Garage doors [s]

Fed up with the garage door that opened into the dryer (pictured below), I bought a replacement that would open into the side room. I went with a steel exterior type.



I bought a second for the garage-to-outside door, this one will be a challenge because it requires a dog door.

Then caulking and trimming on both.



The sod is still alive. The black bamboo should eventually grow alongside the railing in the left part of the image. In the same planter, under the deck, I put the large jade bush I got from SFS nursery.


Thanks to Jon, I have plywood up in the master bathroom so it's time to think about fixtures.



Shower head, body sprays, done. Price Pfister had a nice diagram illustrating the closed loop plumbing necessary for body sprays.

A few events [s]

Wednesday was Settlers night. There was great anticipation as we finally cracked open Cities and Knights. The expansion adds considerable complexity to the game, it's a little intimidating at the outset, but is great for playability. The development capabilities in the expansion add quite a few options up front, but they also change as progress is made. I am simultaneously excited for- and fearful of the inevitable Settlers/Seafarers/Cities stratorgy.



Connie won. I was a couple resources from a last-to-first comeback when I handed the dice to her. Jon was held at twelve of thirteen victory points for a few rounds when his dominance was (at last) recognized. Curt was not far from the finish either. On account of our newbiness to the expansion, the lack of a dominant force/quick winner, and some very 'contemplative' turns, it took five hours to resolve the victor of Catan. That meant 02:30 on a school night. It never really dragged, unlike Risk or Axis where you can finish a pint before your opponent has decided which three territories he'll invade.

I burned about a quarter of my amputated overhang that night. The wood was particularly poppy and there wasn't a shortage of embers on the wood floor. No housefires or burn marks on the highly laminated (not laminate) surface.

I stopped by Dixieline's home furnishings showroom because their kitchen and bath selection is pretty good. I was optimistic, Home Depot just doesn't have much variety and any store that specializes in such fixtures is overpriced and/or requires install. My original goal was to find a pedestal sink that would mesh well with the tight confines of the downstairs bathroom.

Unfortunately the only inspiring ones were ultra modern, and that would clash pretty badly. I took a liking to the Xylem Essence and Europa vanities because they were very slim and had no cabinets. I liked the Essence more and could even tolerate the countertop vessel, but doing a wall-mounted faucet did not appeal. I settled on the Europa with a one-piece white china top.

Joe sold it to me, he didn't mind discussing the options with me and wasn't pushy, but unsurprisingly all of his knowledge seemed to come from the catalog.

It wasn't until the invoice was printed that I was informed there was a $100 handling charge. Joe seemed to expect unpleasantness and meekly suggested that it was offset by their 25% then 20% discounts (which I intuitively know means 45% off list price!). Anyway, that bs was enough to deter me from returning but I was still okay with the bottom line and went ahead with the order. Joe told me it'd arrive within a week.

Then Thursday I (Jon) called and was informed the sink top was back ordered and they should have originally told me two or three weeks. I cancelled the order and was told there would be a restocking fee but they'd try to get it waived because my arrival date was wrong. I pointed out they couldn't well charge me a restocking fee on something not in stock and made the impression that I wasn't going to put up with any more bs. Joe called me later to confirm.

Unfortunately, for future projects this leaves me with Home Depot and the internet. The former has limited supply, the latter offers only jpgs to suggest the quality and consistency of the merchandise.



I headed over Expo to see if they were still open; the place is in the final stages of Circuit Citying. Selection was pretty limited, but they had a few vanities not unlike the Xylem one for a pretty good price. The only tops available were black glass, which I decided against based on style. I did snag an independent sink drain (rather than the one that comes with the faucet) and after the install I'm very happy with it. It's easier to install, looks better, and is of better construction.



The final pull from Expo was a sturdy shelf probably used for stocking small items. Now it's holding up Rob's big ol' crt tv and the sound system pilfered from Casa Morelos. No more bleeding clutch cables without some tunes or Futurama dvds.



Today we took Jon's xr to Plaster City way out on 8. Ty attended, so did Erik and Ian with their big Hondas. The barbecue was a challenge to secure, but very clutch for the grilling of sirloin burgers.



The terrain was a significant contrast to the previous excursion, tight trails were replaced with 360 degree mobility, packed dirt was replaced with sand.



