Tag Archives: house

Bad astro alignment if I don’t listen to myself

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
May 11 2018

So I posted earlier that my astronomy season has kicked off, and I’m good to go. With the news that Jupiter was in opposition this week (the closest it will come to Earth all year, hence LOOK NOW for your best view), I thought, “Well, yeah, I want to set up”. And because it’s a PLANET, not some dark sky object, I can do it from my backyard.

So on Tuesday, I was in a hurry to set up before Venus disappeared behind a house, and I wanted to show my wife and son, so I set up the scope on our deck. Anyone who knows scopes knows a deck is a bad idea unless it’s cement. Otherwise, they jiggle if anyone walks. Hard to get vibrations out, but whatever. Anyway, got it set up, quick solar system alignment on Venus, good to go, showed the family, all good.

Then I did a quick sky tour, realigned on Procyon and Capella, not bad, and then I started doing a quick sky tour while I waited for Jupiter to come up over a house.  » Read the rest

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A new addition to our family

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
December 4 2015

Wow, all those studies were right. Click-bait really does work! 🙂

You came here thinking I was talking about a kid, or a pet, weren’t you? How disappointed are you to know I’m talking about a refrigerator?

When I wrote the blog about the kitchen, I left out “my contribution” to the overall project. Most of the decisions were Andrea’s, including final floor colour, countertops (actually all three of us agreed on that one!), cupboard choices, design for drawers, choice of sink, etc. But from the beginning, I wanted a new fridge.

At night, when I go to make sandwiches for the next day, I was constantly moving three things out of the way to get to what I wanted, constantly shifting leftovers or vegetables to put the lunch containers back in, constantly dealing with the “tight” crunch of the fridge. Totally a first-world-problem, “I have too much stuff in my fridge”, but it was really annoying.  » Read the rest

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Kitchen reno from heck: Summary

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
December 3 2015

So going back to the beginning, now that you have seen pics of the outcomes, what went wrong during the process to cause such stress? It wasn’t just one thing of course, it was a variety of factors.

  1. Initial design delays — we started asking for design meetings in January, pressured them throughout Jan / Feb / March and didn’t get any official designs until June 15th. Of the nine versions, eight of them were unworkable, a waste of paper not to mention the time and effort they put into doing them. It took another 45 days, mostly waiting on them to get back to us with answers to some questions that should have been dealt with back in April or May, but delayed us into the summer. This meant August 1st before we had an actual design.
  2. Overall start delays — we wanted the project to start in mid-July and, based on the two week estimate, to be mostly over by August 1st.
  » Read the rest
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Kitchen reno from heck: Speciality areas

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
December 2 2015

There are three other areas that I wanted to talk about quickly, as they are part of the design and reno — the ceiling, the flooring, and some special cabinets.

For the ceiling, the main issue was the bulkhead over the island which matched the island layout but was basically useless to the regular design. Somewhat aesthetically pleasing, but had to exit for the new design. We cut it back considerably as you can see in the photos, and changed the lighting options. We didn’t know what we would find exactly when we opened it up, but there were no issues in the end.

For the flooring, we had considered a number of options. Some required a subfloor that would have meant a step up going into the kitchen, if only a few inches. So, no. Others would be cold, others would be hard, some would take some wear, some wouldn’t take much.  » Read the rest

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Kitchen reno from heck: Dining room area

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
November 29 2015

Before we started the reno, we had a dining room of sorts. Essentially, when you came into the front of the house, there was a small foyer, and then you went up two steps to a big room that was one-half living room and one-half dining room. It was configured as such, but we never used the dining room, for a couple of reasons.

First, we like having our table in the big kitchen. All together, easy to move from one to the other. It’s also how I grew up, one big kitchen, and while I’m not against a dining room, I don’t mind the kitchen and eating area being one.

Second, we didn’t like the location of the dining room. If you were eating, you would feel a lot like you were almost at the front door, particularly if anyone came by and knocked. Sure, lots of people say, “Oh, eat in the kitchen when it is just you, but use the dining room when you have guests.”  » Read the rest

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