Electric Pony Wall

Things moved along while we were in Hawaii. The rough-in electrical work was mostly finished today, and a pony wall was added. Recessed can lights, a three-way switch and some outlets were added. The pony wall will be behind the base cabinets, beneath the counter top.

Recessed Lights

Pony Wall

We let the animals out in the house for a bit, but butters soon tried to get into the wall space. The cats were placed back in quarantine. I don't want to have to call a chimney sweep out to retrieve any kitties. I think Tater Tot would go in and never come out, having found the most secretive of lairs away from the dog and human faces.

On a travel note, we were glad to have a direct flight, although it was direct to H-Town which entailed a 2.5 hour drive to Austin. My dad and sister were kind enough to meet us with Ziggy and our car so we could hit the road from Intercontinental airport. It was about 17 hours of travelling. Hiking down to a mammoth waterfall the yesterday before our flight made our last day of vacation not too shabby, and to top it off we came across a wild hog in the road on the way from the falls to the airport. Back to the grind tomorrow, but hey, it's only a one-day work week.

Top of Wailua Falls

Yea we made it to the bottom!

Hawaii 5-0

After losing a purse after a sunset booze cruise off Waikiki we met with a local police officer to file a police report.  Flying is going to be difficult without ID, we read having a police report should help.  The cop showed up and began making the 'police report' in his tiny spiral-bound note book.  I imagined he was writing something along the lines of:

Dear Dairy,

Purse was stollen, left in a cab off Waikiki.  If found call this number...

XOXO
Officer Pe-yope'

The lines had no quality control as he scribbled his notes across the small page of his diary.  I wondered what happens with those notes?  Does he turn in that chicken scratch to his commander, who'll gather everyone together to show what a great job he did, placing in a high prominent spot on the refrigerator.  Or maybe they'll all go out and bury it in the yard and see if a pretty banyon tree will grow.

Wall comes down

The wall has been gutted and re-framed. The new expanse is 8'6". We pushed part of the opening towards the living room, shifting the expanse about 3" away from the stove area to remove re-routing a gas line, money and trouble. It's nice to get out of the house at this time, since there was so much dust and insulation blowing around. Just a few hours in it made my sinus and lungs feel funny.

Our cabinet guy should have gotten in there to make his final measurements and begin construction. Hopefully those will be finished, or close to when we return.

Don't have too much time to format this, breakfast awaits at Boots and Kimo's.  The That's Lanikai Lillers, and me eating some poke', and drinking some Big Swell IPA.

Kitchen Remodel Begins....with the help of scrambletron

Yesterday marked the official start of work on our kitchen.

         

  Wood Arrived on Friday.        The prep left the house with a ghostly feel.

Apparently the 1950's was a great year for well made cabinets since the contractor could find no possible was to remove the nailed into the wall cabinets in one piece.  After a day of trying, the contractor gave up and we said to destroy the things.  It does make you wonder....is it such a good idea to destroy such well built, perfectly ok cabinets? Oh well!

This is how much cabinet demo happened in one day.

Now to the lovely hole in our wall...in knocking out a section to see what was behind there our contractor found a gas line 3 inches in from where we wanted to knock down the wall.  So we could lose 3" from the opening or pay to move the line 3" back somewhere to the tune of $100/in.  We decided to go for it and move the line...those 3" are important!

Bye Bye Wall!

With all the surprises and durability of a 1950's kitchen, the demo was moving a little slow.  Way too slow for scrabletron.  She decided to take matters into her own hands and start the demo herself.  Unfortunately she isn't very smart and ended up demoing part of the living room wall instead.  EBear fixed her mistakes with some plywood.

Look I helped!

Say goodbye to the Refrigerator Hole to Nowhere!

Thursday the city of Austin picked our 1986 Kenmore refrigerator.  This thing was born in the same year as my brother.  It came complete with the recently discovered refrigerator hole to nowhere!  Has anyone seen Ghostbusters? I think Zuul might live in my fridge.

I am scared of the hole to nowhere...it looks way bigger is person.

So the fridge is gone and I regrettably had to plug in the new fridge before the new kitchen is complete.

But since the new fridge is so big we really can't fit it into the kitchen until the wall comes down.  So its now conveniently located next to the front door.  Easy to put the groceries away!

E-Bear also did a great job of DIYing a shut off valve for the waterline to the fridge.  I also discovered there was a cable line located behind the fridge.  We considered keeping it, in case we wanted to put a TV on our bar for whatever reason....but we decided that since that scenario would be rare, we could scrap it.

Where the fridge previously lived, complete with water and cable!

The engineer finally told our contractor how to not make our house fall down so we are set to begin Monday...that is if there are no more delays!

Bresley's wedding tomorrow!

--KBear

Lilly's Swimming Hole, New Faucet, and Delays

Since we were left with little to do and nothing in our kitchen we took scrambletron swimming.  Lilly decided to join us, but only to wade around in the water of course.  Lo and behold Lilly decided swimming is pretty fun! A photo was in order...

And now this spot is known as Lilly's swimming Hole.

In kitchen news...our faucet came in, we deconstructed our living room closet, soon to be a part of the kitchen, and we set up our temporary kitchen, which consists of paper plates, plastic utensils, and coffee..the bare essentials.  

Eddie in the closet                  Temp Kitchen       

No More Table in the Kitchen

Ohhh a faucet

On another note E-Bear has come down with a serious case of swamp a$$. Apparently it affects over 7 million Texans every summer and EB believes it to have originated from our sofa.  He is trying to overcome it by drinking lots of water

Poor Eddie

Demo is delayed till tomorrow, or Wednesday, or whenever our contractor decides its time and he's confident our house won't fall down.

Alejandro Escovedo at Blues on the Green

We went and saw Alejandro Escovedo at Blues on the Green this Wednesday.  The music was alright.  I don't love the guy, but appreciate his unique and laid back sounds.  I couldn't really tell since we didn't get super close to the stage, it looked like he was wearing some old wild west get up, like a fancy western banker or card dealer.  No matter what band plays, it's hard not to have a good time at Blues on the Green.  Ziggy did pretty good too, a solid A this trip.  There was a instance where she tried to get up in some guy's bbq, and another where a kid stuck his finer out in pointy way of saying hello.  Ziggy obliged and licked his finder, then howled and barked a little bit.  I think the noise of the cooler he was opening set her into some kind of alert the crowd mode.

The storms rolling in from the east brought in a nice sunset, and
85 dgr F weather - the coolest I think it's been there.  Another thing getting popular is hoolah hooping...hoopsters?  Bringing it back to the old dirty hippy Austin.

Alejandro did exclaim "this is the best day of my life," then ended around 8:50pm, whereas most musicians play until the 9:30pm (noise ordinance?).  He also had a phony leave for an encore, or it could have just been a break, but seemed a bit cheesy.  After the music ended everyone stayed, must have brought food, beer and expectations to hang out until 10pm.  We walked through the sand vollyball courts, provoking some tethered shrimp scampi running by Ziggy.  She must have thought we were in Galveston, minus the smell.  We headed west out of the dirty park lot to Red Bud, on a sweet curvy road full of hills.

                 Blurry Ziggy.................................blurry kasey.........................crisp bag*.  

*Ziggy Summer tip 18:  Get  transported in a thermally insulated cooler bag to beat that summer heat.