House update - Moved in!

Well, we finally are settled in the new house. I put most of the shoe moulding down:


I only skipped the mudroom. I'll probably do that on Friday when the TV guy comes during his 4 hour timeblock. Otherwise the mudroom is looking good.


I drilled a 2x4 into the studs with some deck screws and then just threaded some hooks in to hang bikes from. I could do a chin-up on it, so I figured it'd hold a couple DH bikes.

The living room looks nice as well, lots of open space. We cleaned all the window treatments and re-hung them. It will help a lot in the summer with all the sun the house gets.


I also got a new bike, one of these. I rode it yesterday and today and it rides great. Pictures later.

Finishing touches on the floors

So I spent the last few evenings this week putting down tile and then fixing one that came loose on the edge. I made the mistake of just catching my toe on it...and the board to build up to the tile wasn't in place. Oops. Here is how the grout is looking.


I pretty much just have to clean today, put down some shoe moulding and I'll be done. If you recall from the photo of where the sink used to be on March 9, you'll notice there are no more pipes coming out of the floor save for the washer/dryer hook-ups.

Speaking of shoe moulding, with all the carpet removal, you can guess what the house has none of...that's right, none anywhere. So how much moulding is needed for a 1300 sq ft house? This much:


It's about 200 ft of it, I stained it all yesterday and will varnish it today.

Here is a without moulding/with moulding comparison. The photos only show it covering the mistakes in our edge sanding...which really doesn't do it justice. It completes the room in a really big way. The color is also a little better match than the photos show.



Also, Erika has done a great job with the paint. The bath room has a really nice earth/sky thing going.


Now I just have to move in so I can sit on the can for a while.

More on the electrical outlets

Here is a link to how I replaced all the outlets in the front of the house. It's really as simple as turning off the breaker, pulling the old one out and installing the new one with a grounding wire to the metal box. It's worth noting that if it's a home that's super old (like ours) that you should check every socket with a lamp before you work on it. Don't assume that because the breaker turned off one side of a room it turned off BOTH sides of the room. I almost found that out the hard way. Not cool.

Lots of stuff done

When I last left off, I had one coat of polyurethane down. I have been coating ever since and am pretty much finished. Have a look!



I finished up last night around 10:30pm and then promptly lost an hour of sleep due to daylight savings. Total of 4 coats in each bedroom and 5 coats in the hall, living and dining rooms. Also, in my exhausted state I missed a 3 foot by 5 foot area. I'll fix it later.

Erika starting painting and made some outstanding progress.





She's really pretty good at painting...waaay fewer white patches than if I were doing it.

Unrelated to all these goings-on, this is what the mud room started life as:



Now, there are a few things to take away from this picture. First, the fridge isn't in the kitchen. Second, the carpet is gross. I mean really, really gross. Third, there are bi-fold doors that seperate the kitchen from the mud room (funny rant here, midway down the page). Also, there is a cabinet for you to bang your head on. Furthermore, there is a washer-dryer and nasty old sink on the left (out of the picture, naturally). So, what to do?

Move the fridge to where it should have been in the first place.



This involves re-routing the filtered water hookup, installing a new grounded outlet in the kitchen (more later here) and removing the fridge doors so it can actually fit through the doorways that it wasn't meant to go through.

After that, read a book about tiling, then tear out the carpet and start to lay tile.


Now, get the bi-fold doors and cabinet out and put the sink outside.


Then decide it's not going back in after you break the drain pipe.



I still have to do the tiles around the edges of the room. Then I have to remove all the plumbing for the sink. More here later.

First coat is down!

I put down the first coat of polyurethane on the floor yesterday afternoon. It looks pretty good. I'm excited that it will come pretty close to matching the kitchen, so when you look from the living room through the house, it will be cohesive.

Here are some bad cell phone pictures:




Now I just have to sand it, and then repeat another 3 times.

No more sanding

Well, maybe just a little bit more. Take a look.



As you can see, the light color doesn't clash with the dark trim the way the red color did.

Also, we got welcomed into the neighborhood. This plate was full at one point.



I'm going to bed now and will be asleep before 10pm.

More on making yourself sore

Okay. So like I said, we bought at house with pee-stained carpet. However, there were hardwood floors underneath. So I pulled up all the carpet. That alone was a mega-pain. It covered both the living and dining rooms, as well as the hall...probably 300-350 square feet, probably had between 400-600 staples holding it down, along with loads of carpet grabber boards (basically, paint stirring sticks with 4-5 nails per square inch). 6 hours later, I was admiring some really red, slightly neglected hardwood floors. Now if this were a rental, I'd have left it as it was. But no, I have seen what is possible (below) and I must have it!



The lighter color in the kitchen matches the walnut colored trim soooo much better. So, I read up on DIY floor refinishing. This link and This link had some particularly useful info. One thing that came up a lot was the fear of the drum sander. So I rented an orbital sander instead of the drum sander.



