Our two carts loaded up

We had this plan to get up, get brunch at IHOP, and then go see one of our movie selections from the night before. Instead, we woke up at 11:30am this morning, and wouldn’t make it to any movie. Also, my wife was still feeling ill. I’m not complaining, as we never have the opportunity to sleep in anymore. Nor should we be pushing ourselves to exhaustion or further illness. We modified our plans, decided on a late lunch/brunch at a local diner, then hit Target for toothpaste. Toothpaste, my friends!

Before I begin to recap the wealth of items we purchased today, let me explain a few things:

1. We had a nice lunch. I had a pastrami sandwich, and I only ate a portion of my fries.
2. We’ve been searching/discussing additional seating for guests in our living room.
3. We’ve been searching/discussing how to best display/organize our DVDs.
4. Yes, we remembered the toothpaste.

Have I mentioned how much I like Target? They have such nice stuff. Anyway, after picking up toothpaste and milk, we went to the furniture section. Oh, a nice bench that has built-in storage, perfect for movies! Oh, a nice bookshelf to hold our movies and pictures! Oh, pajamas for Josh! Oh, a larger plush blanket for snuggling on the couch! The list continues. We loaded up the car, and rushed home so I could put the shelf together before I had to pick up the kids.

I put it together in record time — under 2 hours, as I’m an expert. So far, they both look great, match our furniture, and we fit all the DVDs and some picture frames. Next on the list? More wall shelves and new living room tables.

New wall shelf
New leather bench	And it has storage

It’s February, the month of cold weather, Valentine’s Day, my wife’s birthday, and now with new carpet. Our house is 40 years old, and I have no idea how old the living room carpet is. It’s in somewhat decent shape, but certainly looking its age. Beaten down, the padding no longer cushiony, and old stains that I can’t remove. We figured that we would should at least try to get some quotes on carpeting, laminates, or hardwood flooring for the living room and/or hallway. If we get some quotes now, we can either get it now or adequately plan for the future expense.

For years, I’ve seen Empire Carpet commercials on television, and it sounds good. Still, you never know. I called them in for an appt on a rainy Saturday morning. I thought we’ll get a few quotes, and see where the chips lay. After we reviewed samples of different types, we settled on specific carpet and laminate choices. Fearing the sticker shock, I was unpleasantly surprised for the actual sticker shock for carpeting the living room.

I was ready to send this guy packing, as that was way out of the budget. I’ve never purchased carpet, but I wasn’t going to spend that kind of money either. Our salesmen then stated he “mistakenly” quoted living and hallway, and “re-quoted” it $700 cheaper for carpeting just the living room. Better, but still way to much. Again, we said okay, but we’ll think about it.

Oddly enough, the Empire Today salesman started negotiating, and called his manager…. supposedly. They offered that if they could find a carpet style and color in their warehouse that we liked, they could offer a lower price. They “found” the carpet and color for 50% less than the original quote, and we filled out the contract. The final price was what we expected in our heads. The installation was scheduled for a few days later on Wednesday.

Needless to say, I was a bit weirded out. How did we drop more than 50% from the first quote? Was the first quote a sucker price? I went online that night, and there were plenty of people complaining about Empire Carpet — specifically the sales tactics and the quality of carpet. Understandably, I was very apprehensive at this point. We had time to cancel if necessary. We dropped by a local carpet and flooring store to check out pricing and materials, but they were significantly more expensive per foot. Yikes. What to do? Apprehensive, I spoke to a friend who had used Empire to carpet her condo, and she has been pretty happy, so we said what the hell, why not.

Wednesday morning, my wife and I moved the television and the aquarium. I took some time in the morning to finish moving breakables and other items from the living room. The carpet installers came around 11am, and took about three hours to remove the old carpet, install the new pad and carpet, and help me lay the home theater surround sound speaker wires under the new carpet. They were decent, but sadly, they took my Stanley tape measure. The photos are all below. The carpet is actually a slightly darker brown than what we had previously, so the pictures below may be deceiving. It’s not pink.

After they left in the afternoon, I took a painting we’ve had sitting on our fireplace for years, to get a hanging wire installed on the back of it at an art & framing store in town. Doing my best without a tape measure, I centered it and hung up the painting on the back wall. Not bad, and the colors look nice against the wall.

What’s the verdict on the still-in-progress living room? Better! I don’t think visitors will notice the difference between the old and new carpet, but we certainly do. It’s plush and clean!

After all these years, I finally got my HDTV. Oddly enough, it hasn’t truly hit me yet. You would think that I would be dancing around, giddy like a little schoolgirl. It would be within the realm of possibility that I would do that, and justifiably so. I’ve absolutely salivated over the thought. Instead, I’ve been pretty chill about the entire purchase. I think it’s partly because I haven’t truly had an opportunity to enjoy it very much. I should explain. We’ve had a busy few days, so my mind has been elsewhere.

