November 2005 Archives

Ok finally finished my floors. Had to do the floors in fits and starts around other projects that had more of a immediate need such as major pool maintenance so I would not have to deal with a pool full of algae garage sale, several computer issues etc… I also was really sick in there as well.

As I have stated earlier on this blog I also had to do the floors in modules not only for technique testing but because the kitchen is right between my den where I watch TV listen to music and relax and the garage where I have tools materials etc..

I did a lot of clean up especially after I put in the mortar between the tiles. I thought also that if I could scrub the tiles as much as possible before putting down the wet seal that would give it more outstanding final luster & sheen.
Well I could get no shine before the wet seal but tested a few pieces of extra tile from previous cuts by applying the wet sealant and they came out looking just ok. I was a bit skeptical about taking that final conclusive step at this point, but could find nothing else to scrub off of the tiles so started on one corner of the floor and it looked really good after the initial application of the wet sealant!
I proceeded to do one half of the floor so I still had a passage to the den and garage from the other part of the house and wow. It looked great! Tonight I finished the rest of the floor after returning from a nice run at the local Junior college and I’m done!

Believe it the floor is done and looking excellent!

I have already been studying up and researching for my next two projects, what color to painting the kitchen and redoing the cabinets and putting in another sink and possibly getting new kitchen appliances.

Some pictures:

Here I am after completion of putting down sealant on floors and after evening run still dressed from run.

Tiles still wet from tonight’s application of the sealant.

Showing last night's application with half the floor not done to allow passage from one part of the house to the other portion of the house.

We had Thanksgiving at one of my nieces place with her family. I started my Thanksgiving Day preparation of my usual smoked turkey Wednesday. I used a larger than normal turkey and it turned out well.

My dad fixed lamb and prime rib and one of my other sisters cooked a standard roasted turkey.

We all filled in with additional side dishes that have turned out well. I worked the day after Thanksgiving, from home as usual of course, and the day was mildly busy.

The rest of the weekend was uneventful I purchased some items for my computer room mainly a couple of more heavy duty UPS’ and another older rack mounted case. The rack is now populated with a dual processor Pentium 2 system. I will of course have no use for those items and uninstall them and build a more powerful system into this rack case which has a lot more space for drive space than all but one of my other 19” rack mount computer cases.

I also had another decent weekends of runs and even on back to back runs of decent distance my time is improving showing my overall fitness is improving since I’m able to handle back to back 7.5 and 6 miles runs improving by times in both.

My normal 6 mile run felt pretty good today I just kept it nice and loose without really pushing it and took my time down about 30 seconds from my last 6 mile run a few days ago even though I didn’t feel comfortable. Down 2 minutes from my first run of the beginning last week
Yesterday I was a bit out of it and the previous day I had to tone it down a few miles. Soon I will feel comfortable to lengthen the stride and push the pace. After that point its time to work on speed an intervals and hitting the hills from time to time. Then maybe I will be able to hit some of the “all comer track meets” next year.

Not too much special this week so far. Waiting for a person to come and get the items they bought at my garage sale so that I can get to the intent of the garage sale, getting more space to maneuver in.

Also had a couple of nice runs this week both in the 6 mile range I need to keep that up and hit the weights once my space in the garage is once again free.

I still have quite a few things to get rid of from my garage including numerous computer monitors. The monitors are all CRT’s since I moved totally to flat screen models in my computer room. The flat screens are much easier to move around than some of the CRT behemoths I had before. This flexibility is important since I'm always moving things around.

Well hopefully this weekend I will put another dent in moving items out of the house!!

Floors and garage sale how do they go together? Well I moved things out of my house plus acquired a few new pieces of furniture the past few months to replace or sell and moved that furniture to storage until my floors were done.

            Well I ended up a bit sick and also my tile wasn’t available in the store when I took the time off to install the tile or at least the main portion of the install.

Well I then ran into some killer furniture deals at auctions and knew that these windows of opportunities at those prices so gotta take advantage and then decide which pieces I wish to keep.

I always take advantage of the storage specials of half a month off or 1 dollar a month when doing things like this and this was no exception. This time however my timing was off because of the tile not being in stock and my getting sick.

            So to move these things out I had a garage sale so I could get things out of storage without costing more money and keep things off the floors since I’m not totally done. I just have to clean the grout haze and seal the tile. Then I will place the pics up on the site.