Summer

I love summer. Sure it is 100 today but the evenings are so pleasant here in Denver. Our garden is starting to take off. I think I waited too long on a lot of the plants, so I’m anxious to see how it turns out.

I had a great time at my parents cabin this weekend. Picture from the lake included.

This post was sent from my phone. So we will see how it turns out!

Updates to the House

Well we’ve been in the house for a little over two months now.  We’ve already had some work done on the house, besides the floors.  We’re also planning the next couple of projects.  I’m looking forward to those projects quite a bit.

Electrical Work

During the inspection process it was noted that our panel was an extremely dangerous panel from back in the 50′s and 60′s.  If you google Federal Pacific you can find all kinds of fun stories about it.  Here is one link.  So we needed to have that replaced to make sure our house doesn’t burn down.  The rough cost to do that is $1400.  We tried to have the seller fix that problem but he felt he had given us enough already.

So it was up to us to find an electrician.  So I used Angie’s List to find one.  We decided to use Sundog Electric and we couldn’t be more happy with our decision.  They did a great job with the panel and we decided to have them put boxes in for ceiling fans and do some other misc work.  When they first came out they were getting a bush out of the way so they could work outside and all of a sudden a bunch of bees started flying around.  It turns out we had a huge bees nest in the eaves of our house.  So I had to get some bee killer and they rescheduled for another day.  When they came back they were able to install the new panel but ran out of time for the fans and other stuff.  So they came back and got everything taken care of this Wednesday.  Now I’m, slowly, putting up the fans.  I can say without a doubt that buying the cheap fans is a PITA.  They take so much more work at assemble and put up.  It is worth the extra money for the nice ones.  We also now have new outlets in different locations within the house.  The old ones were the crappy two-prong kind.

Landscaping

Patio Location

For now our primary landscaping focus will be in the backyard.  The thing we’re the most excited about is putting in a patio along the house.  We’re thinking of just using poured concrete because it is cheaper than other options.  Although I have heard some good things about stamped concrete.  So we might price that out.  We also want to have a fireplace built into one corner of the patio.  It would be wood burning (gas is weak).  We’re going to have to talk with the contractors when we’re getting quotes to figure out how best to do that.  When they put the new patio in they would also be fixing the nasty grading problem we have near the house, between the two doors.

Potential Garden Location

Crappy Old Flower Bed

Our other project is to begin putting in gardening space in the backyard.  I had grand ambitions of doing a ton if it at once but I came to my senses.  I want to do it right and have a nice looking raised bed made with timbers.  The cost and effort of doing all the space at once like that was a little overwhelming.  So I think we’re going to do one bed across the back fence for now and use it for veggies.  Somewhere between 16 and 24ft long and 4 feet wide.  As you can see in the pictures above.  There is some work to be done first.  I’ve taken out the clothes line and the pole closest to the fence.  I removed the bricks from that horrible constructed flower box or whatever it was.  I pulled a bunch of bushes and weeds from the left side of the garden in back.  Still need to remove that sidewalk.  Then of course comes the part of putting in the actual garden bed.

Eventually we want to make a bigger flower bed around the tree.  Not much grass can grow there so we will put in shade plants.  The current thing they built looks even worse than the ugly flower bed thing I already took out of the corner.  We also want to have another big garden bed along the fence on the left side of the yard.  We’re hoping that most of that bed would also be veggies.  We also want to fix up the flower bed along the back fence on the right side of the yard.  It wouldn’t move away from the fence.  We would probably just improve what is there.  We want to make sure we leave a nice section of grass.  That area off to the right  seems to have the best grass so we will leave that alone.

Ah the joys of being home owners! We are actually looking forward to doing a lot of this stuff.  It will make it feel more like home.  Just beware, we might sucker you into helping….  I will post some Google Sketchup’s that I made of the yard and the garden area sometime in the near future.

