It's Alive!

We finished all wiring the home-theater system into the Grondulbarn today. Then we tested it with the space-battle scene from near the end of Serenity. We've had the home theater system since our wedding---we bought it and burned a bunch of CDs rather than hire a DJ---but we've never really deployed the system properly. In particular, I think we had the rear speakers sitting by the fronts. With the rears mounted behind the listener, I was quite pleased with the results. They system in question is just a basic 300-ish-dollar Samsung model with Dolby 5.1, but it performs as well as I need. so, hurray for home theater.

We also thoroughly tested the coaxial and Cat 6 networking cables we finished installing a couple of weeks ago. In fact, I'm writing this blog post through one of those cables.

All this means we are now ready to finish putting up the new drywall. I'm looking forward to getting that done.

Need to Recover

Alison and I had a busy weekend.

On Friday, we drove to the Philadelphia area and met up with my grad-school friend Ketan and his wife Patricia.* Patricia is also a Georgia Tech graduate, and she was, very briefly, Alison's last roommate in Atlanta. We had a nice dinner** with Ketan and Patricia, and they were kind enough to put us up for the night.

On Saturday, I spent all day at an Evolution autocross school,*** which was the event that instigated the whole trip. Meanwhile, Alison spent the day with Ketan, Patricia, and their nephew Dhruv visiting the science museum in Philly. I met up with all four of them in the evening and, after dinner, Alison and I drove into the city to see my Rice roommate and Joint Best Man, Shuaib. After some Guitar Hero World Tour, we all crashed at his place.

On Sunday, the three of us enjoyed a nice breakfast before Alison and I headed back to the Grondulbarn in Maryland. We then set to work finishing wiring the house for surround sound. Apparently our coax/network-cable project wasn't arduous enough for us. The wire-running went well enough, but the 'barn contained no new Cracker Jack style surprises, like last time.

So, it was a fun and productive weekend, but not exactly a restful one. I think I need another weekend to recover from this one.

* Be sure to pronounce this name as if you were Bolivian.

** Mmmm, sushi.

*** I hope to say a bit more about the school in a later post.

Kablam!

I went up into our attic for the first time today, to run cable as part of our plan to wire the Grondulbarn for the 21st century. While there, I discovered these interesting artifacts positioned just next to the trapdoor:

• A machete, with scabbard, made in 1945.
• The barrel of a double-barreled shotgun. Don't ask me where the rest of the weapon is.
• A Winchester Model 1894 .30-30 lever-action rifle, in a leatherette case.

Wow.

I checked that the rifle was unloaded, and Alison called the police to come run its serial number, to see if it had been stolen.

While we waited, I got Google smart on the rifle. The Model 1894, or Model 94, it turns out, was one of the most popular hunting rifles ever made. About 7.5 million were made during its 112-year production period, which started, not surprisingly, in 1894. The internet tells me, based on the serial number, that this particular weapon was made in 1974. The gun is in near-new condition; there's essentially no wear or rust on it. Interestingly, my father owns a much earlier example of the Model 1894; that weapon belonged to his grandfather and was made, if I recall correctly, right around 1900. My dad's rifle, in addition to looking both more aged and more worn, has an old-school octagonal barrel in contrast to the round barrel on the gun we found in the attic. The newer rifle also has a safety on the lever; I'm not sure if my dad's has that feature.

The 3 policemen who arrived at our door---apparently, it was a slow night for crime fighting in Montgomery Village---ran the serial number, and found that the rifle was "clean." I've decided to keep it. So, suddenly and unexpectedly, we own a gun. Now I need to learn how to safely operate it.

And I guess I need a gun rack for my Miata.

The Grondulbarn will be Wired

Thanks to Ketan's suggestion, we've decided to take advantage of the partially disassembled state of our house by wiring it up with coax and networking cables. We are routing coax to most of the rooms so that we will have the option of cable TV in each of them. Also, we're running Cat 6 cable to the same rooms, so that we can set up a home network that will run at up to 1 Gb/s, much faster than our wireless network can. Eventually, we plan to get rid of cable and stream video over the network, so additional bandwidth will be critical.

To me, this aspect of our reconstruction project is easily the most interesting.

And It Goes On

I apologize for the light posting of late; we are still busy rebuilding the house. On the upside, Ketan suggested I take this opportunity to run both networking and coax cables throughout the house, so that's my new plan.

(De)construction

It's been fairly quiet on this blog lately; Alison and I have been busy tearing our house apart. I thought I'd post a few photos of our work in progress.

The New House - A Vent

OK...the previous owner of our house was just...unbelievable. I think she did everything as cheaply and as quickly as possible. We have now lived here approximately a month and here is what we have discovered. I will denote with an asterisk the things we knew about before we moved in, but which are worth mentioning:

1. The shower door in the master bathroom does not fit - it is too small. Also, it doesn't close properly. *
2. All of the walls are a mess. She was completely unable to plaster anything correctly. I think she just glopped it on and didn't sand it down before painting. She dripped paint all over. This is so bad that rather than fix the mistakes in the living room, we may just put up new 1/4" wallboard over the old.
   