We navigated terrain, ran a small oval course, hill climbed, and did some jumping.



A few more photos can be seen on flickr at the moment.

A few more shots of the carnage [s]

There are a few wires to dispose of, all in due time. The couch is a bit off the wall to center its occupants more and provide a space for the woofer. Um and I'm terrible at pillowing couches.



I brought the tripods home from my office so I had a bit more snapping liberty.



Dixieline was closed today, grumble. Still, I put the head back.



Surf board rack with wifi. Duh.

Truth in 24 (6)

• Rides (7): The speed night mainstay is a powerful road car that features a wealth of modifications such as blowers, bottles, death proof roll cages, and chaingun turrets. The LeMans circuit is a departure, for sure, but not one that dances off into the fairly land of f1 and the lot where cars - to paraphrase Ferdinand Porsche - should win a race and then fall to pieces. Nay, LeMans racers have to run strong for a contiguous day and have been a testbed for the development plenty of commecial technology.
  Truth in 24 showcases the fastest and least recognizable of the series, the prototype class. These machines are purely designed for function and tend to be a crap shoot for aesthetics. I would have found myself salivating considerably more had they focused on the classes that consist of 430s, 911s, S7s, Corvettes and the like. But that experience may have been ruined every time a LMP breezed by on the outside of a hairpin.
  So while there's little variety or focus on the cars you might actually see in the parking garage at your local hospital, they look good, sound good, and require no increased frame rate or cgi to knock your socks off.
  
• Authenticity (10): It's a documentary. You can't get a whole lot more authentic without jumping formats. Of course I'm accepting the characterization of Peugot as evil. But if they weren't evil they wouldn't have made their cars looks so evil.
  
• Femmes (0): I think I spotted a few in the crowd. For something created by nfl films and shown on espn, I actually expected a few umbrella girls.
  
• One Liners (7): The authenticity and female content aren't a surprise, but the prevalence of quotables was a shocker. None are so cornball to be as memorable as 'danger to manifold' or 'my hand gernade', but they're excellent within the context of the story. The lecherous lead engineer of the Audi powerplant has a few, such as the observation that his turbo diesel is quiet and sexy, in contrast to the 'normal' perception of sexy as involving screaming. Shudder.
  Then there are a few - often through thick accents - that draw a chuckle while you're watching, such as, 'Drive home like grandma'. And then the prophetic, 'It always rains at LeMans'.
  
• Action Sequences (7): I'll start with the 3/10ths empty part of the glass: no martial arts, Mexican stands-off, or nos explosions. The 7/10ths is a tasty blend of Fine Driving, high speed camera clips, mishaps, and flying cars. The carnage is actually Tetrised into the storyline so it doesn't feel like a nascar commercial. And most importantly, the movie draws on so many sources of footage that the coverage of the track, cars, pits, is very complete. It doesn't hurt that you can watch some impressive shots and know it wasn't cooked up by a supercomputer cluster or remotely control car.
  
• Star Power (6): Paul Newman and Steve McQueen show up in a few homage clips, the rest are racers.

7+
The Fast and the Furious (7.7): Genre-defining, quotable, unreal
Gumball Rally (7.5): Still relevant
Initial D (7.1): Cult, riveting, but give us some shine
Thunderbolt (7.0): Over the top for better and worse
6+
Days of Thunder (6.7): Pretty good but not very pretty
Ronin (6.3): Left in the briefcase: girls, rides, one-liners
Mad Max (6.2): Brutal action, no frills
Truth in 24 (6.2): Good, but too much truth for speed night
5+
Redline (5.7): Fantastic if watched in a foreign language
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (5.6): Sexy, but unfulfilling
2 Fast 2 Furious (5.3): 2 flimsy
4+
Driven (4.9): Succeeds in everything unrelated to cars
Death Race 2000 (4.0): If only they were just racing across town
3+
Movin' Too Fast (3.3): Well, it has cars

Multiple fronts [s]

Now that the downstairs floor is done, the floodgates have opened.

