Thursday, April 28, 2011

Miscellaneous

Lazy.  That's what you call someone that posts one tidbit every quarter.  Hello, I am lazy, nice to meet you.

And this post isn't so much a work of art or a spew of vitriol... It's more of an update.

The home front
I mentioned here and here we were trying to build a house.  And while the schedule has been oh-so-lax and not-quite-met... I believe it is actually about to begin.  There's a plan.  There's a builder.  There's a rough outline drawn on the ground with my truck parked in the "garage."  Now, building a house is probably not all that unique, so I probably won't be leaving updates here every 3 hours (unless there is something particularly interesting to post).  For friends/family/stalkers I'll try to keep a running set of photos on Picasa.  Other disinterested parties may silently ignore that.

I would, for the record, like to point out the builder selection process:
  • Builder 1 - hired to draw plans and bid on the house.  Copied/pasted plans from a web site.  Fired.
  • Builder 2 - Seems.   Like.  A.  Nice.  And.  Honest.  Guy.  That.  Talks.  A.  Little.  Slow.  For the record, I'd like to mention that 2 out of 4 times I have been to his office, I had car trouble bad enough that I had to be towed home.  No, this was not the same car.  Jinx?
  • Builder 3 - Seemslikeareallyniceguythattalksreallyfastanddrinkstoomuchcoffee.  We actually went a few rounds with him, telling him how we wanted to do some of our own work and he mysteriously just decided (weeks into this) to stop returning our phone calls.  Nutjob?  Or stringing us along?  Who cares.  Fired.
  • Builder 4 - The most highly recommended builder by the girl that eventually drew our plans (not by the copy-paste method).  "He would build my house," she said.  Then we talked to several subcontractors that slowly shook their heads no.  "He doesn't pay his bills and you cannot ever get him on the phone."  Fired.
  • Builder 5 - A slick used car salesman that deals in 2x4's and plywood.  I was ready to leave the office about the time I shook his hand.  Fired.
From the above, you can probably deduce we went with Builder 2.  If you're still wondering about the possible jinx, I'd also mention his office caught on fire about a week before we signed with him.

The Chambers
Ellie May has had the idea for several years that she wanted a shiny new (old) Chambers range in her kitchen.  We even drew the plans with the odd sized hole in the cabinets for it.  We've been watching Ebay/Craigslist for over a year, bid on a few and never found the right one at the right price.  And then they fell out of the sky.  Last week we found 2 of them for the price of 1.  Neither is pristine by any means, but they're both mostly complete and I feel certain I can build one working stove out of the 2.  I'll also have a spot on Picasa for the restoration of these guys... and possibly have some blog entries here as there do seem to be a crazy bunch of rabid fans (Ellie included).



Suggestions for naming the ranges are now being taken.