A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

For those who have known me for a long time, it’s no secret that I used to be pretty engrossed in amateur astronomy. Back in 1990 I got a job specifically so I could buy a telescope, and after working full time for the entire summer I was able to purchase my dream scope. I used it pretty religiously for the remainder of high school, but once I got to university its usage dropped. And once I started my professional career it became non-existent.

Recently I started getting the itch to get back under the night sky and my telescope was sitting in the garage tempting me. I vowed a few weeks ago to start getting active in amateur astronomy once again. Luckily telescopes aren’t like computers that become obsolete after six months. My quality scope I bought almost twenty years ago may not have computer guided controls of today’s models, but its optics are still top notch.

Last night Michelle and I were out for a walk and I couldn’t help noticing the half moon in the clear night sky. I knew that Michelle had never viewed anything through a telescope before so I decided tonight was the night to fire it up. After cleaning a thick coat of dust off of the telescope I hauled it out to the backyard and aimed it at the moon. I fumbled a bit finding the controls, but it didn’t take long to get back into the groove. I centred the field of view on the bright moon, pulled it into focus and immediately remembered why I loved the night sky.

You can see more photos of Michelle and I under the night sky on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

Michelle’s brother Christopher Parker married the love of his life Dazawray Landrie on Saturday, May 16th, 2009. The wedding ceremony was held at the Forestry Farm in Saskatoon. Things were looking pretty scary weather wise leading up to the wedding. The ceremony was being held outside and it was snowing regularly right up to the big day. As it turned out, the Saturday of the wedding turned out to be a great day.  Whew.

The wedding was short and sweet, followed by some mingling while a few key family photos were fired off. There was a few hours to kill before the reception which was being held out at Langham, SK - about 30 minutes outside of the city. Michelle was co-emcee for the reception so we grabbed a quick lunch and made our way out to Langham to get a few things organized.

The community hall where the reception was held was decorated beautifully. The wedding party, friends, and family did a great job of getting everything in order. Dinner was lasagna and Caesar salad, which was a little unprecedented, but delicious. I seriously believe that may have been the best lasagna I’ve ever had.

The dance followed the reception and a good portion of people stuck around until the end. Michelle and I are happy to say that we shut the thing down…as we do at most wedding we attend.  I didn’t bust out the moonwalk or worm this time around, but we did make use of our recently acquired ballroom dancing skills. We were waltzing like nobody’s business.

I fired off quite a few shots at the ceremony and a handful at the reception. You can check them out at my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

The final step of the kitchen renovation was installing the tile backsplash. This was a job that I was pretty sure I could tackle by myself. I did a lot of research on the subject and nothing really seemed beyond my capabilities. It would be the first home renovation (involving cutting things) I would take on completely by myself (note: Michelle helped with the grouting).

Michelle and I liked the look of travertine (a type of stone) the best after shopping around many different stores. Surprisingly enough the stuff we liked the most was from The Home Depot. The only problem was that there were stocking issues with the stone and it was not available through a special order. Annoyingly we had to check back at the store regularly to see if they had received any (or found some that they had lost). We ended up having to buy the 42 square feet we needed over two separate occasions as they received shipments. This put our plans of getting the tile installed right away a little out of whack.

We borrowed a wet saw from one of Michelle’s colleagues and I was underway. My plan was to get the tile on the wall over a Saturday and Sunday, and then grout one night during the week. I was calling this my best case scenario which I was sure was not going to hold.

As expected, my Saturday wasn’t as productive as I was hoping since Michelle’s dad and uncle stopped by to start work on putting in a cabinet outlet for the microwave. This chewed up a good chunk of my afternoon. Sunday however went quite well and I probably could have finished, but I thought it would be safer if I stopped. I was super tired and figured I would start making stupid mistakes….like cutting off my fingers.

The grouting didn’t go exactly as we were hoping. A day after applying the grout I noticed some problem areas that had cracks and small pinholes. I wasn’t sure what to do about these and started to get quite worried. After some reading and talking to some friends I just decided to repair the problem areas with the help of a grout saw and fresh grout. It appears to have worked.

After letting the grout cure for a few days I moved on to the final step of sealing the travertine and applying a silicone caulk around the backspash perimeter. Even though I finished this up late on a Thursday night I decided to clean the kitchen and put it back together. I was tired of it being out of commission for the last week and a half. Plus I wanted to wake up to something nice.

