Kalamaf Drackonsbane » Home

Argh! Floor Flood!

kalamaf — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 02:59:29 +0000

We had a pretty bad rain storm about a week ago and when I got up in the morning I was greeted by a huge puddle of water in the dining room floor. Great! It tends to happen when the wind blows from the East during a rain, but this time was much worse than usual. Really gotta get off my lazy ass and get some door hardware to fix the weather strip at the bottom of the door, I hope that’s all it needs, I can’t see anywhere else that the water could be getting in from.

High Power Bill

kalamaf — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:13:23 +0000

Just got my worst power bill of the year, the Feb. bill is always the highest, just about $700 for the last 2 months of electricity. Time to start cutting corners again, I can’t imagine how but we’ve apparently used quite a bit more on average than during the same period last year. Maybe the weather has been colder this year than last, I can’t really remember. Lately I’ve been keeping the living room at 15 when I’m just in there by myself playing games, and I should probably get a heated blanket to hide under so I can keep the room even cooler, that would probably do for saving a bit of coin.

We’ve also been considering getting one of those infra-red furnaces to put in the basement, they’re supposed to be pretty cheap to run and if the basement is kept warmer for cheaper it should make the whole house easier to heat in general. At $500 though it would take a number of years to recoup the cost in power savings, so we’re still on the fence about that purchase.

New TV needs New Stand

kalamaf — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:15:00 +0000

The wife rolls her eyes when I go moving things around in the living room, but with this new TV I want to get a new stand so I can get rid of this big honking entertainment unit that surrounded the old TV. Good thing I don’t have rheumatoid arthritis or anything cause moving all this crap around is hard work. The stuff is large and fairly heavy, but a nice TV stand with 6 compartments would be a perfect replacement and make the room look so much better.

New Surround System

kalamaf — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:42:36 +0000

To go along with my new TV (some day, if it ever shows up, damn you Futureshop!) I had a chance to pick up a Bravia 5.1 system. 850 watts, smaller speakers than my current setup but damn did it sound nice. And it’ll take up less room, especially the sub which is about half the size of my current one and doesn’t need to be plugged into the wall for power. If the wife keeps rolling her eyes everytime I rearrange the living room she’s gonna need some serious wrinkle serum for her forehead! The only downside with this type of surround system is that it only has a single optical input, but since the TV has several inputs and most of my stuff will be connected by HDMI it’ll be ok. The TV will take whatever sound I plug into it and send it all out through it’s single optical output, so all in all I think this new setup will be perfect. It also comes with an auto-calibration mic that will configure itself for optimum sound, can’t wait to try that out.

New TV Stand

kalamaf — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:12:26 +0000

So I did a bit of shopping around and I’ve found a TV stand I like. It’s more than I was planning to spend, even though it’s currently half price. These things have gotten expensive over the last few years! It’s pretty slick looking though with glass shelves, metal posts and a mounting bracket at the back so I don’t have to worry about the TV getting bumped and falling face first onto the floor. Having a 6 year old in the house makes for worrying times when it comes to new electronics. She’s a good kid though, but accidents can and do happen!

Game Room

kalamaf — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:00:58 +0000

I’ve been working on my basement plans a bit more this week, trying to fit in a game room. Nope, not enough gaming going on in the house already, I need a good space to put in something bigger like a pool table or ping pong tables. Probably pool, it’s a lot more fun and I haven’t played ping pong since high school. There’d be room for a dart board too since they just hang on the wall, but I need a big plain piece of wood behind it because frankly I suck at darts and have been known to completely miss the board quite often.

Basement Renovations soon!

kalamaf — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:44:36 +0000

Going on 5 years now since we moved into this house, and the basement is still just a huge concrete room like the day we moved in. It’s almost time to get started on that and we have some basic plans sketched out. It will mostly be turned into a large rec-room, a laundry room, a work room and maybe a small office. A bathroom would be nice to have downstairs too, but would be expensive to put in. Not because of the Kohler faucets, but because the pipes leading out of the house aren’t at floor level in the basement, they’re near the ceiling, so we’d need to have a holding tank and pump and stuff, and that adds drastically to the cost. We’ll see though, if the main part of the renovations cost less than expected maybe there will be enough left over to do it anyway.

