Whew. Our Kitchen project is now done…and it turned out great!

I’ll let the pictures speak for themeslves.

  Before:                   After:

All-in-all it went pretty smoothly. Jess and I did this ENTIRE project our selfs and took about 5 hours over 2 days to complete. Not too shabby considering the project included cabinet removal & installation, re-routhing wall wiring & electical outlet-box installation, cabinet & wall preportion, along with the wall-mount above-range microwave installation. (Thanks Goehner Designer Builders, all that construction work in high school is really paying off) We were able to do this project for about half of what it would have cost if we’d had to hire the three seperate installers needed.

We love the finished product. If any of you have a similar kitchen or are in a similar “counterspace sitution,” we highly recamend doing this project as well.

Good Luck!

Buying (and living in) a condo is a lot like swimming in a Lake Martha. Sure, its inviting, the scenery great, and the adventure to arrive there exciting. But after you have taken the plunge and swam around for a while you find your stuck with little “attachments” not seen from the waters edge.

One of theses little nuances is “Condo Grilling” or “BBQing.” We received a fantastic grill as a housewarming gift (thanks Dave!). This stainless steel beast has all the bells and whistles, 4 burner, separate round side burner, cast-iron grates, and much more.

Come to find out, we can not store or use our new grill on our nice wood deck.

Fine. We moved the grill to the garage, only to find out that we can not have the grill’s 20 lbs LP tank in our “dwelling.” The City of Madison considers it a fire hazard. Each “family” in the multi-family dwelling (condo/town-home) residence is only allowed to store a 1 lb tank.

Moral of the story…For those of you in a similar situation, buy the SteakSaver by Mr. Heater.

This handy little item converts the normal 20 lb LP tank connection to a 1 lb LP tank connection. The Steak Saver costs about $24 from True Value and is super slick to both install and use. (It also sells online through Amazon and Northern Tool)

If you live in a multi-family dwelling condo or town-home in the City of Madison we highly recommend this item.

Now that things have finally settled down for us, we finally have the time to work on our condo. Our Corridor-Style kitchen leaves us with limited counter space. Thus, our first large project is to install an over-the-range microwave, as our current microwave takes up almost one entire counter by itself.

You know what that means? Yes…Another trip to Home Depot.

Our current set up is an standard exhaust vent and a cabinet too long to work with an over-the-range-microwave.

After getting a better idea of the severity of this project by doing a little Google research, we purchased all the needed tools, electrical outlets, boxes, and a really nice over-the-range stainless steel microwave by LG. I also ordered a new cabinet from a local AristoKraft dealer/show-room here in town. The cabinet should be built and shipped shortly.

We have all the puzzle pieces, and yet somehow I am still left staring at a wall of our kitchen for hours….probably not a good sign for things to come.

…Stay tuned for as this project progresses

This past weekend my grandfather passed away. You can read his obit here. He was a really good grandpa and a pretty cool guy. I learned so much about him over the weekend and everything he did. He built up the farm, raised 6 kids on one income, keep current on politics and baseball, and knew a ton about the area and the families in it. He was amazed that his grandkids could accomplish so much, but I think we are just taking the traits he had like intelligence, work ethic, honesty, and duty, and putting them to use in our current world. I hope that as we all start families, we can keep those traits and traditions going.
His funeral was wonderful too. The Sons of Norway where there, David Fischer sang one of his favorite songs, and we drove the funeral procession past the farm. It was so personal and really reflected his life and our family. Here’s a copy of the speech that my family put together and that I read at his funeral. Grandpa Ernie’s funeral speech When it’s our time to go, I hope we all have such a warm and loving send off.

A few months ago as a wedding gift, Caleb and Amanda Olson (Newlyweds and Best-man in our wedding) bought us tickets to see Monty Python’s SPAMalot and a weekend get-away in St. Paul Minnesota. Yesterday was the culmination of the two month-long wait.

For those of you not familiar with SPAMalot, it is the musical rendition of the classically hilarious movie, Monty Python and the Search For The Holy Grail. This show debuted on Broadway in 2005 but premiered in England before landing in the Big Apple. Included in the all-star cast was Tim Cury, Hank Azaria, and David Hyde Pierce.

This musical is absolutely fantastic! All the classic movie characters remain the same, new characters are added, and all the characters that you wished had greater character development, get their chance in SPAMalot. (aka. Not-Yet-Dead Fred, the Tower-Trapped Boy who wants to sing, The Frenchmen, and more)

WARNING: The songs will get stuck in your head for weeks!

If you have the chance to see it GO.

Thanks Caleb and Amanda for a SPAMtastic weekend!

Alright, I need to post this before the hilarity is lessened.

I begin by posing this question, “If I were a dead thing where would I be?”

Apparently in the life cycle of buying a house (condo) there comes a brief hazing period for new homeowners. Jess and I can attest to this first hand.

