Penny Floor Update

So the short answer is this:
we quit.
After the hundreds of hours that it took to do the dressing room "test area" we decided that our time might be better spent pursuing other adventures (ask us about Wonderland, Maxine, Dear, or Tigertree Ranch).  You can still come in, try some stuff on and check it out.

One unintended perk is that people seem to loose a lot of change in there.  Score.

our kitchen is on modwalls' website!

I was on Modwalls' website today looking for some tile for the entryway and saw that they posted the pictures of our kitchen!
http://www.modwalls.com/brioblendcitysunshine.aspx

We're the EXAMPLE kitchen!  So exciting!

Painted Stairs

When we ripped the carpet off the stairs (about 2 years ago) , it revealed some wood that was pretty beat up.  Its all scrathed and has adhesive stuck to it.  The plan is to sand and paint.
We love our house, but we don't plan on being here forever.  So when we do anything to the house it is important to keep in mind that it cannot be too personal.  For instance, we are working on the entryway right now and I really want to do a bright rug pattern out of 1 square inch glass mosaic tiles.  Instead, I think we will do grey tiles.  I also have dreams about what I want to do to the stairs:

But they will probably be white. 

Maybe all of this self editing is good though.  When we do have a forever home it might end up looking like a fun house. 

Tiny Branding Iron Excitement

There seems to be an increasing amount of cross pollination between our home blog and our store blog.  So I'll keep this short but, like the penny floor, it could have some fun home applications.
Browsing Not Cot one day (which you should do if you aren't) I found Shape Ways, which does 3D printing of almost anything imaginable.  Actually, if you are way smarter than me and can do the design side, you can take away the almost and you have known about this for a while.   You also probably call what they use a CNC machine, but I call it a Star Trek box.  As a side note to what is already turning into a tangent Electrolux went even more Star Trek and made a food printer. 

Now these obviously work well for a store but I think they have tons of other applications as well.   A family crest on an old newel post or a wall paper pattern coffee table you are refinishing.  As a thank you for letting you know about tiny branding irons, use the comment section to tell Niki she should let me buy a CNC printer.

The Entryway (sucks)

This horrible entryway has been haunting us since we moved into the house.  I have had plans to rip up the linoleum and replace it with slate for some time.  I had peeked under the linoleum before and saw a subfloor.  I was thinking that I would pull up the top layer, put down the slate and then add some sort of threshhold.

But THEN

it occured to me yesterday that the linoleum, and thus the subfloor, were probably added when the house was carpetted back in the 70's.  Which would mean that there was some original flooring under that subfloor. So, all I needed to do was just pull up the "new" stuff, to expose the original and that would be a huge improvement. 

When I took that picture of the old entryway last night I was thinking that this would be the first project on the house that ended up being easier, cheaper and faster than planned.

Ha!

I pulled up the subfloor to expose hundreds of these nasty little saw things. 

These little bastards do not want to come out of the boards.  From what I can tell, these came as part of the subfloor stuff so that some lazy contractors 40 years ago could just put it down, pound the crap out of it, and bingo, subfloor.  But when I ripped that stuff up, these stayed.  And now that I am trying to pull them up, they are still staying.  I mean, like, really staying.  They laugh in the face of my hammer and pliers.  

So now I am back to slate.  Thanks house. 

Motorcycles Are Heavy

Last week, Jason and I carried my CB175 down to the basement.  This picture is very upsetting because it does not show how steep or slippery my basement steps are, or how heavy a 1973 CB 175 is.  It does accurately portray the fact that Ben was not there... 

 

I have been saying I am going to start tearing this thing down for a rebuild for months now, so I am excited to finally get to work on it.  I know it is not a home renovation, but I think posting about anything we aren't qualified to do on here is applicable.

  

If you ever wonder how I manage to get so many work/tool related injuries, my workshop is a good indication.  

  

Every bolt/mirror/nut/cable had not been touched for years.  I got this thing from the second owner with 2,100 miles on it.  He claims it had been stored "in his garage" since then, though the leaves and rust tell a different story.   The clutch is shaped mysteriously too as it had "never been dropped."  All of this creates some stubborn hardware. 

So the hope is to get it stripped, bead blasted, painted and rebuilt by spring. 

Safe Dishwasher

When you buy your first house everyone tells you about crazy things that will happen that you could never have been prepared for, but are forced to deal with.  I don't mean like your house getting broken into, or even a furnace breaking down when its 15 degrees, I think most people have an expectation that that sort of thing is going to occur from time to time.  I mean those curve ball problems.  We noticed an odd, almost electrical fire, smell when we walked in after being away from home for a week.  While we were busy walking miles and miles of trade shows in Vegas to make Tigertree better, our dishwasher was running, presumably the whole time.
A lot of issues arise from a dishwasher running for 144 hours straight.  First, we are expecting really high utility bills this month.  Second, even dishwasher safe products (like dishwashers for instance) don't hold up very well to a 6 day dose of hundred degree water.
Unfortunately a lot of our favorite kitchen gizmos, the top of our food processor and our wine saver corks were in there.  So we lost a ton of money in kitchen gadgets and have to buy a new dishwasher.  The upside though, is we get to document a dishwasher installation on the blog!  And if it is anything like my sink/faucet/disposal install (which I unfortunately did not chronicle) it should be pretty interesting.  Honestly, if your dishes are still dirty after 144 hours in the dishwasher, it is probably about time for an upgrade anyhow. 

The grates used to be white.

 

This is not photoshopped.  All of our plastic stuff melted in a similar fashion.

  

I feel like adding some "really, really"'s to the dishwasher safe line.

 

What we were doing while our house was almost burning down. 

 

 We love Canters at Treasure Island, but it is always empty.  This concerns us, so please go have the best ruben of your life next time you are in Vegas.  All of that hot sauce and mustard is in response to the awful cold I had all week.

 

If you were shrewed you would have noticed that Niki is sitting on the same side of the table as me.  Is this because:

a) We are one of those obnoxious couples that sits on the same side of the table at restaurants.

b) We are good photographers and the lighting was better there.

c)  We went to Canters two nights in a row.

Leave your answer in the comments.

New York, New York has this amazing giant claw machine.  I did not win an XBOX.

 

They also had this cotton candy machine.  Which we want for Tigertree.

Then we caravaned home with Obama.