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A Little More Than A Week...

Well, this time I wasn't as good about getting a 'weekly' update in, but things have been quite busy in the last two weeks...

$1.99 Gasoline

Over this past weekend, we went to Mitchell, SD, to visit some friends for a few days. We had a grand time (it was nice to be away and not really be scheduled to death with stuff to do) and it was really good to see some people we haven't seen for a few months. I won't really linger on the trip to South Dakota, but while in Mitchell we encountered regular and super unleaded gasoline for $1.99/gallon. The next cheapest option was $2.08, but most prices hovered around $2.15. Of course, I took advantage of that deal (might as well). It's really sad to me when I think $1.99 is a deal, but it's certainly been some time since I last saw gas prices at that range...

More Painting!

Well, nearly two weeks ago now I replaced the fascia board which I'd mentioned in the September 27 post. The job itself is quite trivial, but the board needed to be painted. So, I broke out the paint and started in. Of course, when I got up there to paint it, I started really looking at the soffit (which also needed scraping & painting) and decided to do that project as well while the paint dried. Well, long story short, when I got one soffit done, the rest of them all looked like hell. So, it was time to tackle all of those. Fortunately, the scraping was pretty straightforward (not much necessary), so the project went pretty fast (except for the upstairs soffit which I did a different day since I ran out of daylight and since it required a lot more up and down the ladder action).

I am very happy to report now that all of the major painting projects I'd been neglecting for a few years now are complete -- and things look fantastic compared to their previous conditions.

Storm Window

I finally dug out the mysterious missing storm window for the kitchen window which doesn't open. After some basic cleaning and re-glazing, I primed and painted the window white (its previous color had been red) to match the remainder of the windows. I let it cure for a few days in the garage and recently installed it. Of course, I also sealed up the window like the others (with caulk, leaving a few weep holes at the bottom).

I need to do some maintenance on said window on the inside in the kitchen. It's currently covered by curtains (so it's easy to ignore, although that's not the reason for the curtain), but when I was examining it there was a bit of water damage since there had been no storm window on it for some time.

So, once that's done, my major projects outside (related to the house) will be complete.

Window Plastic

Well, it's getting to be that time of year again. But, unlike last year (when I put the shrinkwrap-type plastic on the inside of the upstairs windows), I believe I'm going to use the outdoor variety. I tried it on the aforementioned kitchen window last year with very mixed results. By the middle of January, the tape had released and I ended up just removing the plastic.

This year (in addition to the tape), I'm going to use some staple strips as a bit of a backup to the tape. That should help to reduce the stress on the tape, hopefully preventing the same problem. It will also be a lot nicer since we're likely to do some painting projects upstairs this fall yet, which will include trim paint. So, perhaps as early as this weekend I'll break out the ladder again and tackle those projects. I'm not looking forward to dealing with the window plastic, but it will help keep heat in (and being outside should be easier to deal with than the indoor stuff, aside from the fact one has to be on the ladder to install it.

Office Move

In addition to all the other stuff I've been tinkering with lately, we also moved our office over the last two weeks. We're still in the same building, but occupying our own smaller space which aptly costs much less than our previous office space. We had previously been paying for 'window' space on main street (which we don't use or need) and also sharing common office space with another company. While that itself wasn't a bad deal, it's a good move to a new location. Things are much quieter, and we're not paying near as much!

Of course, with that move means our work network and whatnot also had to move. I managed to reuse most of our existing office infrastructure (down to the keystones of the wall plates). So, I've spent a few days up in the ceiling of our new office space running wire and terminating wire. Fortunately, as of today, I've basically completed the project. But it was fun to wire a 110 block again. smile

That's all for Now!

So until next time...

-- MattZaske - 10 Oct 2006

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