Ben

Our New House

View of the front of our house

We finally closed on our house!  It is located in Broomfield in a neighborhood called Broomfield Heights.  We took a lot of pictures with our cool new camera.  In fact there are so many pictures the gallery needs a little explaining.  First to get there just click the picture above.  Once you’re there you will see the first 18 items are albums, there are also a few misc pictures near the bottom.  You will find quite a few pictures under each album.  Feel free to look around.    Don’t forget you can always try the ‘View Slideshow’ option.  I will warn you that it will be very slow unless you have a good internet connection.  The pictures are quite large.

The whole process of looking at houses, putting in an offer and going through all the steps  felt like it took forever.  Now we’re finally able to settle in… or we could go in one hour after taking possession and rip up all the carpets!

View the Demo pics

That’s right we were in there taking out the carpets covering the living room, dining room, master bedroom and 2nd bedroom.  We started around 1:30 or 2 and got done around midnight!  Pretty much everything was sore (hands, legs, back, knees, etc).  It turns out there is a lot more work involved in taking up carpet when you care about what is under the floor.  The results speak for themselves (below).  Even though the finish had yellowed over the years it looked so much better than the carpet.  Of course we couldn’t just leave it there.  We then had the floors sanded down and refinished.  We don’t have pictures yet but we will.  The major problem with the floor was in the master bedroom.  Originally there were three bedrooms on the top floor.  At some point they decided to take out a wall and make a much larger master.  When they did that they never bothered to repair the floor.  We thought it would be a major issue but the guys doing the floor said they could make it look like new for fairly cheap.  So we took them up on the offer.  You probably wouldn’t know it was there if weren’t told about it.  We are really excited to be moving our stuff in there very soon.  We will have more pictures of the refinished floors and more pictures after stuff is in the house.

So now all that is left is for you to come visit us!  Book now, our summer is filling up…

Before (click bigger)

After(click bigger)

Problem(click bigger)

DNC in Denver

So the DNC was in town this week.  For the most part it didn’t impact us too much.  Traffic was a little weird but thats about it.  We decided late in the day Wednesday to go downtown to see what it was like down there.  One of my coworkers came with us downtown.  We were all shocked how easy it was to park.

Security at the DNC

We got out and wandered towards the convention center.  We were a little disappointed when we couldn’t get inside the perimeter because didn’t have super cool badges.  So we got to stand out side the big barriers and watch the people filter in past security.  I didn’t take the picture above but it gives you an idea of what it was like.  Except the area we were standing by had lots of cops in riot gear standing around.  They even had secret service there checking badges.

DNC HulaHoop on the 16th Street Mall

Then we wandered down to the 16th Street Mall to have a few beers.  We stopped at the Rio for margaritas during some of the first speeches.   Then we left to wander around some more.  We called another co worker and met up with them.  They mentioned that Obama was staying in the Brown Palace so we stopped by to see if he was out and about.  He wasn’t…  So we gave up and went to sit outside on the mall and watch the people.  We were sitting right by where the person with the hula hoop above was hanging out.  They were getting people to do it for peace with Iran.

We ended up staying out past midnight, which made for a long morning.  It was worth it though, I will probably never see another one in my life.

Snowy Day

It was a great morning here. A nice inch of snow around the cities and the mountains covered in a white coat. Locals complained about the snow, saying they were ready for spring. I agree that I can’t wait for 70′s and sun to run and bike. However, I enjoyed the view and compared to Wisconsin the conditions outside really weren’t so bad. Sure there was snow but it wasn’t bitterly cold and the roads weren’t icy. All the perks of snow without the bad stuff. You can’t get much better than that!

Now to the grind.

First Post

Leah and I recently moved out to the Denver/Boulder area.  We live somewhere in between in the burbs.  The fairly standard reaction from people here when we tell them where we live is some sort of weird look.  I’m guessing no one like Westminster.  That or people just get gas at the wrong time.  Either way that isn’t all that great.  I guess I should get back to work now rather than write more here.