Tuesday, March 28, 2006
New TownHouse Renovation - Day 28 (3.24.06)
Friday:
Goals: PACK! take a couple of loads over to the new place.
pics
I take a 2/3 day at work so that I can get home and help Rena pack. I drop a load of at the new place, then head to the old. Rena has taken the whole day off and got a lot of things done (getting couch and bed covers, getting some cooking stuff for the wedding cake she is making in 2 weeks, and some other general house related activities). I get home and immediately tackle the garage packing. Our garage normally has a lot of woodworking stuff and CD's in it, but most of that has already been transferred. We have a set of really nice racks that we use for storage in the garage (compliments of the Power-One Costa Mesa closing sale), the ideal thing would be to have the racks taken down at the old place and then put up at the new place so we could just chuck everything on them when we get there. This isn't going to happen with our time schedule. So I decide that the best course of action is to make a pile in the middle of the garage of pre-packed boxes so that we know what is ready to go.
This goes pretty well, I hit some snags here and there with old falling apart boxes and actually finding enough boxes to contain all of the small things that are scattered about. There are a lot of half-finished woodworking projects lying around that I have to decide if we want to continue with. But for the most part, it goes smoothly. Rena comes out to help, and we get all of the shelves torn apart. They break down to tall legs, short side brackets, shelves and long front/rear brackets. This results in a lot of heavy semi-sharp metal things lying around. Rena has the brilliant idea of wire tiring these things together since I am unsure if the moving guys would even touch this stuff while it was loose. We have the old sink (still semi-paint stained) ready to go back to Lowe's so we decide to make a run. By this point it is nearly 7 o'clock and we are starting to get tired.
We take stock of what we have in the garage: my industrial test bench (thanks Power-One!), the 600 pound antique stove, color coded tubs of holiday decorations, and a 10ft by 10ft box of Rena’s childhood dolls. We cry and head to Lowes.
We return the sink with no problems and we head over to the service desk to ask about using a 10% off coupon that we received in the mail the day AFTER we bought our countertop from them. 10% off of a countertop is a nice hunk of change that we would like to see back. It's a long shot (the coupon says not valid on special order items or some such nonsense), but we want to see what happens. As Rena battles that, I head off to find wire ties, a furnace filter, and some light bulbs.
A few minutes later Rena runs up to me and says that they'll do it. BONUS! The only problem is that they would normally return the item, then resell it to us with the discount. But since our countertop is through a 3rd party and already on order, it would result in us getting 2 countertops...not cool. So she looks through all of our recent transactions to find one over the necessary amount (300 bucks for those of you who are curious), and finds two things...jack and shit. It seems we have spent most of our money at H.D. and Sears. Well, then she says we can use the 300 as a credit towards another purchase...."hello new grill", thinks Rena.
Backstory: we got our current lovely grill as a wedding gift. It has had a rough life. In addition to normal wear and tear, it has been...lets just say....slightly abused. We have a nice little back yard at the old place that has its fair share of dirt and bugs. We had a black widow infestation last year that made me less than excited to climb inside and clean the damn thing. So there were a number of "dirty" areas here and there. Some water got into the ignition so we had to light it with a match every time we used it. And then last year we had one of our patented Game Night/ Guacamole cookoff contests in which I was using these kerosene/jet fueled candles to give me some light as I was BBQ'ing. Well, lets just say that I got a little too into the Guac and the games, and forgot about the candle and it burned a hole right through the right hand side of grill platform thing. Basically this grill is in ass shape. I am dreading moving it because it is full of nastiness and barely works. I have been slowly trying to convince Rena of the merits of a new grill...to no avail.
Fast forward to tonight. The grill fairies are smiling down on us, so we max out our counter credit and get a nice stainless steel commercial job loaded on our cart. Total price: 7 bucks. We get the beast back to the old place toss it in the garage and finish our cleaning. I toss my old desk into the alley knowing that it will be gone within a matter of hours just like the dishwasher I chucked back there.
Advertisement: If there is anything you need to get rid of, I recommend the alley behind Adams St. in Glendale. I swear people cruise that thing night and day waiting for junk.
The rest of the night is uneventful. We took a trip to the new place (before Lowes actually) and stayed up to 3ish packing, we set the alarm for 6 and drop dead.
