Posing on our back porch

Kenneth and crew took their sweet time doing the mosaic inlay, but finally our back porch is complete. Woody and I pose here in front of it:


As you can see it turned out to be a simpler and more rustic affair than we had originally imagined. Kenneth advised against the cupids supporting the gold plated Weber grill but relented on the gargoyles. We are still negotiating about the gondolas and the canal...

The biggest burrito in B'ton

Super Taco's fried monstrosity of tortilla-swaddled deliciousness the El Dorado has nothing on the floating burrito in our hallway. Walking from the kitchen to the living room is like walking below a giant cumulus burrito cloud. Imagine how nice it would be for it to rain guacamole, imagine it...

Pillars of the community

Our front and back porches are looking great! All the porch columns are in and we have a new back door. The backdoor overhang has been shingled and sided and the wood columns are set for the pergola to be attached. Only a few short weeks, er, months until our "water feature"!

The good kind of glass ceiling

You know, the kind you don't have to wear very large shoulder pads and sneakers with hose to surpass. We came home today to find the ceilings in both the kitchen and the dining room lowered -- this is grrrrreat! "Why?", you may be thinking, "it looks just like all the rest of the pictures of lumber that you all insist on wasting gigs of cyberspace on." Well this lumber is the first step in us getting central heat and air AND lighting (like lighting not run off extension cords!) in these areas!

The kitchen

The dining room

So now your bellyaching about pictures of lumber sounds pretty foolish, doesn't it? Doesn't it?

A new version of Windows

And this version actually represents an improvement rather than some strange and nasty variation of the old version. (Hell, I'm an Apple user so none of these problems plague me. Woody may say I've drunk the Mac Kool Aid, but I say...Kool Aid is tasty!)

Here are the two new windows Kenneth and crew installed in the back bedroom:

The back bedroom is the sunniest room in the house so two windows on one side is plenty.

We also had a new window installed over the kitchen sink, replacing the nastiest, spideriest window in the whole joint. I need to ask tomorrow, but I'm quite certain they turned up something that looked like Jeff Goldbloom from The Fly while installing this window. (You can click on those blue words and it will take you to a nasty image of The Fly. Be forewarned.)

Woody installed the first official "fixture" in the kitchen shortly after this photo was taken -- a can light centered over the sink, woohoo!

The window on the far side of our bedroom was replaced as well, only two windows remain to be redone (the two in the front of our bedroom).

These windows are helping a ton in keeping what little heat we can generate in the house, it's cozy in the bedroom and tolerable everywhere else!

Kitchen demolitchen

While I was peeling myself off Bourbon Street after a half dozen Hurricanes at my conference in New Orleans, Woody and Cuz worked on demolishing the kitchen!

The cabinets are gone (obviously) and the drywall has come down leaving only the insulation -- on to the wiring!

Smaller than a supercomputer

but larger than a breadbox is our new furnace/ air handler! Doesn't it look technical and menacing? Woody has been trying to play Yahtzee with it (á la Gary Kasparov vs. Deep Blue):


Woody seems to be winning but I trust the furnace will make a turnaround any time now. And when it does it will suck Woody into the shiny metal maw we found in our hallway today...


And it will choke. Last time I checked Woody's biceps were bigger than the venting we have running through our attic. One again, his robust build saves him... However, I'm quite sure we can shoot Maddy around pneumatic style if we shove her in there hard enough.

The porch has chicken legs...

but the rest of the front of the house is looking great! The siding is up and the windows in the living room are completely replaced. Soon Kenneth and crew will start beefing up the front porch columns and install a new front door.

Maddy approves!

She may look dejected but that's only her I-am-looking-for-McDonald's-wrappers posture. Of course, she was entirely too slow. By this point I had already finished all the half-full cans of Dr. Pepper and cheese caked Quarter Pounder papers within a fifty-foot radius. Yum.

Maddy gave up the fast food pursuit and sat her butt on our brand new front porch shortly after this photo. Like Woody says to her when she trys to do, well, anything "I have 200 pounds, opposible thumbs and cause effect reasoning on you, you will never win." I don't have 200 pounds or cause and effect reasoning but at least I have thumbs. So I think I'm still smarter than the dog. Maybe.

