Category: Real Estate

Back to running – Nike+ to track progress

Posted on by Sol Young with Leave a comment

After a long time off I’m finally back to running. My wife gave me a Nike+ at Christmas and it’s been gathering dust for the most part.

Why? We’ve been remodeling and we’re finally wrapping things up (photo stream on Flickr). I can feel the all-our-spare-time-sucked-out-of-us-and-put-in-to-construction-duties coming back like the warmth of Spring. Now there will be time for visiting family, coding, and running.

I’ll be adding a static about page to solyoung.com and a Nike+ badge will be a small part of it. The Philadelphia Broad Street 10-miler is coming up in May and I’ve got to get back in runners shape. One huge advantage of working at iofy is our office is right at the finish line. It’s going to be a great, great run!

Posted in Nike+, Real Estate, Remodeling, Running

Installing tile – real developers do it themselves

Posted on by Sol Young with 5 Comments

Tiling 19 Tiling 8 Tiling 15

Tiling... Done! iFlickr IMG_0444.JPG

This weekend my wife and I got an early start Friday to finish off our bathroom’s tile. I’ve been photo-blogging it to Flickr and periodically putting up notes on Twitter. The last couple weekends have been similar, doing plumbing, floor tile, prep work, etc.

Though there is so much to do (more blog posts, tons of iofy priorities, and building in a certain web service), this is still satisfying work… Something everyone 1/2 interested in real estate should do at least once. I’m a software engineer and dev team manager because I love to build things. I think other developers should feel this way too.

More pics after the jump…

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Posted in Blogging, Flickr, Hiring, Managing, Photography, Real Estate, Remodeling, Software Development, Twitter, Web Services

Remodel update – it’s not done yet

Posted on by Sol Young with 1 Comment

Bath and still some work to do...

My wife and I spent the weekend getting rid of the old tub and installing the new one. The goal was to get through the couple days and have a working shower before Monday AM. So much for that… But at least we’re close enough to be done tomorrow (with the tub anyway).

It’s photoblogged on Flickr and I’ll continue adding photos of the remodel to this set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/solyoung/sets/72157604033311207/

What we did, this weekend, in a nutshell…

  • Killed the water to the apt, disconnected all bathroom plumbing.
  • Removed old 300lb cast iron behemoth.
  • Removed the toilet and vanity.
  • Cleaned the old floor and hit Home Depot for propane and equipment.
  • Added new shutoff valves for bathroom and various features of the bathroom.
  • Got a ticket for putting the old toilet and vanity on the sidewalk before 7pm.
  • Installed new subfloor (1/2″ ply) over the top of old floor.
  • Picked up all the fixings for finishing the project.
  • Put tub in place.
  • Cut out floor for new drain.

So, what’s next? Hooking that tub drain up and building a wall to house the new shower faucet.

Or maybe we hire a plumber…

Posted in Real Estate, Remodeling