Happy Birthday Simon

Hope you’ve enjoyed Oblivion as much as I did. If not, I’ll nerd you out with checklists & maps.

House Progress

We managed to get some work done on the house over Christmas. Along with the usual wall paper stripping (stairs, hall and living room) we also successfully installed the house alarm (no mean feat as I’m afraid of heights), ripped up the hall laminate and skirting boards and cleared out the shed (put all the kitchen unit boards and junk in there).

We have a skip bag for the junk which we will fill today.

Hopefully, we will have the kitchen guy up this evening too to discuss our plans.

Arthur Rackham

Oh and Arthur Rackham’s Alice in Wonderland illustrations :P

Alphonse Mucha

Me wants all of these!

LiveJournal Syndication

Don’t forget people, if you have a paid account (or know someone who does), you can create syndicated feeds to add to your friends list in LJ.

What does this mean? If you have an account on some other web service such as Flickr, Twitter, PhotoBucket, etc. you can create an LJ account for it and it will show up in your friends feed.

Go here add add your RSS feed, give it an “account” name and share it among friends.

I have one for my Flickr favorites, one for my Windows Live Spaces and one for my Twitter.

House

Well our energy levels could only last so long. Last night and this morning I felt exhausted for working on the house. Getting in after work then 1 to 2 hours of stripping wallpaper will take it out of you.

So we’re taking a break this evening and will pace ourselves better in the future. More sleep would also be prudent.

We’re still focused on getting everything done but without killing ourselves from now on.

All the upstairs is stripped so it’s down the stairs, the hall, living room and kitchen/dining room left.

Will be discussing/shopping for kitchens and doors this weekend.

House Progress

Almost done with stripping the wallpaper upstairs. Not bad for a week’s work (2 hours in the evening and the weekend).

We got a second steamer from one of Tasha’s dad so that has helped a lot.

Unfortunately I left it on one of the walls too long last night and some of the plaster coat came off!

Still, we’ll finish the back bedroom off tonight and get the landing, stairs and hall underway.

House Photos

Slightly delayed (like the house) here’s some photos of the progress after one week and before the handover.

2008-12-04 set slideshow

2008-12-14 set slideshow

House Progress

Last night, I took down all the internal doors and lock receivers, removed any of the wall fixtures like curtain rails, hooks, nails and accessories in the bathroom and finally removed any of the loose skirting boards.

Tasha continued to strip the wallpaper in the front bedroom but now that I’m mostly done with dismantling stuff, I’ll be able to help her.

Afterwards,we went for dinner at Arthur and Catherine’s and brought them back to see the house later on.

I was also sad to hear that Bettie Page died last night. No doubt there will be a resurgence of interest in her past and iconic imagery.

House Directions

For future reference coming over to our house, here are the directions from the Kilmacud Luas stop.

Progress

I finished dismantling the last of the kitchen units last night and am storing the big bits out in the shed (which is bigger than I thought). Still have to do the sink unit and remove the tiles in there.

Tasha stripped some of the wallpaper in the front bedroom with a steamer we borrowed (should make life a lot easier)

Tonight, the plan is to remove all the internal doors and maybe some skirting boards.

House

We got started on the house this evening. Tasha stripped the surface of the wallpaper up stairs so it’ll be easier to remove and I dismantled the crappy kitchen that was left.

Need to get a skip for the bulky stuff and the wheelie bins in for the smaller things.

Turns out the fireplace in the front room was just sitting in front of the old one so restoring it should be no problem.

More Sad News

My (maternal) grandfather passed away this morning at 6am. He had been very frail and fearful for the last few years but his death was painless and peaceful at home.

With the recent death of my aunt Mary too, it’s been a tough month or so but at least their passing's were painless.

Oblivion

I finished the Shivering Isles main quest and only have a few bits of side quests to do.

That’s all the guilds, Knights of the Nine, Daedric shrine, wilderness and settlement quests done.

I’ve lined up the other plug-ins via Xbox Live Marketplace and as soon as I’m back online, I can finish them off too.

I started off Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, an original Xbox game, last night. Spooky stuff and odd playing without a HUD. The controller shakes quite a bit.

House

Just got word. We finally get our keys on Monday (with an inspection on Thursday).

About… bloody… time!