Day 7: Are We Done Yet? Nope...

Slate is really heavy. Pretty, but heavy. I no longer need a gym membership. My guns are officially primed and pumped from moving these things around!

Laying it out.


Adhesive is down and so are the tiles ... now I have to wait 24-hours to grout it!

The After ... Finally

It has been over 2.5 years since I have completed my renovation and I never posted "the after" photos ... Well without further delay ...

Here's the before:

And the much anticipated after:




Next, I'm going to tile a backsplash to add a little color to the kitchen area.

Maybe This Explains Why My HDTV Signal Is Spotty ...

I was looking for some fodder to reference for a work blog and in my search came across this article: Comcast Degrades HD Quality To Make Room For More Channels

It appears that Comcast is compressing some of my favorite HD channels, thus lowering the quality of the picture. When I had the cable guy over last year to hook up the HD DVR box, I immediately noticed the picture looked pixelated (compression artifacts, "tiling" or big blocks as they are often referred to in troubleshooting guides). The orginal installer said it was because I had an RG-5 coaxial cable leading into my condo from the main building "smartbox."  He said that the cable would need to be replaced with a RG-6 to get a perfect picture. Well, a couple of installers later, we installed an RG-6 just to test is out, and the picture still didn't look perfect. I was given a thousand excuses why the picture still wasn't perfect by multiple comcast installers:

• "The signal is too strong"
  
• "The signal is too weak"
  
• "It's your TV"
  
• "It's the HD box"
  

It was a frustrating process going through all of this, but one by one I was able to troubleshoot all of these theories:

• "The signal is too strong": I added a load resistor.
  
• "The signal is too weak": I added a signal booster.
  
• "It's the HD Box": I had a new box swapped out.
  
• "It's your TV": This one is my favorite ... A $4k TV that doesn't know how to accurately decrypt and HD signal? Not likely. Since this is Sony's flagship LCD and received top ratings from multiple home theater publications, I knew this was bull snot.
  

This article finally explains what the true problem is. The only option I have is to go with Verizon Fios (Fibre Optic lines). I hear the picture is stellar from one of my friends who does high-end home theater installations. Unfortunately, I won't be able to take advantage of this solution until my Comcast contract runs out (I signed one of those two-year contracts with the intention of saving money over time ... harumph ...)

 

Update

People keep asking me, "How's the condo renovation coming along?"

Well, not too quickly. The last month, every single weekend I have been out of town. To make matters even slower, I began doing some consultant work for a startup downtown.

As you can imagine, no real progress has been made. I still need to finish some detail work on the flooring, build and install all of the base cabinents in the kitchen, schedule the granite counter tops to be installed, and finish painting my bedroom.

Stay tuned.

Paint, Lights and Splinters

It's been too long since I made a post. As a way of making it up to you, my faithful reader, I have a bunch of progress photos:

Suspension lights in the living room (notice the new paint and the TV hung on the wall (thanks Bill!)








The ultra formal dining room ... I had a lot of color choices. I opted for a maroonish-red.




Check out that flooring! I installed it myself. The Porter Cable Brad Nailer is my favorite powertool. I love the "fa-tunk!" sound it makes every time I pull the trigger. It took me two straight days to lay the flooring in the kitchen, livingroom and dining area. Tomorrow and Sunday I will finish up in the bedroom and closets.





Appliances arrive this Sunday. Next Saturday the sofa, ottomans, etc will come.

What is Hammer & A Credit Card All About?

This blog is intended for family and friends to keep up on the latest renovations in my condominium. If you ended up here randomly, feel free to poke around and leave a comment or two.

So how did I come up with the name for this blog? Well, there was a long list, but I figured "Hammer & A Credit Card" best reflects the reality of my new homeowner status. I mean, those are pretty much the only two tools I have as I take on the renovation of my condo. It's a fierce combination actually.

Here are some other names that didn't make the cut:

• spackleandpaint
• paintandnails
• allnaileddown
• diycondo
• extremecondo
• condomakeover
• hammerandpaint
• retrovation
• throwoutthelinoleum
• throwoutthatshagcarpet
• deathtodenpaneling
• allutlitiesincluded

In future posts I will probably be abusing my Flickr account to upload photos of the transformation. Until next time ...