Home Improvement 101

Over the summer I've been slowly working on our fireplace. This winter past we bought a gas insert that we really enjoy, but have wanted to replace the eyesore of full-wall-length red and blonde brick that surrounded our fireplace.

Earlier this summer I started demo on the wall. I broke the bricks by hand with a 3-inch brick chisel and hammer, leaving only the center portion of the brick wall. I recommend renting a concrete saw if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. Anyway, after removing the brick I did a ton of wall repair and then began to frame the new hearth.

Leaving the bricks around the fireplace allowed me to reuse them as a surround, rather than having to reframe and cement board the new fireplace. When it came time to lay the new stonework, the old bricks worked well to support the thinset and stone paneling.

It's a nice product we put up: real stone cut and mortared together in 6" x 24" panels. At 1" thick they cut like butter with a tile saw, but took some work to hold together. Here's a shot of the finished product:

Next up is a set of homemade bookends over the new sheetrock. I've got plans for surround sound and my TV is already wall-mounted and ready to fold into the bookshelves and out of sight for all those fancy dinner parties Carrie and I like to throw.

Anyway, always looking for a set of extra hands if anyone wants to come out and lend some support! Hope all is well. I'll post some family pictures shortly...

Snowbowl Closing Day

Jacob and his buddy Charlie and I headed up for the closing ceremonies at Snowbowl today. The mountain stayed open a week later than every other slope in the state because of all the snow here, so we thought we'd go up and enjoy the warm temps, sunshine, skiing, and food. A lot of people dress up on the last day. It's really a big party.

Old school Larry Bird made my day:

Bird in the background, only slightly upstaged by the dude sporting the awesome tiger head jacket on far left.

Jacob and Charlie, being dorks.

A giant Beaver.

 Party scene.

Peace. Till next year Snowbowl.

Quick Trip to Bend

Carrie and the kids are on spring break this week, so we drove west and spent a long weekend in Bend, Oregon, with aunt Annie. I did a horrible job taking photos, so there's not much to look at here, but believe me we had a lot of fun in Bend.

Jacob had the chance to high-stick some trout streams, without much luck. The water was high and fast and not easy to fish.

Annie was asking the big questions about life. No answers were forthcoming.

We went to a trout hatchery, just to drive Jacob nuts. This picture doesn't do the place justice. It was a huge fish farm and the trout were big and aggressive. They had fish food available - like little kibbles or whatever - for the kids to throw to the trout, and the water would erupt with fish everytime the food hit the water. It was quite a site.

Anyway, sorry not many pictures, not even one of the family. It was a quick weekend, book-ended by a 600 mile drive each way.

Sweatland Weekend. Bonus Pic of Baby Jayce at End.

Pretty busy weekend for the family. Besides that whole basketball thing I don't want to think about, we got up to Snowbowl on Saturday for what may be our last family ski day of the season. It's always disappointing when ski season ends, because here in Missoula that just means it's going to be wet and muddy until mid-June. But Saturday was great, and the sun and snow put a smile on Carrie's face.

Jacob and buddy Charlie were having a good time too.

I think that mostly Annie skis for the pay-off at the end of the day, which usually involves soda and pizza.

Sunday was a pretty full day too. We got the kids out to enjoy a little more sunshine and took a spin on the carousel.

We're also repainting our living room, for the third time, so that sucked up a lot of my weekend. Here's the sample colors. Carrie insists they're all different. I'm pretty sure they're not.

So she picked the one that's 'bluish-grey.' I'm pretty sure it's bluish-blue.

The funny thing is now none of the other paint colors in the house match the new living room color. I mean funny in a lots-of-repainting-to-do kind of way. Well it's going to have to wait, because this coming weekend I'm driving the family out to Bend, Oregon, for spring break and to see aunt Annie at her new home.

Oh yeah, here's a picture of Sandy's newest family addition, Jayce Connor (with big brother Jonah), that I promised a few weeks ago. Enjoy.

Blizzard!

We're getting enormous amounts of snow. It's been snowing for 3 straight weeks, and now we're experiencing our first blizzard of the winter. Everything's cancelled - work, school, basketball. People are X-country skiing to town!

You can't tell from the photo below but it's blowing snow like crazy, gusts over 30 mph, snowdrifts covering all the roads, visibility limited to 100 feet. In the picture below, that's about the three feet mark on my shovel along the driveway.

Here's what used to be our patio:

It's a high clearance, four-wheel drive, snow tire type of vehicle day. Lucky I've got just that, so we ran downtown to see the general traffic mayhem and let Annie stick her nose into a cup of cocoa:

The benefit of all this snow is that we have great snowpack in the mountains, so i doubt we even see a spark during fire season this year. Plus, the skiing is epic right now.

Welcome to the world, Jayce!

Congratulations to Sandy and Terry and Happy Birthday! to Jayce Connor Foltz, 8 pounds 6 ounces. Born February 19, 2014. Photos forthcoming...

Whose Good Looking Thumb is That?

That's my good looking thumb, measuring the space for a gas-insert fireplace. We've got a good old fashioned wood fireplace, but the EPA won't let us burn wood here. So we're spending Jacob's college fund (he's not going anyway) on a gas fireplace!

Honestly, it's finally gotten cold here. Like negative-teens-in-the-morning cold. Wind chills of negative 30. Good stuff. So cold that the boiler/heater at Carrie's elementary school blew a gasket. We eat it up...when we're outside and skiing.

But when we're inside, man, our house is cold! So as we shovel our driveway twice a day as the snow piles up, think warm thoughts, like this:

Selfie!