The Green Monster - PAAAHHHT one

The kitchen was probably the reason we got a such a deal on our house. If you consider we already have a pink bathroom, mismatched wood floors upstairs compared to  down, a basement that is semi finished, and the endless list of other projects needed on this house i just don't think many people had the courage to pull the trigger after seeing the green monster.  Pictures will probably be much better than my description, but this old school kitchen was a mess. 

If you want more of the original green monster see the "before picture" blog entry.

First entering the kitchen you notice the lovely breakfast bar. Its that particle board with the laminate wood finish. Its worn on the surface and seems to be propped up by some hack-job wooden brace. The entire thing wobbles when you put pressure on it, and its overall sloping in towards the room.  It has a lovely side-kick corner caddy shelf that is secured to the wall with massive dark wooden supports.  As you move around the kitchen you can't miss the dark brown cabinets that have a somewhat disgusting overly used and not always cleaned type of look. There is visible grease stains around all the places your hands would go to get things out of the cupboards. There is a massive microwave that sits in the middle of the kitchen above the stove. This thing easily is from the 70's. If you look up you will find that the previous owners were once again quite keen on the plastic, see-through, squareish pattern drop ceiling. Even better above the drop ceiling is three incandescent tube lights that are fully visible without any decorative covering(flickering included). There's also that push board stuff that you can use thumb tacks with. This sweet piece of engineering isn't just screwed into the wall though. The entire thing is glued solid right to the plaster. To top it all off the entire room is painted in a dark green color.  Oh but don't worry! Its not just the walls that are green, these guys loved this color so much they said, heck let's take it to the baseboards, basement and back yard doors and their frames! And so the green monster was born. 

Green green everywhere!

The budget for this kitchen is small, and we are certainly not thinking of demoing everything and putting in a new kitchen at this time. That dream kitchen will have to wait many a year from now to kick off. For now we need to make the best with what we have, and hopefully make this thing into a comfortable and useable space. I very much enjoy cooking, and I fully believe having a nice place to do it in makes the food that much better.  I figure I can get allot done without spending too much money as most of what lies ahead is mostly physical labor.  At this time we are still a few weeks away from moving in all of our stuff from the apartment so I have to get down and dirty and do so as quickly as possible. 

I have an excitement as I prepare to start my minor demo. I've done similar type of destruction before at the instruction of my mother, back when i was a youngin. I'm genuinely excited! The first step is taking a hammer and screw gun to the breakfast bar and shelf.  Most of this comes off easy, but I have to get the vise-grips (my favorite tool) to pull out the wall anchors used to hold the small shelf in place. Within 30 minutes I'm already off to the next task.  I choose to go after push pin board on the wall next. I pull out my new chisel and hammer and get to work. The next several hours to follow are a joke. This stuff is seriously glued on and any hope that "once I get it started" it would come off quickly are completely extinguished. The work is so boring and slow-going that I finish about half of it, and decide its time for blood.  

As carefully as possible I start ripping ceiling tiles down. The plastic tiles shatter and give off a loud crack as they break. Its quite satisfying as I unleash the power of destruction all up on this kitchen! The ceiling comes down mostly easy. I'm again shocked at the craftsmanship that was used in the house.  I have to constantly switch between the screw gun with flat and star shaped tips, hammer, putty knife, and vice-grips to get down what seemed like a combination of over dozen different screws and nails. For a drop ceiling that weighs in about 30 pounds total it's another head shaker. Later I submit to cork boards authority and mind numbingly chisel it the full way off.

The mess is quickly disposed of, but now we have several hundred holes in the walls from the drop ceiling coming down,  the cork board being carved off the wall, and the breakfast bar being disposed of.  Not only that but the ceiling has some serious chipping going on unevenness going on. It appears there have been about 3 or 4 layers of paint put on in here and its peeling in various areas. I bust out a jug of putty and get to work filling the holes. The walls are easy enough to fill in, but the ceiling is a pain the ass or really my back. Where does pain in the ass come from?  Really I can't remember my actual butt hurting during any of my projects. In fact that sweet piece of meat is actually the only comfortable part of my body after finishing a project. 

