Erika and I had a fun weekend including some wine tasting with Zach, Karen and Melina, an 80’s themed birthday party for Joe, a cold early morning photowalk, the Porsche clutch giving out (again…), a woodworking project and dinner with the Stav’s….

All written in one sentence it seems like a busy weekend but it was actually pretty relaxed.  We met Zach and Karen at Old House Winery and then went on to an old favorite – Prince Michel for some tasty wine and good company. Melina is beautiful and is holding on to those blue eyes!  I joined my photo meetup group for a 0800 walk at Scotts Run Nature Preserve (in McLean), it was very cold but fun. Check out some of my pictures from it here.  Unfortunatly as I left the Home Depot to come home the clutch pedal ‘pin’ gave out and stranded me.  (it is being fixed and should be ready tonight or tomorrow…)  Below are a couple pictures from the wood working project which is a long time idea we had to be able to use the trunk and not always have to clear off the top to get it open.  it needs some tweaking but I’m happy with the overal appearance.

I hope everyone has a good week!

Tony and Erika

Anyone who has followed this site for the past month has seen the process of designing and building the bar, along with several updates… So it is with great pleasure that I announce that the bar itself is about 90% complete and even more important, Erika and I have decided to combine our housewarming with a good old ’stock-the-bar’ party.

So the ‘BARWARMING’ will take place on Saturday, 12 July starting around 5pm.  I’ve sent out an evite but may have missed some important people so email me if you are interested but haven’t yet seen the evite. Please feel free to leave comments with suggestions or requests for the party!

-Tony and Erika

1. Ikea forgot to deliver our shelves and desk at the same time. Their customer service was excellent though and they agreed to lower the delivery fee and guarantee delivery between 6-8pm tomorrow (today’s window was 8am-8pm so thats a huge improvement)

2. Our building, Capitol Hill Tower, has rules prohibiting delivery of furniture or other large items on Sundays. According to the concierge – ‘It’s in the bylaws’, yeah along with about 350 pages of other interesting tidbits which I now understand I need to read more carefully.  So I’m not upset with the concierge though it was too bad she wasn’t willing to bend the rules.  Luckily the delivery driver is a sneaky guy and really wnated to not take the couch back to Ikea and he got me outside away from the concierge and suggested wheeling the couch pieces on dolly’s through the main garage and up through the elevators. Apparantly he knows the parking attendant, long story short we go the couch in and I’m sitting on it now – very comfortable! (it didn’t work perfectly, the elevator opened in the lobby and the concierge got a great view of 3 guys and a couch stuffed in there!)

Here are some pics of the couch in the new place. It is an Ikea ‘Hamra’ style leather sectional and very comfortable and compact, it works even better in the room than we’d hoped. We are planning to add another chair of some sort to the left of it;

Also for your viewing pleasure, pictures of Erika, Lauren and I from the ballgame last night and views of the bedroom and Erika’s bathroom which are getting close to being finished;

The house unpacking is going well, Erika brought over her vintage diner table, chrome with a red stripe… and it looks great in the place. We expected the red to clash with they room but it actually goes quite well.  I can also proudly report that the bar is to the 98% level of completion with Plexiglas inserts, shellacked wood and caulked crevices. There are a number of finishing things to do still but it has alcohol on the shelves and stemware hanging from the ceiling box.

You’ll have to take my word for it though… no pictures just yet.  But just so you get to see at least one new-old pic. For all the VT Corps of Cadets out there, especially those of us from Kilo Battery…. enjoy!

No place is home till there is wireless internet and HDTV… thats a big check mark from CHT #313 thank you very much. In the midst of the moving we had comcast here to install the cable, internet and phone so we are officially ‘moved’! HDTV got going just in time to catch the running of the Belmont, which was filled with anticipointment… yes anticipointment, so hyped up about Big Brown and not only did he not win – it looked like he was barely able to finish. Well at least the horse racing ’season’ is over, now we can all get back to watching NFL mini-camps for potential fantasy impacts.

One of my first observations of the wireless networks in this building is the 100% private-secured networks… impressive and dissapointing, I like to have a fallback if my own is down for a little while. Oh well, at least I have my own. We’ll get some pictures up shortly, Ryan took one really great one of Erika and I earlier that we need to share.

-Tony

Erika and I got alot done this evening and I think we can wrap up the non-trim painting tomorrow or Wednesday. The dining room, living room and kitchen share the main yellow color with a light lime green accent color on the air ducting and throughout the kitchen. The bedroom is bold with ‘winetasting red’ and the room definitly could have used a primer coat which it didn’t get. Oh well. Enjoy!

WALKTHROUGH VIDEO!!!!

Also for an interesting comparison check out the video that Chris, our real estate agent took just before we settled.

-Tony

With a great deal of help from Erika’s parents we have the first coat of paint througout the big room (kitchen-dining-living room), the small hallway and one of the bathrooms…  so far we don’t hate any of the colors and in fact are pretty pleased.

I wood puttied and sanded the lower bar cabinet but didn’t get much further than I was last Tuesday really.  I did buy the overhead stemware racks to mount under the upper box.

So, pictures tomorrow, and more painting!

-Tony

• 2.5 hour home depot run, actually a 2 hr followed by a 30 min run after I realized I’d forgotten a key item
• Removed desk surface (counter top) without damaging said surface
• Broke out existing electrical outlet, added new wire to extend to 2 new outlet boxes, one double switch controlling two hardwired lighting devices. – wiring is incomplete at this point but the path forward is clear.
• Installed 42″x48″ mirror on 1″x2″x44″ firring strips
• Re-installed counter top at 36″ height
• Placed new cabinet with drawer under counter top – not yet tacked into the walls
• Installed 2 overhead xenon lights, removed later in process due to both of them swinging down and smacking me in the head…
• Built overhead 6″ high plywood box – that covers unfinished top of mirror and sprinkler head. It will also be the mounting place for the hanging stemware racks
• Built skeleton of a 2 step alcohol shelf for the counter top. The shelf stretches the full 48″ and is 11″ deep giving it one 7″ and one 4″ shelf.  It will be lit from the inside and have ’step-tops’ made from clear Plexiglas to shine upwards.
• Collapsed in exhaustion.

So it was a productive and tiring day, I can’t wait be done with the project and announce the ‘STOCKING THE BAR’ party that will certainly follow. Stay tuned for some pictures and more updates.  Thanks again to all the help from Ryan!

-Tony