St. Patrick's day

Alli bought a traditional St. Patricks day Pinata... asuming the weather would hold and the party would be outside...

it was 8 degrees so we stayed in


watch as alcohol + Alli and Jonathan Foote = Bad idea.

Gyp Bd

Drywall is going up. Big thanks to John, Steven, and Andrea for the help.

Los Lobos

Victor and Isidora Lobos stopped by from chile...

Allison = Plumber?

The most stressful act so far was the removal of an extra radiator pipe in our ceiling, this pipe cut across the ceiling and into the space now occupied by the new top stair tread and riser - it has been capped and abandoned by previous owners but was still connected to the main radiator supply. The yellow tarp was our [weak] attempt to plan for a worst case exploding water pipe...



(click pictures to enlarge) the short 3" capped pipe up in the ceiling joist replaces the 13' pipe seen dangling below.

Following the simple steps to drain the boiler and radiators before-hand meant that this potentially messy job took only 5 minutes and spilled no water.

Insulation, shims

The picture is rather poor, but we've now got insulation in the party wall, as well as a plumb party wall. The 20' tall studs varied as much as 3/4" - all of which are now shimmed out to give a level surface for the drywall.

Sound Proofing

The search for better sound proofing has turned up a bunch of products (The home theater geeks have spawned a slew of new products to make drywall quieter) - the best finds so far can be found in the links ------>