 

 While the putty dries I can't just wait around doing nothing. Those disgusting cupboards seriously need a hand up or hand out or well they need my hands so I'm going to give it to umm.. 

Yes yes.. laugh all you want. Thats my I'm tired as **** face and happy im done for the night.

Right tool for the right job.

Right tool for the right job.

So I'm a bit of a media head. And because I'm a media head, just a few short months after moving in it was a necessity to wire up my house with Ethernet.  If you're asking yourself what is a media head, that would be one who watches movies pretty often, and is continuously follows 1 or 2 TV series per year.  You see I have a hard time with commercials though so I much rather prefer to watch content through a media box that sits below the TV.  The media box plays anything type of media file whatsoever sitting on my computer.  In order for me to accomplish this I need to run a CAT5 cable from the hard drive on the second floor office down to the basement, and then from there over to the living room . Of course one would want it to look all cool and stuff so you have to drill holes through wood, cement, and basically string it up under the floor and behind walls. In my case I'm also going to run the line outside of the house to avoid having to tear up any drywall. There is already wires that are stapled to the red brick Towson row home's exterior, so I'm going to follow that and avoid further work. 

Techy plug, skip if math and tech companies bore you.

You would think it a whole lot easier if i just hooked up the WIFI right? Let the media stream from the PC to the TV over the air!  Well WIFI has trouble streaming media at a high bit rate. Anything at 1080p or higher can hit up to 45Mbps when streaming that delicious hi-def fidelity of  "honey booboo child" to your mush brain.   If you have any interruption in the bit stream then you get stuttering, and well no one will put up with that.  What I'm getting at is that you need CAT5 or "ethernet" cable which can deliver up to 100Mbps(Mega bits per second). This is still the fastest method to transmit data for the common man.  New WIFI standards have finally been set after years of debate so the generation "N" WIFI could get interesting, but ill believe it when I see it. It should be capable of playing HD over the air, but we still aren't quite there yet.  New interesting technologies from Intel's (thunderbolt) offer possible solution for a reduction in wires, and Bluetooth 3.0 sounds fun for short range capabilities, but an all wireless paradise is still some time away.

Back to the action

The plan is to run a CAT5 alongside a coax cable from the second floor across the house, and down into the basement. From there it will go through the cinder block wall, and head up underneath the floorboards as it snakes and follows other electrical wiring that runs across the house. Ill stop about half way under the house and feed the wire up into a living room outlet.  

To accomplish the deed I need to call in the muscle, and make sure the job gets done without any tech issues  popping up. Who better to call then ol' pops.  In less than a jiffy he's at the house with a bag a tools, and plenty of ideas.  Understand that I've worked with "computer" stuff with my dad since I was a child, by no means are we experts, but we both thoroughly enjoy messing with anything techy and um computer stuff. 

We immediately get started on the 2nd floor by drilling a hole directly parallel to one already there. Dad brings a power drill, and a masonry bit to get through the brick. I stand on a ladder outside leaning forward as I push the drill into the wall above my head.  Im about 20 feet up enjoying my home maker skillz as a put a hole in my house. The drilling isn't so much difficult at first, but its slow going through four inches of brick. We make it through the wall then take a wood drill to go through the baseboard inside. After a good 25 minutes of fiddling around its immediately discovered that the drill bit will in fact NOT be long enough to make it all the way through the exterior and interior wall. Its almost a solid foot between the outer wall and inner drywall while our poor little drill-bit is about 5 inches long. Close but not close enough.

Second floor drill hole

We go to Lowes!

With the longer drill bit its easy and satisfying as I punch through the wall from the outside. Dad sees the drill bit slide perfectly through to the inner wall. We are in business!  Now its time to play with the CAT5 cable. I mean after all we drilled one of our two holes, and we might as well run the wire though it so we can admire our drilling job.  I had a old spool of what I thought was CAT5 cable in the basement so we start with testing it out.  I'm a cheap ass so I want to avoid a unnecessary purchases at all costs. It doesn't take much effort to convince dad as i think we are both happy to play around and mess with it. Prices can range, but its about 35 bucks for a 50 foot spool.  The spool doesn't come with the Ethernet connectors on the end, of course, so you need to also have some RJ45's and a crimping tool.  RJ45's is the technical term for the thingies you plug into the computer/wall.  Long story short and an hours later worth of playing around we came to the realization that we need fresh CAT5. 