Here’s what I learned about installing the tile:

• Wet saws are extremely messy and spray water in your face.
• My knowledge of the Imperial System is terrible, making measuring my cuts go slowly.
• Cutting the stone around 7 electrical outlets/switches, 6 cabinet overhangs, and a window takes very precise measuring.
• Pre-mixed mastic adhesive should actually be sticky. The first stuff I bought was dried out, but I wasn’t quite sure since I had never seen the stuff before.
• Installing 40 square feet of backsplash is a lot, and is hard on your back.
• The mixing instructions on the grout package are not even close to correct.
• Using your fingers to smooth grout lines between travertine tears your skin apart.
• Packing grout between porous and ragged edges of the tiles is extremely difficult.
• Applying silicone caulk sucks.
• The feeling of accomplishment after the job is pretty cool.

You can see more shots of the tile install, and the “after” pictures on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Backsplash Install Thumbnails
• Backsplash Install Slideshow
• The “After” Thumbnails
• The “After” Slideshow

Being proud new parents, Jason and Cheryl wanted some nice photos of their new daughter. They invited Michelle and I over one Friday evening for dinner, which would be followed by a photo shoot that would hopefully produce some nice shots of Jorja.

Cheryl really wanted some shots of her daughter in her “birthday suit”, but this proved to be a bit challenging since Jorja didn’t like the chills that came with being naked. While Jorja was wrapped up in a blanket, we practiced shots of Jason holding a Cabbage Patch Kid.   Adding to the hilarity, I didn’t have proper lighting so we had to be a little creative with some common household items. With Michelle acting as my assistant we did manage to get some good shots.

You can see more of the photos on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

On Thursday, March 12 of 2009 my good friends Jason and Cheryl Fenrich became the proud parents of a new daughter, Jorja Ann. Later that day Jason gave me a call to announce the arrival, letting me know that everything went well, and that mother and daughter were both healthy.  I asked him to let me know when they were accepting visitors so Michelle and I could meet Jorja.

The following Monday I got a text from Jason (you heard me right - Jason now text messages regularly) inviting us over to see the new baby. Michelle was at school late that night so after I picked her up we headed over to Jason and Cheryl’s.

It had been a while since I held such a new baby, but I think I did alright. She mostly slept while I held her which was alright by me. The less squirming meant the smaller chance of me dropping her. It was Michelle’s turn next and she looked like a natural holding Jorja. I think her motherly instincts kicked in.

I look forward to taking pictures of this cutie in the years to come.  You can see my first shots of Jorja on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

Even though our cabinets had been installed our kitchen was still in an unusable state since we were now waiting on the countertops to be built and installed. Because the dimensions can change during the cabinet install, the counters cannot be built until a final measurement is made.

Pristine Countertops showed up a couple days after the cabinet install to take measurements. We were under the understanding that it would be a couple days for them to build and come to install the counters. Michelle decided to call J&H Builders to find out when the install would actually happen and it seemed that we couldn’t get a straight answer. After being redirected to Pristine, we were told it would be late the following week.

By the time we reached the middle of next week we still hadn’t heard from Pristine so Michelle decided to find out what was up. After getting bounced around a bit we were told that it likely wouldn’t be until the following week. Michelle found this unacceptable and convinced them to reconsider. They agreed to install Friday morning.

The guys showed up early Friday morning and had the counters installed within three hours. We were ecstatic to clean the kitchen and get everything moved out of the living room and back to where it belonged. We could now start putting the final touches on the kitchen.

My first task was to install the over the range microwave. I looked over a installation video on the Panasonic website on how to do this. It made it sound really complicated so I was a little worried as to my ability to do it. I decided to dive in anyway.

As it turned it was way easier than I was anticipating. We hadn’t installed an electrical outlet in the above cabinet yet so we were hoping to just be able to run the cord to an outlet just below. This plan didn’t pan out so we will have to install the outlet sooner rather than later. An extension cord will have to make do for the time being.

Michelle’s uncle Ray showed up at the tail end of the microwave install to see what would be required for the sink install. He put together a shopping list for me so I could make a trip to Home Depot before tackling the plumbing the following morning.

