Slate Floors, Granite Counter Tops Sealed

So while we've loved our slate floors and granite counter tops so far, Dawn was perplexed as to exactly how to clean the floors.  She can't mop them, the stone just soaks up the water like a sponge - it's very porous.  We'd also heard about how granite can stain and also seep water as well.

We saw the Perma-Treat ads on TV and decided to give it a try.  The guy came out and gave us the spiel.  It seemed like a good idea, and the price was right, so we arranged for a team to come out and seal the slate in both the entry and the kitchen, as well as the kitchen granite.

We had to clear out all the stuff from the kitchen and the entryway - it looked like we'd just moved in again.

They steam cleaned the counter tops and hand-scrubbed the floors - twice - and then put down 2 coats of sealant.

 

But now the floors look great, if a little darker, and they repel water very well - Dawn can now mop to her heart's content.

New Furniture

So we've added at least 800 square feet to our living space, compared to our last abode, it was inevitable that we'd have some rooms that ended up.... under-furnished.

I managed to receive a bonus from work recently that's assisted us in solving that problem.  We'd been looking at different places for furniture for some time now - Ikea, DirectBuy, Mor, local discount stores, etc. - and hadn't found things that really grabbed us.  We were on the way to Ikea again for another look when we passed right by an Ashley store.  On impulse, I told Dawn to turn in, since we'd not tried them yet, and I'd been seeing lots of ads for them recently.

Well, Ashley is a funny store.  They take a lot of dissimilar furniture and offer it up at the same price across the board for a whole class of products.  It's really more like a tiering system - "Low End Couches" all are the same price, regardless of size, style, materials, etc.  This makes it easy for them to offer packages and to swap stuff out.  But it also allows for some healthy margins.  To boot, the love seat for any couch style was always $50 less, regardless of materials used.  This tells me they REALLY boost the price of their love seats. Once I'd figured out their system and became disgusted with it, the few pieces of furniture that might have caught my eye lost their appeal.  We left the store with no progress made.

On the way back to the truck in the parking lot, I saw the Dania store next door.  Dawn's very traditional when it comes to home decorating and furnishing, and the Dania store also looked very high end, so she wasn't even considering going in.  I figured it wouldn't hurt to go in and look around a bit - I mean, we were right there - and poke fun at the kooky looking European chairs and couches.  So I dragged her into the store.

And believe you-me, there were plenty of kooky looking chairs and couches to make fun of.  And some ridiculously expensive pieces of furniture.  But then something curious happened.  Dawn started seeing furniture she liked.  And some of it was actually affordable, if not cheap.  The next thing you know, we're seriously considering purchasing something - something that we'd not done in any other store.

We decided we'd definitely come back once we had cash in hand to make a final decision.  Which we did last week.  It was all delivered yesterday.

I got myself an 'Easy Chair' for my office to sit and read at, or for Dawn to sit and and talk to me while I work:

We also got a much larger dinette table - really a counter-height dining room table and 8 barstool chairs for it:

We'll need to get a new rug for this table, since it's a square table instead of a rectangular one.  We also got a nice, durable couch for the downstairs rec room that should fit 4 kids on it while they play Wii:

We also got a bunch of book cases and a pair of desk-hutch combos for the kids for their school work:

Yeah, lots of particle board furniture I need to put together.  I'll find some time soon enough...

Dial Tone!

So the New Frontier technician came out today and installed the line.  I have dial tone!

He also told me where my CO is - it's a mico-CO that's just down the hill, and... it has fiber run to it!  They don't have a DSLAM there right now (required for DSL service) and their line-length tester doesn't work at this location, but...  there's a good chance DSL will be offered within the year. 

The downer - since it's still a ways down the hill, I'd probably only be able to get 1.5Mb/s download speed (half of what I get now), but the upside is that it would be un-metered.

Right now, I have a 50 GB/month cap, which if I go over, it's another $1/GB.  That sounds like a lot of bandwidth, but... you watch a Netflix streaming movie in pseudo-HD and...  well, that's 3-5 GB right there.  When either of the kids play their on-line games (Team Fortress 2, etc), it's easily 300 MB per hour, per kid playing.

I got an email from Nathan letting us know we were at 46 GB used at mid-month. We've been watching a lot of Hulu and Netflix at the beginning of the month to give us some TV entertainment until DirecTV could install service, and there was a TF2 update that all three of our computers had to download, I've bought some games on Steam, etc....  yeah, we used a lot.

I replied to him saying we'd try to keep it under control, but honestly, I don't see that happening.  We're a high-bandwidth family apparently.  I apologized for the overage, but warned him this was going to be a chronic thing for us, and to just bill us appropriately.

I ended up writing a Web App to monitor our usage on a per-host basis,  I'm using a Perl script to parse traffic logs sent from my firewall to put into a database, then a separate Perl script to parse my proxy logs to put into the database, a third script to correlate the proxy logs with the firewall logs, and then a PHP application to display it all fancy-like on a web page.

Yes, anyone else would just ground their kids from the computer for the rest of the month.  I don't work like that.  :)

Telephone Reschedulled...

Apparently there was some sort of mix-up, partially because I had a fiber team lay copper - in one person's computer, it showed I had fiber installed (when I don't).  They also had be assigned to the wrong exchange, which I mentioned to the CSR when she told me my new number.

Apparently it was easier just to delete my old order and do a new one from scratch now that I have the copper in the ground.  So they'll be out next Wednesday, hopefully, to get us squared away.  Ironically, that's the same date that I'd originally scheduled anyway...

Telephone Installer Missed Appointment

So right after the Frontier guys left on Tuesday, I got a call from a person asking me about setting up a new install date.  I was happy for the call, since I wanted to arrange an earlier install than the 21st. 

She took down all my information and scheduled a new time for today between 8 and noon. 

We've been here the whole time, and no Frontier/Verizon trucks have come by, which is a bit of a downer considering the exceptional effort they've given me so far.  I'll call after lunch and see what's up.

Window Screens Delivered - Finally!

We've been in the house almost a month now - through a record heat wave and later through a record summer chill - and we've had to keep the house bottled up thanks to the monster mosquitoes and other large flying nasties out here in the woods.

Apparently, the window screen people have cut back (like a lot of companies these days) and now are having a labor shortage resulting in a massive backlog.  These screens were ordered months ago, and just now arrived.

I get to install them myself, I suppose.  The windows are easy, of course - you just pop them in.  The sliding door screens will be a little more involved, but not too much, and nothing I can't handle.

All Finished

I realized I've not posted exterior pictures in awhile, and none since we were all done. So here's some updated exterior shots: