A Weekend of 'Plan B's'

For all of you that have been reading cigars and other 'yarny' blogs, you've likely got a belly full of the sheep & wool weekend by now. But alas, there was even more that went on that weekend. How can that be, you may ask? Well, the boys got a bit bored with sheep & wool so we went off and did some fun stuff on our own.

Saturday afternoon, Paul & I wandered our way back from Rhinebeck and hit a few of my favorite places (beer store, the Newburgh waterfront, and a beer bar)! We bought a few choice selections at Half-Time and had fun kicking back with a few pints with Brian and the gang over at the Rail. In between was spent taking some photos of the Hudson River and surrounding mountains. The first shot of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge is below (more on that in a bit).

Plan B #1 came when trying to find dinner on Saturday. We both wanted barbecue, but the only place in Newburgh had a 30-minute wait. This wasn't going to work, so we ended up getting a pizza and going back to the house to watch Game 6 of the ALCS, which the Red Sox won 12-2. All was well...

Sunday, we decided to hang back locally and do some hiking and picture-taking. It was an absolutely beautiful day and we both wanted to do something a bit more active than the eating & drinking routine we had basically perfectly the rest of the weekend. We tried to hike at Mohonk, but were denied at the gate by an ornery parking attendant and a sign that unceremoniously said "No Day Hiking Today." It would've been nice if they posted this on their website, but NOOOOOOO...please drive 30 minutes out of your way before we totally ruin your plans for the day. bastards... However, not all was lost as 'Plan B' #2 was hatched.

I have been wanting to hike up Breakneck Ridge again for a long time and today served as a perfect opportunity to do it. I remembered that it was a tough hike, but Paul was game so we decided to give it a whirl. Here's Paul at the trailhead.

Breakneck is a rocky scramble up about 1200' of vertical terrain in about a half-mile. It did not disappoint. I found a pretty good summary of it written by someone else here. We tagged along with a few groups who helped us navigate the various trails without getting lost. It was an excellent way to spend 3.5 hours on a beautiful fall day.

This is the view from the first lookout point. Storm King Mountain is in the background. They've recently added the US and POW flags. I don't remember them from the last time I was up here, circa 2000 or so.

That's the same Newburgh-Beacon Bridge in the distance. The only detriment to the whole day was that it was a bit hazy, but otherwise a perfect day. The boys part of the weekend ended by grilling up a chicken & shrimp feast for the knitta's that turned out to be a perfect way to wrap up the weekend.

Pics (as promised)...

Hello again. Here's a few updated shots of the bathroom. All of the wainscoting is installed and we're using the shower. Can I get a hallelujah? All that's to do on this side of the room is paint the lower portion of the walls and install a few more fixtures.

Now that door I was telling you about. Here's a shot to go with the description in my previous post. As they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words...

I just couldn't bring myself to changing this doorway. I went with what the house was giving me and am glad I did. It's strange little quirks like this one that make our house unique and interesting. Eventually, the door and trim will be painted the same color as the wainscoting, but that's pretty low on the priority list right now. Must get vanity, countertop, and sinks installed first.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Bathroom Chronicles, Vol. 5

Hello all. Sorry for the delay since the last post, but I spent last week on the road for work and this week has been a mad dash to get the house ready for Snarktoberfest 2007 :-) However, with all the hub-bub going on around us, we basically met our goal of having a 'functional' master bath before the kinttas arrive. We did have to make some sacrifices in the name of 'functional,' like no sinks and an unfinished floor (more on that later), but the new shower is pretty darned cool. In fact, Beth and I have been taking our morning showers in it all week :)

The latest finished tasks are completed wainscoting and re-hanging the door. We're keeping all of the the original doors that were left in the house when we bought it. They're in great shape and just need some scraping and re-painting to make them look perfect again. The master bath door is quite funny since at some point in the past, the house settled about 2 inches near this doorway (as shown by the sloping floor and slanted door framing! So, what did they do? They trimmed the top of the door to be shorter on one side! It looks rather odd on its own , but inside the door frame, it fits perfectly. I had to trim it down a bit more on all sides to accommodate the new casings, but it's good to go now.

