Scoot

This may or may not be the use that James the architect envisioned for the wide, concrete floored hallway, but either way, it sure is awesome! Erin is zipping along on her Xootr scooter. Ronan is now seriously fast and agile on his LikeABike.

Water permeable threshold

This isn't good. There's some rare rain here in L.A., and we're learning interesting things about the house. Among them, this door frame isn't stopping the flow of water.

Another surprising one, when our awesome (and by "awesome" I mean "lousy") plumber installed the outdoor GFI plug to provide power to the water heater he didn't do enough to water proof it. It blew its fuse last night and then refused to be reset. Probably just a faulty piece of equipment, but still, shouldn't an outdoor water heater be able to resist water?

Elusive low voltage box

My fisheye photos were no help in locating the box in the guest bedroom for cable, CAT5, and phone lines. So, Angel started drilling holes. And continued drilling holes. And cut a rectangle out for good measure. Nothing. Aren't there line tracing gizmos for this sort of thing?

Measure once, mount vanity to wall twice

Thus begins the cataloging of the things that need fixing. The punchlist, as it is called in the house construction business.

This was a case of our plumber going ahead and using the pipe he had incorrectly placed as relative center for the vanity, rather than measuring the space.

Also, this is the wrong mirror; it needs to be swapped with the master bath mirror.

Zounds

Ronan's birthday party was a blast this past Friday. I wanted to give thanks to J.D. for getting the driveway cleared off in time for the party. This is the second time we've asked him to get tons of stuff finished in preparation for one of the kids' birthdays, and he's really come through for us in spades.

Wind power

This thing screams "do-it-yourself project" to me. This is a 2kw system, for around $3k, but I bet I could get a little bit of energy for free out of the whirly vents on the house and garage roofs (rooves?).

Guest closet shelving

We took advantage of a sale on shelving this weekend and decked out the guest closet with Elfa shelving. What a huge difference it makes! We were accustomed to having a single wooden bar running across the whole closet in our old bedroom, which, in hindsight, stinks.

The fact that they make it in "platinum" now, as an alternative to the traditional white wire shelving makes a big difference. It doesn't hearken back to the laundry rooms of our childhood homes quite so much.

(This is a stock photo from the Container Store website, and not our actual closet.)