls. Doing these plays I may actually be better off buying calls that are in the money, rather than going with the cheaper out of the money calls. It's hard to tell if my theory is bad, or if today was just an aberration due to the market sell off. I decided against my original plan of selling all of the calls at the end of the day, and kept 1/4 of my positions to hold into earnings, as the stock price was resting on a strong support level, and GES has had a couple of recent earnings surprises.

Well, so far that seems like it was a good idea. GES is up 8% in after hours. Of course that does not mean that it will still be up at market open tomorrow. IPI had blow out earnings recently but went down after earnings on Monday and still hasn't recovered.

The difference though is that GES and retail in general have been fairly beaten down recently, while IPI and fertilizer had already seen big gains before earnings release. We'll see what happens with that tomorrow.

VIP was my second option play. I broke one of my rules buying it though. I put a bid in at open, which filled and then immediately lost 50% value. I was fighting an uphill battle all day, and never recovered. As always I need to remember never to purchase options between 6:30 am and 7:00 am (market open to 10am market time). It bites me in the hiney 90% of the time.

I purchased some JTX calls yesterday. I had an opportunity to sell for 100% gain at one point today and didn't take it. Earnings are pre market on Thursday so I will be selling those before close of market tomorrow. I'll be back here to update this post with how that trade turns out.

My one round trip today was SOLF. It broke through resistance and I bought the calls for a round trip based on the bump in the squeeze rating between Monday and Tuesday. It didn't stay above that resistance long, and ended up plummeting with the rest of the market. I was tempted several times to average down, but had decided not to for a couple of reasons. First of all it was still over a dollar away from the next support level (which was a weak support anyway) and also because I just started tracking this stock. I have not had a lot of success playing the solar sector, despite the huge amounts of money other people seem to make with it. My timing with solars has been horrible, so I decided rather than averaging down, I would just ride the position out to see if I got the bounce I thought we would the last hour of trading. As it happens we did get that bounce, and I sold for a .25 per contract loss. The good part of this story is that because I stuck with my plan, my loss was less than it could have been. Had fear ruled me, I could have sold those options for a .65 per contract loss when the shake down occurred.

My favorite part of today was that I was able to finally add some ENER to my investment account. It's only a small position, as there is a long way down to a support level, but I'm happy to have it. I purchased the stock, as I'm still new to following this stocks fluctuations. I would have to have a really strong signal that the stock is moving in a particular direction before I try to round trip the options.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Daily Research Blog

I decided to start publishing my daily research. I like the flow of this blog the way it is, and did not want to break it up with the daily scans. In order to maintain the feel of this blog, I have decided to start a second blog devoted strictly my day trading research. If this is something that interests you, feel free to visit Day Trading Research: Daily Research 5/31/08.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

CNN: June could be crazy month for stocks

The annual revamping of the key Russell indexes at the end of the month could lead to a hectic shuffling of stocks by big investment firms.

May 31, 2008: 11:07 AM EDT

NEW YORK (AP) -- "The whole month of June is kind of a magic month."

Citi Investment Research equity strategist Lori Calvasina wasn't referring to weddings, graduations or wildflowers blooming. She was talking about the stock trading that will take place in the next few weeks in anticipation of the annual reconstitution of Russell Investment's indexes.

It may seem like a wonkish matter that few individuals would pay attention to, but the reshuffling of the stocks that make up Russell's indexes, including the widely followed Russell 2000 index of small companies, will have a big impact on stock and mutual fund holdings.

"Your benchmark index is going to change," Calvasina explained. Those changes will affect some $4.4 trillion in assets that Russell says is tied to one of its indexes, which were launched in 1984.

Citi estimates there were 120 funds passively linked to Russell's 26 U.S. indexes as of Dec. 31, holding nearly $535 billion in assets -- nearly five times as much as such funds held in 1999. Morningstar Inc. says there are 20 Russell 2000 index funds alone, among 246 that use the small-cap list as a gauge for their performance.

The managers of all those funds will have to adjust their holdings to follow the new lineup in the indexes. But before that happens, hedge funds and others will try to take advantage of the changes.

"Hedge funds are going to try to game this," Calvasina said. "To a certain extent it's already been happening."

Wall Street analysts have been pumping out notes on a near-daily basis with their educated guesses for which stocks will be added, deleted or moved between indexes.

They are able to come up with fairly accurate lists, because Russell makes its methods for picking the stocks in its index public, unlike, for instance, Standard & Poor's, which uses a committee system to develop its S&P 500 and other indexes.

Here's how it works: At the close of Friday's trading, Russell Investments will take the first step of the reconstitution by taking a "snapshot" of approximately 13,000 stocks traded on U.S. exchanges.

