Mom's condo renovation

It was a lot of work, and unfortunately, we did not get to do everything we wanted to do, but we were able to accomplish a lot.

"Before" pictures...

Living room. Carpet may have been original with the condo, about 40 years old.

Living room and primary bedroom.

Guest bedroom. Apparently previous owner painted around furniture which was against the wall. Partial view of shades which were the existing window treatment in the bedrooms.

Bathroom. First picture shows the window treatments in the primary bedroom.

"After" pictures... New carpet will be installed in the bedrooms soon.






As you can see from one of the bedroom pictures, I put some underfloor wiring in place. There is a CAT5 cable going from near the telephone to the entertainment center, another CAT5 cable going from near the telephone to the guest bedroom and a CAT5 cable from one side of the kitchen doorway to the other side. This is so we can place the phone on the other side of the doorway without having to worry about tripping over the cord. There is also a CAT5 cable and a coax cable from the entertainment center to the spare bedroom. There is also speakerwires from the entertainment center to the back side of the living room. And finally, I put a pair of coax cables between the entertainment center and the primary bedroom. I am interested in seeing how to put the coax cable to work. In order to put wiring under the floor, I had to get "flat" cables. I wonder if the flat coax cable I got was really a coax cable. Anyway, we'll find out once I get a chance to try to hook it up.

Everything seemed to take longer than I thought it would. As an example, there was a wire lath behind the dry wall at some places, and therefore, it was difficult to drill through. Also, often it seemed there was concrete behind the wire lath. I hope nothing I put up will be falling down!

As another example, changing a door knob should be simple, right? Well, the old door knob I was replacing on the back door was the type where the screws to remove the door knob are not visible, and one must stick an object through a slot in order to be able to release the inside door knob. However, it seemed it was rusty, so I could not remove the door knob, so I tried to rip it off with the limited tools I had on hand. Eventually, I got to a point where I could find where the release should allow the door knob to be removed and I was able to apply enough lubricant to get it to release the door knob. Then when installing the door knob, I thought it might be nice to have a lever door knob. However, the stores seemed to be out of the left-handed ones, but when I looked at the picture, it seemed that a right-handed one should work. After I started to install the door knob, even though by the picture, a right-handed door knob should work, the picture (or drawing I should say) on the box was assuming that the door is opening to the inside, not outside. In the case of my mom's door, it opens to the outside. Therefore, to install the door knob so that the keyed door knob is on the outside, that meant I would have to install the door knob upside down. So I had to go back to the store and get one which was independent of which side the door knob should go. Then, when I get the door knob installed, I find that it does not latch properly. The hole in the frame does not seem to be in the right spot but since it was an aluminum frame, I had to find something which I could use to cut through it. I tried a combination of a jab saw and jig saw. Obviously a recipricating saw would have been best but did not one to buy one just for this purpose... I was eventually able to make the hole big enough so the door would close properly.

I used http://www.tadalist.com for keeping track of things to do in Florida. Not that the following is accurate, but the following is based on the To Do list which I created. It had to be modified many times to adjust to our schedule based on problems... I mean challenges I encountered along the way.

