All About Ben (and Leah)

Summer

I love summer. Sure it is 100 today but the evenings are so pleasant here in Denver. Our garden is starting to take off. I think I waited too long on a lot of the plants, so I’m anxious to see how it turns out.

I had a great time at my parents cabin this weekend. Picture from the lake included.

This post was sent from my phone. So we will see how it turns out!

My New Phone

My New Phone

http://now.sprint.com/evo/

This will be my new phone, when it finally comes out on June 4th!  I think everyone I know is sick of my current phone, probably more than I am.  Some of the buttons stopped working, sometimes the speaker stops working so I can’t hear people on the phone and it currently takes 30 seconds to switch from one thing to another.

Which is why I’m excited for a new phone.  Why not an iPhone?  Well I’ve seen first hand how much AT&T sucks with Leah’s phone and I don’t have an interest in having those same problems.  I also don’t like how Apple has created such a closed system.  So that is why I’m going with an Android phone!

Raiding Eternity

http://gizmodo.com/5491404/raiding-eternity

Touching article from Gizmodo.  It reminded me that I needed to update this blog.  Life always seems to be too busy.

We Need Snow

It has been awhile since my last post.  Sorry about that and I promise to get some interesting stuff put up soon.  I feel like an entire 6 months just disappeared.

So rather than a big meaningful post I thought I would write about snow.  The resorts along I70 really need a bunch of it and soon!  DMS and Ryan are coming out soon and we need a much better week than last year.  So if anyone knows a snow dance let me know.  I will attempt just about anything at this point.

Go snow!

Updates to the House

Well we’ve been in the house for a little over two months now.  We’ve already had some work done on the house, besides the floors.  We’re also planning the next couple of projects.  I’m looking forward to those projects quite a bit.

Electrical Work

During the inspection process it was noted that our panel was an extremely dangerous panel from back in the 50′s and 60′s.  If you google Federal Pacific you can find all kinds of fun stories about it.  Here is one link.  So we needed to have that replaced to make sure our house doesn’t burn down.  The rough cost to do that is $1400.  We tried to have the seller fix that problem but he felt he had given us enough already.

So it was up to us to find an electrician.  So I used Angie’s List to find one.  We decided to use Sundog Electric and we couldn’t be more happy with our decision.  They did a great job with the panel and we decided to have them put boxes in for ceiling fans and do some other misc work.  When they first came out they were getting a bush out of the way so they could work outside and all of a sudden a bunch of bees started flying around.  It turns out we had a huge bees nest in the eaves of our house.  So I had to get some bee killer and they rescheduled for another day.  When they came back they were able to install the new panel but ran out of time for the fans and other stuff.  So they came back and got everything taken care of this Wednesday.  Now I’m, slowly, putting up the fans.  I can say without a doubt that buying the cheap fans is a PITA.  They take so much more work at assemble and put up.  It is worth the extra money for the nice ones.  We also now have new outlets in different locations within the house.  The old ones were the crappy two-prong kind.

Landscaping

Patio Location

For now our primary landscaping focus will be in the backyard.  The thing we’re the most excited about is putting in a patio along the house.  We’re thinking of just using poured concrete because it is cheaper than other options.  Although I have heard some good things about stamped concrete.  So we might price that out.  We also want to have a fireplace built into one corner of the patio.  It would be wood burning (gas is weak).  We’re going to have to talk with the contractors when we’re getting quotes to figure out how best to do that.  When they put the new patio in they would also be fixing the nasty grading problem we have near the house, between the two doors.

Potential Garden Location

Crappy Old Flower Bed

Our other project is to begin putting in gardening space in the backyard.  I had grand ambitions of doing a ton if it at once but I came to my senses.  I want to do it right and have a nice looking raised bed made with timbers.  The cost and effort of doing all the space at once like that was a little overwhelming.  So I think we’re going to do one bed across the back fence for now and use it for veggies.  Somewhere between 16 and 24ft long and 4 feet wide.  As you can see in the pictures above.  There is some work to be done first.  I’ve taken out the clothes line and the pole closest to the fence.  I removed the bricks from that horrible constructed flower box or whatever it was.  I pulled a bunch of bushes and weeds from the left side of the garden in back.  Still need to remove that sidewalk.  Then of course comes the part of putting in the actual garden bed.