It ranks the companies from largest to smallest, and filters out those that don't meet its criteria, including companies not based in the U.S., stocks that trade below $1 or those that trade over the counter, or on what are called the Pink Sheets, which do not need to meet minimum requirements or file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

After factoring in a few other matters, the largest 4,000 companies are picked to be part of the Russell 3000E Index, which represents approximately 99 percent of the U.S. equity market. All its other indexes are subsets of this master list; for instance, the biggest companies become part of the large-cap Russell 1000, while Nos. 1001 through 3000 make up the Russell 2000.

The Russell 2000, has had a difficult year, falling about 12 percent since 2007's reconstitution. One reason has been the overall weak market performance, especially in financial stocks, which at 20.6 percent make up the single largest sector in the index.

With so many stocks falling, one sure thing is that the market value of the companies that make up the small-cap index will be smaller than last year.

Melissa Roberts, senior vice president of quantitative research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, estimates the market caps of the new stocks in the Russell 2000 will range between $165 million and $2 billion, a dramatic fall from the $261 million to $2.5 billion range last year.

She said that along with market weakness, the big decline reflects a large number of companies that were dropped from the list in the past year due to buyouts and delistings, and some changes Russell made to its methods for including stocks.

Overall, she expects 312 new companies will be added to the small-cap index, including 42 companies dropping down from the large-cap list. Keith Miller at Citi put his estimates at a total of 307 additions, with 40 stocks falling from the 1000 to the 2000.

Because analysts and others can be so specific ahead of the actual reconstitution, the stocks in question could see some hectic trading in the coming weeks before the final lists for 2008 are released June 27.

Find this article at:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/31/markets/bc.na.fin.mkt.us.wallst.ap/index.htm

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Off Topic ~ Free Hugs

This hug's for you!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

All the Same ~ Sick Puppies

I don't mind where you come from
As long as you come to me
But I don't like illusions I can't see
Them clearly
I don't care, no I wouldn't dare
To fix the twist in you
You've shown me eventually what you'll do
I don't mind
I don't care
As long as you're here

Go ahead and tell me you'll leave again
You'll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It's all the same
And I'll take you for who you are
If you take me for everything
And do it all over again
It's all the same

Hours slide and days go by
Till you decide to come
However long you stay is all that I am
I don't mind, I don't care
As long as you're here

Go ahead and tell me you'll leave again
You'll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It's all the same
And I'll take you for who you are
If you take me for everything
And do it all over again
It's always the same

Go ahead say it
You're leaving
You'll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It's all the same
And I'll take you for who you are
If you take me for everything
And do it all over again
It's all the same

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

May Performance

On May 16th I made a post which included a mid month recap of my monthly goals. I was easily exceeding most of them, and was looking forward to tying up a few loose ends and having a fairly stress free couple of weeks... Well, if you follow the market at all, you realize that didn't happen!

Below are my final results for May, which take into account commissions and margin interest. As a reminder, I have decided to base my monthly goals on portfolio value.

Account % . . . . . Goal. . . . . % Actual

Trading . . . . . . . . 25% . . . . . . . . 5.65%

Investment . . . . . .12% . . .. . . . . 5.18%

IRA . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8%. . . . . . . . . 5.40%

As you can see, I did not make any of my goals for the month as far as my portfolio balance goes. Of course those results (all gains, just shown in red because they did not meet the set goal) are nothing to sneeze at. They translate to annualized returns of 67.8%, 62.16%, and 64.8% respectively.

While I am not setting realized gain goals, I am also tracking those. For the month of May my realized gains are as follows.


Trading . . . . . . . . 28.85%

Investment . . . . . 11.2%

IRA . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.72%

I really could not be more thrilled at this point. Those numbers translate to annualized percentages of 346.2%, 134.4% and 20.64%. Obviously I am not going to see these type of gains every month. In fact, I expect June to be really rough. I will probably not take advantage of every trading day with hubby on vacation, and of course I obviously am carrying a lot of unrealized losses over into June. I have a lot of open option positions that I need to close out in the next 9 trading days, and if the market doesn't cooperate, I'm in for a rough ride.

As I have probably mentioned before I have a set group of stocks that I track daily so that I can learn their rhythms for options trading. These include PCU, POT, DRYS, RIMM, FWLT, GS, and GOOG. Another thing that I track during the month is my trades in these stocks. Some of these trades are equity trades and some are option trades, and they have happened across all three of my accounts. Below is a list of the good trades per total trades for the stocks on that list that I traded in May, and whether there was an overall gain or loss in trading that stock. They are ranked best to worst by dollar amount gained/lost.

GOOG 10 for 11

FWLT 9 for 9

DRYS 8 for 11

PCU 2 for 2

GS 2 for 4

POT 0 for 2

These 6 stocks accounted for 69.98% of my realized gains for May.