• Media room: Ty helped me return the couches from the upstairs. I affixed surround speaker mounts to the walls and tonight added some extender cables so there weren't wires in awkward places. The next step will be to change them to coax for a safer journey from the amp.
• Downstairs bedroom: It's slated for rental, but couldn't be until the floor was taken care of. This needs touch up paint and moulding, but it's close.
• Downstairs bathroom: Everything came out for the grinder. Sunday I primered and painted. I trimmed the walls and shower today, so now it's time to find a pedestal sink. I'm thinking maybe I can snag something from Dixieline that isn't horribly overpriced.
• Downstairs hallway: This could use a layer of paint, but the task isn't quite as small as the bathroom.
• Garage: Now that I'm not avoiding pools of drying epoxy, I can rededicate the car hold for vehicles and saws while the side room becomes storage once again. I'm thinking dark red walls in the garage, but leave the ceiling white. I snagged a couple sample colors and will be looking into that one. A big, awesome workbench is in the near future, but more immediatley I have to find a shelf to hold the sound system which as been pretty clutch so far.
  

I didn't have hot water for a couple days. The pilot went out, it would relight with the manual override button pressed but would wink out as soon as it was released. The internet said the termocouple was the likely culprit, it shuts off the gas when the pilot is cold for obvious reasons. I was happy to hear Depot carried Honeywell universal thermocouples.

No dice.

I called a repairman. He walked out five minutes later with the burner working and an empty generic thermocouple package in the trash. Stuff you, Honeywell, and your unnecessarily long 'universal' thermocouple that produces signal below my valve's threshold.



My blurry faced friend dropped by with his kid.

A couple fun one liners:

• For some reason I'm attracted to bikes.
• I love it when you take hallucinogens and help me pick fruit.

Anticipation is high for:

• Fast and Furious, released Friday, its first installment still tops the leaderboard. Obtw, even though the post is backdated, I just published the reviews of Gumball, Ronin, 2F2F, FFTD, DR2000, and Movin Too Fast. There are a couple flashes of brilliance in those reviews, not so much in the movies.
• I finally remembered to replace the propane.
  
• Connie bought lots and lots of Settlers of Catan.
• The White Lambda may return. This time, it could be personal.
  

Refinishing the garage floor [i]

Here's my summary/how to on concrete floors.



Rent a terrazo grinder, mine ran about 70 for the machine and 60 for three blades. Clear the garage because it'll be out of commission for a week.



Being able to hook the hose up to the grinder is immense. The applied water whisks away the concrete dust instead of letting it be thrown into the air. Concrete dust is fearsome.

You'll know you've ground enough when the floor becomes nice an white, see right side compared to left above. The grinder will leave swirl marks that will be visible, make sure this is the look you want. Machines that hone concrete are not used on existing residental applications.

A two car garage won't take more than a couple hours, so an overnight rental is entirely reasonable. An angle grinder with a concrete disc can take care of corners if they matter to you.

Don't worry about the smoothness of the floor, the epoxy layers will take care of that.



Notice how white the floor is when dry (and powdery). Years of wear had both smoothed and stained the concrete. My best guess is that doing the acid without grinding would mute the colors and leave artifacts where there were stains - could be good or bad.

Buy the chemicals. I picked up five gallons of acid for what I generously estimated to be 1000 square foot of concrete (including the inside of the house). When all was said and done I had only used half.

The shop had prescribed two overlayers, epoxy then urethane. In retrospect I might have just tried a couple layers of urethane, but more on epoxy troubles later. The square feet/gallon estimates here were pretty good.



Power wash and/or brush away the concrete dust and whatever else may have accumulated on the floor, the acid should be applied to a wet surface so don't worry about planning for any drying time.

I sealed up a crack knowing full well it wouldn't be hidden by the chemicals. Some might count this as a bonus for the distressed look. I hear there are elegant methods for blending patch jobs into the process, but I didn't take this route.



Applying the acid stain is best at night since you can wet the whole floor and not have to worry about it drying before you're done. Also, the acid works as long as it's wet, so the longer it takes to evaporate, the better.

Pump spray acid on a portion of the wet concrete and quickly brush it in. This is crucial and in the end you'll see any areas that weren't brushed. Then apply a top layer of the stain to eliminate brush marks and create some natural variation. Generally the mistiest setting works best here, if you streamed your name into the job it would stay.



The instructions advise removal of excess acid. I did not, since it would require retracing my steps and then spraying more on to cover my tracks. Kind of defeats the purpose. You'll see a layer of oil float to the top of the wet stain but this will just dry on top of everything and it all has to be washed later.



