if you want to find a needle in a haystack, burn the haystack

I virtually disappeared from this blog for over a month.  I wish I had something exciting to report in the absence but I don't.  Unless you're one of those people who considers 'home remodeling' exciting.  We've been doing a lot of that lately.  We've been doing a lot of everything lately.

...and while I'm still on it-if you fancy home remodeling, I personally invite you to come over and help out.  We're dragging our house, built in 1964, into modern times despite its reluctance to do so.  The house is literally the most torn up it's been since we moved in last year.  Kelly and I had a '5 year' plan that's been accelerated by about 3 years.  This all started with two things: a flaky contractor and a dead television.

Let me back up a little bit.  We originally were going to replace the outside stairs from the deck to the ground (all 7 steps of it) and replace the inside stair handrail.  That was it for the rest of the year.  Inside, I celebrated a little-thinking that I'd get to start back up on my car.

Then three contractors came out and provided quotes to replace the stairs-not terrible quotes-but all three of them either didn't return calls asking for a start date or they simply disappeared after providing a quote.

In betwixt the contractors, I bought a new television because the old one stopped processing a signal (meaning sound but no picture) and Kelly's work has a corporate discount.  So, we decided to fix a wall in the family room and build a television wall with shelving.  And that's when things got 'ambitious'.

What was to be a small project has blossomed into doing multiple mini-projects at one time.  We rationalized that the house was torn up, so why not just do everything we can at once...and that's when it got bigger.

We are rather focused, in spite of the sheer number of things that have climbed on to the list...the pace is slow and there's no deadline, which is a good thing since I ordered most of the supplies off of Amazon.com-it cut the cost of some parts by 60%.

This is how most of our projects begin-a cold, wet surprise when we least expect it!

When this complex pile of projects is complete, we will have wiped so many things off the list it'll be borderline devastating.

I kid.  

It's going to kick ass.  

Bring on the cold water, you ugly fucking garage sale bowl...we're here to empty you...once and for all.

Background Tune: "Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second" by Starfucker