Activesteve.com is Born…

Whew! Well, this post was meant to be written on Sunday, while all the events were ‘fresh’ in my mind, but best laid plans and all that ended up delaying it by a few days. You see, Sunday was a bit abbreviated in my mind, as I slept soundly quite late, then lacked any sort of energy to write coherent sentences on my computer. So what exactly caused such a derailing of my blogging ability? Well, the Order of Good Beer of course 🙂 And the logical second question you will no doubt be asking yourself is just what is the Order of Good Beer? Well, I’m glad you asked, for the tale contained in the following few paragraphs should be able to clarify that for you, as well as fully explain why we decided to throw a good old fashioned barn burner at our place on Saturday night. I had great plans of documenting the entire evening in photos as well, but that turned out to backfire too, and I ended up with only a couple clumps of photos. Some of very early in the evening, then a whole bunch when we devolved into crazed karaoke singers. You can view them all if you dare on the folder on flickr that I put up. Once you’re done, click back to here and read the rest of the story.

Huzzah, I’m finally at the early build stages! As you can see by the picture to the right, the top and bottom frames of the bar have been put together and mounted on the front panels (in this picture, the bar is laying on its eventual front). Does it look like a bar yet? Not likely. I have a few concerns at this stage already. On the left, you see the wide bottom frame. A piece of 1/4 oak plywood goes on top of that frame to form the base of the liquor cabinet portion. I’m worried that the weight of bottles will be too much for the 1/4 wood. I think I’ll upgrade the base with an extra 2×4 stud piece that I’ve got left over. I should have attached it before the frame was attached, but such is life. My second concern is the side frame. There are no 2×4’s for support on the frame. Instead, the bar will rely on the 3/4″ oak plywood sides (not seen here yet) to bear the weight. I would have thought that building a full 2×4 frame would be more solid. I’m not going to bother changing anything on that though, since I’m sure the designer has had plenty of successful builds to his credit.

Well, as a reward for going away to New York City for the weekend, we let someone come over to our house and install our new carpeting on Monday in the basement! Finally, what I thought would be a day off. Well, the carpet has been laid out, and it looks fantastic. They did a good job (Giant Carpet). The new carpet is much lighter, so it doesn’t show Jonah’s hair as much, but will be prone to show dirt. Oops, can’t win them all I guess. Of course, now that the carpet is done, I have to work on putting quarter round trim along all the walls at the floor. Pain in the ass. I also started wiring the speakers up. They have been mouted on the walls, and I bought a fish tape to get the speaker wire through the walls / ducts to conceal the wiring. Again, major pain in the ass! But worth the effort, as there are no wires criss-crossing the floor. We’ve also got word back that the new couch may be in by Christmas, so now I’m gonna have to hurry up and get the bar built. That way, the whole basement would be done for Christmas! Yay! Hopefully I’ll have the whole home theatre set up soon, and I’ll post pics of what that looks like. Next purchase for me: wireless controller for the xbox. I’m also hoping I win a 52″ Toshiba HD TV at work. I bought 3 tickets for $10, with proceeds going to the United Way. Boy, would that TV look good in my new basement!

Alrighty then, second bar update in under an hour. How’s that for service! Lucky for me tonight is a slow training night. Just working out on the ole Bowflex, which gives me time to type between sets. That’s basically the reason I’ve been a slacker on updates as well as the bar building itself. I’m basically putting in lots of training time. Evenings and weekends. Running, swimming, spinning, wave-running, working out… Not to mention the snowshoe races, Winterlude duathlon, and upcoming winter adventure race! When I’m done, I’m usually pooped, and just feel like veggin’. Oh yeah, and add to that the intense Olympic fever I’ve got, forcing me to watch extra TV! Looks like I’m getting a bit off topic, doesn’t it? Sorry. Just felt I should explain myself. That and tonight I seem to have a little extra time to type away here. It’s nice for a change. Anyway, on with my story…