You're supposed to wait at least six hours, it's easiest just to sleep on it - not literally - and the fumes aren't bad so you don't have to worry about waking up dead.



When the acid stain dries it will leave a powdery residue. This should be neutralized with ammonia and removed.



The clean and wet floor will look like a marble, though notice some haze where there's just water sitting on top of the concrete. I can't explain it, though some of it's the fact that I don't have a polarizer for this lens.



The next step is to apply the epoxy. The instructions say the floor should be clean, but it must also be dry. Very dry. Even though the epoxy is water-based. And water should not contact the floor in any amount for several days, even though the urethane is water-based.

The epoxy goes on pretty easily with a sturdy roller on the end of a sturdy pole - it's much tackier than paint so the entire mechanism bears significantly more stress. A thin layer is best, I found success going over each spot once with lots of muscle, then very lightly to pick up excess and even it out. Any globs or thick areas will haze and that's quite bad.

I'd recommend against a second coat, but stay on the long side of the prescribed recoat time.



The epoxy goes on white, it'll dry clear.



The next layer is urethane. In the image above you'll notice the lamination where the epoxy has been put down, and that the colors of the stain are brought more to life. On the right you'll see the wet urethane.

The urethane is as sticky as the epoxy, but it goes on easier because it's thinner and the already-coated floor isn't so porous. It rolls on just like the epoxy. This is the chemical that gives stained floors their shine, though a satin version is also available.



The urethane dries pretty quickly, but has a longer cure time according to the spec sheet.



There's the white haze again, called blushing when referring to epoxy. I'm not sure what to make of it, I might point my finger at the epoxy, but it seemed to also be there when water was sitting on the unlaminated concrete.



Maybe the blushing will go away with the cure, maybe it'll be covered in road dust before then. It's local to some areas and depends greatly on how the light strikes it.

Other than that, I declare success.

Piso mojado [s]

We left off with our heroes needing to remove some thin set. This called for a terrazo grinder, readily available from Sunbelt and not Clairemont Equipment. While I slaved away at a keyboard, dad and Jon took care of the downstairs concrete. Not to worry, I partook after they headed back to the Bay.



I couldn't let the familials have all the grinding fun, so I sqeezed some in by moonlight. Then I spent some serious time doing edges and missed spots with the angle grinder.



And that took care of the most important room in the house. It went quickly and easily because I was able to run a hose to the grinder. This eliminated the most infuriating part of the process, concrete dust.

As such, I can say that polished concrete is kind of a pain to do in a house, but for patios, driveways, and the like - no problem.



So this left my garage a powdery white, both from the exfoliated concrete and thin layer of dust. I stopped by Concrete Solutions, which seemed to be the only reputable game in town. The rep there was pretty helpful and I got to take home chemicals with cool dangerous labels on them.

The stain, sealer, and urethane (I guess I need them all) ran just north of $600 for what I generously estimated to be 1000 sq. ft. That's pretty good as far as flooring goes, even when you factor in a few throw rugs and the grinder rental.



I tested the stuff in a remote corner of the garage, apparently when sealed it appears as it does when wet. It's got a nice variation, looks fluid from an angle, and has some translucency, though that might disappear with multiple applications.



Tonight I went after the downstairs section. The process was simple:

1. Wet down section of floor with brush.
2. Apply stain using pump sprayer.
3. Brush stain into concrete (immediately changes color so probably important).
4. Apply more stain with pump sprayer to avoid brush marks.

I diluted the stain with about 25% water and ended up with a considerable amount left in the sprayer not to mention the five gallon container. Tomorrow may call for another coat, we shall see.

Most enjoyably, after I was finished, the only unlocked entrances to my house were the garage door and lower back door. It was the first time since age six I had to maneuver myself around an acid trap in order to reach the stairs.

I red myself [s]

For whatever reason I decided to do the fences this weekend. Well, I decided to start the fences. I'm maybe half done.



Same thing as the deck, and it matches pretty well with the red brick. For prep, I diluted the Behr finish stripper and pump-sprayered it on. Then I hit it with a brush followed by the hose. It worked pretty well but took some serious effort.

