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Some renovation pictures (http://iacas.org/asm/room/01.jpg through 04) are up. They're building a girder truss today and will pick up on Monday and work, as I understand it, most of the next two weeks to finish things out. Then, our flooring goes down, and then we paint and trim out the room. The table is delivered end [...]

Carey and I have visited two places (A, B for the purpose of this post) in Erie now to get flooring quotes for the game room. The best offer we've gotten thus far is $2750. The idea is to use Shaw laminate flooring to cover between 396 and 437 square feet of space minus a [...]

The Lennox guy came today to look at our furnace/A/C needs. Our furnace, he said, is just fine. Our air conditioner needs replacing, but we knew that.
He said he would not warrant or guarantee a furnace or air conditioner in a zoned setup. The game room would always be calling for a lot of heat [...]

Pergo flooring at Lowe's and Home Depot seem to run about $3.79/square foot. That's around $1750 for just the flooring itself (though I realize we can install it ourselves, yes). I'm wondering if our contractor can't get Pergo flooring (or something as good) for less and then install it rather cheaply… We'd put an area [...]

Carey and I are likely buying a new air conditioner and furnace in the next, oh, week or so. We've been working with a Trane guy (Schneider) here in Erie, PA and we have an offer on a Trane XR-12 A/C unit (3.5 ton, 12 SEER, 4TTR2042A10000A) and a Trane XR-90 two-stage furnace (TUX100C948), installed, [...]

Seriously, builders suck. Contractors, builders… whatever they're called. The guy who built the house I live in has a phone that doesn't even have an answering machine anymore. It just rings and rings and rings. He promised a quote/bid last week, and when I talked to him last week, he said this week. It's Friday. [...]

Carey and I painted our bedroom a pale blue color recently and with a vaulted ceiling, we had a lot of solid, pale blue over the headboard. To save some money (six-foot-wide pictures run, oh, $400 and up) and to make something that we were sure would look good, we purchased three 18 x 24" [...]

Last night Carey and I watched an international edition of "House Hunters." It featured some guy living with his girlfriend while looking for a small flat or home in the UK somewhere near her.
The show explained that there are two options for home ownership in the UK: "free hold" where you own the house and [...]

Carey and I did a little "remodeling" in the master bathroom this past weekend. After several (several) weeks of delays, and after using another bedroom as a bit of a dry run (we painted it green about a month ago), we finally got around to redoing our master bathroom in a "honey wheat" color.
The list [...]

They say that getting married and buying a house are some of the most stressful things you can do. Carey and I eliminated the stress in getting married by doing it on the cheap and easy, but we knew that the whole "find a house, buy a house, move in, take care of a house" [...]

Last night, at 4am, I awoke and heard a weird noise that sounded a bit like Little One hitting her baby doll's head against her crib. I woke Carey up and the noise happened two more times, then stopped. I was content to lock the door and go back to sleep, but Carey had me [...]

Carey and I bought furniture a few weeks back and took delivery of our bedroom set a few days later. A few days after that we shuffled the furniture around and put the pieces - bed, two nightstands, chest, and dresser - where they'll likely remain for many years to come.
The positions we chose put [...]

Yesterday Carey and I spent most of the day shoveling, wheelbarrowing, dumping, and spreading woodchips on the beautifully landscaped yard we now call our own. My parents put wood chips around everything in their yard, and they get by with two cubic yards. Carey and I need ten. Ten cubic yards.
Unfortunately, we only had seven. [...]

Last night, Carey and I had to pick up a 7½" circular saw for my mom. It's listed as $29.99, on sale from $49.99. A pretty good deal. They had none. We went back to the hedge trimmer section where they had a $59.99 Craftsman on sale for $49.99. They had none. We asked if [...]

Carey and I have spent the past few days buying furniture. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we visited John V. Schultz, Arthur F. Schultz, and Oak Express. We also checked in at Kaufmann's and a few other smaller places.
We're looking for quite a bit of stuff, making us pretty good customers:

Dining room table
Six chairs for [...]