Dear So and So

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Originally Posted by Eden

sounds like we need a photo.... I agree with Sky King about how to handle it as a cyclist, but what happens if you are a pedestrian...... we've had situations like that around here, though they are temporary... but come on, close all 4 corners of an intersection for construction at the same time.... the planner for that one must *never* walk anywhere... when my husband complained that he couldn't get to the store to buy his lunch (it was near his work) they put up signs that said "Businesses are Open During Construction"....

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I just finished working on the map (I would have to ride 47 miles to get a photo.). Click on jpg to enlarge. Maybe I will drive out there. The drive is much shorter because I don't ride on the trails.

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The green line on Post Road is a trail out of Fort Snelling State Park. The trail picks up on the other side of the intersection.
The lanes going across the freeway are very, very busy. Post Road is another way to get to the airport.
There are no shoulders and the traffic lanes are extremely narrow. There is very little area between the stop signs and the stop lights.

I think this is a dangerous intersection so I really need to be aware of everything! I wonder how many drivers are aware of bicyclists because of the signs.

And then surprise, surprise. The same thing is at the entrance of the cemetery. There is no way to get from the bike lane into the cemetery. I didn't see much other way than to disobey the signs. There is a lot of construction so I hope it is only temporary.

I checked out google street view - from what I can see there's a sidewalk in the park, that may or may not be signed as a MUP (multi use path). Outside of the park there are no sidewalks or bike lanes in the area, unless they've been striped since the street views were made. In order to go across the bridge it is necessary that you use the street - the moment you decide to do that you are officially a vehicle, not a pedestrian, so the no ped crossing signs have no bearing on you as a cyclist - you are not disobeying the traffic laws. The best way to handle a situation like this one where he lanes are narrow is to simply take the middle of the lane- across the bridge no one has any business trying to share that lane with you, they can wait the few seconds it will take for you to cross safely. At the lights, the same - claim your space, use the lights the same as you would in a car. I can't see any other way unless you intend to ride in the grass...

Dear hubby,

I love you dearly, but WHY did you just give away that set of kitchen drawers? You were the one who suggested keeping them through the kitchen renovation, I agreed because we need them in the storage room later. And we really do need to have somewhere to keep our assorted cr*p while we turn the kitchen into a swath of desolation. Hello? Just because we were giving away the other cabinets doesn't mean the drawers we agreed that we NEEDED. Argh.

Dear self,
chill. It's just a set of drawers. I know it bugs you to have your neatly thought-out system fall apart the minute you turn your back, but really, it will all be ok. I swear.

I've been through a kitchen renovation. Find your happy place, it will be OK. :)

amy house renovation and hanging wall paper are two of the leading causes of divorce. I will never ever do either again with anyone excet a declared enemy. Just sayin.

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Originally Posted by marni

amy house renovation and hanging wall paper are two of the leading causes of divorce. I will never ever do either again with anyone excet a declared enemy. Just sayin.

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I thought disagreement over finances was #1.
DH and I do fine with renos. Our idea of a fun date is Home Depot on a Friday night looking at sinks.

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Originally Posted by Irulan

I thought disagreement over finances was #1.
DH and I do fine with renos. Our idea of a fun date is Home Depot on a Friday night looking at sinks.

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We do fine with renos. I let my partner decide everything and I do my best to stay out of the way.

Finances we solved by splitting the bills and having separate bank accounts.

However, if we ever had to house hunt together I imagine blood would flow. Thankfully our house is almost paid for so we won't be going anywhere.

I contracted the remodeling of our bathroom out. It was cheaper than a split up. However we shopped together for the toilet, sink, vanity etc. It was a nightmare. After two years I still hate the toilet, but I got so darn tired of arguing! :mad: And of course, you use THAT every day.

If there is a next time I will I insist on picking out everything myself. He will not be invited along!

We got bogged down just picking everything out! It's not that we had trouble agreeing on stuff, there's just so much of it, from so many different sources, and you have to be in one store imagining how their stuff is going to look in the same room with the stuff you looked at in another store across town three days ago. Aaaaugh. Maybe it will finally happen next year.

I absolutely hate anything to do with picking out stuff for the house. Of course, I like nice stuff, but for so long I abdicated all of this to DH. He knew everything about houses when we got married and I had no involvement at all with picking out things like window treatments and flooring until very recently. When I finally went with him, to pick out stuff for our bathroom and kitchen remodel in this house, we were so rushed (it was after work) and everything we picked was not available, so we ended up choosing the same counters and cabinets for the bathroom as in the kitchen. It doesn't look bad, just the same, which is boring. And, when presented with the blueprints for the bathroom, I said, "yea, fine," and I hate one of the design features. Me looking at a blueprint is like a blind man trying to read print! And while I love our huge shower with a bench, I am afraid not having a tub in the master bath might hurt us when we go to sell. I hate making long, drawn out decisions, and when I shop, I see what I like and buy. Generally, when I have ideas about what to do, they are right, but then I let DH or a professional take over. I do like shopping for furniture, though.