• Thursday: Remove carpet
• Thursday: Prime living room/dining room
• Thursday: Buy hammer
• Thursday: Buy circular saw
• Thursday: Buy floor padding
• Thursday: Buy more electrical tape
• Friday: Buy paint
• Friday: Paint
• Friday: Lay low voltage wiring on floor
• Friday: Buy fluorescent bulbs
• Friday: Buy more paint supplies - roller, brush, hand container
• Friday: Measure towel holder length (26.5")
• Sunday: Remove towel holder in bathroom (26.5")
• Sunday: Move furniture from bedroom into living room
• Sunday: Remove carpet from bedrooms
• Sunday: Cut underneath doorjam with jab saw
• Sunday: Select paint for bathroom
• Sunday: Buy paint for bedroom
• Sunday: Buy wall plates (5 outlet, 1 switch, 1 double switch)
• Monday: Remove carpet from second bedroom
• Monday: Prime second bedroom
• Monday: Paint prime coat in second bedroom
• Monday: Buy paint for second bedroom
• Monday: Buy towel holder, toilet paper holder
• Monday: Buy additional paint tray
• Monday: Verify threshold matches laminate
• Tuesday: Paint behind sofa
• Tuesday: Paint bedroom
• Tuesday: Paint second bedroom
• Tuesday: Move desk and entertainment center into correct position
• Tuesday: Move clothes back into mom's room
• Tuesday: Measure for curtain rods
• Wednesday: Prime bathroom
• Wednesday: Touch up white paint in bedroom, guest bedroom, and closet
• Wednesday: Move furniture back into bedrooms
• Wednesday: Buy doorknob for back door
• Wednesday: Buy curtain rod for living room
• Wednesday: Buy living room curtain rod
• Wednesday: Buy gallon ziplocks for document storage
• Wednesday: Buy curtain holders
• Wednesday: Look for threshold alternative
• Wednesday: Take off knob on backdoor
• Wednesday: Install curtain holders
• Wednesday: Install blinds
• Wednesday: Set up turntable
• Thursday: Set up entertainment center
• Thursday: Old furniture gets picked up
• Thursday: Finish installing laminate floor
• Thursday: Move furniture back into living room
• Thursday: Safely cap wires in bathroom
• Thursday: Touch up dark green paint in guest bedroom and outside mom's bedroom
• Thursday: Install curtain rod in living room
• Thursday: Paint bathroom
• Thursday: Test sending ReplayTV show
• Friday: Finish laminate in closet
• Friday: Install bathroom cabinet
• Friday: Install towel holder
• Friday: Buy nail gun
• Friday: Buy shoe molding and supplies (glue? caulk?)
• Friday: Buy door knob
• Friday: Buy coax outlet
• Saturday: Finish laminate behind sofa
• Saturday: Install shoe molding behind sofa
• Saturday: Buy more shoe molding
• Saturday: Buy Leviton wall plate
• Saturday: Buy cabinet handles
• Saturday: Finish shoe molding
• Saturday: Organize closets
  
• Saturday: Buy wood block, last board puller, wood glue
• Saturday: Buy miter box
• Saturday: Install shoe molding
• Saturday: Install coax connections
• Saturday: Organize mom's stuff
• Saturday: Test NetMeeting on mom's ThinkPad
• Saturday: Update Windows software on mom's computer
• Saturday: Set up folding doors
• Saturday: Buy coax splitter
  
• Saturday: Return door knob to Lowes and cabinet handles to Home Depot
• Saturday: Adjust length of blinds
• Sunday: Wash chalkline off wall

As I mentioned, we did not get to complete everything we wanted. The following are things to be targeted for next time:

• Install threshold for front door and sun room
• Paint shoe molding
• Install new bathroom doors
• Install toilet paper holder
• Build cabinets
• Build pantry
• Make microwave shelf
• Create new storage in bathroom
• Install dishwasher (Maytag for 33 1/2" clearance)
• Install towel hooks
• Install blinds in guest bedroom
• Check light in bathroom
• Check light in kitchen
• Install low voltage outlets
• Set up backup hard drive
• Replace mirror in bathroom
• Replace bi-fold doors
• Install curved shower curtain
• Try to eliminate extra (original) cable
• Future: Install projector for home theater
• Future: Replace back door (frame)

Update: I found that the creators of TadaList also have a more robust site at www.backpackit.com. Not only does it allow you to create checklists but it also allows one to save notes, "writeboards" (whose format is similar to wiki's), and files. There are limitations with a free account, but still, with only 5 "pages", I can create as many to do lists on each of the different pages. Therefore, I can have a page of "personal projects" and create different to do lists, such as Home Entertainment, Computers, etc. Also, the interface for updating to do lists is much better, with drag and drop capability for reordering lists.

Hurricane Wilma

The purpose of going to Florida was to help my mom renovate her condo. It was only coincidental that Hurricane Wilma came through a couple of weeks earlier. Fortunately, my mom's condo was not directly damaged. The resident upstairs had her windows broken (and I assume water damage as well). My mom said that water was getting through her door.

