Well Christmas is over with

At least for me it is. Due to work schedules my family did celebrated Christmas this past Sunday. My sister, brother in law, niece and my mother all came in from Benton. Dad and step mom came over and we all had a nice late lunch together. We were only missing my other sister, her husband, and two kids.

Sorry for not updating on the renovation of the living room. Everything came together, some needed a little encouragement to fit right but everything is done except for refinishing the wood floors, that was earmarked as a later project.

Having a house full of people was somewhat difficult for me. I discovered my social anxiety has gotten worse, trying to listen to give different people asking or telling me something overwhelmed me. There was a moment I even fled my house to the shop to get away. I love my family and this shouldn't have happened.

Living room renovation, discontinued ceiling tiles

Walls are up and painting is finished. While dad is working on making the window and door facing I went ahead and worked on the ceiling. There is really nothing wrong with the ceiling tiles that are there except from the damage done to them from the panels being pulled from the walls. I liked the fresh clean look of the ceiling tiles that I put up in the kitchen, 12x12 interlocking Styrofoam tiles. They were $29 for a box of 64.

Yesterday I called the hardware store that had them to check to see if they still had them in stock. Found out that they have been discontinued due to the factory shutting down. They only had the pressed cardboard tiles which cost $32 for a box of 32. With Christmas coming up I rather not spend that much on tiles.

This wouldn't have been as much of a big deal if I hadn't already pulled down a third of the ceiling in the living room. Throwing away the tiles that had the damage and paint on them Cheapest option would be to paint the damage areas on the few tiles and make it blend in, replace the tiles I have left and to pull a few tiles from the hallway and replace those in the near future. Another option is to pull the rest of the ceiling and hope I have enough tiles from the hallway to replace all the damaged tiles. Third option is to bite the bullet and spend the money on the more expensive tiles.

Shelves for the office

Going through my phone I found pictures of a set of shelves I put in my office above the computer. They were built to display some of my knick knacks that were still in boxes. 

Boards cut to size, plane used to round over edges and rasp was used on the end grain.

Brackets up, leveled and squared.

Shelves finish, already emptied two boxes.

Shelves are made from 1x12 yellow pine since the hardware store was out of white pine.  I used three sets of adjustable shelving brackets since I wanted the ability to adjust the space between each shelf.

Cold floors

My has house has bare pine wood floors throughout the whole house except for the bathroom and kitchen which the wood is covered by vinyl flooring. This makes for a cold wall from the bedroom to bathroom in the middle of the night. Plans call for the two main bedrooms to have carpet laid with the living room, hallway and office to be simply sanded and finished.
Going bare foot is almost unbearable, wearing shoes all the time isn't ideal either. When I lived at home with my dad many years ago I had a pair of leather sole moccasins house shoes. I have searched recently and all I can find are moccasins shoes complete with rubber sole. I miss my old moccasins and hope to find another pair soon.

Living room renovation, new walls

A lot has changed since I last posted about my living room. Progress happened faster than I could take pictures of each step. I hope that no one is disappointed in missing some of boring stuff.

Walls are now insulated and have up to date electrical. The light switches were a challenge in themselves, and took most of one day to short the mess out. We added braces along the seam between where the panel boards stored and the drywall started.

We even finished putting up the drywall. Careful measurements were made to plan our attack to reduce the amount of extra work of added strips to screw too since some areas were not 16" centers. Dad has been in the process of mudding the seams and screw heads, one more final round off mudding and sanding and we can start to paint.

The Toyota received new tires

With the winter season upon us and many predictions of this winter will be colder and wetter than normal I have been making a few preparations. I have to travel to and from work so I need my truck to be able to make the daily trip. The tires that have been on my truck since I purchase the truck the years ago are showing their age. They have reached the last wear mark so I decided to go ahead and replace them. All terrain tires without much tread are not really all terrain are they?
The Hankook dynapro tires have at least 60,000 miles on them shop I think it's a good choice to have them replaced. Wal-Mart was having a sale on their Goodyear wrangler trailmark, with the idea of trading the truck within the next year or two I think these will be a decent tire, my last two trucks I have ran Goodyear wrangler and was pleased with them.

Had a few problems at the Wal-Mart I went to, had to wait about three hours due to most employees calling in sick, and the ticket being written up with the wrong tires causing a price issue. When all was said and done everything was corrected and taken care of.

The end of No Shave November for me

Had a great short run this year being able to participate in No Shave November, but it has come to end. My vacation has ended which means I must return to work and to an outdated idea of professionalism. For nine days I didn't have to worry about shaving and ended with a beard that just started to become soft after the rough stage. I didn't care how I looked all week since I spent my vacation either in the mountains camping or at the house working in the living room.

With returning to the routine of shaving, I have switched over to using a lotion based aftershave instead of the alcohol splashes. With the colder weather my face dries out quicker so the aftershave lotion helps to prevent that. I have stocked up on Nivea sensitive post shave balm last year when the local Wal-Mart's put several items on clearance to redo the shelves.