The Call of the Wild

I just returned from a six-day trip to the Boundary Waters (BWCAW, for those of you who love acronyms). And I think the pictures do a pretty good job of sharing the experience, so I'll just give a brief explanation for these shots.


Loading up the packs before we depart. That's Peter on the left, Liz in the background, and Sergio on the right.



It rained the first day.


But after that the weather was great.


We saw a snake...


...and an inquisitive owl...


...and a fish getting a suntan...


...and a ninja loon...


...and two bald eagles, who watched us while we were swimming.


We stood on rocks and pointed.


We walked through a part of the forest that burned a few years ago.


This is Long Island Lake, where we stayed for two days. Our campsite is on the point jutting into the lake from the left.


A nice sunset.


Same sunset, just a little while later.


We built fires from dryer lint and used flint and steel to light them.


And we roasted acorn squash on one of those fires.


We did a lot of standing around...


...and practiced looking tough and growing our beards.


We saw a lot of beautiful lakeshore...


...and a couple misty mornings on the lakes.


Oh, yeah, and we paddled our canoes a lot. Altogether we canoed and portaged (where you carry the canoe on your shoulders from one lake to the next) 30 miles in five and a half days. It was pretty idyllic and relaxing.

The Star of the Show!

Fun at Green and Yellow Park w/Aunt Janell!

First Aunt Janell is the Leader...





Now it's Ella's turn!




What fun!

Pizza to Make Your Mouths Water!

Get a load of these beauties! We would be proud to claim we put them together, but they are the creation of Loading Zone II, in Lake Linden, a little town north and west of Hancock. The first pizza is Bacon Cheeseburger, swirled with yellow mustard, and topped with dill pickle slices (does the inclusion of dill give any clue as to who ordered this one?) The second pizza is Hawaiian, complete with onion and green pepper. Both were very good! They look homemade...does that count?

Our New Family Member

This is Ozzie, our answer to Fletcher, Twila, and Nikki. He is a 5 year old Miniature Pinscher. We got him from a coworker of mine. He's pretty cute and is obviously as fond of Andy as Janell is. He looks forward to meeting everyone sometime soon.

Kitchen Cabinets (Finally!)

Well, it's no baby boy, but I'm just about as proud of these cabinets as Steve and Rachel are of Peter. Here's a photo of the cabinets I've installed so far.



A couple of you knew that I needed to cut one of my upper wall cabinets in half and make two smaller cabinets out of it. Here's a shot of that cabinet in two pieces:



And here's a shot of one half reconstructed and ready for installation. (In the first photo, this cabinet is the one just left of my head.):

Barnhart, Babyboy is Born!

The specs:

Peter Nicholas
Born 8/11/2009 at 6:00pm
8 lbs 15.5 oz
20.5 inches long

Mom and baby are both doing well.

There Will Be Baby

We were admitted around 11 this morning. Lord willing, we will have a baby today.

We saw a doe with two fawns on our way to the hospital and our room had two cradles in it when we got here. Not sure if it's a sign, but after 6 ultrasounds we're pretty sure there is only one in there.

Stay tuned

The Finished Floor

In our fifth installment of the flooring saga, the floor is sanded and receives its final finish.


No, you did not miss a post dedicated to the sanding. I do not have any pictures of the actual sanding process. This is partly because I didn't want to distract myself from the primary task and partly because I didn't want to risk contaminating the camera with sanding dust. Actually, the whole sanding thing is something I would just as soon forget, so I'm glad to exclude those photos. Otherwise, I might be reminded of the work involved and never finish the upstairs floors.

The sanded floors look much better than plywood that's been trampled on for several years, colored on, and chewed on (by the cat, really) - you must admit. I was tempted to stop there, but I had already bought the finish and wanted the floor to look good for more than a week.

I applied one coat of sealer and two top coats of the Bona Strong finish. I can't really compare it to other finishes (somehow I've blocked the memory of finishing the apartment floor) but I was generally very pleased with the process. The only issue with the Bona products is that if you spend enough time on their website, you will begin to feel that your floor isn't worthy of the product. But, you've already bought it so...

I was glad to have included the downstairs and upstairs halls in this project because it was such a drastic improvement. The upstairs floor is fir as far as I can tell. See if you can spot the floor patch in the photo below.

These photos show the dried first coat of finish, which should look very close to the end result. It's kind of a shame to cover all this with carpet. Ha - just kidding. Just a little flooring humor.

The final coat is drying as we speak, er... blog. Here's a photo of the wet finish. It will dry to a semi-gloss (that's Silkmat in Bona-ese) to hide the various imperfections. If you can spot the footprint, I'll give you a chance to help when I finish the upstairs bedrooms.








Next up - Trim!