Losing a Family Doctor again

kalamaf — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:58:18 +0000

It seems like this town has a hard time holding on to good doctors lately. A few years back the wife & kids family doc picked up and moved without even letting them know. We managed to find a new one for them fairly quickly and he’s been around for a few years now. It took a while for the kid to warm up to him since she was only 3 when she first saw him, but now she’ll even climb up on the exam table without fussing, and lets him check her ears and throat and all that. So it’s such a shame that we just learned he’s moving away in 3 months and we’re stuck with once again needing to find a new doctor.

Damn storm, flooding my kitchen!

kalamaf — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:18:00 +0000

When we bought this house we were told that it included a 7 year warranty (it was a new house made by Maple Leaf Homes). Too bad I’m not one for reading the fine print though, because as the house has settled during the last 5 years it’s developed some minor problems. Cracked paint in a few places, a side door that is very hard to lock properly, a window that is crooked and lets in a draft, a damp basement and most recently, a front door that leaks horribly when we get rain and south east wind. I called up the warranty company and was informed that none of those problems are covered, it’s only for major structural defects. Like say if a wall were to collapse or the roof caves in. Speaking of roof, we had to get a bunch of shingles replaced last winter because some of them blew off in a storm.

So unfortunately a home warranty isn’t nearly as good as buying something like an RV extended warranty, hardly anything is really covered. I’m not sure how wide spread Maple Leaf Homes are, but if you’re looking to buy a new pre-built home, make sure you have it checked over real good by a professional, although personally I’d steer clear of Maple Leaf completely. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go hire a carpenter to find out why my damn door is leaking!

House Stuff

kalamaf — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:02:33 +0000

The rest of my time this past weekend was spent trying to build a slide for the kid. I brought home some old lumber from the store, stuff that used to be for movie shelves, to build a platform out of. The slide part I bought on sale at Kent a couple weeks ago, $50 marked down from $100. It won’t take long to build, but I need to get 2 more longer boards to use as support braces. The platform is about 4 feet high and only a foot and a half wide, not the most stable thing when put on the lawn, so I need to do something to make it a little more solid. It would be done already but we needed to get some grocery shopping done, and pick up a new laundry hamper to replace the old cloth one that’s 6 years old and falling apart.

Ultimate Gaming Chair

kalamaf — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:23:46 +0000

I’ve seen gaming chairs advertised before, ones with a bit of vibration, or with speakers built in. This one however takes the cake. It’s not a gaming chair. It’s a full blown massage chair from Takemi Select ! What better way to relax when playing some games than to sit in something like this? Sure it wouldn’t be good for Rock Band, but when you’re done wailing away on guitar or drums you can pop in a less energetic game and let the chair work out the knots.

Another busted Vacuum

kalamaf — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:12:37 +0000

A while back I bought a new vacuum for the staff to use in the store since we had moved to a new location with carpets instead of just a concrete floor. I didn’t want to spend much on it so I just got one at Zellers for around $65. It worked good, for a while, then it died. First the head wouldn’t spin and then eventually it just wouldn’t work at all. I tried to return it but it was out of warranty already after just 3 months. Now I have to lug the one from home back and forth every few days ’cause I’m too cheap to buy another new vacuum. I should just bite the bullet and look into Electrolux vacuums instead. They’re more expensive, a lot more, but my parents have had one for about 15 years now and it’s still working great.

Looking for Furniture

kalamaf — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:11:41 +0000

I was browsing around online looking for furniture and came across these hammock chairs, that’s looking rather tempting for the rec room. They’re normally an outdoor chair, but since the basement isn’t finished yet I could easily attach a mounting bracket to the ceiling joists to hang a chair from. But, with something like that I’d probably fall asleep too easily while watching movies or playing RPG’s on the 360.

Building a Rec Room

kalamaf — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:07:40 +0000

I’ve begun the planning phases for my basement rec room. I got the measurements done and got some prices on materials. Depending on how I do the room it’ll cost between $600 and $1200 just for the materials, not including the flooring (either laminate or carpet) and doesn’t include labour costs. I can probably do a lot of the work myself, but in the end I want the room to look good so I think I’d be better off paying someone to do the finishing touches. Then I need some decent discount furniture for it, I don’t plan to buy new stuff cause frankly, new furniture will end up costing more than the room itself. A good used couch, entertainment stand for the TV and a coffee table should round out what’s needed for that.