The following is a picture of a giant tree which was behind her condo. My mom was without electricity for about 2 weeks. Can you imagine that? No refrigerator, no stove (it's electric), no hot water... No lights and it gets dark around 5:30 pm.


Here are some other pictures behind her condo. I wish I had the chance to take other pictures of the area. For example, there were places where many signs were blown out. The structure for the sign was there, but the sign itself was blown out... So sometimes it was difficult to know what business it was. In addition, some street directional signs were down or a stop sign was turned the wrong way.

Having a navigation unit in your car... Priceless

I used our navigation unit (Garmin c330) to use on the way to Florida. Here are the ways it helped me out:

• About one hour outside of Dallas and about an hour from Tyler, there was bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-20. I had no idea why but we were not going anywhere. Perhaps it was construction or perhaps it was an accident. Anyway, by using the navigation unit, I could see that Texas highway 80 was running parallel to I-2o for a while, so I was able to get off of I-20 and take highway 80 instead. There was hardly any other traffic on highway 80, so not many other people decided to take this alternate route. If traffic had been going smoothly on I-20, this detour on highway would only cost me about 10 extra minutes. However, considering we were not going anywhere on I-20, it could have saved me an hour or more.
• Since I was driving on a Monday, I did not expect hotels/motels to be all full, but to my surprise, they were. Perhaps they were people who were still displaced from Hurricane Katrina or perhaps they were the snowbirds heading south for the winter, but at any rate, the first motel I stopped at in Hattiesburg Mississippi was already full. By using the navigation unit, I could call all the other nearby motels and I was able to find out that they were all full, too. So I decided to keep going.
• By using the navigation unit, I could find that my best bet of getting a hotel along the route was to go all the way to Mobile Alabama. I found that the Hilton Garden Inn still had some vacancies (not many, only about 3 rooms left), so I asked them to hold a room for me.
• On the way to Mobile, there was some extremely heavy fog. By use of the navigation unit, I could tell that the road was not going to do something unexpected, like a sudden 90 degree turn. I could have even driven with my eyes closed! OK, maybe not.
• While in Mobile, with all the heavy fog, I probably would not have been able to find the hotel without the navigation unit. Even with the navigation unit, I made some wrong turns, but was easily able to determine I was heading in the wrong direction.
  
• While driving toward Pompano Beach, there was some construction going on I-95. They were even going to close I-95 at 10:30 pm. It was only 9:30 pm, but the traffic was backed up. By using the navigation unit, I was easily able to find my way to the Florida Turnpike (I had to backtrack a little bit) and bypass all the mess on I-95.

I really could not have imagined how my trip would have turned out without this unit. Yes, it is a little pricey, but I would say it almost paid for itself on this trip.

New digs for Sushi Sake

On November 6, Soda-san had a grand opening event for the new location of Sushi Sake. I had not been to a grand opening event where the owner was giving free food to the patrons, especially not sushi! It was great (and extremely popular).
Normally in such an event in Japan, one takes a modest portion of the food (since it is free). However, apparently, many people were going back for multiple servings. No one made a fuss about this 'faux pas' behavior.



We have since gone back and it was still very crowded even without the free food. The new location is at 2750 N. Collins in Richardson, TX, not far from the old location.

Photosharing

We have a Flickr account. I like the way you can see thumbnails of all the pics at once and the slideshow function is pretty good.

There are some things about Flickr aesthetically which are not clean.

There is also Smugmug. Smugmug is very well done. One thing I like about Flickr is the calendar function to be able to see when pictures were taken very easily. Smugmug does have a map function which would be good in our case since we do a lot of traveling.

Smugmug does require an annual fee, but it is $29 and there's no limit on the amount of photos you can post. Flickr is free with no limit on photos as far as I can tell, but you can only post so many photos per month (as determined by how many bytes are uploaded). I signed up for the premium account in Flickr which increases significantly the upload limit.

I'll have to play around some more to see what are all the pros and cons between Flickr and Smugmug.