Goals: PACK! take a couple of loads over to the new place.
pics
I take a 2/3 day at work so that I can get home and help Rena pack. I drop a load of at the new place, then head to the old. Rena has taken the whole day off and got a lot of things done (getting couch and bed covers, getting some cooking stuff for the wedding cake she is making in 2 weeks, and some other general house related activities). I get home and immediately tackle the garage packing. Our garage normally has a lot of woodworking stuff and CD's in it, but most of that has already been transferred. We have a set of really nice racks that we use for storage in the garage (compliments of the Power-One Costa Mesa closing sale), the ideal thing would be to have the racks taken down at the old place and then put up at the new place so we could just chuck everything on them when we get there. This isn't going to happen with our time schedule. So I decide that the best course of action is to make a pile in the middle of the garage of pre-packed boxes so that we know what is ready to go.
This goes pretty well, I hit some snags here and there with old falling apart boxes and actually finding enough boxes to contain all of the small things that are scattered about. There are a lot of half-finished woodworking projects lying around that I have to decide if we want to continue with. But for the most part, it goes smoothly. Rena comes out to help, and we get all of the shelves torn apart. They break down to tall legs, short side brackets, shelves and long front/rear brackets. This results in a lot of heavy semi-sharp metal things lying around. Rena has the brilliant idea of wire tiring these things together since I am unsure if the moving guys would even touch this stuff while it was loose. We have the old sink (still semi-paint stained) ready to go back to Lowe's so we decide to make a run. By this point it is nearly 7 o'clock and we are starting to get tired.
We take stock of what we have in the garage: my industrial test bench (thanks Power-One!), the 600 pound antique stove, color coded tubs of holiday decorations, and a 10ft by 10ft box of Rena’s childhood dolls. We cry and head to Lowes.
We return the sink with no problems and we head over to the service desk to ask about using a 10% off coupon that we received in the mail the day AFTER we bought our countertop from them. 10% off of a countertop is a nice hunk of change that we would like to see back. It's a long shot (the coupon says not valid on special order items or some such nonsense), but we want to see what happens. As Rena battles that, I head off to find wire ties, a furnace filter, and some light bulbs.
A few minutes later Rena runs up to me and says that they'll do it. BONUS! The only problem is that they would normally return the item, then resell it to us with the discount. But since our countertop is through a 3rd party and already on order, it would result in us getting 2 countertops...not cool. So she looks through all of our recent transactions to find one over the necessary amount (300 bucks for those of you who are curious), and finds two things...jack and shit. It seems we have spent most of our money at H.D. and Sears. Well, then she says we can use the 300 as a credit towards another purchase...."hello new grill", thinks Rena.
Backstory: we got our current lovely grill as a wedding gift. It has had a rough life. In addition to normal wear and tear, it has been...lets just say....slightly abused. We have a nice little back yard at the old place that has its fair share of dirt and bugs. We had a black widow infestation last year that made me less than excited to climb inside and clean the damn thing. So there were a number of "dirty" areas here and there. Some water got into the ignition so we had to light it with a match every time we used it. And then last year we had one of our patented Game Night/ Guacamole cookoff contests in which I was using these kerosene/jet fueled candles to give me some light as I was BBQ'ing. Well, lets just say that I got a little too into the Guac and the games, and forgot about the candle and it burned a hole right through the right hand side of grill platform thing. Basically this grill is in ass shape. I am dreading moving it because it is full of nastiness and barely works. I have been slowly trying to convince Rena of the merits of a new grill...to no avail.
Fast forward to tonight. The grill fairies are smiling down on us, so we max out our counter credit and get a nice stainless steel commercial job loaded on our cart. Total price: 7 bucks. We get the beast back to the old place toss it in the garage and finish our cleaning. I toss my old desk into the alley knowing that it will be gone within a matter of hours just like the dishwasher I chucked back there.
Advertisement: If there is anything you need to get rid of, I recommend the alley behind Adams St. in Glendale. I swear people cruise that thing night and day waiting for junk.
The rest of the night is uneventful. We took a trip to the new place (before Lowes actually) and stayed up to 3ish packing, we set the alarm for 6 and drop dead.
# posted by Tony Starr @ 1:16 PM 