• For the past week, I’ve been working in Delaware and staying at my sister’s house.
• Work has been generally pretty busy.
• We have my friend Paul staying over next weekend (July 4th weekend.)
• On July 4th itself, we’re hosting a large BBQ summer party at our little abode, so we’re in preparation for that.
• We’re in the midst of decluttering, and have been tossing out all the old stuff, and organizing the house a little bit better.
• I’ve been having trouble configuring the new Pioneer AV receiver. [More on that later.]

With all that going on, who has free time to sit on the couch and vegetate? Not us. I think televisions are fine, but my life stopped revolving around it years ago. What I do think is that when I DO get to sit in front of it, I like it. I watched Star Wars: A New Hope Sunday morning with Josh & Lily. It was something else to see all the visual detail that I’d never noticed before. I also watched a bit of the USA vs. Ghana World Cup game, and that was picture perfect bummer of a result. I played a little Uncharted 2, and the game went from nice vista to panoramic beauty.

On Friday morning, I woke up at 4:30am, and began to put the tv stand together. The AV receiver has been sitting here since last Saturday, and I was expecting to move the old Sony tv and stand to someone’s house. The tv was scheduled to come Saturday, and I wanted a headstart to get the new stand up, and the packaging bagged and thrown out. It took me about four hours to put the stand together. On a tangent, if I could go back in time, I’d invent the Allen wrench. It’s as if the entire slate of Chinese-manufactured products are required to be built with Allen wrenches. I can not tell you how many months of my life so far have been spent putting together some piece of furniture with an Allen wrench. And dowels. And those annoying bolts that you have to stick into one of those round things in a hole, and twist and lock that bolt in. You know what I’m talking about. Anyway, occasionally, I used a Philips screwdriver as needed, but towards the end, I did have to switch to my Black & Decker cordless screwdriver, which was a big help.

I finished assembling the stand around 9am, which was good, because I had to switch over to doing work. Good timing, eh? I think I’m getting better at putting furniture together after all these years. In the evening, one of Namita’s friends came over to pick up our old 32″ Sony Wega tv and stand. We put that heavy tv in my Highlander, and loaded the stand in her car. Josh wanted to come along, so I belted him in, and we then drove to Princeton to move it all into her apartment. It was heavy, but she was pretty happy. And it was free, since we couldn’t find a buyer. In 2010, everybody wants an HDTV, not a clunky, heavy, SDTV. On the way back, we picked up some Papa John’s and wings for dinner at home for the whole family.

On Saturday afternoon, I moved the old AV rack, and old Onkyo receiver and 6-disc DVD players into storage in our basement. I moved the stand into place, and put all our current devices into their respective spaces. The tv delivery guys from Ceva arrived in the late afternoon, unboxed the tv, assembled the stand, and turned it on for me to verify all was in order. Below is a picture of the new setup, until we re-arrange the rest of the living room. I have mixed feelings about no longer using the old Onkyo DVD player and receiver as they’ve served us well since I purchasing in Nov 2003. Unfortunately, the only reason driving my decision is that neither was compatible with HD. I’m happy that my PS3 plays Blu-rays and upscales DVDs well. For now, I don’t need another Blu-ray player, and that means one less device that I have to buy.

We were busy the rest of the weekend with kid birthday parties and more shopping, but I was a little frustrated with getting the new Pioneer receiver working properly. I did the automatic setup (with the included microphone), but I could tell that the 5.1 surround features weren’t working. It kept defaulting to Stereo, and I couldn’t get the subwoofer to go from Standby to On. It should turn on if the receiver tells it to. Late Sunday night, I read most of the thick VSX-1020-K manual, and played with the HDMI connections via trial-and-error. Eureka! The subwoofer’s little light changed from Standby red to Green On, and I could hear a little bass now.

I’ve also noticed a slight buzz with this G25. If you stick your head behind it or have the surround sound on low, I can hear the slightly perceptible buzz. It’s probably not a dealbreaker, but I thought I should notice it. It’s very reminiscent of a flourescent bulb. I’m wondering if it’s just because I’m in the break-in period on the set? I’ll wait out the two weeks, adjust the display settings (color, brightness, etc.) and review the results.

