House Construction Part 4 - Basement forms are up

The forms for the basement walls are going up today. The setup for the basement will be as follows: a center entry door in the front of the basement. This door will have a clearing pushed out in front of it with knee high walls (approximately 30 inches high) that will be comprised of wood posts. These walls are necessary because there will be grading done to conceal as much of the front of the basement as is possible given the layout of the land. Centered on each side of this center entry door will be a 4 foot high by 3 foot wide window. So the front of the basement that is parallel, essentially, with the main state road will be comprised of a 4 x 3 foot window on the left side, the center entry door with cleared patch, and another 4 x 3 foot window on the right side front.

The right side of the basement will be comprised of a 9 foot opening that will be framed out for two 4 foot double doors that will swing open to provide an 8 foot entry. The 9 foot area will provide the opportunity for expansion to a 9 foot garage door. The pouring of these walls and forms will be performed by tomorrow evening. I will attempt to get pictures posted that correspond to the previous construction posts up when I can. The pictures have been taken they just need to be uploaded.

Front view of house basement forms

Right side view of basement forms



Back left corner to front of house view of basement forms



Back left corner view to inside of basement forms



View of back of house basement forms

House Construction Part 3 - Footers are poured

The concrete folks poured the footers this morning. The next step planned is setting up the forms for the basement walls on Monday. Then on Tuesday the walls are to be poured. This is all assuming the weather cooperates. For now the footers are to be cured in over the weekend. Once again I will plan on getting some media (pictures, eventually video(s)) uploaded when time permits.

Front right corner view of footers

Front left corner view of footers

Left side view of footers

House Construction Part 2 - Footers and footer forms are dug and placed

They have dug and placed re bar for pouring the footers around the perimeter of the house. I have pictures that I will post as soon as possible.

Just an update on the basement layout. There will be an entry door in the center of the front of the basement. There will be a window on each side of the door on the front of the basement. Then on the right side if you are looking at the front of the house there will be a 9 foot framed out area that will have two 4 foot doors that swing open for an 8 foot opening. The purpose for this area being framed out like this is to have the potential to put a 9 foot garage door in place of the double doors to have a garage in the basement.

The footers should be poured today after the footer inspection is complete. I will continue to post updates as progress continues.

Dug out footprint for house



Another vantage point of dug out footprint



Right side of house footers, this is where two four foot double doors will be in basement



Left front corner of house footer frames with rebar

House Construction Part 1 - Land and summary of things to come

Pics of general floor plan and layout

Potential top floor layout, merely a company template though

Layout of main floor, which will be minus optional kitchen layout

Company picture of exterior of house, ours will be without the attached garage

Ground has been broken in what is the beginning of the the construction of our new house. The land is 0.60 acres in what is essentially an open field with a gentle downward slope from the back of the land to the front, which meets a main state road. The digging began yesterday and they pretty much finished digging in preparation for the laying of the foundation. Stay tuned I plan on posting some pics as progress continues.

For those wondering what the layout of this house will be I will give a bit of a summary of the setup. The foundation will be a full unfinished basement. The main level of the house and the only finished part for now will be 1320 square feet. It will be two bedroom and two full bathrooms with the potential of at least two more bedrooms added to the top level. It will also have the potential for another bathroom added to the top level as well as one to the basement. The living room will be about 13 x 21 and the kitchen/dining room combo will be roughly the same with potentially a foot or two shorter length. The front of the house will have a full 8 x 48 foot covered porch. A general layout of the house can be found here: http://www.cbsmods.com/plans/display/84 . The top level of this cape cod style house will be 880 unfinished square feet plumbed for a potential bathroom. The top will also have three equal sized dormers.

We are very excited for the start of this endeavor and I will continue to post updates along with media.

Pics of undisturbed land:

Front view of land from state road

Looking from front left corner across majority of property

Looking from front right corner towards back of property



Back right corner looking to front of property, main state road is visible

Best Buy Shenanigans Update

I called Best Buy back yesterday to get an update on the status of the change of payment plan on the store credit card. I did this due to the fact that we had not heard back from the store manager and expected to be contacted sooner than this. But anyway I got in touch with one of the managers that helped us in the store and he confirmed with us that all of the necessary information had been sent in. So hopefully within two payment periods we will see the new 36 month no interest deal on our statements. Thanks for the semi-comforting update Best Buy!

Proscan Company Background

If you're like I was and wondering what the story behind the Proscan electronics name is, I'll attempt to give a bit of a background. First of all what sparked my interest in this brand name was the 40" 1080p Proscan tv that Best Buy currently is selling for $499. I almost had an accident when I saw this price for a 40 inch full high definition tv.

So a-searchin I went. Here is what I found at the wikipedia.org site for the ProScan name: "The Proscan brand superseded the RCA Dimensia line in the early 1990s after the purchase of RCA by General Electric and lasted into the early 2000s until it was dropped for the current RCA Scenium brand. Thomson SA has never manufactured or distributed televisions in the United States labeled Thomson. In 2006, Thomson Consumer Electronics licensed the Proscan name to ON Corporation, although they retain actual ownership of the name and logotype. The company's website is now http://www.oncorpus.com/ ." - information supplied courtesy of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProScan

ON Corporation sounds like it is a small company that is just trying to get it's feet wet. I believe that they outsource their work to multiple places throughout the world. There main office is located in Indianapolis. Do to their small size and probably small overhead I think they are attempting to get their name out through low priced HDTV's. I have owned the 40" Proscan model since this past Sunday and have been thoroughly impressed with the quality at this price point. I did, however, purchase the 4 year Geek Squad black tie warranty just in case this low price came at the expense of a lack of reliability. But so far so good. I suggest going to Best Buy and checking one out next to higher priced models. This of course is assuming your local Best Buy has one on display.

