Garden Time

Erika and I spent most of our day digging in the dirt. We built a raised bed for her vegetable garden and couldn't have had a nicer day for it. Here is the completed product:



It's untreated wood, with some stakes sunk in for stability. It's not pretty, but it's functional.

We also got a peach tree and planted it in the center of the pump track. Hopefully, this time next year we'll be eating some tasty peaches between pump track sessions.

Pump Track update

Here are some non-spy photos of the track. I spent about 4 more hours on it today. A view of the track from the fire pit:


A views of the 180 degree berm. I rode this a couple times and it's pretty awesome.


In the front of the picture is a really tight, 60 or 70 degree turn. I'm going to bet when you hit this right, you'll have to make a real effort to keep your head up. The 180 degree berm appears in the background


Erika also got started on her garden. She's going to have tomatoes, lettuce, fennel, garlic, zucchini...and loads of other stuff, too. I'm going to be eating good once I build the box for it. I snagged some 2x12s and 1x2s to build a box. She spent a good portion of time ripping up old grass and turning the soil.

Yard work...kind of

I have, hands down, one of the coolest ladies on the planet living with me. "Why?" you ask. Two words: PUMP. TRACK. If you don't know what that is go here. Yes, Erika has consented to me ripping up a large portion of the lawn.

I started building it this afternoon and kept going well past dusk...I spent almost 5 hours on it. It's a 40' x 60' area that's going to be a figure 8-ish layout. It will have a few cool features. First will be a 180 degree berm. Second will be a diagonal line option. To be honest, I'm crossing my fingers on how this all turns out. The goal is for it to be loads of fun for both Erika (less experienced) and I (more experienced) to ride for a few hours.

Here are some spy pictures Erika took from the back porch.

Something not related to the house

For anyone out there with a Subaru they want to make a little faster and learn a lot about, go here.

Romraider is an open source tuning solution for Subaru engine management. You can change nearly anything in the stock ECU. You can totally blow up your motor if you want! Your investment is a $70 cable from a company called Tactrix. Additionally, you can log data from your ECU to understand what it is doing. In the case of my 02 WRX, I can see when the turbo is making what pressure, what ignition timing looks like and what duty cycle the fuel injectors are running at. See pics of maps below:


Then, when you really want to have fun and risk spending serious coin, try some little changes...baby steps. So over the last year or so, I've gone from a motor pulling in 137g/sec of air at 5k rpm to a motor that pulls about 160g/sec...about a 17% increase in horsepower. Having my oil analysed has shown no adverse wear on the car...just tons of fun.

House update - Moved in!

Well, we finally are settled in the new house. I put most of the shoe moulding down:


I only skipped the mudroom. I'll probably do that on Friday when the TV guy comes during his 4 hour timeblock. Otherwise the mudroom is looking good.


I drilled a 2x4 into the studs with some deck screws and then just threaded some hooks in to hang bikes from. I could do a chin-up on it, so I figured it'd hold a couple DH bikes.

The living room looks nice as well, lots of open space. We cleaned all the window treatments and re-hung them. It will help a lot in the summer with all the sun the house gets.


I also got a new bike, one of these. I rode it yesterday and today and it rides great. Pictures later.

Finishing touches on the floors

So I spent the last few evenings this week putting down tile and then fixing one that came loose on the edge. I made the mistake of just catching my toe on it...and the board to build up to the tile wasn't in place. Oops. Here is how the grout is looking.


I pretty much just have to clean today, put down some shoe moulding and I'll be done. If you recall from the photo of where the sink used to be on March 9, you'll notice there are no more pipes coming out of the floor save for the washer/dryer hook-ups.

Speaking of shoe moulding, with all the carpet removal, you can guess what the house has none of...that's right, none anywhere. So how much moulding is needed for a 1300 sq ft house? This much:


It's about 200 ft of it, I stained it all yesterday and will varnish it today.

Here is a without moulding/with moulding comparison. The photos only show it covering the mistakes in our edge sanding...which really doesn't do it justice. It completes the room in a really big way. The color is also a little better match than the photos show.



Also, Erika has done a great job with the paint. The bath room has a really nice earth/sky thing going.


Now I just have to move in so I can sit on the can for a while.

More on the electrical outlets

Here is a link to how I replaced all the outlets in the front of the house. It's really as simple as turning off the breaker, pulling the old one out and installing the new one with a grounding wire to the metal box. It's worth noting that if it's a home that's super old (like ours) that you should check every socket with a lamp before you work on it. Don't assume that because the breaker turned off one side of a room it turned off BOTH sides of the room. I almost found that out the hard way. Not cool.

Lots of stuff done

When I last left off, I had one coat of polyurethane down. I have been coating ever since and am pretty much finished. Have a look!



I finished up last night around 10:30pm and then promptly lost an hour of sleep due to daylight savings. Total of 4 coats in each bedroom and 5 coats in the hall, living and dining rooms. Also, in my exhausted state I missed a 3 foot by 5 foot area. I'll fix it later.

Erika starting painting and made some outstanding progress.





She's really pretty good at painting...waaay fewer white patches than if I were doing it.

Unrelated to all these goings-on, this is what the mud room started life as:



Now, there are a few things to take away from this picture. First, the fridge isn't in the kitchen. Second, the carpet is gross. I mean really, really gross. Third, there are bi-fold doors that seperate the kitchen from the mud room (funny rant here, midway down the page). Also, there is a cabinet for you to bang your head on. Furthermore, there is a washer-dryer and nasty old sink on the left (out of the picture, naturally). So, what to do?

Move the fridge to where it should have been in the first place.



This involves re-routing the filtered water hookup, installing a new grounded outlet in the kitchen (more later here) and removing the fridge doors so it can actually fit through the doorways that it wasn't meant to go through.

After that, read a book about tiling, then tear out the carpet and start to lay tile.


Now, get the bi-fold doors and cabinet out and put the sink outside.


Then decide it's not going back in after you break the drain pipe.



I still have to do the tiles around the edges of the room. Then I have to remove all the plumbing for the sink. More here later.

First coat is down!

I put down the first coat of polyurethane on the floor yesterday afternoon. It looks pretty good. I'm excited that it will come pretty close to matching the kitchen, so when you look from the living room through the house, it will be cohesive.

Here are some bad cell phone pictures:




Now I just have to sand it, and then repeat another 3 times.

No more sanding

Well, maybe just a little bit more. Take a look.



As you can see, the light color doesn't clash with the dark trim the way the red color did.

Also, we got welcomed into the neighborhood. This plate was full at one point.



I'm going to bed now and will be asleep before 10pm.