NEWS!!
by Chris Stone on Jan.27, 2012, under Uncategorized
I would like to start by saying that for anyone who may not have heard the big news for the year is that Heather and I are going to be parents. The due date is July 26, 2012 this should make for an interesting year. Most everyone should have already been told by now but just incace…now you know 
For news reguarding the house, we have been working fairly quickly on remolding the upstairs and have since demoed 3 rooms and most of the hallway. We have also installed 3 windows and have bought the rest. Just waiting on a few more warmer days to install some more.
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| From 2011-01-02-16-Working Upstairs |
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| From 2011-01-02-16-Working Upstairs |
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| From 2011-01-02-16-Working Upstairs |
B I am hoping whitin 4-6 weeks to be able to start sheetrocking upstairs and eventually the rooms will become the master bedroom and the nursery. I will post pics of the new windows soon. Maybe having a baby will give me more of a reason to keep this updated
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New Job!
by Chris Stone on Oct.12, 2011, under Uncategorized
So a few weeks ago I posted about a new job at Pine State, now since then a few things have changed. I am starting a new job however it is not at Pine State, It’s instead at a convenient store in China. After a little while I am going to be the manager at Lakeside Country Store. I am very excited about starting a new job and this will be close to what I was doing but with a fair bit of a bump in pay and hopefully better hours after I get settled in. As well as managing that store I will also eventually manage the store in Albion also. There is not much more to add at the moment so I will keep this post a short one, I will do an update after we either have the porch done or I have more to report on the new job.
Some More Progress
by Chris Stone on Oct.10, 2011, under porch, Renovations
Its been a little over a week since I last posted, there has been some work but not as much as I would have liked. Since the last post the deck railing has been done, the basement stairs have been installed as well as the windows have started to go in. What I mean by windows are going in is that the 4 windows facing the drive way were put in but not finished, they have to be shimed and almost famed in slightly due to them not being flush on the outside of the house.
He is here working today and hopefully all the windows will be installed as well as the final sanding on the sheet rock. Perhaps even the lattice-work around both the deck and house will be put in. We are still waiting for the window that goes into the dining room. If everything goes well today we should be able to start cleaning up the porch and possibly even start moving stuff onto it in the next few days.
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| From 2011-10-10-Porch-Basement Stairs |
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| From 2011-10-10-Porch-Basement Stairs |
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| From 2011-10-10-Porch-Basement Stairs |
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| From 2011-10-10-Porch-Basement Stairs |
Porch Muding
by Chris Stone on Oct.01, 2011, under porch
Our contractor showed up Wednesday to finish the roof, which is fully done now. As I had posted earlier he wanted to finish singling the roof to the far left to make it look better and basically to do a better job. He also finished hanging the sheet rock which was done with green board just in case of any water damage, which shouldnt be an issue but that’s what he decided to use. He also did all of the taping on the sheet rock as well as at least 1 coat of mud, I can’t tell if he has done anymore. From the look its just 1 coat.
As for whats left to do, he still has 7 windows to install, the railing to install around the deck, our basement door and basement stairs, he obviously has to finish muding the sheet rock, as well as finish the cedar shakes around the windows. I am not sure how long it will take to finish everything, I don’t even know if he will show up today (Thursday) but from the work standpoint it should be like 2 days left of full work, which means on his time-table probably a week or so.
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| From 2011-09-29-Porch Muding |
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| From 2011-09-29-Porch Muding |
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| From 2011-09-29-Porch Muding |
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| From 2011-09-29-Porch Muding |
New Job
by Chris Stone on Sep.29, 2011, under Life
Well it’s finally happened. I went to talk to Manpower on Monday about a job at Pine State Trading which I had done before about 6 months ago, apparently they had transcribed my phone number wrong into their computer which would explain why I never heard a peep from them. This time however they setup an interview for Tuesday at 10:30. After the interview they offered me any job they had open at Pine State. After talking to Heather about it we decided that the loader position was the best fit. It was between loader and picker, the loader’s hours are more consistent, a little better pay, and if Pine State decides to end the temp loader job it will bump me to picker anyway so its a little bit of a safety net.
When I went into work Tuesday I gave my 2 week notice and now my last day is Oct 10th. It seems so weird to give my notice after all this time. I have been looking for a while now and it’s really felt like its time to move on with my life and start a new chapter, I am hoping this will give me more opportunity to move up and advance through the company over the next 5 years or so. So far all of the customers have been awesome with their thanks and good luck’s they are the people I will miss the most. I wish everyone at the market the best.