Some areas are a bit dark and will need a second coat of stain. I was getting about sixty planks (one side) out of each gallon. I estimate seven gallons for a single coat.

Many thanks to Jessica and her gymnastic painting abilities, Jessica Lee Pool House looks good next to Rob Queenin Memorial Pool and the D. Lane Juniper Stump Grove.



The deck can now be walked on for the opposite-angle view. I need to start thinking about sweet outdoor lighting.



I've spent some time organizing the storage room. I swapped out two flourescent fixtures, one broken and the other an unnecessary 100w. The replacement fixtures illuminate such areas as the paint/chemicals alcove on 50w.

Odds and ends [s]

I cleared out the car hold on Sunday thanks to the garage-media room proximity. I was able to relocate all of the tools to the adjacent storage room, though they've been in disarray since being displaced from the upstairs bedroom.

Now there's room for a work bench, should that be a pressing need when the indentured serv- family comes down for turkey and A Colbert Christmas.



And perhaps I'll I find myself in an industrious mood wherein the garage is a fine test spot for concrete polishing (Jay's garage, above). On the subject, a good amount of dust has accrued in the media room - and it's not like I've been sloppy down there; the couch, et al, are still pristine. Concrete's a quick clean, not so for carpet.



I think the shiny, minimalist garage will be a boon for the eventual sales process. Most of the houses I looked at months ago used the garage as storage locker, dog house, evil dungeon, or all of the above.



There's shelving to be done. First, a few for helmets and such to be located where my riding and surfing gear hangs. Next, some small ones for the sound system rescued from Casa Morelos. Apparently the thing only likes me- it would continually overheat and shut down for my old roomies and did the same for Rob when he tried it recently. Last night it worked seamlessly with my mp3 player.

The next step is to move the extra tv down there since garage activities mesh well with American sports. Then hook the ol' laptop up to the tv and audio system for access to Pandora and internet accessibility.



Now, Alfa owner I am not (yet). Nor do I wish to act the Ferrari owner. But how awesome is the above dude's place?

I'm a fan of lighting- flashes for photography, fluorescents for wrenching, and accents for everything in between. So I'd like to install some red, recessed led bulbs on a motion sensor. Red because it's close to safe light color, leds because they're instant-on and I could leave them going overnight and use less power than thirty minutes of tv. And it'd go nicely with a chair out front and some sort of beverage. My block isn't quite as interesting as the Adams-Morgan strip where I learned to love the practice, but excellent nonetheless.



So, those vents on the side of the garage. Are those for thermal equalization or what? Cause honestly I'd much prefer to close them up and stem the flow of moisture to my sensitive metal products within.



I'm still unsure how to execute on the storage room. It's a convenient way to access much of the house, so I'd like to keep it uncluttered. It's an accessible but unseen storage spot for garage materials and that will be its primary purpose. The room is also ideal for wine, perhaps the northernmost section could be outfitted with a rack. And there's the choice of ground cover for the exposed hillside.



I found some black crg levers on the Pro Italia site, so on Saturday I stopped by the Glendale store - yeah, the one from Entourage.



Good spot. I've never had any serious complaints about GP or Forza, but the shop is certainly much friendlier than their southern equivalents. They even knew Chris from Ca.



Barring any bad scoring corrections, looks like I have a shot at the Medieval Gridiron playoffs.



The Raiders game was a breath of fresh air. The recipe for success was a pretty obvious causation: half of Denver's defense was on the bench -> the Oakland offense could be somewhat effective -> the Oakland defense was not stuck on the field for fifty minutes -> there was no fourth quarter defensive collapse.

Rob Ryan is brilliant. I didn't need a victory to say so, this is just the first Monday I've actually wanted to think about football. Oakland has put up some fantastic challenges (remember how they dominated SD through three quarters) but the d would always falter having been saddled with spending the most time on the field and putting points on the board.

Russell and McFadden may be developing, the only thing to say for sure is that they need time on the field. Fargas is solid.

Cutler had a less-than-stellar day. Perhaps Shanahan trusted his second string defense a bit too much against an ineffective Oakland attack. Against any other team he may have tried making the game a shootout a la the Browns. The Raider secondary is good, but Cutler had a solid pocket all game and with receivers like Marshall and Royal, it's surprising he only completed 43% of his passes.

And then there's the absence of Jason Elam...