Activesteve.com is Born…

Well, keeping the ball rolling, Jody and I completed Phase II of our basement renovation projects. Media Cabinet, check. Painting, check. With the carpet on its’ way, we had to get cracking on working on the next part of the project. We wanted to make sure we got all the ceiling, walls, doors and trim painted before the new carpet went down, that way we didn’t have to be nearly as careful. As a result we started the prep work on Friday night, and worked through till Sunday to get it all done. Never one to do things half-assed, we started off by filling in all the old holes and sanding everything smooth so that the paint would stick well. We also taped off the critical things, so as not to bung things up too badly during the paint process.

Then, we hit all the surfaces with two coats of our paint (Behr Premium Plus – color Raffia Cream for those interested). One might have been okay, but two coats on the walls just made it that much nicer, and presumably more durable. After that, the baseboards and doors were all given two coats of glossy white paint. The end result is quite stunning, and should be even better once the new carpet goes in.

Hello folks, and thanks for popping by for another chapter in the happenings of ActiveSteve. The contents of this little blog post may not be the most riveting that I’ve ever written, but it was certainly and exciting moment for Ms. ActiveSteve and I 🙂 People, I’m talking about none other than a new furnace, and a new air conditioner! Yes, it definitely would appear to not be the right time of year for a new air conditioner, but if you’ll bear with me, I’ll explain it all out to you fine folks, and I’m sure you’ll see that it was a good time to do this. For those of you who have a penchant for the gory details, and particularly in pictures, click yourself over to Flickr to see the set of pictures that we uploaded. This will be the first set of pictures in the start of a new collection… our 2009 renovations! Yup, this is the first step in a mini-renovation which will see us giving the kitchen a facelift. Read on for a bit more about the process and where we’re going with this.

Welcome back to the ongoing tales of excitement from my life! It’s been a few weeks since my last post, and I know that I’m due, as usual. Sorry to keep you all waiting, but it’s been an exciting few weeks for us over here. I’ve actually been doing some travel for work, as well as having a nice long Easter weekend. Instead of going anywhere far away, Jody and I opted to stay in the area, and do touristy things in our own neck of the woods. The picture you see to your right shows you one such little event. This shot is from the famous Diefenbunker, , Canada’s cold war museum. I’ve been wanting to go there for quite some time, and Easter Friday was finally the time for it. We actually had a 2-for-1 coupon from the Ottawa entertainment book, which made it even more of a reason to head out. If you don’t know what the Diefenbunker is all about, head over to the website and read up on it. Or read on for a bit more from me.

I just had a look at the last time I posted anything on the bar project, and realized that I’m way overdue. Last posting was January 16th!! My apologies to all my loyal readers 🙂 Although things haven’t been steady, I have definitely made a lot of progress since the last update. I had to first go out and buy a router table, and then put it to extremely good use by routing all of the various pieces for the bar. Who knew cabinet making was such labour-intensive work? I can definitely appreciate why custom-built cabinets cost big bucks. Every step along the way has unique challenges. In the picture to the right, I’m holding up a couple of my favourite examples of routed wood. These pieces are for the cabinet doors. I’m not even sure of what all the steps were called for those pieces. I think I did some rabbets, mortises, tenons, and even some radiusing. Of course, when it’s all done, to you, it’ll just look like a cabinet door. To me however, I’ll remember that at the onset, it was a rough piece of 1×6 Clear Red Oak, 8 feet long, and some 1/4″ Oak plywood! There’s a certain satisfaction in doing something all by myself from scratch. It can be pretty relaxing.