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Sandy is starting to show a little belly!

Bird House Remodel

Here's the eagerly awaited Bird Avenue house update.

We finished the remodeling more or less on time, although some paint got chipped off when the carpet installation took place, so Mr. Chen and crew had to go back in and touch things up. While some of the details are not 100 percent perfect, overall, I'm pretty happy. Mostly it's good to just get it over with and move on to the next phase, which is renting the place out.

So a summary of the "updated" items: completely redoing 2 bathrooms, new interior and exterior paint, new carpet, replacing 2 windows, and patching up an area in the back wall of the house where the redwood had grown too close to and damaged it. Also was suppose to seal up the roof area, but turns out it was very difficult to do due to the way it is done. Although it doesn't look perfect, some was refunded for that, so I guess it's fine.

There are still some minor stuff which I had to take care of on my own. They include changing a few door knobs and putting up some blinds and moving all the furnitures back into the house and generally cleaning up the place up a bit. (Update, I also had to do some touch up on painting and fix the gates and fence in the backyard.) But overall, it's pretty much done! Yay Ya!

Okay, now on to the task of renting the place. Sandy's been taking charge of this task for the most part, posting the ads on craigslist and calling the correspondents. So far, there seem to be a fairly high level of interest. We've gotten about 15~20 calls and basically had an "open house" of sorts for all the interested renters to stop by and have a look this past Saturday. Some of the potential renters we feel pretty comfortable with, others seems a little bit more iffy. Fortunately we had enough that we have a little bit of choice. Unfortunately, seems like the renters for the most part don't actually want the furnitures, which I thought was a plus.. So, I'm going to have to move everything right back out and either donate them or stack them up in Henderson or something..

Oh.. also arranged to have a gardener to come and fix up some of the broken sprinklers and do monthly maintainence, so that the place will look nice and we won't have to worry about the renter neglecting the yard like I did for the past 10 years, haha.. Anyways, will give an update when we get the place actually rented out. It'll be quite a relief when we finally do :)

Update on Various Things

The past few weeks have been super super hectic. I don't know how we would have made it through if Mom hadn't been here to help out. Unfortunately, she has returned back to Taiwan already and Sandy and I have to take care of ourselves again :( It was great when Mom was here because not only did she help out, all her sisters and brother (my Aunts) tend to help out too, especially Aunt Susan with all her delicious gourmet food :D

It's not always home cooked foot either, we went out to eat a few times during her stay as well. Unfortunately, I didn't always have a camera handy, but here are some pictures from the couple times I did have my camera with me.

Finally, also some picture of the grass growing back on the previously barren parts of the backyard. I also have a bunch of the Bird Avenue remodelling picture, but I think I'll save those for the next blog post, as I will be getting several more tomorrow most likely (with carpet installed and basically everything done)!

March Prenatal Visit

March 9

Tomorrow morning Sandy and I will be going to Kaiser for our 3rd Prenatal appointment. Sandy scheduled it early in the morning, 7:45 A.M., so there would be no disruption to work. This checkup isn't supposed to be too exciting though, just going over some initial test results and to serve as regular followup. Our next checkup in April will be the highly anticipated 2nd ultra sound appointment, in which we'll get to find out about the gender of little wuster, but that's still a month away. So, for all you eager Grand Parents and Aunt/Uncles to be, you'll just have to wait a bit more.

This checkup is basically just going over the blood/urine test results collected from Sandy's previous visit. Since she already went online to check her results, and everything came in normal or very close to normal, it probably won't be too informative. However, they like to schedule a checkup basically every month to keep track of the mother to be, on her weight, and collect some urine sample to make sure everything is ok. It's also a chance for us to ask any question regarding the pregnancy. In fact, Sandy keeps complaining how stern the nurse was when she attempted to combine two appointments to the same day.. The nurse was like, "Mam, no we cannot do that for you. Mam, you need to realize how important it is for you and your baby that we have regular checkups on you."

March 10 - After the Checkup

The checkup went pretty smoothly, basically doctor went over the test results and assured us all the data are ok. We got to heard the Baby's heartbeat, which is pretty cool (sounds like you're on a train and it's going over the tracks steadily (or maybe the dryer spinning). Only glitch (and something we'll need to keep in mind) is to have Sandy drink lots of water before going next time, as they keep asking for urine samples, hehehe..

Bird Ave Remodel Kickoff!

Day 1 of remodeling

After a couple months of delay due tree removal application process, we've finally started the remodeling now that the trees have been removed.

The list of things we're having the contractor (Mr. Chen) take care of include the following:

• complete redoing of 2 bathrooms
• replacing 2 windows
• replacing the carpet
• removing wall paper and repainting the entire house
• repair wall and roof eave area damaged by the redwood trees.

Mr. Chen was recommended by a couple different people and have done work for several of my relatives before. His price is very reasonable but there has been some mixed review of the quality of work. I think it really depends on the experience of the particular crew working on the job at the time and whether there are any custom work that requires special attention. As my remodeling should be fairly simple, being a single story with no custom or special finishing involved, I'm hoping it will turn out just fine. There's also no assurance the more expensive contractor will do a perfect job either. Chatting with my friends, it seems that often times there will be some details that are not perfect after the job is done, so for now, we're going with the low cost approach as we're treating this as an investment (intending to rent it out afterwards, and costly improvement may not translate to too much extra in rent and would be hard to recoup). Perhaps I can tell him that I'm writing about this job and posting it on the internet so that he'll make sure to pay extra attention and do a really good job, hehe..

So far, I'm pretty happy with the progress, it's day 1 and they already gutted the bathrooms and tore down all the wall papers.. But I guess it's really how it looks like when it gets all put back together that matters, so I'm holding my breath.

Sunday Brunch

This past Sunday, Sandy and my Mom went to brunch/lunch with Aunt Susan and family. I wasn't able to make it myself as I had to go clean up Bird Avenue house in preparation for the contractors to start work.
Here are some pictures from the brunch. According to Sandy it was a feast! Everything was good and Aunt Susan ordered so much food for everyone that everyone ended up with their tummy stuffed. I also got to eat some hargow and siumai when Sandy and Mom dropped by Bird Ave. to take a look after the meal :)