Eventually we want to make a bigger flower bed around the tree.  Not much grass can grow there so we will put in shade plants.  The current thing they built looks even worse than the ugly flower bed thing I already took out of the corner.  We also want to have another big garden bed along the fence on the left side of the yard.  We’re hoping that most of that bed would also be veggies.  We also want to fix up the flower bed along the back fence on the right side of the yard.  It wouldn’t move away from the fence.  We would probably just improve what is there.  We want to make sure we leave a nice section of grass.  That area off to the right  seems to have the best grass so we will leave that alone.

Ah the joys of being home owners! We are actually looking forward to doing a lot of this stuff.  It will make it feel more like home.  Just beware, we might sucker you into helping….  I will post some Google Sketchup’s that I made of the yard and the garden area sometime in the near future.

Ben

New Gallery

My picture gallery is back!  My host said my old one was taking up too much space so I had to shut it down.  This new one doesn’t use quite as many files.  It is a very simple program and I like that.  It has a lot less going on so the average user can understand it.

Enjoy!

http://benroscoe.com/zenphoto/

Gallery Down

My gallery is down right now.  It was taking up too much space on my server.  I’m working on a new version.

Our New House

View of the front of our house

We finally closed on our house!  It is located in Broomfield in a neighborhood called Broomfield Heights.  We took a lot of pictures with our cool new camera.  In fact there are so many pictures the gallery needs a little explaining.  First to get there just click the picture above.  Once you’re there you will see the first 18 items are albums, there are also a few misc pictures near the bottom.  You will find quite a few pictures under each album.  Feel free to look around.    Don’t forget you can always try the ‘View Slideshow’ option.  I will warn you that it will be very slow unless you have a good internet connection.  The pictures are quite large.

The whole process of looking at houses, putting in an offer and going through all the steps  felt like it took forever.  Now we’re finally able to settle in… or we could go in one hour after taking possession and rip up all the carpets!

View the Demo pics

That’s right we were in there taking out the carpets covering the living room, dining room, master bedroom and 2nd bedroom.  We started around 1:30 or 2 and got done around midnight!  Pretty much everything was sore (hands, legs, back, knees, etc).  It turns out there is a lot more work involved in taking up carpet when you care about what is under the floor.  The results speak for themselves (below).  Even though the finish had yellowed over the years it looked so much better than the carpet.  Of course we couldn’t just leave it there.  We then had the floors sanded down and refinished.  We don’t have pictures yet but we will.  The major problem with the floor was in the master bedroom.  Originally there were three bedrooms on the top floor.  At some point they decided to take out a wall and make a much larger master.  When they did that they never bothered to repair the floor.  We thought it would be a major issue but the guys doing the floor said they could make it look like new for fairly cheap.  So we took them up on the offer.  You probably wouldn’t know it was there if weren’t told about it.  We are really excited to be moving our stuff in there very soon.  We will have more pictures of the refinished floors and more pictures after stuff is in the house.

So now all that is left is for you to come visit us!  Book now, our summer is filling up…

Before (click bigger)

After(click bigger)

Problem(click bigger)

Housing Update

This is the outside of our new house.

After several months of searching we’ve finally found a house!  I won’t post a link to it quite yet, don’t wanna jinx it.  We have to get through closing first.  I did include a picture.  We are really excited to have a place of our own.  We’re sick of the apartment life.

It has hardwood floors but they are stuck under carpet right now.  So before we actually move much into the house we plan to have the carpet removed and the floors refinshed, if needed.  Right now it looks like a grandma’s house.  Which it was.  She lived there from the day it was built in 1958.  We’re lucky because everything was very well taken care of inside and out.  The only major repair that needs to be done is taking out the electrical boxes and replacing it with a much safer one.  The rest of the work is just stuff we would like to do to make it feel more like home.  Things like taking down wall paper, the wood floors, new window coverings,  adding a deck(s), etc.

Of course it does mean we will have lots of house work to do this summer.  I’m looking forward to it.  I enjoy doing little (or big) projects around the house.  It also means we will probably need to invest in at least a few new tools .

House Hunting

We recently started looking for a house out here in Colorado.  It could be quick or it could drag on forever.  Hopefully we will get it wrapped up quickly though.  So far we are looking in the Lafayette/Louisville area.  This is close to work and other people we know.  The houses are a bit older (older than 1995) which we really like.

On a random note, it is Febraury 3rd and it is 60+ degrees outside.  I am really starting to like the weather here