Friday, September 12, 2008

Tooth Fairy Epidemic


The tooth fairy has been a frequent visitor to our house. Ella has lost both of her front teeth in the last month. I think it is pretty cute how losing a tooth or two completely changes the look of a kid. She actually looks younger with the big gap up front.

Not to be outdone, Asher had 4 teeth pulled to make room for adult teeth. I have never seen such big teeth. The dentist hoped the roots would be dissolving, but they were full length. Asher wasn't excited about the whole experience.

Monday, September 1, 2008

Pouring Out a Good Time


When Stefanie and the kids moved into the house in September of last year (a month after I moved in), I confidently assured her that we would have Thanksgiving in our "new" kitchen. If not Thanksgiving, then certainly Christmas. Well, for a number of reasons, the primary one being my absurdly unbridled optimism, we are a little behind that schedule. We are hoping that I might make good on that for this Thanksgiving. Tonight, however, was a major step in the right direction.

We have been planning our concrete counters for a while. I got a quote the first month we moved in for $4500. So we decided to go the DIY (do it yourself) route. I actually was ready to begin in March, but we opted to focus on other things for a while. With summer all but gone, we decided to use my last 3 days to get going on the counters. In true optimistic fashion, I also made a mental list of ALL the other things I would do during those days, because, well, 3 days! I can knock these counters out in half that time. I got started with the first step of cleaning the garage. You can see here that my garage is actually clean, and the tables I built are level. Problem? This took all of day 1. You are looking at the finished product of an entire day of work. I actually finished unpacking that final four boxes still in our garage from our move 1 year ago (although we still have a lot of other boxes in our dining room).

2 days left. I got to work on the forms. This was my favorite part. Figuring out the size, making the forms, putting it all together. This is a picture of the form for our cooktop counter top. It is made with MDF, and the counter is poured upside-down. The bottom of the form will be the top of the counter. I cut 2 inch foam insulation into the shape of our cooktop. Just a tip, if you ever find yourself needing to cut foam insulation, don't use a handsaw! What a mess. The jigsaw is definately the ticket. After all the corners are caulked with silicone, I went to work on the rebar and wire mesh to give the concrete some support. Then I thought, "What will I do with the extra concrete from these two counters? I should have a good amount." So I started a third form for our bathroom sink. That accounts for day 2 AND day 3.

We went away on Saturday and Sunday, but Monday night, I decided to pour starting at about 8 pm. I figured the cooler weather would be better for pouring concrete. I knew this would be a two-man job, so I asked my friend Don to come help me . We mixed, poured, vibrated, and smoothed all three counter tops before 10:30pm. This interesting tool Don holds is called a pencil vibrator. It gets all the air-bubbles out of the concrete. The only problem was that it got smoking hot and was hard to hold.

In 5 days, I will see how these turned out. I will post an update then. Out next step is to stain the counters a weathered dark brown and polish them with the diamond polisher. Full steam ahead!