There are a few key things I have learned over my past 7 months as a day trader that I need to remind myself of.

*First and foremost, close ALL option positions the Thursday before option expiration (for the upcoming month that is June 12th).

*During option expiration week limit any option trades to round trips. The majority of trades during options week should be equity trades.

*FOOLS RUSH IN...do your own due diligence before opening a position. If you don't have time to make a few basic checks before entering a position, then you don't have time to watch it once you make it.

*No Fear, No Greed...the bears are in control, and are ready in willing to shake the fearful out of their positions. Know your support and resistance areas, including type, strength and variance. Hold firm to positions pushed to the limit, but do not be afraid to take the loss once they push through. There is always another trade to be found.

*Research all positions daily for changes. My daily research includes closing price, after hours price and news, chart, short interest, market sentiment, support, resistance and possible break outs.

*Begin each month knowing if there are any days the market is closed. Market holidays should be treated like expiration days, close out all open option positions a week before the holiday, and limit option plays during the week proceeding the holiday to round trips. June does not have any market holidays, however the market closes early July 3rd, and is closed on the 4th. Option expiration is June 20th. This means that all option plays picked up beginning June 23rd need to be closed by Thursday, June 26th.

I have decided to keep my current goals through the end of August for a couple of reasons. First of all, as mentioned above, I am entering June with a lot of unrealized losses on the books, and may not be taking advantage of trading every day. Unless the first half of June is as remarkable as the first half of May was for me, I am going to have a difficult time making these goals in June. Therefore, I want to continue to reach for the sky with these lofty goals through August to determine if I am able to achieve them once I get back in the day trading groove. At the end of August I will evaluate my performance and adjust my goals accordingly for September through December.

Have a great weekend, and Happy Trading!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Round Trip Options May 19 - May 30, 2008

Despite having a lot more option positions than I prefer this month, I was able to round trip a few more options. Here is how they faired.


DRYS PUTS gain .70 for 18%

RCH CALLS loss .20 for 43%

DRYS PUTS gain .80 for 15%

PCU PUTS gain .85 for 44%

GOOG PUTS gain 1.00 for 23%

DRYS calls .50 loss for 10%

Overall I am pleased with the performance of my round trips for the month. June option expiration is Friday June 20th. My husband will also be taking vacation from June 23rd through July 4th. My goal is to close out all of my open option positions by Thursday June 12th in order to avoid the accelerated time decay of options week, as well as allow myself the freedom to trade or not as I please while Hubby is off work.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

DOW down 427 points in two days!

What a crazy week so far!

I realized on Tuesday the market was going to be weird this week, with the upcoming holiday coming. I can't predict how Friday will go, but it will probably be low volume, and highly manipulated. In the mean time, I'm working on closing out as many option positions as I can before then, and get back to being more strict with the options day trades.

Visit my round trip options board if you are interested in keeping up with my plays as they happen.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Roundtrip Options May 1 - May 16, 2008

Well, I got back to making a few round trip options plays this month. This is how I have fared so far.

DUG calls .60 gain for 65%
PCU calls .70 gain for 10%
FWLT calls .50 gain for 16%
EXM calls .50 gain for 25%

Visit my Roundtrip Options board. We have a few new assistants on board that will help bringing some options trading ideas for quick trades.

I will try to get back into the habit of documenting Round Trip Option plays each week.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Everything happens for a reason...

I found out today that had I stayed in my full time job (I went part time in Feb '07 to spend more time trading, then quit the part time position in October '07 to trade full time.) I would have been laid off on Monday. Just thinking about all of the things I would have given up had I stayed in that job the additional 14 months before the inevitable lay off gives me a deep appreciation for my position. That first decision in February to go from full time to part time started my destiny into motion. The fact that I started trading at the beginning of a bear market gave me a crash course in how brutal the stock market could be. I've learned that being too cautious is as detrimental as being too greedy. I learned that the market makers will rule you through your greed and fear if you allow them to. No fear, no greed, is so important.

The big story so far this month has been oil, which has sent one of my favorite stocks HTE on a run. Close of day 5/1 HTE traded at 21.83. Close of day today (option expiration) it traded at 25.55. That's a price increase of over 17% in just 12 trading days! Not to mention (yet again) the .30 per month dividend.

The option stars for me so far in May have been V, FWLT, and GG calls. All traded or currently held between 100% and 400% gains. In realized gains V barely edged out FWLT, but FWLT shares I am holding continued to gain while my V options are basically the only red in my trading account. My big losses were POT calls (I should have bought out a month further) and my DRYS puts. That could have been a huge gain if I had bought the calls instead.