The new AV setup

Finally, just to note, I’m currently kicking myself for miscounting the number of HDMI and digital optical cables I needed. I had ordered them last week through Amazon for outstanding prices at less than $7 each, but found out that I needed one more of each. I considered running out to Best Buy, but the brick-and-mortar big-box retailers charge 4x the amount. I decided to order from Amazon again, and just wait until Tuesday. In the meantime, if we want to watch movies / play games , or watch television, I have to switch the cables to different inputs. By Tuesday, this should all be better. We renewed our Amazon Prime membership again this year, and I’m very pleased. When this type of situation like the need for additional occurs, it’s not too bad. I can order more stuff, and am not penalized by additional shipping fees. It’s all paid for, and it gets here in just two days. It’s a win-win-win situation.

I hung up some pictures today. It’s a momentous occasion. Why? Lemme ‘splain.

Picture it. Sicily, 1942. A young Mussolini had come to power…… let’s try this again.

Picture it. Christmas, 2008. I bought a set of 10 shadow boxes for my wife for Christmas. I selected various family photos, got them printed at our local CVS, and placed them within each frame. My wife is happy, and we decide to hang them up in the stairway landing upstairs. Since we’re planning to have the house painted, we decide to hold off on hanging the frames up. Why hang them up, when we’ll just have to do it again after painting the house.

Months go by, as we continually postpone painting the house. Hanging the pictures becomes an inside joke. March 2010, the house is painted, and I finally hung up all 10 frames. I couldn’t do it myself. Joshua was my assistant, and he did a nice job handing me my hammer, holding the laser level, and handing me each new frame.

It’s not complete. We have to replace one picture with a better landscape photo, and we need to find a better photo for the frame in the center (professional family photo?), but it’s up!  Sorry for the low quality cameraphone picture, but it’s all I had available. It’s probably strange to you that I’m elated to hang up picture frames. The reason for my elation is simple. We’ve been “on hold” for a long time with redecorating and making other little fixes to the house. Some things have changed here and there since 2005, but we’ve just started making the bigger changes. Waiting to paint the house has delayed making the living room nicer, hanging up family photos, and other stuff too small to mention. Minor in the grand scheme of things, but to me it always felt like part of our life was in a holding pattern, forever waiting. Now, it feels like life is moving again.

And that is a good reason to feel elated.

Josh helped me hang up these picture frames

The window treatments are officially up. The top of the living room window is 12′ off the ground, and oh, we don’t have a ladder. After pricing out buying a ladder or hiring a handyman who owns a ladder, my friend Doug offered to drive over to our house and install it for us with his ladder.

Eureka! I worked from home, occasionally helping out where I could. Between the new interior paint, the new slipcovers and accent pillows, and the new light fixtures, we’re finally catching up on all the remodeling that we’ve had on our list. You can’t do everything, so we’ve always done little things here and there. The recent work was a big chunk of the to-do list.

The living room itself is not yet complete, but we’re damn close. What’s left? Duh, my flatscreen HDTV, of course. Say it with me. Mwahahahahahaha.

Our window treatments are installed

Today, I installed the 2nd light light fixture in the upstairs hallway. It’s always a pain, but I’ve got it down to about two hours each time. I installed the 1st light fixture in the downstairs hallway last Sunday, but I had to wait until this weekend when we had some daylight, since you have to shut off the power before doing electrical work.

The toughest part of the overall installation is trying to slide the light fixture base onto the two screws (and washers) in the ceiling. You have to guide the two screws blind into two tiny holes in the light fixture base, but you can’t see where it’s going. One screw is in, the other isn’t. Then the revese the next time. The washers don’t come through the holes. The screws slide out of the holes when you tighten it too much.  And you’re doing all this while on a stepladder for two hours.

The best part was completing it about 15 mins before my parents showed up to visit, so I could show off my handiwork without looking too sweaty.

Thank goodness, we’re done for a while. It’s cheaper for me to do the electrical work than hiring an actual electrician, but geez, it’s a royal pain in the butt.

Busy, busy weekend. Sometimes, I think the weekends can be so busy, you need a day off on Monday just to recuperate from the weekend activities.

On Saturday, we actually didn’t do too much, but we hung out with the kids most of the day. I took Josh to his gym class in the morning, followed by a haircut to tame the large ‘fro on his head. Late lunch for the kids, and we were off to get ready for an adult dinner. But first, dropping off the kids for a few hours with my wife’s family!

Yes, an adult dinner. Every once in a while, we get the opportunity to dress up and eat a nice dinner sans children. It’s a wonderful experience. Saturday night, we had dinner reservations at Sophie’s Bistro, a supposedly very nice French restaurant in Somerset, NJ. The food was so good and so rich, by the time my entree arrived, I could only eat a few bites before I gave up and asked to have it packed up.

The evening was young, so we went to drop off pajamas and other supplies to the kids, and then we were off to watch The Blind Side starring Sandra Bullock over at the AMC in Hamilton. Keeping in mind that this was our second attempt to watch this particular movie together (read here), but also my wife’s second viewing of the same exact film, it was still enjoyable.

