7

I'm not going to say its been a long time... cause duh, its always a long time these days. But I have pics from Emi and my trip to Florida.

Emi can drive a boat and catch fish

(Thats a small Sheepshead). Thats why I love her so much. Plus she is so cute

!!!

THAT MY FRIEND IS A DAMN NICE SNOOK! The best part is that they are soooo tasty.

The wall was in TERRIBLE shape, I know I should have a before and after but you can see all the skimming I did to try to flatten out that wall as best I could.

Here I'm working on getting the trim ready to paint. Just a little stripping, I might hit it one more time... I came this far already right?

And new colors for the living room. Im thinking the beige is the way to go. And use the yellow for the living room walls by adding it to some white so that it will cover the whole room.

See I'm not the only one in my family that works on my apartment. This is my parents apartment in Roscoe Village, in Chicago.

Well I recently discovered that my site here has gotten a few more hits than I thought it was. To be perfectly honest I thought I was talking to about one other person (Hi, Mark www.markmaupin.com). I appears that there might be few more out there stopping by so I know no I need to get a bit more serious. Ah keem, here we go, uh... well I have a bit of stage fright now. I put some varnish on the trim today. It smells something wicked.... uh yeah that's where I'm at with the apartment.

Yeah I'm slow in updating these days but .... I'm, well lazy, anyway... this one is for Mark. I was quite pleased with the look of a little paint and I figured I'd wait to update but Mark help so much to get these walls ready before we put the floor in I had to post a pic. I know the trim isnt stained and I have work still to do but its looking so nice I had to put it up there.

AND MY BEER!!!! I'm once again brewing... my newest Emi Wiesse, a simple, wheat beer, should be great.

And the Apartment...

You saw this area before... the gas fixed and floor in.

And the other area, a little rough but done.

Quick Honeymoon update

You gotta do the lobster!

PoCoNoS, nice place.

Unlike any other day in my website, today Emiko and I got married. :-D It was a very nice ceremony at the Mayor's office. We have a few pictures we would like to share with you all.

		We wish you all could have joined us on this great day. We will surely celebrate as soon as possible. Ryan and Emiko
The service.	A new husband and wife.

This could have been done when the plumber was out before!!!

Arggg.

No I needed to rip up the floor!!!

No comment.

Saturday... its getting hard to remember exactly what happened over those 5-6 days. After getting the new floor up and the old floor out and down to the garbage the rest just seemed to go so slowly. Especially the stripping, I've mentioned it before, but I figured it would go quicker with 2 people. Instead it just was moving at the pace of 2 people, destroying my theory that whatever the job, 2 people make the work go at least 3 times as fast. Anyway. With a few miscellaneous trips to home depot, lots of orange stripper and a ton of rags we eventually got the trim all stripped. Actually a large portion of what I stripped probably should be done some more to lighten it a little bit to match the rest of the room, but with the floor done I will take my time to make that decision. Stripping finished, I believe, Sunday evening... late.

Monday, was a little bit of catch up on rest and then getting the sub-floor ready for the new flooring. I also decided to wire the cable and stereo. BUT its getting close to the 5PM already and I need to pick Emiko up from the airport. But I'm leaving way too early I realized. So I decide to work on the cable and surround sound wiring before I go. I figured a nice groove in the flooring will allow me to recess the wires so that they are out of site and mind. TO make a very long story short (and one that is not quite done yet). I cut a gas line, 2 fire trucks, 15 firemen, 2 ConEd guys, no gas for my neighbor, a frustrated Ryan, no work done, understanding but unhappy neighbor, a $40 a day tool reserved for the next day. Things are not looking good and the day ends at 12PM with downstairs neighbor asking to keep the noise down, doh!

The gas lines capped off.

Tuesday starts on a good note, floors are getting really ready to be installed. We figured it would go pretty quick so we take our time getting everything ready to go. About noon we are laying floor. 8 hours later we call it a day surprised at how long it is taking. The Wednesday at noon we have a small get-together for lunch at a friends house.

Wednesday, we finish in time for the lunch, all that remains are the small sections where the power nailer doesn't quite have enough room to operate, they will need to be done by hand. Time for a break. Mark you deserve it, working like a dog, arrive at Kay's house for lunch. We are bit late but not horrible. Refreshment? Oh, yes that would be nice. Ice tea Mark? Sure sounds good. Mark says to Ryan 2 minutes later "I'm sorry. I'm sick, I gotta go..." Ryan says, "Serious?" "I think I'm going to puke." Bye everyone! (apparently Kay had ice tea with lemon in a pewter pot that created some kind of chemical reaction that put Mark into another world......... Hey Mark! Did I say thank cause this week is turning out just splendid so far, but hey at least you're still alive!)

Thursday, I finally put an end to the work. Apologized to Mark and we head to Blockbuster to get enough games to last us at least 20 some straight hours of PS2 and Matrix glory. 4PM~Hey blew a fuse dude... wait the street lights are out... what the whole east coast is out? I'm hungry.

Friday, Mark can't go home, still have no power, but we enjoy some dinner and Mark ships out at the wee hour of 8AM (in airport talk that means wake before 5AM). Mark makes it home alive, possible in one piece and with a whole hearted thanks. Thanks Buddy. Check out these floors!


