New Beginnings

I'm sorry I haven't updated recently. I've been kind of busy and there hasn't been a lot of new stuff going on at the house. Stuff that you want to hear about anyway...I'm sure you're sick of hearing about staining and varnishing. :)

I started my new job at Hemlock Semiconductor yesterday. I am an instrumentation engineer out there. So far the job has kept me busy meeting new people, online training, and trying to figure out just what my job entails. So far everyone has been very friendly and very helpful. I will be incredibly busy at work once I get up to speed, but I am looking forward to it.


The staining and varnishing of the trim is DONE! I have some door frames to varnish...and I still have to stain the doors themselves...but the trim is done! That is a nice thing to have out of the way.

With the trim being done I could start concentrating on my tile floors. Dad helped me pick out some accent tiles for my floors this weekend. I did some playing with layouts and found some great looks...with some good artistic direction from Dad. :) This is the half bath tile lay out.


This is the main bathroom layout. It matches very well with the border in the shower with the color and angle of the tiles.


This is the master bath floor with some larger accent tiles. I think I'm going to put some of these tiles throughout my shower also to tie it in with the floor.



Dad and I were out laying tile in the laundry room tonight. It is probably half done. I will go out to finish it tomorrow.

The hardwood floors were finished last week. However, when I look into my study you can see the sanding grooves on the floor. The same thing happens in the front entry. So the hardwood installer will have to come back to sand the floors again, re-stain and re-finish them. I now see why Dad's motto has always been "Do it right the first time". :)


I have some more cabinets installed also. These are the cabinets for my vanity in the master bath.

Movin' On Up!

I have some exciting non-house related news! I recently accepted a job with Hemlock Semiconductor! I put in my two weeks notice at the end of last week at Wineman. It was a tough decision to leave a company I've worked at for 8 years, and friends that I've worked with for 10. But this is a good move for me and it was the right thing to do! So we went out to celebrate on Saturday night with a dinner at Genjis and some ice cream cake afterwards. It was a great night out with the family! I start at HSC on February 23. I am really looking forward to the change.

Onto the house stuff. No pictures today. There's nothing really exciting to take pictures of. I stained all of the windows in the house on Friday and Saturday. That job SUCKS! Thankfully it is done. I put a first coat of varnish on them yesterday. The sanding and second coat of varnish is not going to be a fun job either. Oh well. Such is the life of a house builder. :) They are looking nice though. I did have one mishap on Friday when I kicked the can of stain. It did not tip over, but splashed over the edge, made a big spot on my floor and turned my white shoe brown, stained my toes brown and the bottom cuff of one pant leg. Oops! :)

The trim has all been stained and two coats of varnish put on. I just need to do some organization down in the basement to get some of it out of the way. I need to stain and varnish the extension jams for the windows, but that should go much quicker than the trim...there isn't much there.

Dad screwed down all of the tile board to the floors...so now we're ready to start setting cabinets. THAT is going to make a huge difference in what my kitchen looks like! I can't wait!

Things are still moving...

Nothing too exciting

I'm sorry I didn't post last week. There wasn't much to report on. The same is true for this week, but I do have a few pictures.

Dad has all the pieces of backer board cut for the tile floors. He just needs to glue them and screw them to the floor. When that is done we can start installing cabinets. Dad and I made two trips to the cabinet shop on Friday to pick up the lower kitchen cabinets. Right now they are all sitting in my living room. There's not a good picture, but I will get one up when we get them installed. I LOVE the cabinets! As you can see, right now they are kind of being used as a table top. :)

Mom and I did more varnishing and staining. I would say 90% of the trim is DONE...all stained and varnished. There are handful of boards that need to be sanded and have a second coat of varnish put on them...but that's it. So we started staining the door jams this weekend too. We have probably half of those done. We stayed away from the ones near the hardwood floor that's not finished. I put a first coat of varnish on the doors we have stained. The stain just adds a finished look to the doorways... So after that it's onto the windows and doors.

That's all I have to report. We were busy the last two weekends, but nothing notable. :)