My long new drill bit!

 

We go to Lowes. 

Since we already had practice attaching the Ethernet connectors to the old wire, its short work to get the wire through the 2nd floor hole, and the RJ45 connected.  I then easily sling the wire across the house to pops who hangs out the window.  He catches it and snakes it through the already existing wire brace holding the other services connected to the house. It sits nice and secure across the house and flows down with the rest of the wires to the basement. From there other wires run through the cement wall. They are properly drilled to size and sealed with caulk to keep the moister out.  These holes are out of the question so we must drill our own.  

Anxious to cause mass destruction I take the first stab, and grab the drill as I muscle to the wall angling all my weight on to the drill.  The next 30 minutes probably looked comical if you have ever drilled through cement.  We run down the battery in both pops and my drill with only making an inch of progress. The drill just won't go through the cinder block. We give up on this task, and in an effort to at least get the network up and running we run it through the basement window and plug it into the router.  A quick test up stairs, and for the first time in my life I see a download reach 92Mbps. Yes, this speed excites me... I know I'm a nerd, but I'm fine with that.

Our lack of progress forces us to the go the window.

The job isn't finished yet! We still have to run the wire from the router in the basement along the floor above us and over to an outlet. This is actually not so hard, and in 20 minutes we have the wire properly fished through the living room outlet.  We crimp each end and then install this cool little outlet cover that has a Coax cable and a internet port on it. Now it looks cool. 

Going up through the floor to the outlet.

CAT5 running up through the outlet along with the coax cable.

Finished product!

With the network up and running its time for pops to hit the showers, and tend to his own kin. As I head out back to start cleaning up, and think what to do about the wire running through my basement window my good neighbor Dave calls across the alley! Apparently he saw the comical workout I gave the drill earlier, and wants to help.  Dave informs me that the problem is not the drill-bit it's the drill! Cement or cinder block requires a drill called a hammer drill. He happens to have one handy,  and hands it over so the cement can meet defeat at my hands.  ouch im down to the bottom the barrel here I better finish this entry.  In a matter of about 15 seconds I punch through the basement wall with out barely breaking a sweat. Heck I didn't even have time to take a breath. I promptly thank my neighbor and return the drill. Success! Two trips to Lowe's for one day is enough, but I put hammer drill on my most wanted tools list. 

The moral of this story is I did all this work for TV. A very just and noble cause I must say. When Katy wants to watch Gilmore girls or I need my fix of planet earth we can sit back on the couch and watch whatever media is stored on the PC upstairs. Al a cart, on demand, commericialess TV, ahh what a thing of beauty. 

Finished product all plugged in.

Wire running properly through the wall and not the window.

This is a shot of the crimping tool, and me holding the cat5 cable in the proper sequence ready to receive the RJ45 connector.

Going Yard

Yard part two!  Woohoo!

Ok ok... I have been running a bit behind on the blog. With the house being in a livable and comfortable condition thing just seem to, well ya know.. Nothing better than a soft couch, endless snacks, and the O's playing every night on your beautiful TV.  Combine that with work and the weather warming up outside, and it leads to a very lazy man doing just what he wants. Drinking, having fun and living it up! 

Well somewhere in the middle of that castle-esk life-style we did find some time to finish bringing our yard up to neighborhood standards.  Still left on the to-do list was mowing, edging, cleaning up more weeds, disposing of several bags of yard waste, and some man decorating. 