We have had this …well, odd funk coming from our basement for a couple of months now. The smell comes and goes and is more noticeable at certain times than others. As our cat hides down there during thunderstorms we assumed that the smell was coming from …well, her. However, this weekend Jess and I went on a “Find that smell” adventure.

We searched Hi and Low in that basement. We re-organized, swept, swiffered, and washed the floor. We thought we were in the clear… that is until last night when we were doing laundry.

The smell was back, and like a Bruce Willis film, it came with a vengeance. That’s it. I had had enough and I put my nose to the grind-stone in hopes of winning the “finding that smell” game. I had noticed a faint smell when I went to fill the dryer earlier this month. I assumed that with our cat, Katie, and wet clothes, 1 plus 1 = 2. This made sense considering I described the smell to Jess as remotely like “wet dog” or “wet animal.”

This brings me back to my original question. “If I were a dead thing where would I be?”

The answer…as you probably have already guessed…The Dryer.

We stopped the laundry and pulled up the lint trap to find living “bugs” and a few small hard white things in with the dryer lint. “Are those… bones?” asked Jess.

After a slight freakout, I with tools and Jess with a gloves & a bucket-o-chlorine, we attacked the dryer. Yes, no need to call the coroner, at 10:30 last night Jess and I removed not 1 but 2 WAY dead (we think) chipmunks, their “bug” friends, and more fur than I care to discuss from our dryer.

Gross…freakin aye, yes.

Apparently they had crawled into the outside dryer exhaust vent, traveled down the air chute, and got stuck at the base of the dryer exhaust. I could not tell you how long they had been there…but it was pretty aweful. Jess and I spent 2 hours removing dead parts, chlorining, scrubbing, and washing the Bejesus out of our dryer and surrounding floor. In fact, it was a good thing that today was garbage day, because we were able to get everything out of our house, including a few dryer parts that won’t be missed.

Needless to say, I will be making a home depot run after work so we can finish our laundry….animal free.

For those who doubt the power of the Cooper:
Last night, we went to Ikea and bought a bookshelf I’ve been looking at for months. At about six feet tall and with 16 compartments, it’s huge- I have a lot of books. The cost of shipping was almost as much as the cost of the shelf itself, so we decided to measure Ace and see if she could handle it (For those who don’t know, my car’s name is Ace). It looked good in theory, but would it work? We headed down there, grabbed the shelf, and pulled up the car.
About 5 minutes and several sounds of laughter from the other customers, it totally fit! I could even shift, see out the back window, and see all my blind spots. Boone was squished against the from window a bit, but not too terribly.
Here’s some photos for those out there still doubting- I know I won’t be anymore. 🙂

Boone here. Jess and I recently returned from our wonderful honeymoon on the island of Oahu, Hawai’i.

It was Fabulous!!!

We spent about 10 days enjoying the many sites and sounds that Hawai’i has to offer. A few of our favorite activities included:

• Spending time with co-workers at a Buddhist temple
• Eating Pancakes in a plantation city at the base of a 13,000 foot volcano, Mauna Loa
• Eating sushi by Kuhio Beach for two days
• Strolling on a Black Sand Beach on the Big Island of Hawai’i
• Surfing at the birthplace of surfing, Waikiki Beach
• Standing atop the home (volcanic crater) of the volcano god, Pele in the Volcano National Park
• Seeing ancient Petroglyphs carved into the volcanic rock in the Big Island desert
• Climbing to the summit of a dormant military volcano site, Diamond Head, on Oahu
• Spending 7 hours enjoying the Polynesian Cultural Center
• Walking through a Lava Tube hidden within the Big Island’s Rainforest

Stay tuned for more pictures and stories from our adventure in Hawai’i.

So, we just attended our cousin Carrie’s wedding this past weekend and it was the last wedding of our summer (whew!). It turned out beautiful and it was so good to be a part of their day. I was amazed at how different all the weddings we went to this summer were. I was kinda worried that it would get old, and all our family would be bored, but each of them was wonderful and I think everyone had a great time.

Carrie and Mark head to Italy for their honeymoon after this and it will be weird not to see them and talk about wedding stuff. It’s kind of weird not to be talking about wedding stuff period, but think of all the free time (and money) we will have. Hmmm….. You can see some pictures of Carrie’s wedding on our pictures page.

Isn’t technology wonderful!? We already have our wedding pictures back and I found a great way to share them with everyone. It’s a web site called Shutterfly and it allowed you to create online albums and collections. The best parts- you can add pictures to the albums, order prints from them, or even just right-click and copy the image to your computer. How cool! The NY Times did a great article on some of these sites, too, talking about how good they are for pictures and such.
Anyway, you can check it out for yourself at the link on the top left that says ‘Wedding pictures.” Enjoy!