Also, here is the link to Best Buy's website page for the Proscan 40" TV: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9329381&st=proscan+40%22&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1218086176467. Be sure to check out the reviews, they are overwhelmingly positive for the most part. P.S. almost all HDTVs have some sort of failure rate in the first year or so, of course this is true for pretty much all electronics in general.

Dynex 26" LCD HDTV DirecTV Remote Code

For anyone wondering what the DirecTV remote code for the 26" 720p Dynex LCD TV is, it is 10463. Enjoy the sweet luxury of one remote! Here is Best Buy's link to this tv: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9135401&st=dynex+26%22&lp=2&type=product&cp=1&id=1218054462182

Cheap HDMI Cables vs. Expensive HDMI Cables

Take my advice on this one, expensive cables don't make better cables. For those who believe that a $70 HDMI cable is better than a $4 HDMI cable, sorry but this just isn't the case. Take it from a electrical engineering technician's personal experience.

I've made hundreds of cables (mostly Ethernet) at work. There is nothing special about these things. You have individual conductors, the same size in the $70 cable as in the $4 cable. The reason these conductors are the same size is because the connector on the end of the cable will only except a certain size conductor.

In a six foot HDMI cable there is not enough shielding or noise protection in the $70 cable to warrant such a price difference from the $4 six foot cable. I would even venture to say that there is a strong possibility that the manufacturer of the actual cable for the two companies could be the same. What makes the cable a decent cable is the crimping procedure. Which is most likely the same, and if not very similar, in both cable provider companies. The reason that this is the important factor in the cable is simply because of the single most important aspect in electricity. This aspect, connectivity, novel concept I know. But electricity flows amazingly well when it has a path.

The $4 cable is tested before shipped just as the $70 cable is. The life of the cable from there most likely depends on your useage. So do yourself a favor next time your in an electronics store and see the high falutin $70 HDMI cable. Look on Ebay for something more reasonable. I recently bypassed buying the cheapest HDMI cable in an electronics store. This cable was $30. I looked on ebay and found three of the same size HDMI cables for a total of $7.50 shipped. You don't always get what you pay for, especially without reasearch.

Proscan 40" 1080p DirecTV Remote Code

For anyone wondering what the DirecTV remote code for the 40" 1080p Proscan LCD TV that's $499 at Best Buy right now, I found it on an AVS Forum. The code is 10030. Happy boob tube watching!

Best Buy Shenanigans

This past Sunday started out relatively normal, my wife and I woke up at around 8 AM by way of our 14 month old baby girl alarm clock. Nothing special was planned for the day, so we just went about our business getting ourselves somewhat presentable and feeding the baby. The only thing on the agenda at this point of note was to check out my wife's parents new 37" LCD HDTV, simply for the fact that we were itching to get one ourselves.

So once we got gussied up and the baby fed so that she was off of E we headed out the door for the approximately 2 mile trek to her parents house. We arrived and checked out the new addition to the family and promptly decided we should get one ourselves. So we quickly headed back home and planned on leaving to head to one of three Best Buy's within an hour and a half of our home. We decided to call these three Best Buy's and check on the availability of a 40" Proscan 1080p LCD TV. Only one had this particular model in stock, and this one also happened to be the farthest of the three away. But at this point we had gone all in and had to stick to our guns. It was a date.

The plan of action was to wait till we had fed the baby lunch and then to leave at a time when we could expect the baby to take her first nap on the way over there. We did and she didn't. However, she was surprisingly happy for an impossibly not to be tired stinker. She just sang and played her way to this strange electronics mecca. We arrived at Best Buy with the expectation of spending at least $499 in order to qualify for what was apparently the previous weeks offer of no interest for 12 or 18 months (I can't remember which). Little did we know this offer was doneski and the other offer we considered of $799 or more for 36 months no interest had now been upped to $999 or more. Zoinks. We'd been suckered. This I can't fault Best Buy for, however.

So spend $999 or more it was. We found the 40" Proscan and decided on it rather quickly, although I did look around at the other TVs to see if there would be a last minute change of heart. We then struggled for what seemed like an endless amount of time about what else to get to add up to the required purchase amount. After chasing the baby around, who squealed and hammed it up all the while, we finally settled on a 26" Dynex TV for the bedroom and a Samsung home theater system with a 1080p up converting DVD player. These items combined with the Geek Squad 4 year black tie warranty added up to over the $999 hot spot.

However, once we had applied for the credit card, received our credit limit, and finished checking out; or so we thought, the real problem arose. Our purchase was showing up as having only a 6 month no interest period. Apparently the black tie warranty was not part of the promotional purchase offer. This was not clear in the Best Buy ads. It simply stated on home theater and geek squad purchases over $999 36 months no interest.

One of the supervisors agreed to call in a payment plan change request to the credit card headquarters. After what seemed to be a surprisingly unproductive and disconcerting conversation with the operator the Best Buy supervisor told us that he would send in a faxed copy of the Best Buy promotional ad as well as let us know when he heard back from the credit card company. So off we were with a beautiful breeze of uncertainty and anxiety in the air. Not sure if we were going to get hit with a bombshell of interest in 6 months. Heading home with an exhausted 14 month old baby girl, who didn't sleep on the way back by the way, and feeling hungover from the ride through the vague land of creditville.

So in closing, Best Buy I beg you to work on learning what your current promotions are and then conveying them to the customer. And please Mr. Supervisor don't leave us hanging in credit limbo for long, either lower the hammer or ease the anxiety.