We luckily have somewhat the same taste when it comes to redecorating, so no big fights, though we do regularly disagree. We landed on a nifty solution for this kitchen, since we ended up spending so much time discussing which one of the two countertops/dresser fronts/yadda yadda we liked did we actually want to BUY - he got the final say on the fronts, I got the final say on the counter tops, he got the backsplash, I got the wall colour, etc.

Our kitchen is a 'swath of desolation' as well. The living/dining and spare bedroom are also, because they will get new flooring. The rest of the house looks like a unit on Storage Wars, piled with everything.

Most people can't believe that we would live in a house with kitchen walls made of cardboard for a year and a half...we took out the old cabinets and there were no walls back there. It was open to the studs--we covered most of it with some cheapie whiteboard stuff but there was a little open space at the top and above the fridge. It didn't bother me until the cat went in there and came out filthy. So Brewer closed it up with pieces of cardboard boxes. Of course it doesn't look great, but I can be content thinking of my foremothers with dirt floors and no plumbing. Cardboard walls are better than no walls at all, right?

In the living room, when we moved in and ripped out the dog pee carpet, the subfloor looked ok and we had the surface finished. The cats have now customized the surface to the point of splintering, which I also kind of didn't mind but I kept my path to the rugs when I walked around barefooted.

The last time anyone worked on the house, we had gone to Switzerland to visit my dad and when we got home completely exhausted and found the house a complete disaster, I thought I might need to be placed on a 72 hour psych hold, so I haven't been too eager to make another run at it.

The tide turned when I got to coveting a new piano, found what I wanted, and Brewer loved it too...of course it makes sense to replace the flooring BEFORE bringing a piano in, and of course it makes sense to destroy the kitchen at the same time--Brewer knows I may never agree to it otherwise--and I'm already overly busy and a little coo-coo adjusting to my new job, so going completely out of my mind seems unlikely. So here we are.

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Originally Posted by malkin

The rest of the house looks like a unit on Storage Wars, piled with everything.

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Oh yeah. :D

I only just this minute got a call from IKEA, who will be delivering our new kitchen stuff ASAP. But they weren't supposed to come for another hour, so I had to run around and find rugs for them to trample in on. And doing anything at this point involves shifting piles of other stuff. So finding a rug involved pulling it out from under the stove (as we've been using it to pull the stove around between uses), which involved moving the coffee percolator and water boiler which were balanced on top of the stove, which was pretty impossible because there was nowhere else to put them as the dining table is also our functioning kitchen counter and is half covered with assorted small stuff. Which may have something to do with the fact that dh gave away that set of drawers...

And lugging a packet of new flooring out of the way so that it doesn't get boxed in by 3 tonnes of IKEA-ware, I neatly managed to put in a huge scratch in the livingroom parquet flooring. Yippee.

And so it goes, indeed.

I'm actually so early on in the process that I'm looking forward to it, but I'm pretty sure that three weeks from now when we feel that we should have been done and still have siding to put up and drawer handles to attach and so on and so on that I will be wondering what possessed us to ever start.

eta: I didn't mean siding, I meant trim. Don't really know the proper terms in English.

So the guys did the living room floor today and did some demolition in the kitchen--removed the whiteboard and the cardboard, leaving the walls--well, wall-less. Kind hearted Brewer didn't want to leave them in jail upstairs, so he moved everything away from the wall-less side making it impossible for a cat to get in up there. So imagine our surprise when we hear a plaintive mewing from the cellar. We discover a hole in the kitchen floor, just big enough for a cat to get through.

Getting into the cellar is complicated by the fact that the entrance is a door in the floor which is of course covered by furniture that belongs everywhere else. *eye roll*
All's well that ends well and that silly cat is back upstairs with his brothers, where I believe he will be staying until the work is all done and cleaned up.

Aw :-)

Our Lyra just disappears outside in a huff through her cat flap whenever the noisy people start. Sometimes she'll just sit outside looking in, looking indignant. She also goes around complaining when we move her food bowls, again.

We managed to lay most of the new kitchen floor last night. I would be more pleased about it if it weren't for the fact that it's identical to the old floor, which we only pulled up because there would be gaps in it once we installed the new kitchen furniture, plus some minor damage in a corner. So now we've spent 4 hours, sweating and cussing, and the result is a lovely new floor that looks, well, just like the old one, only a little bit more of it.

I'm very pleased that I got to receive the IKEA stuff, though. I spent a full and happy hour organizing it into neat piles, according to when we'll need it :p without my guys around who would just laugh at me.