My Little Corner of the World

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Fall time already?

It's really starting to feel more like fall. I noticed it the other day. I walked outside and didn't start sweating right away. haha It's not COLD out, but it's definitely been a lot cooler. I'm kind of excited for fall because I kind of missed it last year, but I'm kind of sad to see summer leaving. Summer and fall are my favorite seasons! I'm dreading winter. Maybe it will be a warm one this year. That would definitely be good for the yogurt business! hehe

D and I went down to Laffy today. The maintenance guy stopped by and fixed a couple things at our apartment. Did some laundry and some more unpacking. Got a modem and finally have our iWe'llnternet hooked up. Ran some errands. We had a buy one, get one free coupon from Chipotle so that's where we ate supper. A burrito and a burrito bowl for under $7! Can't beat that! I was pretty excited to get the coupon in the mail!

We finally made a decision about an architect. Looks like we'll be going w/ someone local instead of the guy from Indy. I think we have our first meeting this Thursday. Still have to choose our contractor. Have been checking out a bunch of equipment online. Trying to buy some things used to save a bit of money. We bought a used walk-in cooler last month. Our next big purchases will hopefully be a 3 compartment sink and an upright freezer. We've found a couple potential items on craigslist. So might go check some of those out this week. They're kind of spread out over Indiana. Hammond, Goshen, and Indy-ish area. lol. We'll see if any of them work out.

Spent the weekend working on the garage floor. Had to fill in cracks, sand the sealant, clean the floor a couple times, and then finally paint. We had planned on painting on Saturday, but some coating hadn't come up properly or something so we cleaned it again. Then we spent all Sunday afternoon painting. D painted and I sprinkled the paint chips and also helped w/ trim. Afterwardds, we jumped in the pool.

Well, here are a few pictures from the past week or two:

Thursday 7/26: We met w/ the health dept. Ate a quick lunch at BK and then met w/ the city inspectors. Busy Day.

The sky looked beautiful. Especially when driving by the wind turbines.

perty!

We were in the car, so not a great shot.

Taken from the driveway at home. The clouds looked amazing!

Beautiful!

What a view! An ocean of clouds!

I think this was Monday 7/30: @ the shop. Met w/ our designer and also an architect

Went to Igloo after our meetings to check out the competition.

This was my first time here, but I wasn't too impressed.

Decor was kind of outdated looking, although I liked that wraparound counter.

They even serve food!

We weren't overly impressed by their custard.

D really liked his smoothie, but it was basically a strawberry banana shake w/ a little bit of slushie mix.

I didn't like my pb cookie dough thick shake. I guess it's a combination of a shake and a blizzard? Wasn't good!

I think this was Wednesday 8/1 or Thursday 8/2: Scrubbing the garage floor. Getting it ready to paint.

I'd never noticed this birds' nest near the garage.

Cute little birdies!

The mama bird was sitting on the garage roof keeping watch. She was chirping pretty loudly when I was near the nest.

awww...

close up..

Another nest, this one's on the front porch. I knew about this one but hadn't really seen the birds close up so decided to investigate.

There is a nest here on this wreath every year!

awww

Sleeping soundly.

checking each other's blood sugar. This is what we do for fun! ;)

I think this was Thursday night 8/2...I made homemade pizzas for supper! One was veggie and the other was hamburger.

Saturday 8/4: We went to Schmidty's for dinner. Mom, Dad, and Jennica had been there once before. It was D and my first time there. I loved their breadsticks and salad bar!

Chicken alfredo pizza w/ broccoli and mushrooms.

Their pizza was pretty good. I would definitely choose this place over Pizza Hut any day! :)

Okay, well I wrote this entry last night but am just now finishing up the captions for the photos. Happy Tuesday! :)

Thursday, August 2, 2012

It's a slow process...

Realized that I hadn't written in a week, so thought I would type out a quick entry. It's a pretty boring day--working on laundry, made a turkey meatloaf. Made a few calls about blueprints, did a bunch of research on website designs--found some designs that I may like and emailed them to Kelly--our web designer. D's out working in the garage. We're in the middle of trying to paint the floor out there. Yesterday, we moved everything out--so the entire garage is empty. Scrubbed the floor down last night. D filled in some cracks this am and is prepping it so that we can put the first coat on. Since it already has a sealant on it, we may have to sand the entire surface. Ugh.

This week feels almost like a complete waste in regards to the yogurt shop. I am getting very frustrated. We've spent so much time with so many departments, trying to figure out requirements, etc. Everyone just gives us the run around, no one can give us direct answers, we have to call so many different departments. Augh! Last Saturday and Sunday, we spent most of our time trying to figure out our final layout design. We thought we had things pretty much finalized, but then our designer suggested a new layout at the last minute, which kind of threw us off course. After playing around w/ different concepts all weekend, we finally decided that we liked our original idea the best. Also, finalized our logo! Was learning all about vector images. Couldn't open the file from the designer because we don't have adobe illustrator. So that was a long process.

Finally, got bids in from a couple contractors and they are NOT cheap. Looks like we *could* be our own general contractor, but I don't know if that's such a good idea. Our building permit will have to go through state, but supposedly we don't necessarily need to hire an architect for the blueprints since it's a remodel under 30,000 sq. cubic feet. However, the building inspectors acted like we would need one. I think they just didn't want to bother with us. It's easier to say, oh, just hire a contractor. But have you priced out contractors? The price is RIDICULOUS! I could understand hiring one if we were actually building a new place, but this is just a simple remodel. However, we'll be required to submit a few different blueprints-- 1)detailed floor plan 2)plumbing blueprints 3)electrical blueprints 4)mechanical blueprints 5) possibly blueprint w/ fire sprinklers ( if we have to move any of them) So I suppose I should contact a water sprinkler contractor and get some sort of bid on that. Oh my goodness, I just want to pull out my hair! Or maybe pound a wall!

Our designer can do a detailed floor plan, but I don't know if she could do the plumbing, electrical, mechanical. We met w/ an architect /engineer on Monday and still haven't gotten a bid from him yet. Met w/ one on Tuesday, got his bid yesterday-- way too expensive. Yesterday we contacted an architect that we found online. He's about 1.5 hours from laffy. Sounds like he's the cheapest so far. We shall see. We just want to get it right, because if we don't do things correctly the first time then it will tie things up and will push back the build out. We DID find out that we can get a demolition license without having our building permit yet. So we'll be able to hopefully do some demo work while waiting for the permit to go through. Can tear things down, just can't insert anything new.

Okay, well I've been rambling. I bet you're sick of hearing about all of this.