I had the best intentions of re-finishing the floor too, but we just ran out of time. What it boiled down to was I didn't want to run the risk of having tacky polyurethane on the floor when a house full of people needed to take showers. It can wait until the October rush is past and it's just me, Beth , and the kitties again. No pictures to post right now but I'll get a few up soon.

Bathroom Chronicles, Vol. 4

This week has been going great. The Red Sox shut out the Angels 4-0 in Game 1 of the ALDS last night, AND I've been working in the bathroom all week. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't spend 8 hours a day at work! As of my last post, the bags of pellets were doing their thing and I was prepping things for the plumbers to come back. The floor sanding adventure went well, although it did take two trips to the rental center to get the right kind of sander. I originally rented a vibrating pad sander since I was terrified that a belt-type in my hands would gouge the floor. The problem with the pad type is that even with 20-grit paper, I would've been sanding the floor for about a week. It was the equivalent of trying to dig a ditch with a teaspoon. Given our limited time-frame, I broke down and rented the belt-sander. I was relieved to see that my fears were very much overblown. Don't get me wrong, you can gouge the floor if you're not careful, but they're easier to control than I thought. I had the entire floor sanded smooth in ~4 hours. Here's what the unfinished floor looks like now. You can see the before & after at the doorway transition.

The plumbers returned today to get the toilet and shower stuff installed. Well, I'm happy to report that this latest round of plumbing work went off without a hitch and we're now the proud owners of a working master shower and toilet! thank you...thank you very much... I even got the shower seat and trim pieces installed (see lovely blue painters tape in the photos, which is needed until the silicone sets up).

The plumbers will have to come back one last time to install valves on the hot & cold supply lines to the vanity. Unfortunately, the vanity we picked out has an enclosed back, which means that valves shouldn't be installed ahead of time unless you want to cut out huge holes in the back of the cabinet to let them through. Oh well, I'm not too troubled by that. After all, we have a toilet and shower again >;-D

Bathroom Chronicles, Vol. 3

We just came off of another fabulous weekend. Beth's Mom, JoAnn, and Nancy left today to head back to GA. We had so much fun, no matter what we were doing. After entertaining a house full of people all weekend, it's rather quiet now.

I took this week off of work to focus on the bathroom. It's the last push to get it functional before Sheep & Wool. I've managed to make a little progress over the weekend and today. Sunday was spent getting the new shower panels installed. The install went as expected, but as always, a few hiccups here and there getting them trimmed and notched. Thankfully, no catastrophes to report.

There is a funny story associated with the installation, however. The swanstone panels get attached to the wall using double-stick tape and construction adhesive. You put gobs of adhesive on the backside and use wood braces to apply pressure while the adhesive sets up. There's even a nice diagram with the suggested bracing layout. Sounds simple, right? Well, for the two opposing walls, it was. I was able to get the braces in nice and tight. The back wall, on the other hand, was another story. Since there's no opposing wall to provide resistance, I had a hard time applying enough pressure to keep the panels adhered on my rather wavy walls. The cute diagram I mentioned previously just wasn't cutting it, so I had to get creative...

Scary, huh? and yes, those are bags of pellets for my stove. I rigged up some diagonal 2x4 braces that got wedged against the lip of the shower pan and nailed a few pieces of wood to the brace to make shelves for the pellet bags to sit on. Trust me, this worked much better than standing there pushing against the wall for 24-hours! Each bag weighs 40-lbs, so I figure I've got approximately 100 lbs of lateral force being applied to the wall. I checked for pull-away and haven't see any. So far, so good. We'll see what happens when I take this contraption apart!

Today's fun was trimming out the new window. I re-created the colonial style trim on my other upstairs windows using stock 1x4's and some off the shelf moulding from my local lumberyard. Here's what it looks like.

Tomorrow's starts the hardwood floor refinishing adventure. I'm renting a sander in the morning and hope it get the floor ready for polyurethane by the end of the day. We'll see if I actually get that far.