Remodeling - Main Floor Bathroom Demo

Before

The main floor bathroom was beige.  Tub, shower, toilet, paint, counter, sink, floor all beige.  The cabinet was unfinished wood, but apparently the dominant color in 1980 was beige.

Didn't need the toilet, vanity, ...

or Shower

It was functional and dated, but we really didn't like it and it went away.  Added what was there to the BPOS in the living room.

Remodeling - Garage Closet

Closet in Garage

This condo is a three story unit, more townhouse style than a typical condominium.  It is built on a hill, so the main floor opens up to the street in the front, and the basement has a garage out the back.

The garage is downstairs and the nature preserve is out the back, so a majority of the time, we will be coming in and out through the garage.  So, I decided to build a coat closet in the garage. 

The photo shows a door to the left that leads upstairs with a small platform.  Before I started construction, the platform ended about 4 feet from the wall.  Utilizing some left over packing crates from work, I was able to create a platform and a closet in the corner.  The chest freezer will go under the shelf when we move, and the majority of our coats will be able to be put in the closet. 

View into the closet. 

Even better, I was able to re-purpose material that was destined for the dump, old flooring from our bathroom, and other materials around the house.  The total cost (excluding labor) was less than $10. 

Remodeling - Main Floor Demo

Living & Dining Room - Before

Anyone doing a remodeling will tell you that the first part of remodeling in coming up with a plan, discussing what you want done, getting quotes from a contractor, going through the process of choosing products and all that stuff.

We kind of short circuited that process by calling up a contractor friend that we've worked with before, and told him in broad, general terms what we wanted to do.  Remove some half walls, put in some hardwood flooring, move the laundry upstairs, redo both downstairs and master bathrooms, and a few dozen other minor things.  

Living & Dining Room - After

Well, we decided that we wanted to skip a few steps since we owned two houses (i.e., two mortgages), and we wanted to have the remodel done before we moved in.  So, we called our friend, and he said, sure, let's go.  

Gulp.  

Downsizing

Downsizing.  We've been thinking that for a few years now, but only as a concept.  But suddenly, it moved from much more than a concept to a reality.

We’d just finished lunch on a Sunday in early December when Gail suggested we drive past Katie's house.  Katie had just moved in to a condo complex and she was going to be hosting Bible Study on Monday night.  Since she had never been there, and it is easy to get lost in most condo complexes, we decided to drive by. 

“Hey, isn’t that Steve from Church?”  Steve’s picture was on the For Sale sign in front of a condo as we drove by.  We had been considering downsizing and had been slowly pruning our belongings.  We sold our camper since we hadn’t used it in a few years, and I had begun the process of selling off some excess Lego (shocking!). 

Steve’s a pretty low-key Real Estate professional and when we called him up, we said we were interested in the condo life, but were not really in the market just yet.  He agreed to meet us over at the condo that afternoon. 

Of course, when we got there, Gail texted Katie that we were touring the condo, and got an immediate “We’ll be right over” response.  The group of us wandered through the 80’s style condo and kind of made fun of some of the design choices. 

The next night, Gail and I were talking and the one thing that we really liked about this condo was the location.  The back deck looks over a local nature preserve.  It only had two bedrooms, but it had a large living area, and huge garage and shop area under the house.  I took out a pad of paper and we wrote down what we would need to get rid of to fit into a condo of that size.  There were some painful choices on the left behind list, but it wasn’t anything that we couldn’t live with.  So, we called Steve back and asked if we could tour the condo again, with an attitude of “Do we want to live here?” 

The second time through, we started envisioning furniture placements, which walls to remove, what flooring to replace, how drastically the bathrooms and kitchens could change, and the like.  After discussion, we put a reasonable offer on the house.  The sellers accepted the offer and we started the dance with the banks, insurance companies, escrow companies, inspectors, repairmen, interior designers and the like. 

Suddenly, downsizing is a reality.

Software Factory

My first job out of college was with McDonnell Aircraft Company, or MCAIR for short.  I started out my career there writing software for F-15 fighter jets.  I was on a number of different programs, some of which I can talk about, some of which I cannot. 

One of the nice benefits of the job was that they fully paid for tuition for advanced degrees, so I got a Masters of Computer Science from Washington University ('85).  As part of that I studied emerging Artificial Intelligent technologies as well as relational databases. 

At the time, MCAIR realized that they were going to go broke hiring software engineers, so they started a project call the Software Factory to reduce the amount of time it took to develop software.  They wanted to use a relational database as the underpinning and since I was the only person in the company who understood this technology, they tapped me for this team. 

The goal was to create a Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tool, a pretty formidable task back in the mid 80's.  The Visual Studio's of the world had not been invented yet, there were no Frameworks like Bootstrap, Source Control was very rudimentary and there were no automated build & test environments.  MCAIR decided that they should build one. 

This was probably one of the most interesting jobs I had in my life.  In modern day terms, I was the architect of the database design.  Since configuration management was vital to any large scale software project, we implemented a configuration management framework using Ada sitting on top of the database.  We called it the "Foundation" and it used the generic abilities of Ada to manage the management of files (like GitHub), as well as database entities. 

As the project grew, we extended our tools to a point where we could generate a tool to do version control on any type of data with just the CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) queries.  By 1990, we had about 50 people on the project.  However, in 1991, the cancellation of the A-12 project removed a majority of the funding for this project.  During the course of 1991, we cut our staffing over 50% and one of the main project drivers was gone.   Shortly thereafter in a horrible career decision, I decided to go work for an insurance company. 

Kind of like a first car, I look back on my first job with happiness.  We were doing some stuff that was well ahead of its time.  Looking back on it, it was pretty rudimentary, but back in the 80's it was a big deal. 

(Note:  Cliff and Layna were probably the two best looking people on the project.  No wonder they got in the picture.  Yes, she had shoulder pads.  Yes, our monitors were really that big.  And most of the women at the time had the big hair thing going on.) 

Printing Press - Part I

Found this note from my father with the Superior Rotary Printing Press.

This printing set was a 1943 Christmas Present, when I was 11 years old.  

The reason I "remember" this is that one of the ambitious projects I tried with it was to print an article "Seharnhorst, Huge German Battleship, Sunk in Fight".  That naval battle and sinking took place on December 26, 1943.  It is described on pages 267-271 in The German Northern Theater of Operation 1940-1945, by Earl F. Ziemki, 9 June 1959 (Department of the Army pamphlet No 20-271).  

Note the citation and format of the citation.  He wrote this in June 12, 2002, approximately 50 years after his last English/Technical Writing class.  The underlining and format exactly as he wrote it in his note.  

Link to Book

Farewell, Old Friend.

After sitting in the garage for two years without being used, it was time to say goodbye to the camper.   I knew it was time last fall, but figured that it would sell quicker if I waited until spring.  I must have been right, for within 6 hours of posting it on Craigslist, I had about 20 people who were interested. 

We were able to sell it to a young couple with a 2-year old who were just as happy to get it as I was sad to see it go.  It may have been a great garage shelf for the past 20 years, but we had some great memories. 

I had thought I had everything cleaned out when we popped it up to show the new couple, but they noticed a magnet attached to the side.  Then another and another.  As I collected the magnets, I remembered the good time we had, and the multitude of places the camper had been.  We camped in it from coast to coast, so it has seen it's share of use.   And who can forget 15 straight days across the Southwest as we were moving to Everett. 

Ahh, the good times. 

Farewell, old friend.  Hope your new family can make as many good memories as we did.