Now, all we need to do is find a contractor and get our permits. We should have all our bids in this Friday so we can make a decision this weekend as to which contractor we will choose. I am still waiting on any word from our permits. I will have to start hounding them again this week to see if I can at least get a status update.
The back yard.
Here is the trailer.
Somethings that I look forward to is the whole Realm vs. Realm thing. There also seems to be a lot more "individual helping the group" thing where you can solo things that will help your guild or Realm or Faction instead of "getting a large group of people to accomplish a task" thing that WOW had.
It used a bunch of modules that hold little pieces of information instead of one big file. So, for example, there is a module for "Recent Entries", "Links", "Comments" ect ect. The main index is only about 20 lines long and it just calls each of these modules that you want.
It took me a while to wrap my head around t his new style of framework but I think I have it now.
To make this story shorter, my old site did not have these modules so I could not update it. I could keep the style the same but any time I wanted to make a change, it would cause more errors than fix things.
I have uploaded a new style, I don't know if I like it yet, but it is at least based off the default Movabletype 4 framework, so things like the comments work. I might change it back to the original but it will take some time for me to update all the different modules that are in the new site.
Anyway, Enjoy!
]]>![IMG_0125[1].jpg](http://WWW.craigsirk.com/IMG_0125%5B1%5D.jpg)
This is my original one. It is doing much better since I took it to work over a year ago. This did 2 things for it. 1) It got more attention and sunlight because it sits by my window. 2) The cats don't eat it any more.
On a side, note, my iPhone took this really weird picture. Now, this has not been edited in any way. The ladder on the left side is moved up, skewed from the picture.
![IMG_0124[1].jpg](http://WWW.craigsirk.com/IMG_0124%5B1%5D.jpg)
Looks pretty good :)
]]>I also started playing around with the mortar to repoint the wall. The mortal which was left in the house is too dark. I used some of it and it came out a very dark gray. We would like it to be more whiteish like the original.
So I went to Home Depot and looked around. All the big bags of mortar are gray so I went to the tile section. I found a non-sanded grout which I though would work but when I put it on the wall, it looked to putty like.
So back to Home Depot. Fortunately this time I found a white thin-set mortal for tile. This worked well. It looked more like mortar. The only thing was it was too white, so I added some of the gray mortar and made it slightly light gray. Now it looks good.
So tomorrow I will start working on the wall.
]]>I swept both floors and took the piles of plaster and dust and carried it to the back yard. Unfortunately I cannot put this plaster stuff in the dirt dumpster or I could get ride of it with the basement slab. But I have to wait and get a regular dumpster for it.
I have to say tho, there was a lot of dust in the air when I was done. But it looks better now that there is not crap all over the place.
]]>Well, I have finished the basement for now. All the old concrete slab is out and the floor is fairly level. Now I need to decide (or more accurately, find out) how far down we can dig the basement. Total bucket count is 308
This will probably wait tho until we have found a contractor. We have met with 6 contractors and they all seem good right now. We are just waiting on estimates from each.
]]>I also dug out more of our basement. I removed 3 piles :) Yay! and 78 buckets. That brings the total to 214 plus what ever Meredith, Daryl and Tom helped me with.
Craig - Buckets 214
Kristen - Buckets 0
Yay I'm winning at something!
This is the dumpster. it was empty when I started.
This is annoying on several levels. Not only does this mean, a few weeks before we were to begin, I have to find another contractor, but I have to find a contractor that will work with our bank and with our pre-assigned budget.
It is annoying that he had 2 months to look over the draw schedule and now he gets cold feet. He is also annoying because he was supposed to talk to the bank and work it out but apparently he never called them back (I know this because I spoke to the bank) before he decided to pull out. Maybe this is a sign that we should not be using him anyway. The first thing was that he lied about having his license. When the bank asked for it, it was still be "approved" by the DC permitting office. So that was a delay.
It also annoys me that the bank is basically holding our loan hostage. They don't want to give out any (well less than 4%) starting funds for us to begin. How are we supposed to pay for things when everyone in the industry wants 30% down?
Anyway, I have started the whole contractor searching thing again and have a few leads.
]]>My old host, Xian, was getting ride of his hosting services so I had to change over to a new host. While doing this, I had to reinstall moveableType anyway, so I though, why not upgrade. So far it seems to be working well. I have not had a large amount of time to play with it yet so I will let you know as more comes of it.
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