So I sanded and sanded for about 8 hours. I did two bedrooms and the living room, ate through loads of sandpaper and finally said "nuts to this" and went to get the drum sander. DRUM SANDERS ARE MY NEW FAVORITE THING. I put 36 grit sandpaper on and finished the bedroom before Erika was back with lunch. Drum sanders don't kid around...see below.



So what was going to take me 16-20 hours with an orbital sander took me 3 with the drum sander. Like I said, those things are no joke. Pay attention to what you're doing.

So I'll finish sanding tomorrow. I have to do the edging and then Erika and I will start urethaning (is that a word?) asap.

How to make your entire body hurt

Step one: Buy a house with pee-stained carpet:


Step two: Try to make above flooring look like the one below without anyone's help.


Step three: Profit. Wait, no, not profit. Step three is actually immense body aches because I am a pencil-pushing sissy of a desk jockey.

More to come soon.

No more rants

Letting slip with that rant was an error in judgement. Here is my latest and most successful stab at getting a really sweet handling mountain bike.

First some background. A good 60% or more of a rider's mass is on the back wheel. 60% or more of your braking force comes from the front brake (all this assumes seated rider, level ground). I think that last one is the reason why some mountain bikes use larger front rotors, though it seems to come from some fuzzy logic. Larger rotors are good for the following reasons: better heat dispersion (larger rotor area), higher initial bite (greater leverage against the hub), and greater brake force for a given hand effort. Larger rotors are bad for the following reasons: greater weight, higher initial bite (can be difficult to control for novices).

Some more background. I have never owned or even ridden a bike where the natural tendency was for the rear wheel to let go first during a corner (in a car, this is oversteer). I've owned and ridden a couple two three bikes, let me tell you. Every single bike I've ever ridden is an understeering pig with the front wheel letting go long before the rear. Many riders solve this by using a larger front tire (say a 2.5" front vs. a 2.3" rear). This is a good start, but isn't enough. In theory, that difference in contact patch shouldn't make a difference at all if the coefficient of friction is the same for each tire. So what to do!?!

You go here and you purchase one of these soft tires for the front:

and one of these harder tires for the rear:


Durometer is how tires designate coefficient of friction, by the way. Lower is softer, stickier rubber. Higher is harder, less tacky rubber. Maxxis is the only company I know making different durometers available in single ply tires. Of their tires, the High Roller, Minion and Larsen are the only tires I see like this.

This combination allows greater overall traction to the front tire, has numerous benefits and almost no drawbacks. Benefits: greater brake force available, greater cornering force available, more neutral handling (the front wheel still lets go first). Drawbacks: Your front tire will wear more quickly than it used to. I'm guessing it'll last about as long as your rear tire. Now you need that heavier 185 rotor, there will be a slight increase in rolling resistance while climbing (but only on the front wheel).

Seriously, for the mountain bikers out there, if you only learn one thing ever from the internet, it is this. Buy a softer durometer front tire. You'll be faster and have way more fun once you're pointed downhill.

The point of blogs is rants, right?

Above anything else, I'm a bike nerd and mostly, I love mountain biking. Really, I love tearing downhill just fast enough to be scared much of the time...but with enough control that I don't crash. This isn't possible without a machine like a bike. To me the whole point of dealing with an expensive, complex machine like a mountain bike is to have as much fun as possible with the minimum effort.

The point of all that is to give a little background to my rant. This photo bothers me:

It bothers me not because it is pixellated, but because there is a 185mm rotor on the front brake. If you want to be able to zoom in on what I'm talking about, go here. And Trek isn't alone. Specialized has adopted this foolish design as well.

begin rant

So why does that bother me? By increasing rotor size, you haven't increased stopping power.

How so? You have greater leverage to stop the wheel!

True. But, you still can't stop any faster. No one seems to get this, so I'll yell it: BRAKES DON'T STOP THE BIKE, THE TIRES DO.

How so?

Friction. Tires with higher friction will stop a bike (or any vehicle) much faster, because their grip on the ground is much stronger. Remember, even when you're moving along, the contact patch of the tire is stationary at all times.

I see. Go on.

With the puny little tires on this bike you have poor traction. With the increased rotor size you have a grabbier brake. So combining these two results in a bike that snaps into a front tire skid when the brake is applied firmly.

What happens in a front tire skid?

Usually you either put a foot down or you crash.

When am I most likely to apply the brake firmly?

The last time I did it, I was in a corner that tightened up abruptly. I also do it anytime I panic...you probably do it when you panic, too.

When I panic, don't I want to have control over the steering?

Why yes, you do! That is why Anti-Lock brakes exist in cars.

What do I do to solve this problem?
Sticky tire up front or a smaller (160mm) rotor. Either is a fine solution.

end rant