TylerWelch.com

Clay and Aaron came to town for a long weekend in Seattle. The picked a great time of year to visit as the weather was close to perfect for their entire stay.  It was great to see them both and spend time together.

Images Gallery

It’s hard to believe this kid is only two years old. I though this was fake when I first watched it.

There is a lot going on in Seattle in July which has caused our remodel ambitions to slow down. We’ve been spending time in the evenings and have been able to accomplish quite a bit between 6pm and 10pm (Remember that is doesn’t get dark in the Northwest until 10pm). To date we’ve install a total of 4 new windows and have 7 left to go.

The work crew is coming over today to finish the installation of the stone across the front of the house. Once they’ve concluded this portion of the work, we’ll be left to finish the remainder of project on our own.

Here’s my list

1. Finish the last coat of paint on the porch columns and remove blue tape
2. Hang house numbers
3. Trim side bedroom window
4. Exterior trim on guest bedroom window & inside finish work
5. Install Cedar trim board along front edges of house to separate the old shakes from the new
6. Install Cedar shakes on porch and across front of house and stain
7. Pressure wash old shakes
8. Stain the rest of the house
9. Install 7 more Windows

My hope is to be done by the end of August, but it all depends on how much time I can squeeze in on the weekends and evenings. I should also mention that I’ll be taking a week off to knock off some of the bigger things on the list.

Here are the latest images

The holiday weekend was spent  with one of three tools in hand; a scrapper, a tape roll and a paint brush. I underestimated the amount of paintable surface partially because of the need to need to update the porch ceiling, surrounding trim work and front window on. We also had to deal with a little bit of rain and stormy weather but what would a July weekend in Seattle be with out a little moisture.

Although we accomplished an incredible amount over the past three days we still have a ways to go  before we can say the porch is finished.

To Do List

1. Apply  second coat of primer to all white surfaces.
2. Apply two coats of paint to all white surfaces.
3. Install Cedar Shakes on porch.
4. Stain Cedar Shakes.

The good news is we’ll be able to break this up into small projects that can be accomplished in the evenings after work.

The updates are all in the image gallery

The new short film by Blu
an ambiguous animation painted on public walls.
Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden (fantoche)

Considerable progress has been made on the porch this week. If the weather holds out, it looks like they may wrap up by the end of the week.  Then it will be our turn to paint and stain over the weekend. The more I get done now, the more time I’ll be able to spend watching The Euro Cup.

Over the weekend, Annie and I continued the molding project for the doors that were replaced upstairs. While doing this project, I decided that the framed arches in our living room needed to go. While I’m normally against ad hoc projects as things always go sideways when working on an old house, this one ended up to be rather simple. I can’t claim total victory as we’ve only completed one of the two arches but I’m confident that we’ll have this little side project wrapped by the weekend.  Be sure and check the images

This are coming along nicely on the with the porch remodel. At this rate we should be 95% complete by the weekend. I’ve uploaded some additional images to the gallery if you’re interested in seeing what has been accomplished.

I should call out that Annie and I did the front door staining and molding over the holiday weekend. It’s amazing what two novices can accomplish with the correct tool set and a double bevel miter saw

A couple of months back my wife was on the way out the door for a overnight business trip. She’s a minimalist traveler and prides herself on fitting everything  in an overnight bag including clothing, laptop and other business related paperwork. On this particular day, something struck me as odd.  As she was leaving I noticed that she had a very large book under her arm that was almost as large as her bag.  Reading is one of her favorite things to do so when the idea of getting her a Kindle came to me, it was really a no-brainer. Waiting 6 weeks for it to arrive was a little painful but when it did finally show up on the door it was it well worth the wait.

I got to play with it for about 10 minutes until she laid claim to it by logging onto my Amazon Account to begin the de-registration process.  I realized that she had done this only after I cycled the power on the device and the text in the upper corner of the screen read "Annie’s Kindle".  Her subtle but effective approach made me realize that my time with this new toy was short and I better enjoy it while I could.

After a couple of months of watching her read comfortably on the couch, I decided it was time to get my own. Yesterday the DHL driver dropped my package off and we’ve become a "2 Kindle Family".

One of the issues that we quickly ran into was the concept of sharing books that we’ve purchased. Amazon’s solution for this requires that both of our Kindles be registered under the same Amazon Account. Unfortunately this would also mean that I would be getting recommendations for the books she reads and vise versa. Hopefully Amazon will address this issue in the future and allow multiple accounts with the same billing information to be tied together. For now we’ve decided to keep our accounts separate.

While watching this video I came to the realization that the biggest impact that we can have is on the children around us.