On Sunday morning, we picked up the kids, and hit the road for some home improvement shopping. Due to the all the recent home improvement work, we still had to pick up better-than-we-have-now light fixtures, curtain rods for our new window treatments, and other things. I’m not big on home improvement shopping, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. Otherwise, the alternative is to live in a cardboard box under the Brooklyn Bridge. Mmmmm, DUMBO.

Late Sunday afternoon, while the daylight was still streaming, I (we?) decided to install at least one of the light fixtures, so I chose the downstairs hallway. Now, the last time I did this was April 2008 when replacing the kitchen ceiling light fixture (see around Apr 15th if you’re interested.) The dome of the original fixture had come loose and fallen (and oh boy, shattered) one evening, so we needed a replacement light fixture back then. Instead of calling a qualified electrician, I decided to do it myself. It took me about four hours later at that time, it wasn’t fun, and yet no ceiling fires in the past two years. Time to try it again!!!

This time, it was still a pain in the rear end, but it only took me two hours to replace the ceiling light in the downstairs hallway. Again, so far, so good on the ceiling fires, i.e. there has been no sign of fire! The only downside is that I think some of the fiberglass that was in the new light went into the air, and embedded themselves into my face, as my face hurts. I’m not even joking. Apart from that, the downstairs hallway is better lit, so I say “Mission accomplished!” I have one more light to install in the upstairs hallway, but will do that next weekend, when I have daylight. Obviously, one needs to turn off the power to that fixture at the circuit box, and installing a ceiling light is probably an even greater pain in the ass while in the absence of light. I don’t know for certain, but I’m just assuming here.

You know, I think I’m turning into a regular handy man.

New interior paint and window shade

Oh man, this house is starting to look nice. About two years, we were interested in getting the interior of the house painted. We didn’t know what color to paint it, but we knew we wanted to get it painted. However, when the prospective painters gave us their quote, we waited until they left before we fainted. Egads, does it really cost this much? We said we would think about it, and two years passed. It was easy, because life just got busier around here, including the arrival of Lily the Muppet. 

Fast-forward to this year, and we still really want to paint the house. Of course, we still didn’t know what color to paint it, but that’s beside the point. We called a host of painters, and you would think that in the current state of the economy, contractors would be chomping at the bit for work. Maybe some, but not all. Of the nine different painters I called, only three gave us quotes. 

The fresh paint really cleaned up the interior

Three. That’s right. Tres painters. Some never called me back. Three came in to check out the place, and emailed us quotes a few days later. The ones who came to estimate, but never sent us quotes, nor responded back when I emailed, informing them I’m still waiting on the quote….. well, those guys just baffled me. Why wouldn’t you even give me a quote? My favorite is probably the same painters who gave us a high quote in 2008, but I called back anyway. With the recession, I wanted to see an updated quote. Instead, they used the same price estimate, and added an additional $400 for extra doors and the upstairs hallway. 

For a while, we considered just buying the paint from Home Depot and simply painting the place on our own with the help of some friends. It didn’t work out though. I had limited free time to get the caulking, sanding, and painting completed on my own, and some of our friends didn’t have all the time either. It was cheaper to do it ourselves, but it wasn’t turning out to be the smartest, based on free time, effort, and cost. I’ve come to realize that some jobs are easy enough to do yourself with a little elbow grease. However, you should pick your battles, and avoid getting overwhelmed for a task you don’t have the skills, equipment, and most importantly, the ability to complete it timely. 

In the end, we selected Stewart’s Painting and Power Washing, a father and son team based here in central NJ. They seemed honest, fully insured, and their references checked out. I’ve been pretty worried about handing over large sums of money to contractors, based on the horror stories I’ve heard, but I called their references, and previous customers were generally very happy. These guys came in way under compared to everyone else, and well, they actually gave us a quote. 

We were scheduled to have the painting completed last week, but the last-minute February snowstorm/blizzard (snowicane? snowapocalpse?) delayed it. Our painter was only able to complete the spackling of cracks and holes on Wednesday, and helping us to remove the old window treatments and blinds (no charge!)  Our painters came back the following Monday and Tuesday and finished the job. Truth be told, they missed some very minor details here and there, but on the whole, a very good job, and the price was excellent. I would certainly recommend them to others. 

In addition to the interior painting, we’re also replacing the living room window treatments and blinds. The old venetian blinds were broken and hard to use, and the old curtains matched nothing. On Thursday, our new custom shade from Budget Blinds was delivered and installed in 30 mins. Now we’re just waiting to find the curtain rods, get it all installed and hung up, some pictures hung up, and we are done. 

Booyah.