Ray arrived late Saturday morning and we immediately got to work. He mentioned earlier that he was having some painful back issues so he was going to have me do the work as he coached me. I wasn’t sure if he was serious about this, but as it turned out he was. He directed me through 9/10ths of the plumbing work and installation of the sink and faucet. I had no idea how any of this stuff worked prior to this, but with his instruction I now have a pretty solid foundation for future work in this down this path. As the old saying goes,

Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.

The work took a little longer than I was expecting, but that can likely be chalked up to me going slowly as I was taught Kitchen Plumbing 101. We managed to have a working faucet and sink by the end of the day with minimal glitches encountered along the way.  (Hey…that was like a poem).

The kitchen was pretty messy after the day’s work, and even though I was totally wiped I wanted to get everything cleaned up so we could have an actual working kitchen. Under all of the sawdust and ABS pipe shavings Michelle presents what was hiding.

Following admiring our new kitchen, the three weeks of renovations finally overcame me and I made my way to the nearest couch and collapsed. I could cherish the next few weeks of a normal household until we tackled the final step of tiling the backsplash, and fixing the completely out of place light fixture.

You can check out more pictures on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Microwave Install Thumbnails on Flickr
• Microwave Install Slideshow on Flickr
• Plumbing Thumbnails on Flickr
• Plumbing Slideshow on Flickr
• Final Product Thumbnails on Flickr
• Final Product Install Slideshow on Flickr

After seeing our kitchen in a near finished state, Michelle and I decided that we would prefer to buy new appliances sooner, rather than later. We were planning on holding off buying a new refrigerator for at least a year, but once we saw how ours looked in the new kitchen, that plan went out the window. We had the fridge area built with a counter-depth fridge in mind, and we really didn’t like how far our current one stuck out past the counter. Plus we left an opening for a 36″ fridge, so our 28″ one looked a little ridiculous.

So the plan for the weekend quickly switched gears as we found ourselves running around to the many appliance stores in Saskatoon. The plan was to purchase a fridge, a dishwasher, and an over-the-range microwave. We left the stove upgrade until a future date since we want to make the switch to gas. This just didn’t seem like the time for that.

We focused our attention on the fridges, and narrowed our search down to three models. As it turned out, counter-depth fridges are a premium, and are few and far between. They are typically only made by some of the higher-end manufactures so that sucked. I still find it weird that they are more expensive than standard depth fridges even though their capacity is typically five cubic feet smaller.

I was kind of hung up on keeping the three appliances to be the same manufacturer. Michelle was not. We came down to two setups and got the salesman at Coast Wholesale Appliance to price out the two options. Our plan was to pick the cheaper of the two. As it turned out they worked out to be within $30 of each other. No help there.

We decided to leave and sleep on it. As we were leaving we remembered that Saskatoon Appliance had another location in the area so we decided to head over there. We had the saleslady their price out our two options just to see if there would be a difference. I kind of felt bad because the guy at Coast spent a lot of time with us. I figured if the quotes were only a little cheaper at Saskatoon Appliance we would still by from Coast.

Well as it turned out Saskatoon Appliance beat Coast by almost $1000 dollars on both setups. My loyalty to the Coast salesman faded pretty quickly and we ordered our appliances. We really liked a fridge from Fisher & Paykel. I also really liked one of their dishwashers. It is a two drawer system that lets you run two loads separately. Michelle wasn’t as impressed as me, but I managed to convince her. The company doesn’t make microwaves so we went with a Panasonic that seemed to match alright.

If you’re interested, you can read more about what we went with.

• Fisher & Paykel French Door Refrigerator
• Fisher & Paykel Double DishDrawer
• Panasonic Over the Range Microwave

Who would have thought that shopping for appliances could eat away an entire day. We spent nearly 10 hours flying from one end of the city to the other in search of the perfect fit for our kitchen. Now hopefully our new toys arrive soon so we can get our new kitchen completed. I’m also looking forward to the “new” beer fridge we get to put down in the basement.

There was no way I was tackling trying to install a kitchen. As comical an event it would have been, and as entertaining a blog post it would have produced, having all of the cabinets come crashing to the ground did not seem desirable. Luckily a friend of ours Wade (of J.J. and Wade fame), actually installs kitchens for a living. Hiring him seemed like a much better idea.

Wade and one of his guys showed up late Monday morning and got right to work. I filled them in on some pertinent information and then got the hell out of their way. I took off for the office and left the guys to do what they do. When I got back at around 5pm, I couldn’t believe how much they had actually accomplished. The majority of the cabinets were up and you could really start to see the kitchen taking form.