3. She painted over most of the outlets. Not just the covers, but the actual outlets, too. You have to try really hard to plug things in 'cause there's dried up paint in all the holes.*
4. She painted so badly that there is colored paint on all the white trim and ceilings where she failed to mask anything.*
   
5. The bathtub in the hall bath upstairs is not level. This caused water to drip onto the floor and caused a leak into the kitchen below. The ceiling wallboard is damaged and now has holes in it from the plumber trying to diagnose the problem.
6. The toilet in the powder room leaks from the bolts holding the tank to the base. We already had a plumber fix the water valve from the wall. It had no teflon tape on it and the seal was not seated properly. I am going to go out on a limb here and assume that the bolts that are now leaking do not have teflon tape on them, either.
7. When we took the wallpaper off in the powder room, we discovered that there was old wallpaper backing underneath it that had been partially removed, and painted over. Also, she wallpapered right over a large hole in the wallboard. There is also something funny going on with one of the walls in the powder room. After removing the wallpaper, we found this glossy white paint is peeling off the wall. I like to call this "wall leprosy". It's too hard to scrape it all off, but plaster probably won't stick to it to level it. This means we will probably have to put up a new piece of wallboard there, too.
8. She wallpapered over a hole in the wall in the dining room that contained live wires where a wall sconce had once been mounted. Thank goodness we didn't discover that by sticking our putty knives into it. That would have been "shocking". Haha.
9. She glued her chair rail to the wall. Inevitably, I tore up the wallboard getting it off, which means more taping and plastering. Yay. Thanks, previous homeowner!
10. When the hardwood floor was installed, she did not remove the baseboards before she put it down. Thus, the baseboards are behind the flooring and are extremely hard to remove. Also they were painted to the wall, and she used nails approximatey the size of railroad ties to attach them. Excuse me, previous homeowner....they make something called a "finishing nail". Embrace it.
11. The light in my closet is broken. This is something that was installed as part of the repairs required after the home inspection. How can it already be broken? This woman was magically bad at home stuff, I tell you!

Anyway, that's it for now. I'll keep you posted on all the FUN FUN stuff I find as we continue. Maybe someday I'll get to paint my walls...if I can ever get to that point!

Moved, Sorta

Thanks to Nick, David, Lisa, Ken, Charles, and Ashley---in approximate chronological order---Alison, Newton, and I have now been relocated to the Grondulbarn. Note that I didn't say we're moved in to the 'barn. Most of our belongings are still in boxes, scattered about the house, or stuffed into one of the two rooms that we don't plan to immediately occupy. I probably won't be posting much in the upcoming weeks; I'll be too busy shopping for home furnishings, covering the previous owner's terrible paint, and cutting our grass with my schmancy new manual lawn mower.

The Gronduls Have Their Barn

Alison and I closed on our townhouse today.  That's right;  we're homeowners now.  The structure is in quite good shape, for something built in 1973, but there are a zillion small things that need tweaking, and the previous owner was simultaneously very enthusiastic about painting and terrible at it.  So, I expect that we will be quite busy working on the house for the next several months.  After that, you'll all be invited over for a party.

Moving Day

Our ongoing home purchase means that we will be moving house soon.  Specifically, we expect the moving date to be April 25.  So, if you live in the area, and if you don't mind carrying other people's stuff , we'd be grateful if you would join us that day for a festival of moving.  See, festival?  It's fun!  Not arduous.

Welcome to the Grondulbarn

After some negotiation, we've agreed on a price with the seller of the house I recently mentioned. So, Alison and I will be homeowners as of April 15.

Yay. We're about to be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Maybe This Time...

Alison and I made an offer on another house last night.  This one's in Montgomery Village.  Now we wait...

Maybe

Alison and I made an offer on a house today.  We'll see how it is received...

Update:  The owner summarily dismissed our offer.  Apparently, he expects to get much more than comparable houses in the neighborhood have sold for.  Fortunately, we've already lined up a couple of other interesting properties to look at this week.

My Commute Just Got Much Longer

Do you think our real-estate agent will be able to find a house with a driveway like this in our price range?  Notice the stripped curbing at each apex.  I don't think I'd ever get to work.  Or the store.  I'd just be turning laps all day.

Stately Whedon Manor

Those of you who know Alison and me in meatspace know that we are hoping to buy our first home in the middle of next year.* Sadly, I don't think we'll be able to muster up the cash to buy Joss Wedon's house, which has just gone up for sale. However, if you are a well-heeled Whedonite, you might want to point your realtor in that direction.

* Yes, the current credit crisis does have me worried.