Archive for the ‘question’ Category

It may come to blows…

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

The one thing I abhor more than anything else in a home (and trust me if I come to your place, I will notice) is ugly tangled messy electronics. HATE FOR THIS. Boiling seething hate. The Boy and I have come to a number impasses over this “electronics” issue over the eight years we’ve been together. It’s been a consistent issue raised, but never resolved.

This particularly new electronic stereo mess has been sitting in the living room for a few months and I’m at about the point were I start to completely loose patience and stare at it with seething fury every time I walk by. The cords, the CORDS, all those messy cords…

I’m trying really hard not to be an asshole about it. Really, really hard. I understand that my role in the relationship is to be a complete freak about the aesthetic side of our lives, but he’s not willing to hide it and I’m not willing to look at it. No compromise is forthcoming so it looks like we got ourselves a stalemate.

My question for you is this:

How do you battle out those kind of decor issues with your significant other? What is your decorating snapping point?

*P.S. On the prettier side of things, I think I found a spot for the new spider table.

**P.S.S. I think I win though, cause come on. CD’s? What is this the stone age?

FILED UNDER: decorating, living, question, readers

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Shade Sail

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Now that the house is getting painted and the exterior is slowly coming together I’ve started to think (once again) about shade sails. While the above installation is not the most glamorous example of a shade sail, the structure and design is pretty similar to what I’m considering installing in our side yard.

Residential applications are a little less industrial and hazardous looking…

Our side yard takes a beating during the long summer days and could use a bit of relief from the desert sun. If we create a little outdoor dining / ping pong recreation area I’d like to alleviate some of that intense heat with a pair of rectangular gray sun shades that are attached to the eaves of the house and then strung out and fastened to three large metal poles cemented into the ground.

Instant shade.

Here is a mock-up in Sketchup of what I’m sort of thinking :

I’ve been looking around at shade sail manufacturers and found Tenshon whose 9′ x 14′ shade might just work perfectly in grey. At $169.00 each they are not totally unreasonably priced.

Here are some examples of Tenshon shade sails :

I haven’t been as impressed with the quality, pricing and color options (as well as size customization) at other manufacturers, but I’m still looking around.

It’s probably premature to start really planing this project (but I just love to plan and then get depressed waiting to do it for real) so my question for you is:

Has anyone installed a sun shade? Any tips or things to be weary of? Is this look dated or is it awesome?

Thanks!

FILED UNDER: exterior, landscape, links, question, sketchup

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Tax Time

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

I’m getting a whopping $593 refund on my taxes. I always try to work my taxes to zero out at the end of the season – no paying the government at tax time and no interest free loans to the government either – but this year I got a small return which will be turned around and invested in the house…of course…

The Boy and I can’t decide.

Oven.

TV.

Paint.

Here is the deal-io:

Oven

I know I’ve mentioned before that our oven doesn’t work, like the stove top and griddle are great and all the pilot lights work – so it’s getting gas – it’s just that the oven part won’t ignite. We’ve had people come look at it, I’ve talked to restorers and priced out restoration – but the cost is really prohibitive and no one seems to understand whats wrong with it…so I’m tired of dumping money on it I don’t want to invest a ton of money into it if there is little hope of it really working correctly forever and ever. The other weird thing? We have a 40″ oven space and need at least a 36″ wide oven to straddle the gap.

TV

Our TV is about to take a dump. The top portion of the screen no longer works correctly and everyone’s head gets cut off. It randomly goes black and white and the volume will sometimes just go to max for no apparent reason whatsoever. It is a television possessed and we are waiting for it’s final throws out of this mortal coil. We’ve had it for almost ten years and it’s seems the time to replace is coming…but what will we do without TV? I don’t know, live life more fully, read more, do more house projects…but goddamn it after a long day of work I like to relax a bit and watch Hoarders: Buried Alive and weird documentaries about Brothers and Sisters in Love while snuggling on the couch in horrid fascination.

Paint

Still got to paint the house. OMG.

…

Oven

Because of the crazy wide gap we are going to need one of those super expensive six burner commercial grade totally over the top ovens to fit in the oven slot. I’ve been haunting the local dent and dings, trolling Craigslist and keeping an eye out restaurant supplies for something reasonably priced. I know there is NO WAY we will find something like this for $600 – but it would make a dent in the total cost.

It’s not like we are professional cooks and need a super slick oven, but I’m so sick of hearing The Boy go on and on and on about all the great stuff we could cook if only we had a working oven while walking around the Fresh & Easy. I GET IT. We can’t heat up a pizza. Yeah, I’m suffering too.

I had high hopes for this baby when I saw it at Ikea, but at $1,749.00 it is out of the $$$ range of possibilities. The other possibility is that we buy yet another 1950′s used stove and take the big risk that it won’t function either.

We’ve also thought about moving the cabinets over to shorten the gap, but that requires a whole lot of demo and moving the vents and lighting and trying not to damage the metal cabinets and original Formica in the process, as well as replacing floor tiles and moving electrical outlets. So all in all a CRAZY amount of work with a lot of risk to close in 10 inches.

…

TV

The Boy has been voting for a giant flat screen TV for awhile now (of course, gender stereotype and all). Flat Screens, LCD’s, Hi-Def…whatever. I’m pretty easy, I just don’t want it to be ugly and huge and I want to be able to watch Project Runway and maybe True Blood when that shit comes back on. We are not technophiles and pretty TV stupid as well as cheap, an awful combo.

I guess we could be as happy as this couple if we go to Costco and pick up ourselves one of those fancified flat picture boxes that all the cool kids got.

VIZIO 40″ 1080P LCD HDTV

$629.99

This is actually in our price range…but I bet you need a lot of fancy accessories to make it work “correctly”. Special cables, mounting hardware and such. Which adds up!

Paint

YES. The house needs to be painted – it’s been over a year since we started priming.

But…we are going pure white. WHITE WHITE. Which means we can buy one bucket at a time and we are going to need about 5 five gallon buckets. At about $500 this is a project we could do all at once or sparse out paycheck to paycheck. Plus we are doing all the labor so the time frame is pretty open. Just depends on what we want to do.

I’ve been asking around to friends and family trying to get input on how to solve this dilemma…

But what do you guys think we should do? What makes sense for both life enjoyment and house resale value? Or is there something even better we can do with this tiny lil’ windfall?

FILED UNDER: question, readers

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