Once again I got out of their way and hung out in the home office. I peeked my head into the kitchen every once in a while between loud “construction type” sounds. The guys worked pretty late into the evening before calling it a night. Apparently everything went more-or-less smoothly throughout the day.

Since they traveled in from Regina, Wade and Tyler just stayed at our place. They were back up and working early Tuesday morning after Michelle and I left for work. When we returned at the end of the day they were just wrapping up the trim and some of the other more cosmetic stuff.

I got a kick out of some statistics they were keeping throughout the day. On the top of one of the lower cabinets they had written a tally of how many times two songs had played on one of Saskatoon’s terrible radio stations, Wired 96.3.

• Dead & Gone by T.I. - 9 times
• Low by Flow Rida featuring T-Pain - 9 times

Apparently the day didn’t go quite as “by-the-book” as the previous day as they had to make use of their ingenuity to get some stuff to work out. Everything looked pretty awesome to me so obviously they made some good decisions. They were hoping to wrap things up by around 4pm, but ended up working until after 9 before actually getting on the road back to Regina.

Michelle and I were super happy with how the kitchen looked so far. The only thing I was worried about from the design was how much floor space there was going to be with the cabinets around three walls. As it turned out I was worrying about nothing since it turned out great.

Now we just have to wait for the countertop to be installed. The guys showed up Wednesday to take measurements, but would likely not be able to install for at least a week. We were obviously hoping they would be done within a few days since not having a kitchen sink really sucks. Eating out is starting to get old.

You can check out more photos from the install on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

After we finished demoing the kitchen Friday night, we still had some time to start the electrical work. Because we were adding a whole new wall of counter and cabinets, and relocating the fridge, we needed to move some outlets along the north wall of the kitchen. I made a quick trip to Home Depot to pick up some materials, and then we were on our way.

It turned out that moving one light switch down about six inches created a 2 foot by 2 foot hole in the wall. Michelle was not very impressed, but her dad reassured her that it would make things easier. Nothing a little piece of drywall and mud wouldn’t cure.

As it turned out I didn’t drill enough holes in the basement ceiling beams, so I got to work on that. This time I used one of Dave’s drill bits and it worked about 100 times better than the one I own. I ripped through those no problem, but man did it make a mess. I also had the pleasure of watching nearly all of my ceiling tiles fall to the ground as I drilled. These things come down way easier than they go back up. Who would have thought redoing your kitchen would turn your entire house into a complete and utter disaster?

I pretty much took care of the grunt work (like drilling, cleaning, and passing tools) for the wiring since I know nothing in this area. I did however learn a lot while watching Dave. I don’t think I could do it alone, but I’m pretty sure I could with some guidance.

Dave finished up the wiring on Sunday without electrocuting himself so I would say that it was a successful operation. Michelle’s Uncle Ray also showed up briefly to take care of that 2 foot hole in the wall. Man, it sure seems like Ray loves the dry walling!

You can check out more picture of the wiring day on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

The weekend arrived and that marked the beginning of the actual work for the kitchen renovation. Michelle and I spent Friday night emptying the kitchen in preparation for the demo on Saturday. After a little deliberation we decided to dump everything into the living room We figured we could deal with losing that room for a few days. You can see the initial clutter of our kitchen below.

And after we moved everything out of there, it didn’t look too bad. Very deceiving.

The living room on the other hand was a complete disaster. I wasn’t too sure how I would be able to handle this for the next few days. However I was happy that everything was able to fit in the living room alone. I was really hoping to keep as many rooms as unaffected as possible.

Early Saturday morning the kitchen arrived. I was thinking we would be able to fit all of the boxes in the dining area, but when I saw the truck I knew that would be impossible. The only feasible place to store everything was the garage.  I was really hoping the installers wouldn’t mind hauling everything in as they needed it.

Michelle’s dad arrived not too much later and we started to rip the kitchen apart. I was rather pleased that everything came out without too much trouble. The lower cabinet turned out to be the only thing that wasn’t salvageable.

This was my first foray into demolishing a room in a house and it turned out to be not too bad. My only regret is that I didn’t get to use any dynamite, let alone a sledgehammer. Maybe next time.