Sheet Rock Begins!
by Chris Stone on Sep.28, 2011, under porch
Monday Heather and I went to Lewiston to be with her Aunt Brenda while she was in the hospital for the day. We were able to do some shopping and run some errands after. The point of this is that before we left our contractor showed up early (for him that is) at 9:30. Before we left he had started working more on the roof, I know I had stated that the roof was done but there was a bump in the roof from where the new shingles and the old met. He decided to contintue doing shingles over to the left of the house in order to make them even. So he was working on that before we left and one guy was working on finishing the cedar shakes around the door. He had said he was having sheet rock delivered today and was going to put that up as well today. When we returned home at 4:45 we passed him leaving our house and came home to the roof not finished, sheet rock not finished and basically 2 more projects started and 1 small one finished.
Now as much as I hate to complain about someone but this guy is an idiot and works slower than I have ever seen. Heather and I were talking and if we had been doing the work ourselves today we could have done all the sheet rock and finished the roof just the 2 of us today. He had 3 guys and did not finish either. Kind of annoying. On any note, here are some pics of what was done, and what was not finished.
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| From 2011-09-26-Porch Update Sheetrock |
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| From 2011-09-26-Porch Update Sheetrock |
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| From 2011-09-26-Porch Update Sheetrock |
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| From 2011-09-26-Porch Update Sheetrock |
Porch Update
by Chris Stone on Sep.26, 2011, under porch
There is finally more porch progress to report. We now have all the electrical done, doors in, stairs are basically done, the roof is finished, and it’s almost ready for sheet rock. It’s nice to finally see some good progress, the doors were a big step. We replaced the porch lock with an electronic keypad which I am very happy about and love it immensely.
The stairs are a welcome addition, we were starting to get sick of jumping up and down on the deck to get in and out of the house. We started using the porch door ever since we had a porch to walk on and now its starting to feel like a real porch. I just wish it hadn’t taken this long to get this far, and as much as I feel like I have said this before, I think it will be done in the next week. We do still have about a week left on windows and the sheet rock will take about 4 days-ish to finish after its started which should be any day now.
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| From 2011-09-24-Porch Update |
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| From 2011-09-24-Porch Update |
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| From 2011-09-24-Porch Update |
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| From 2011-09-24-Porch Update |
New Computer
by Chris Stone on Sep.26, 2011, under Life, porch
Another quick post on yet another purchase curiosity of the insurance fiasco is my new computer. I have been meaning to replace my desktop for quite a while now seeing as tho it is about 6 years old. This time instead of seeking out a new desktop I opted for a laptop which will be docked to my desk and used mainly as a desktop but can still be portable. After searching out many websites and comparing prices I chose to go with Lenovo. In case anyone is not familiar with them they are IBM just with a new name. Heather currently had an older IBM Think Pad laptop, which currently sells as a Lenovo Think Pad.
I was able to get a pretty good deal since they have weekly deals. The one I chose was an Ideapad Y570 which includes among other things the following specs.
Intel i7 2.0 quad core with a 6 mb cache
8 Gig’s of Ram
750 Gig HD
WiFi/Bluetooth
Card Reader
Webcam
Without getting into all the nitty-gritty specs lets just say it covers the basics with a nice processor and enough ram to get my by All in all a really good deal for the price.
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| From 2011-09-21-New Laptop |
Couch
by Chris Stone on Sep.24, 2011, under Life, porch
This will be a short post, but I wanted to throw one out there for one of our new purchases. Seeing as tho we had a couch on our porch we were able to buy a new one with some of the cost being covered by insurance. We did however go much bigger than what we had and thus had to spend a bit of money ourselves. That being said, we picked out the most awesome couch in the world lol. The one we got (pic below) is a three-piece couch with a chaise. We also went back to using my old coffee table that was just being used to hold the Xbox before. It’s a great fit for the space and look. We are very happy about this purchase and I think I will be losing my wife to it as she will probably end up sleeping on it more than the bed
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| From 2011-09-17-Couch |
Another porch update
by Chris Stone on Sep.22, 2011, under porch
After what seems like forever we finally have the framing up, electrical done, and insulation in the ceiling and walls done. We are waiting on windows, doors, stairs, and sheet rock. As much as this should have been done by now it should be done within the next 2 weeks mainly due to windows being ordered and taking forever.
Now with most of the porch work behind us I am hoping to re-direct my attention to the upstairs again and finish up the second room we started. We still have a little demo to do as well as the electrical for that room. We should be able to start on the third room as well as the hallway soon. There has been a lot of progress done upstairs in the last month and a half but still a long way to go to get it all demoed for the winter and hopefully prepped to start putting the pieces back together next summer.
Below are some pics of the porch as it stands, I will keep trying to update and blog more about the house progress
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| From 2011-09-17-Porch Update |
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| From 2011-09-17-Porch Update |
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| From 2011-09-17-Porch Update |
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| From 2011-09-17-Porch Update |
