Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Wasting No Time Drywalling!

Drywall started on Friday afternoon abut 3:30pm and is almost done being hung and taped on Tuesday at 8pm. They are flying! We figured it would be at least a week or two on drywall but it has been more like 3 or 4 days. Here are some pictures of the rooms. It really looks like a house on the inside now.

Arched half wall in the basement.

View of the great room from the seond floor.


Ceiling in the office.

Hearth room off of the kitchen.

What can you say?

Well the Alveys are excited to see the NFL season start but it didn't exactly start the way we wanted. We had a great tailgate party prior to the game with about 25 people which was an awesome way to start the season but the game was horrible. Good thing we had some beverages prior to numb the pain. Above is the view from our seats. We are at the top row of our section so that means there is no one behind us to spill beer on us. Now Scott just has to make sure I don't spill beer on him. We are slowly making friends in our section. We had such a great group around us the last couple years and this year everyone is much more reserved, less willing to talk to the drunk girl, and slow to chant cheater, cheater, cheater!

Bubba is back for another season!

Mom and Dad relaxing in the sun with a ice cold beverage!


Kristen and Scott playing corn hole. Kristen is off crutches but not completely off the DL.


These guys obviously are enjoying the perfect combination of beverages and direct sun light.

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Now for the Inside!

The Brickers finished the outside and the drywall guys wasted no time at all. They had the truck pulled up yesterday after calling Jeff 5 times wanting to know when the drywall was going to be delivered, pulling the drywall off the truck, and throwing it on the walls I think directly from the truck.


After 1 day of work, the basement is drywalled, most of the second floor and the master suite is done. They don't waste any time and they work long days. B couldn't even believe how much they had done. She had to check it out herself and she could figure out why she couldn't walk directly through the walls anymore.

Jen is now getting nervous because there is no longer, "well they still have to drywall before you have to decide that." All of the decisions are now and we are starting to have to make final decisions on what we want for a lot of things. So many decisions and so little time.

Pittsburgh

PNC Park is probably the neatest park I have been to and I am a huge fan of the new Busch. I think whoever designed Busch could have got a few pointers from Pittsburgh. Everything is open and it has a very small ballpark feel to it. It sits right on the rivers and looks directly into downtown. There concession stands have more options than I think I have ever seen at a stadium. I couldn't decide what to eat or drink (Beer of course but what kind).


We walk up to the stadium and there are restaurants attached to the outside of the stadium, bars all around the stadium and wonderful statues of Pittsburgh greats (yes there are a few) to take pictures with. The restaurants are something I have never seen before in a ballpark.



Then we walk into the stadium and they are so gracious to give us Willie Stargell comemorative plates that Jen so proudly displays. As we get to the bleachers, the Brewers were such gracious guests and wanted us to feel welcomed, that they almost hit us with a homerun in batting practice. Unfortunately we were too distracted figuring out where we were going that we missed it. Pittsburgh were such good hosts that they let the Brewers beat them 11-3. I would love to watch baseball in PNC Park every night but not Pirates baseball.
Overall Pittsburgh was a neat city. We didn't know what to expect but most of the people were very nice, except Fred, and they tolerated drunk Ben. We ate some great food on "The Strip", saw all of the street markets, and had a siting of "Buffalo Ben"
We had fun and as much as it pains me to say it, I would recommend visiting Pittsburgh to anyone. It's funny when you have your favorite sports teams you hate cities because of their sports teams and Pittsburgh was one of those for me. I no longer hate the city just the teams and their obnoxious fans. I will definitely go back but next time I will go to watch someone I care about.