Cool Weekend

Bandit had herding Friday night, and then afterwards my dad and Kenny (who finally finished with his bar exam!) came up to have dinner with us. We ate at Macaroni Grill, and then they hung out at our house for a little bit before heading home. Marc and I started to watch Failure to Launch, but I was so tired I fell asleep.

Saturday we ran a bunch of errands - I think we did a lot of shopping. We bought an electric lawnmower and a hedge trimmer. Marc did some yardwork with the new toys, and managed to break a sprinkler head. The previous owners left behind a pretty nice shed in the backyard, and I think Marc was very excited to have things to put in it.

We had dinner with Steve and Erin and the kids at a pub called "The Hop Yard." The food was pretty good - Marc was grossed out by my crab melt sandwich, but he has no taste. They had corn dog bites for appetizers too, which I thought was awesome. Afterwards we rented Firewall and watched it at their place. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great either.

Sunday morning we ran more errands, mostly to Home Depot and OSH to buy more tools and a new sprinkler head, and then to Petsmart. The kittens are just about ready to be adopted out! I've been trying to work on a template for my craigslist ads, but just haven't had time. I should make it a goal to do it this week.

My dad came over in the afternoon to help some more with the fish room wall. Last week we knocked down the drywall on the fish room side. Here's some pictures from that:

You'll note the "brace" pieces that are attached to the studs. They're there because none of the studs are full length. These were studs that were too short for the height of the wall, so the guy just shimmed them with another 2x4, and then used another piece to connect them. NOT the proper way to build a wall. It probably wouldn't have been the end of the world since it's not a load-bearing wall, but I just can't believe that someone would be so cheap and lazy to build a wall this way.

So on Sunday we cut the studs at the top of the opening. Well, my dad really did all the work. This was a tricky job because we wanted to cut the studs without cutting the drywall on the family room side. So our solution was to cut about 1/3 of the stud with a skil saw, and then the rest with a regular old hand saw. This actually worked pretty nicely!

While my dad did that, Marc and I were on the family room side trying to locate all the sheetrock screws, so that we could pull the studs free. We used a cheap little magnetic screw finder (my dad says it cost him $2 and he's had it for 20 years) to locate all the screws. Then we made little holes in the sheetrock to get the screws out. The holes will need patching, but I think we're going to be able to get away with not re-sheetrocking the family room side.

So the studs are all ready to be pulled out, which we'll do next weekend. Marc and I will probably go and buy some of the wood we need for framing the opening and building the stand, and also finish prepping the floor this week.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!