I finished the landscaping in the front yard last weekend, but keep forgetting to take a picture during the day. So for now, here’s an artsy-fartsy night shot.

Best thing about the landscape lights is that they’re solar powered and use LED lights. I haven’t stayed up to see how long they stay lit, but I believe they last at least 8 hours.

The front landscaping project is finally reaching an endpoint. See here and here. Planning to pick up mulch next weekend.

We have a set of adirondack chairs for some time now. Students at Sarah’s school made them. One was even painted green. It has been featured in many photos on Gotshoo. The other one was neglected and sat all by its lonesome naked self.

There’s a constant joke between Sarah and I about the chairs. Me: Hey, when you going to paint the other chair. Her: Hey, when you going to finish (insert numerous house projects). Some how I always end up losing that argument.

A guy at work just made us two tables to go along with our chairs, so I have a new found interest in the chairs and sanded down the neglected chair to be ready for paint.

Some how I have been able to overcome Sarah’s kitschy color selection for something closer to base colors and something we both agree with. I want to paint the chairs the same type of red as the New Belgium logo (seen above). I also want to somehow get the logo on the chair.

Just as a test tonight I printed out the logo on thick paper and tried to cut it out with an exacto knife. My skills are a little rusty, and I could see how it could take some time to get it cut out. So Internet, this is where you come in.

Is there a place in town that I could get this made into a stencil, or shipped off to any place on the internet to be made into a stencil? Or does anyone else have an idea?

My expert block layer doesn’t work on Sundays or even days so it was left up to me to finish the other half of the block border.

Who knew all those years playing in the sandbox would pay off?

I had to call it quits before finishing up the side by the driveway. Very close to being finished. Really liking how everything is turning out.

I had a busy weekend with doing some do-it-yourself landscaping this weekend. The front of the house has been in disrepair since last fall when I started to remove all the rock from the front. It was one of those projects that fell to the wayside for other activities.

Yup, nothing pretty about it.

This is what the house looked like pre rock removal.

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I think the blog juices have been restored after a relaxing and constructive weekend. This weekend kept us busy but we weren’t swamped with particular chore or event. It was just a nice balance.

We’re making progress on the kitchen. The old cruddy tarnished brass cabinet handles have been replaced with polished nickel handles. The polished nickel also match the new light fixture we put up a few weeks ago.

We haven’t replaced the hinges yet. You can see a small gap on the door on the left. The nickel hinges I picked up at Lowes are about a 1/4 inch off, we’re going to have to special order them online.

P.S. That’s not the green we’ll be painting the kitchen. Just a test area.

Please add back porch light and patch hole. kthxbai.

Sarah and I have been brainstorming all week on what color to paint the kitchen. We’ve still got a few holes to patch from the last project before we can do that.

Today was  a monumental day in the Shoo household for DIY weekend warrior projects. We haven’t had a real kitchen light… in… Well, that isn’t important. The light was the casualty of a previous weekend project long, long, long ago. But somehow the planets aligned, the weather was crappy, and my dad happened to be available.

It was a project that I put off because I knew it wouldn’t be easy and it would be a two man job.

The huge hole you see is where a box of three switches and an outlet was located before. We decided to reduce the chaos to two switches and move it up to the appropriate height. The other box had a modified faceplate to allow room for the back splash.

Maybe we’ll leave the hole for ventilation.

This is what happens when you’re the homeowner and have to run wire in the attic.

This corner actually got piled with more crap as the day went on.

Remnants of the previous light combined with the really old wire. Love it when people paint around light fixtures and leave a tree ring of paint history behind.

This is the kitchen with lights. It looks great. Going to take a while for my eyes to adjust. It’s been a while since we’ve had real light in there.

Thanks again to my dad for giving up his day to help out.

Just a little work around the house.

With the talk of Windows 7 and a new Battlefield 1943 coming out this summer, I’ve been getting the urge to build a new PC. I’ve built my own several times. It’s not hard to do, it won’t save you money or time, but it’s enjoyable to put a bunch of high priced parts together to create a new machine.

LifeHacker has a great DIY to building your computer from scratch.

Here are a few recommendations that I have in addition to that post:

• Find a computer dude you know. Make sure you compensate them with beer and possibly cash depending on how much time they give up to help you. Much cheaper than going to a computer repair store.
• Research, research, research – Any part that you look at buying, check the comments, read forums, check out the manufacture’s website. Just like preparing for a test, it will benefit you in the long run.
• Be patient – Not everything will work the first time. Some times you need to try different combination of parts. Ex: The SATA DVD-rom drive might not work out of the box without downloading a bios update.
• Avoid the big box stores if you’ve got a pile of parts and no one to help you. There are two local stores that I know of that will do a much better job and not try to “up-sell” you on any unnecessary services.
• Keep your receipts.

I was actually not a lazy bum this weekend.

Dad came over this weekend to help rewire and replace the front porch light and the foyer light. The wires for the lights had been cut over a year back when we were rewiring the basement lights.

One of the beauties of owning an older house is that everything is wired to the same circuit.

The greater part of Saturday we spent exploring the antique wiring and devising a plan on how to rewire everything. One of the best investments this weekend was a 25′ steel guide wire.

We would hook the guide wire to the old wire then pull the old wire out. Once the guide wire was through, then we would hook up the new wire and pull it back. This method worked extremely well.

Mrs. Shoo is extremely happy because this year we get to have Trick-or-treaters. Everyone stop by with your kids, we’ve got plenty of candy. I don’t need any of it. (I am sneaking a piece as soon as I hit publish)

I am getting ready to start rewiring the house and I was going through my how-to books and came across a 1984 edition of Handyman. My dad obviously passed it down; looking at the address label.

I would have been three at the time when this came out. I think that was also about the same time my Dad was rewiring our house at the time. Half of my childhood memories are of my Dad working on the house on weekends. I know he put a lot of time into that house.

Got to love the penny-loafers. I think Dad had some too.

It may be 24 years old, but it’s still relevant.