Our good side

I once read that Mariah Carey only allows her right side to be photographed because that's her "good side." Google her and test it out. IT'S TOTALLY TRUE! I didn't look at all 3,020,000 images that Google turned up, but the 20 I could stomach on the first screen seemed to prove the claim. Take a look at 517's "good side"! Also check out the fancy motion detection light installed by Woody this weekend!


And here's one with some autumnal foliage, you can also see the two brand new windows that Kenneth and crew installed in the kitchen. They go up and down easily and have no wolf spiders, woohoo!

If you peer hard enough at the front porch you can tell what they did up there today, if not go the next blog entry...

Ken goes to boot camp

Brad, Amy and baby Pearl came by yesterday. After Pearl busted out with some impressive watch-me-roll-over dance moves, we headed outside where, naturally, I showed the couple with a small impressionable baby the heap of disturbing junk underneath the front porch. In a (rare) fit of bravery, I hopped down and picked up the derelict Ken doll. We discovered that, sadly, he was no longer vocal. We also discovered...that he wasn't Ken!

Brad looked closely at his molded plastic booty and sagely declared "I think this is a GI Joe." Joe had been engaged in an under-porch covert op, naked and rubbed in under-porch camo makeup since 1964. That is commitment, go Joe!

We're taking a poll, which of the Village People-like Talking Joes do YOU think our naked Joe is?

Lovely B'ton Meter Maid

We are moving on up once again in the meter world! This time the improvement wasn't brought on by a skid steer accident though. Woody has put in an impressive new meter box complete with very powerful/ cartoonish looking ON/OFF switch for the electricity for the entire house. This will prevent him from adding any more volume to his already impressive mop of hair when he is working on wiring the joint.

At the top of the new meter is a hole into the house. Take a look at what was peeking out:

Now that I look at this it reminds me of The Hills Have Eyes. Except Woody isn't radioactive. And he has all his teeth.

We are getting covered in vinyl!

No, not latex, vinyl. Take a look! Woody and I have been touching the new siding in ways that might qualify as infidelity...


We have brand new soffits to finish off the roof as well!


New windows have been delivered and will be installed soon!

Still life of disturbing junk meets Mattel

In his more articulate and agile days Talking Ken looked like this:


He came with a real posin' stand. You never knew what he was going to say next. He had bendable legs. He wooed the ladies with lines like this:

• Hi, I'm Ken.
• Let's go to the big game tonight.
• What are you doing next weekend?
• Why don't we all go to the movies?
• Let's go listen to Barbie's records.
• Let's go visit Barbie.

Then he left his gravitationally impossible girlfriend, started doing meth and landed up like this:

Broken and battered under a porch in B'ton. Let this be a cautionary tale to you all...

Walk softly

And carry some porch planks. Kenneth and crew started pulling up the front porch, uncovering loads of disturbing junk (to be featured shortly).


The disturbing gaps left are going to be filled with fabulous new porch planks.

Soon our outdoor paradise will be complete...soon...

Rear Window

As we were synchronized commuting yesterday, Woody told me that he had been keeping a secret from me. I asked him if it involved the giant vat of Vaseline in the crawl space or the 40" waist hoop skirt I found under the bed. He said, this time, no.

When I got home I lurched around the house in my work shoes horking down Sun Chips and looking for the surprise. No sign of it. Woody pulled up and stood looking at the back of the house grinning. This is why...

We have a rear window! Let the Hitchcock references begin. From the second floor it looks like this:

This area will eventually be a nice sunny office for the both of us. It has perfect napping sunlight, no?

We are stairmasters!

In an effort to further chisel our already Adonis-like gluteal muscles, we've decided to add a second level to the house. The hu-uge attic is being turned into a bedroom, yet another bathroom and (perhaps) a beer making room. We now have 16 steps to take us there!


Eventually the staircase will be open to the kitchen and have storage cabinets built into the wall underneath. Mady has been working it out as well, getting her sweat on running up and down the new staircase.

Kenneth and crew have framed out the ceilings upstairs and are getting ready to cut windows in the far end of the house. Like I said, it is hu-uge up there!