Living room windows	Living room / balcony door	My dining room already doubling as a computer room, so nice.

OK, it took 12 days to get back to my posting and I am happy to say sooooo much has gotten accomplished. Mark was out for over a week (over a week due to the "Blackout of 2003" as the news likes to call it. Anyway the time line went like this (kinda).

Friday I wake up and take a trip to New Jersey to pick up 18 boxes for a total of 360 ft2 of 3/4 X 2 1/4in pre-finished red oak flooring. In the back of the borrowed van it doesn't appear to be all that much. I swing by the grocery store and pick up sustenance. Mark arrives at LaGuardia about hmmm, 12. We take a long route to New Rochelle (due to my navigating excellence) and buy some beer and meat from Costco. For the rest of the evening we attempt to carry what has become an endless amount of wood up 5 flights of stairs. It started all good, Mark carries to the 2nd and 1/2 floor I carry up to the apartment. After we get 1/2 of the wood in the apartment this proves tough. We are in pain and water flows through us like water through the Hoover Dam. Drenched, tired, already sore. We continue. Now we decide to carry 2 boxes together. We get one load to the 2nd floor. Ready to cry, we change strategy again. (That was not smart.) Now we carry one box two flights of stairs at a time, together! It all starts to get foggy from here but somehow the boxes of wood are now piled in my apartment. Mark now has time to look at the prep work I did to get ready for us to "install some new wood flooring". With only about 1/4 of the trim stripped, 1/2 the old flooring out, we break for dinner. After dinner we decided we should try to get a little more done as carrying up the floor too a few more hours than we expected. We managed to rip up a bit of the floor before heading off to bed. Well I did anyway. Mark hit the sofa. Although I often wake in the middle of the night after haven fallen asleep on my beloved couch, after a grueling 10 hr of work I could have pulled out the bed for him. I'm such a dick!! Sleeping on the floor apparently did wonders on Mark's back cause he woke ready to work.

Also over the weekend I saw these two.. yeah they look like a ball of fun don't they!

Well I was going to posts some new pics but I left my compact flash card with Emiko... she got a new digi-camera. So I cant take any pictures right now, but I'm stripping like crazy. Its going slow but I hope I start to notice accomplishment really soon. I am happy for a certain someone who should be very happy with the pending sale of his apartment... I'm hoping the excitement will help him over look the few spots I missed with the roller on the walls and the so-so paint job of the heating units in the living room... we'll just have to see. ;-)

I'm off to Japan till the 4th of August. I have much to do when I return (I might just have help to carry up and install a floor when I return ...insert big smile here...) so I need to get my act together and start busting out the preparation work that needs to be done.

Well the pest is gone (see 7/22). I have been stripping and I have a song to go along with it... its kinda Captain Morgan / chemical stripper induced stripping song to pass the time. I guess Ill spare you but I thought it was really entertaining at the time. NAW, went like this,

Theres a lot of doo and daaws in there that make it really great. The dance is out of this world... stripping is bad for your health, there is no doubt about it , be careful kids!!

But look at these doors!!! The left door is in the process of being stripped (bottom still in process). The bottom part of the right door was done with that peelaway stuff, darkened the wood, I don't like it, the easiest to use so far has been the citrus stuff... I love it, I have a song that I made while using it, let me sing it to you.... um, I forgot how it... Maybe next time.

Ok now I've set up the photos as thumbnails to save my bandwidth starved friends.

Today nothing really special just a new pest has claimed a little piece of my property!@#$%^&! I hate the winged rats!

I've been a little busy. First was the stripping. The trim on the right is looking ok, still a bit dark but I'm happy with the orange stuff, thanks Mark, but the sheet stuff that washes of with water leaves a horrible white film... I hope it will come off.

This radiator had to move. It was floating off the ground... mostly because it leaked and the floor beneath sagged and started to rot away. It is really heavy, I mean it. It's heavy. Really!!

With the radiator out of the way I have started to peel away the paint behind it.

Oh yeah. I also decided it was a good idea to rip out the floor. The floor wasn't totally unrepairable but what the heck... I've lost it (according to Brad a long time ago ;-) It's pine anyway, so I figured maybe a nice white oak (or maple if the check clears) would contrast the dark trim. And since its pine it won't be so heavy to carry down the stairs... uh huh, second hernia (1st was while moving the radiator). I better lose some of this gut after carrying this floor down. I don't want to think about bringing the new floor up :'-(

7/15/03 With just chunks of paint falling off on this side of the room and off the doors the stripping work has been easy so far. But I started to get frustrated with the right hand sliding door not working properly. And as you can see it wasn't that easy to get it back in place. One bolt that holds the track to the joyce above fell out and the others came loose so I needed to get in there and tighten up and reinsert the one.

After a little persuasion (a hammer and a sawsall ;-) and a little help from Emi I was able to access all the bolts and got the doors level.

I needed remove the trim on both sides to get enough room to get anything done... actually if I accessed from the side below first I would have been able to get it all done from this side.

Here is a picture of the track and the wheels assembly the doors hang from. And can you see all that wood? From the outside there is a layer of plaster, then lathe, then the monster studs, then 3/8 tongue and groove pine that lines the cavity on both sides, the door and then over to the other side, the wall is about 16 inches across.