Apollo 11 - 45th Anniversary

While I know that there are certain people out there that don't believe we went to the moon I am not one of them. I remember getting to stay up late and watch TV as the Eagle (the moon lander) came to rest on surface of the moon July 20, 1969. My Uncle was part of the crew at Cape Canaveral that launched Apollo 11 on its historic trip to the moon.

Today I have a video sequence shot by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of the Apollo 11 landing site. Its getting pretty hard to ignore the evidence now!

NASA Probe Sees Apollo 11 Moon Landing Site from Space (Video)

This is the famous photograph. Every human alive but one is in this picture. The only one missing is Michael Collins the astronaut behind the camera, piloting the command module

Renovations Underway

A couple of months ago we did the big spring cleaning in the house. I have lived here for 20 years now and its amazing how much stuff and junk (I also pulled out old carpet and stripped all kinds of things in preparation for what was to come) just accumulates. That cleaning filled two 30 yard dumpsters. This past week I started on the serious renovations starting with the now empty front bedroom. This was my youngest son's bedroom from the day we moved into the house (although both boys shared it for a long time when they were younger). With #2 son out of the house and, mostly, on his own I figured this was the place to start. 

The carpets were pulled in the initial cleanup and we went over the floor again to make sure that there were no staples left behind (I don't recommend the bare foot approach but it can be quite effective in finding sharp objects.). Carpet tack strips were pulled up and the old baseboards were removed and will be replaced with new ones. Since we were down to bare subfloor at this point painting really only required us to tape off the window and the closet door. The regular door has seen better days and will be replaced when everything else is finished.

Painted by spraying on new white primer followed by spraying on the first coat of paint. I didn't really get the coverage I wanted with that so we rolled another coat of the paint on. I think it looks great! Then we moved on to the floor putting down and underlayment followed by laminate floor planking (Tavern Oak). I'm basically down to the tricky stuff that has to be cut at this point but I'm very pleased with the result so far. I'm not looking forward to working in the closet though!

A few pictures of the progress from last week.

Looking in from the hallway. Every spot where you see underlayment needs to have planks cut and fitted now. The easy part is finished.

A step inside the room looking towards the NW corner. This is probably the truest looking for colors.

From the SW corner looking back towards the front window (the house faces north).

A slightly better look at the floor.

Looking back towards the door and the hallway. The closet door is still taped off from painting.