DIY hardwood floors.
Well our animals have done a good job on our carpets… They love to tear up little pieces of the rug, and we’ve been doing an OK job of hiding that with throw rugs… Friday was the end though. We came home from work and found the reminents of a bird all over the floor and the carpet had some new “stains”. They were a mess and not worth cleaning, so we ended up jumping into this project a few weeks earlier than we expected, but oh well…
Holes in the carpet. Here you can see the holes that the animals were putting in the carpet. Sorry about the toes on the bottom… 12mm really is a WIDE ANGLE. There is a lot of extra furniture here because we hadn’t moved it downstairs yet, we were moving it from room to room as we worked in different rooms before we relaized how much easier it would be to move it all downstairs…
Floors under the carpet We tore up all the carpet and were surprised to find “hardwoods” under part of the floor. It’s actually really old (1941) wood subfloors. The wood is in OK shape, but it’s not anything nice enough to finish, and it’s also been screwed down. It’s only in one of the rooms we need to do, the rest are plywood and lenolium, so we have to go over those anyway.
WRX loaded to the “gills” with wood. We both drive small cars. Here you can see my WRX loaded with the wood. Anything short enough to fit sideways in the car went in, all the 5~6′ boards went on the roof. We picked the wood up at lumber liquidators in Boston, so we had to drive 1.5 hours with the car loaded. We bought Canadian maple for $1.99/sq ft.
New wood ready to go. Here you can see the new wood stacked in the “den” ready to go down. We started in the bedroom, and will then do the hallway and den last.
Bedroom 1/2 done. This is what I’ve gotten done so far. Half the bedroom. It’s looking pretty good if I do say so myself. Some gaps, but not bad, and much better than the original hardwoods downstairs.
Bedroom so far. The other “good” thing about this project is that I “needed” some new tools. An Air compressor and nail gun were needed to nail the boards to the floor. Good tools make it a lot easier and faster.
Downstairs Bedroom This is a shot of our downstairs bedroom. It’s got all our crap from all the upstairs rooms in it while we put the wood down. We actually sleeping on our pull out couch until we finish, so that should help motivate me to get finished ASAP.
Finished Bedroom Floor This is a shot of the bedroom with the whole floor installed.
Finished Bedroom Floor This is a yet another shot of the bedroom with the whole floor installed.
Finished Bedroom Floor This is a yet another shot of the bedroom with the whole floor installed.
16 week baby update!
We had our 16 week checkup today… Awesome visit as we spent nearly 15 minutes checking out the baby on the ultrasound. 10 fingers, 10 toes, 2 kidneys, 2 lungs 4 heart chambers, the head of an 18 week old (just like Dad?!) bones, everything but the sex… Even if we’d wanted to know the Doctor couldn’t see anything the way the baby was sitting. It was amazing to see everything. He/She was moving a bit while we watched which was fun to see. He/She also appeared to be sucking it’s left thumb… Watching all the discover health and national geographic shows that have been on recently I guess that’s a strong indication of what hand the baby will use in real life, so it looks like another lefty! We go back in a month for another ultrasound, then Nikki is going to be in a study where we get an additional ultrasound at 36 weeks, but otherwise I think we’re done barring any complications. We both were blown away by the details we could see. It’s been a fun 16 weeks, and we can’t wait to meet whoever is in there!
Old school lenses on my EOS!
Been playing around with the idea of getting some old school MF (manual lenses) on my 5D. I had seen some images on flickr of some old school lenses on miami fever’s 5D. I went to work finding some info about using alternative lenses on my camera. Fred Miranda’s forums are a great resource for this. I ordered a Nikon 28mm f/2.8 and a Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 from KEH camera in GA. Then to get them to work on my 5D, I ordered some “af confirm” adapters for Nikon -> EOS and Olympus -> EOS from ericcc1006. Everything happened to come in today (I knew the lenses where due today, but the adapters were airmailed in from HonkKong, so I had no clue when they might arrive!) and I got a chance to play with the lenses at lunch real fast, then snap some pictures in my light box at work at the end of the day… So far the lenses are pretty fun to play with. I’m more impressed with the Olympus so far, but I think that’s because of the feel of the focus on the Nikon. I honestly thought it was broken when I opened it because when you adjust the focus it doesn’t feel like anything is happening… Sure enough, put it on the camera and watch and the focus adjusts perfectly… It’s fun playing with manual focus lenses again. I picked the Olympus 50mm because I have the canon 50mm f1.4 (with USM AF) to compare it too, and the Nikon because I’m thinking of getting a wider prime lens similar to the Nikon. I’ll be doing a lens test for NSOP later, but so far they’re both very fun to play with, and VERY SMALL/light. Their built like tanks too which is nice.
Old Images.
I’ve been going through all my old digital images in an attempt to get everything organized. I’m also working on setting up my better images over on www.benjacobsenphoto.com to sell them. In the process I found an old fun shot of Nikki, one of me and Nikki on our first anniversary, a few of Moseley, and an family photo my sister was looking for. I figured I’d post them here as it’s the easiest way to share with everyone.
If you want to DL the family photo at full resolution (and unedited) rick click, save this link!
Sunday morning beach walk.
Nikki and I went for another beautiful walk on the beach Sunday morning with Moseley. There was a nice brisk breeze from the north which made it feel a little more like fall. Everyone has been asking how Nikki is and or looks so I figured I’d bring the camera along and snap a few pictures. The no shell fishing sign has no relation other than I was playing around with my camera and I loved the contrast so don’t read anything into it. Nikki is starting to show enough that people who don’t know her might guess that she’s pregnant. She is also reporting that she can feel the baby moving now and has been able to for around a week. She was unsure at first (she thought it was gas 
) but now is positive it’s the baby! We’re 15 1/2 weeks pregnant at this point. Wednesday will be 16 weeks/4 months. Next Wednesday is our next doctors appointment where we’ll get another sonogram which we’re both very excited for.
