Belated Crusie Photos

Here are some belated cruise photos. Let see, we got photos of our room and bathroom along with the night view from our balcony...no land is sight. The City shots are from Puerto Rico and the pool and slide photos are from the ship of course. The slide was actually lots of fun! The port in the background of face shots of Joseph and me is St. Thomas. We had the best time in St Maarten but we didn't have the camera...so I guess you should have been there! Oh and we got one photo of one of the many buffet areas. The amount of food was ridiculous but helped make the time less stressful since you just ate when hungry not when time allowed.
We met awesome people on the boat and on the islands. There were lots of people our age on board, but the activities were really geared to keep interest groups together and we never felt out of place. The best small world story is that Anissa from Cheney High was on her Honeymoon on the same ship! It was a huge bonus to get to see her and her husband and catch up.
We had a great time and if we had a professional photographer with us we would have more photos to share...Heather and Evan we may need to travel together as a rule :)

Kitchen mayhem

The wall and all five levels of flooring are removed! Yes I said 5 levels...we put down pergo wood...up in 10 minutes, then we took out wood backed linoleum up in 1 hour then we hit 3 layers of dreaded linoleum. This stuff is too strong to be made in such hideous designs...we had green marble, brown squares and grey and red swirl. So the last three layers took 1.5 days. But the great news is that even with the appliances in the living room it feels like real progress to us! The Kitchen floor will now be the same level as the living room so that one day (hopefully soon) we can put nice flooring through the house. Oh and upgrade alert our ceiling are now at least 1 and a half inches taller!

Ride Snowboard Art Contest Reception

I went to Ride Snowboards 7th Annual Art Contest Reception last Saturday night and had a great time. Pyramid a few kegs so people were happy to get something free! I was "working" but I didn't have to do much other than help Molly from evo Gear interview a few contestants. She ran the camera and I found people for her to talk to. Oh and I drew the raffle tickets... Some creative folks came out to support the Top 30 boards in addition to the Final 7 that were picked to be judged that night.

Earlier that day we drove out to Hoodsport to see our collapsed yurt on Dow Mountain. A beautiful day with snow and blue skies but not a beautiful site as I look at our totally destroyed yurt. TOO MUCH SNOW then rain! I'll post pics later.

Vacation right after the holiday break?!

Thanks to Fred and Diane we are looking forward to our honeymoon cruise in the eastern carribean! This is a photo of the ship we will be on for 7 days. We can not believe we are going on such a nice trip, and we know little about the details so we are excited to pleasently surprised each day.

Ripping good time

Here is Brodie opening his first present of the season. He got the idea right away and was the center of attention for long enough to prove that there are no grand kids at the Browder family Christmas yet :) Brenda you really should get on that...

Deflection

Here you can see whats left of the load bearing wall that is going to give us 2 more feet in our 8 foot wide kitchen. There is only 2 studs left supporting the ceiling joists above. I've sistered the 2x4 joists above and they are not ending on top of this wall but it does help decrease the span as 2x4s are too small to make this span unassisted. Our house was built in 1941 and is lightly built as far as I can tell.

I just bought a 10 foot 4x10 beam to put above the joists, allowing them to hang from this beam. It's sitting in our living room now waiting for 3 strong people to hoist it into the attic! It was sitting outside in the rain at the lumber yard so hopefully once it drys out it will be lighter.

After consulting with Cheryl's Dad, Jackie the plan is to jack up the wall slightly so it's not saging then attached the joists to the beam with "huricane ties".

I just got my new framing nailer, a cheapo from Harbor Freight. You can see it in the lower left corner. It made framing this wall for our breakfast bar much easier for a un-skilled home owner like my self. You can also see the 4x10 beam that allowed us to open the walls. This wall is non load bearing but it will be when I take out the wall behind the fridge.