The previous owners were nice enough to leave a working electric mower, several old shovels, and a seriously beat up weed whacker.  As you can tell from previous pictures our lawn is in three tiers. Thus in order to mow the lawn you must run up and down hills as you push the mower.  Its a sad admission, but I look at this as my exercise. Lol no wonder I'm getting fat! After running up and down my hilled yard things immediately started to take shape. Mowing your lawn is like getting a hair cut after you let it grow out for a long time. It immediately makes things look better. 

After the mow was a quick run around with the weed whacker.  This is a special weed-whacker though. The safety guard that holds the blade to cut the cord has been broken completely off for what looks like a long time. After wrestling with getting the wire though the little hole for 15 minutes I was finally off the races. It only took about five minutes for me to accidently give the cord a bit too much slack and realize that there is a reason that they place a blade on the safety guard.  The purpose of this invention is to cut the cord down to the appropriate size.  My shins were not happy with me. It looked like they got beat by a tiny little man whip. Don't cry for me Argentina; just a minor flesh wound!

After what really only amount to a couple of hours of work Katy and I just had to get our Lowes on!  I mean damn they give you this plastic card and all you have to do it swipe it through this machine and they let you walk out of the store with whatever you want!!!!

An hour of exploring later and we were all set! Flowers, tomato plants, miracle grown, weed killer, crab grass killer, a trowel, and some other odds and ins.  Katy got right to work planting our flowers and plants and I laid down the first round of weed killer.  The lawn just wasn't ready for seed so I'm going hopefully kill all the ugly green stuff over the summer, plant my seed in the fall, and have a lush beautiful lawn next spring. I'm starting to think I'm going to be that guy who is going to have like a competition in my head with my neighbors on whose lawn looks better. 

With all the work done, and the yard looking right it was time to sit back and... wait.. sit back where! All I got is a big long lawn with a bunch a grass! Well heck this must be remedied immediately!  It didn't take much convincing for Katy and we were off again to Lowes! This time we were going to show them who was boss! I mean I need somewhere to sit in my lawn this is just inhumane!  Now of course you didn't think I was going to buy lawn chairs did you? Oh and we bought a grill too! Who wants to come over and party! /me begins to chant "Party! party! party! party!"

 

And the video walkthrough!

And the sun shines again

Although I'm still many articles behind on current events I couldn't help but sneak in a quick real-time article.  For the first time in what seems like forever it was actually warm outside Saturday and I couldn't resist putting off inside boring chores for a little fun in the sun.  The backyard was in need of some dire tlc, and who better to give it them me! I mean come on love is my middle name. Just ask Katy.  Anywho thats a story for a different blog..  I went to work about 10ish in the morning thinking this would all be over in the early afternoon, but ended up going till close to sunset. Weeding several flower beds that have not been touched in over a year sucks.  It takes a lot of time to pull everything up and then shaking out the dirt. Especially when every square inch is covered by grass or weeds. Here is what the beginning of my day looked like...

As you can see it's a mess. I'm not looking for a reno out here just a thorough cleaning. Well eight hours later with a half hour lunch, three big trash bags of lawn junk and extreme tightness in my hammies I had a respectable looking back yard. Of course nowhere from finished.. Like anything ever is... What I did get done was pull out all the dead plants, weeds, grass, and trash.  I also had the joy of discovery by finding out what was growing in this mess.  It was a pleasure to find that we have a very small strawberry patch growing in the top level garden bed. On each level there are some plants that the neighbor said grows into a massive shrub with big green leaves and one white flower that comes up the middle. Mom also came over and knew the name of it, but I have selected memory so I don't remember.  I plan on seeing what it looks like and then decide if it lives or not.  On the middle level I discovered a rose tree, or vine or whatever it's called. I am quite excited about that. What wife wont enjoy fresh roses from the garden. I also have a couple dozen green leaf plants that I think will grow a flower on top. They were pretty entrenched in the slopes.
After digging out a few of those gross vine trees who roots go like 2 feet down I trimmed back the overgrown grass on the sidewalk.  It only took about 30 minutes with a small flat head shovel to get a nice strait line. It made the sidewalk look much better. Another 40 minutes spent on cleaning up and finally I could go watch the O's(of course they lost in the 9th inning).  

 

Yeah me!