Looking at the two year and lifetime charts on POT, I find it hard to believe that I can lose money on call options, but I do. Long term this one is a no brainer though. I have a few swing trade stocks in my IRA that I will convert to POT as I take profits.

LIFETIME

TWO YEAR

I was a little late making my goals for May. As you may know my trading has been limited between February and now based on market conditions and my bathroom remodel. Anyway, about a week ago, I decided to set some goals through the end of the year. I decided to go with a portfolio percentage increase each month, taking into account the money that I need to remove each month from my trading account in order to meet our household obligations. I created a spread sheet that is linked to my "scorecard" where I keep my high level stats for my three accounts. This spreadsheet will automatically adjust the next months goal based on the previous months final balance, so I am set through the end of the year. If I decide my goals are unrealistic, I can easily change the formulas to adjust based on new percentage gains projections.

My goals and current status as of 5/16/08 are
Account % . . . . . Goal. . . . . % Actual

Trading . . . . . . . . 25% . . . . . . . . 29%

Investment . . . . . .12% . . .. . . . . 15%

IRA . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8%. . . . . . . . . 7%

I will be keeping an eye on GOT this week. It has been consolidating since mid April, has had some insider buying and may get a pump soon with the rest of the retail sector.


At this price, a 50 % gain is reasonable once the stock starts it's upward move.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Hot IPO's

I am currently invested in three IPO's. The first V I have discussed here before. It has been down a bit this week, with option expiration coming, but staying within the upward bound trading channel. I've heard predictions of 100 before the end of the month. I'm not sure if it will go that high that fast, but we will definitely see 90. I have been collecting V in my IRA, and have gathered a lot of June 100 and 110 calls. I held them through the expiration week, so I've had some time decay, but with the flips I did before this week, I'm still green over all on V trades, and looking to score big in the coming weeks.



The next IPO I am trading is IPI. Intrepid Potash has been channelling between 46 and 52, and I bought a few June 55 calls to make a short term trade. My first target is 100% gain.



The last one is a little risky, but I made an extremely small purchase (less than 100 shares) of CFX. I have it in my investment account. I got in on a dip today at $23.75. I got tired of watching it go up a dollar or more each day without me!



Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

V for Victory!

IPO for V happened while I wasn't actively looking for new stocks to trade. The low on the first day was $55.00 and it has been a steady climb ever since. I got in some calls a couple of weeks ago (+VFP June 80 calls) and sold 1/2 of them yesterday to leave my remaining 1/2 free and clear. The stock dipped briefly today, but I was 15 minutes late getting to my computer and missed my in to buy more at my low ball bid. Today the stock touched 80 at close. V is Visa by the way, and a great investment right now I think for these trying times. As the prices of necessities go up (gas and groceries) while companies are laying off employees or telling them that there will be no raises this year, people will be doing more credit spending just to make ends meet.

Trimmed a few GOOG shares today at 560 (about 15%) and looking for an in to put some V in my IRA. I believe that this is going to be a great long term play.

I'm in a few POT calls and some DRYS puts. I think DRYS is toppy here. POT could really go either way, it has some support at 180, but if that drops support levels are 160 and 140...

Shorted some PMCS today, and it ended the day up. I will be watching this one closely tomorrow, it could go either way.



Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

I'm back!

If anyone is still popping in here from time to time, just wanted to let you know I am finally back! I've been trading around a core set of Google shares, and as you know last Friday finally gave me the bump back up I've been looking for. This gave my day trading account the boost it needed to be able to make intra day trades again.

By my stock traders Almanac, April is the month to buy the tech and health care sectors. July is supposed to be when they peak. I am currently holding shares of Google (GOOG) and Biogen Idec Inc (BIIB) in these two sectors. Both were purchased in February, so I actually got in a little early, but I'm seeing some small gains in both already.

As I type, Google has managed to hold it's 530 support this morning, and is tickling that 540 number again. If it can break through 540 the next resistance looks like it should be at 570....and there went 540.

I've also been trading around a core group of ESLR shares. It looks like it is attempting to form and inverted head and shoulders pattern, which could see it back up at it's 19.00 a share high. I'm currently averaged in at 9.00 on that stock.

The big story from my watch list has been POT though, with about 50% gain since February. Unfortunately I am not in. No resistance, hit a 52 week high today. Will it continue it's run, or correct? I'm not sure enough one way or the other to get in today.

It feels good to be getting my feet wet again, but I suspect I will be wading in to this market cautiously.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Off Topic: Bathroom Remodel Completed.

Before:



Some pictures of the finished project.

Panoramic tour:



A few Detail Closeups






This entire ordeal was pretty stressful for me, but I think it ended up really fabulous. The bathroom is much more functional now than it was before, and I like the look a lot. Hope you enjoyed this off topic month as much as I did, now back to trading!



Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

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.