With the kitchen being totally cleared out we were now able to start the electrical work. You can seem more pictures from the day on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

The one thing Michelle and I really dislike about our house is the kitchen. It’s not ugly or anything, but it just lacks counter and cupboard space. We’re limited to about 4 square feet of counter space to work with, and our cupboards hold about half of our kitchen stuff. Shortly after moving into the house a little over a year ago we decided that our first big project would be to redothe kitchen.

We checked out a few places to do a custom design and we ended up going with J&H Builders. We met with one of their designers, told them what we wanted, and after a few drafts we were happy with what she had come up with. We put down our deposit and placed the order. We were told it would be about six weeks for everything to be built.

As it turned out everything was ready in about four weeks and we hadn’t started any of the prep such as doing electrical work, or purchasing the hardware such as sink, faucet, and pulls. Plus we hadn’t arranged a date with our installer. So we found ourselves scrambling.

First step was to add some electrical outlets on one side of the kitchen. Michelle’s dad came over last Sunday and we checked out what we were working with. Nothing to complicated here, but it would require me to drill some holes in the 2×8 beams in the basement ceiling to run the wire from the breaker box across the house and up to the kitchen. Michelle’s dad told me it would be messy and tiring. I believed the messy part, but I didn’t buy that it would be tiring.

For those of you who know me, I’ve never really been exposed to this type of work before so drilling 15 or so 1″ holes through these 2×8 beams was not on my resume. So only after I started drilling my first hole did I realize how much this was going to suck. Michelle’s dad was telling no lie when he said it was going to be tiring.  I figured it would be faster for me to construct a 5 megawatt laser than to continue drilling.At first I just thought my drill or bit sucked, but then I realized it was probably my technique. After fiddling with my stance, I managed to get fairly proficient at making holes. The real difficulty was how awkward it was in many areas to work around ducts, and all sorts of other crap.

About two hours later I finally managed to get the holes drilled and Michelle and I started the cleanup stage. It felt good to get phase one completed in our journey to a new kitchen. Next phase: wiring the outlets with Michelle’s dad. I’m not tackling this one by myself. I like our house when it’s not engulfed in flames.

You can check out more photos on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

Since moving back to Saskatoon in 2005 I’ve been hosting the annual Geeks in Basements New Years Eve Extravaganza - a gathering of my closest friends to celebrate the coming of the new year. This also happened to be the first one that would take place in Michelle’s and my new house.

Since Saskatchewan was going through such a bitterly cold stretch we thought it would be a great idea to give the 2009 party a Caribbean theme. Our guests were informed to show up in their best island gear and enjoy some Jamaican style cuisine and groove to some funky reggae beats. We even announced that there would be a special prize for the most impressive getup.

Marla and Charles were the first guests to arrive and they sure did impress us with their costumes. All Marla needed was some suntan lotion and she could have jumped a plane to the West Indies.

Unfortunately as more guests arrived the quality of the costumes diminished. And when I say diminished I mean were non-existent. At least Michelle and I had enough leis for everyone to wear. Besides the “dressing up stick-in-the-muds”, the company was still top notch and everyone had a fantastic time.

As usual I laid out the “community camera” for people to fire off shots during the night.  I actually had no idea that there were so many picture taken until tonight when I pulled the photos off of the camera.

Feel free to check out some of the better shots on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

And in case you hadn’t guessed, Marla won the prize for best costume - a bottle of Malibu Rum.

I never made another post following the wedding announcement back in September so I thought I would give a quick update. Michelle and I have gotten the major things sorted out including the venue for the reception, the photographer, and the DJ. The bridal party are ready to go with Michelle having found hers and the bridesmaid dresses. As far as I know they are all fitted and ordered. I too have found what the men will be wearing, but I’m pretty sure they have not went and got fitted yet.  I may have to give them a deadline. Michelle being the crafty person she is has been spending a lot of her time creating our invitations and ’save the dates’. We are going to have a lot of people needing to travel a reasonable distance for the wedding, so we figured ’save the dates’ would be a good idea. Michelle finished those up last night and will be mailing them out in the next couple days. Only expect one of these fabulous creations in the mail if you’re a traveler.  If you live close by, consider this your official ’save the date’.

I guess the last major thing Michelle and I keep ignoring is where the actual wedding ceremony will take place. We’ve found that when you’re not getting married in a church, your options become quite limited in Saskatoon - especially when weather could become a factor at the tail end of September. If you have any suggestions, we’d love to hear from you.