Kitchen Update Part 7 - Progress on the left wall

The left wall is where the new fridge, freezer and pantry will go.

Kitchen Update Part 6 - Why a professional drywaller is better than Tbone

Check out the quality job done by the dry waller...

Kitchen Update part 5

Progress being made on the upgrade. Framed out the wall, added support for the hood, and the drywaller is working his magic.

Kitchen Upgrade - Part 4

Here are some drawings of the kitchen upgrade. Compare them to this post for the before look.
Before pictures

Nike + Ipod

Vinh's raving about the Nike + Ipod kit convinced me to get one too. I used the 30% off at Champs coupon when I was visiting my bro in Dallas. Ended up getting the kit for $20! Since I have not done much running, I decided to try the kit out when I was cutting the grass on Sunday to track the distance traveled: I traveled 1.2 miles in 55 minutes of mowing. :-)

Kitchen Upgrade Part 3

Prepping the house for the construction. We put up plastic sheets to enclose the work area and covered the furniture to help minimize dusting. We also covered the hardwood floors with thick paper to help protect them.

Kitchen Upgrade Part 2

We removed the fridge and some cabinets on Friday.

Kitchen Upgrade Project Part 1

We are in the process of upgrading the kitchen. Here are some pictures of the current kitchen.

SONOS in the house

I switched from the Roku Soundbridge (for whole house audio) via a Panasonic receiver and the Slim Devices Squeezebox 3 (for the Home theater/2 channel set-up) to the SONOS system. Selling the SB3s was very easy (sold them in about 4 days) and that covered most of the cost of the SONOS system. The SONOS system is great for setting up a wholehouse audio system. The system consists of 3 modules: the ZP-80 zoneplayer which feeds a source system (in my case the P1A and Lite Audio DAC-60 to the Emotiva Pre/Pro and amp), the ZP-100 which has it own built-in amp so you can just connect it to speakers (in my case the in-wall speakers in the dining room/family room area), and the CR-100 which is the remote control with LCD display. One of the Zone players has to be connected via ethernet your network. It thens sets up a MESH wireless network so all the other players and the controllers connect to it. The controller can control any of the zone players without the need for line of sight. Last, it does all the stuff you would expect a network music player to do (plays music off your server (Flac files for me), plays internet radio, and if you wish can play premium subscription based music services too like Sirius, rhapsody etc).

Resealed Driveway

Asphalt driveways are nice in that they are cheaper to construct vs. a concrete driveway. However, they do require more maintenance to fill in cracks and to reseal. Our driveway is till in very good shape, but I have spend several weekends filling in cracks. I was ready to seal the driveway myself when Linda convinced me to hire it out. This was a good move cause the total area to be sealed is over 6000 sq ft.

The before picture shows the gray surface of the asphalt -- a sure sign that it needs to be sealed. The after picture is the nice black surface.