Josh Highland’s Blog

I love this cartoon from toothpastefordinner.com, but i think its wrong. The housing market is down…the BEST time to buy a house!

I am trying to sell my house right now, you can see it at 2061Redlands.com. Its a great place. You should go there, fall in love with it, and then buy it. It would be a win-win situation! You would be getting an awesome place.

UPDATE:
The Fed has decreased the rate by 3/4 a point! Here are a few articles on it:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080122/ap_on_bi_ge/fed_interest_rates
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/fed/main-jan2008.asp
(thanks Christian!)

2061Redlands.com

My town house has become the redlands party house over the last few years. It looks like its time to move the party though…
I am selling my town house and putting an offer on a new houe (pictured below). The new house doesnt have shared walls with my neighbors, has a yard for the dogs, a pool for hanging out, and a huge open floor plan for massive parties. cross your fingers and wish us luck

Last week, I placed the finishing touches on my house, finally! I installed the pergo laminate flooring that I bought over a year ago for my living room.

I originally thought that it was only going to take about a month to finish everything. WRONG. It has been 1 year and 8 months that I have had keys to my house.

Quick run down of all the things that I have done to my house:

• Removed a cabinate in kitchen, making the dining room and kitchen connect now
• Replaced all florescent lights with recessed lights in the kitchen
• Added pendent lights to the kitchen
• Added over head lighting to the dining room, master bed room, and office
• Added recessed lighting to the living doom (dimmable)
• Primed and painted every interior wall in the house
• Ran coax cable to every room through the walls
• Replaced every light switch and wall socket
• Replaced all the plumbing fixtures (toilets, sinks, faucets, shower heads, garbage disposal)
• Replaced the kitchen window with a huge 72 x 48 x 18 garden window
• Replaced all the crappy pink and green tile in my house with high quality, stylish ceramic tile
• Replaced the kitchen counter tops and wet bar with black granite
• Replaced the fireplace tile with black granite
• Added a black granite back splash to the kitchen
• Replaced every single door knob and door hinge with brushed nickel equivalents
• Replaced every door in the house with new 6
• panel molded doors
• New thresh hold on the front door
• New refrigerator, stove, dishwasher (all stainless steel)
• Refaced all of my cabinets in cherry wood.
• Installed about 1000 sq feet of laminate wood flooring in my living room, office and master bedroom
• Removed the acoustic popcorn ceiling in the master bedroom, living room, and dining room
• Painted all the stair railing and banisters
• New door jambs downstairs
• Replaces sliding closet doors in the bedrooms
• Replaced shower and tub doors
• New custom vanities in all 3 bathrooms
• Replaced the door bell
• Replaced the thermostat
• New baseboards through out the house
• Replaced the water heater

Im sure that I am missing more things that I have done/replaced. Basically what it boils down to is the fact that I took my house down to the studs and rebuilt it from the inside out. I dont think there is anything that I havent replaced/updated/fixed in the entire house since I bought it.

Its my first house, and I feel really attached to it. Its cost me a lot of money and time to get it to this point, but I have had a great time doing it. I think that its increased the value of the place a lot. I know that it looks worlds better then it did when I moved into it. Ive also gotten a lot of sweet power tools along the way.

Wow, sorry for the lack of updates. The last week has been really busy for me.

On Tuesday, Amy got a call from Loma Linda Childrens hospital. They offered her a job. The Best part is that she put in her 2 weeks notice at starbucks about an hour before loma linda called. Talk about being looked out for by someone. She doesnt start her new job until February. Until then, Amy is going to be the EBay queen. We have so much junk that we need to sell.

Thursday was Thanksgiving. I made a veggie ham log. It was amazing as usual. We did a lot of running around, amys moms, then her dads, then my parents new house. Later that night keller, anessa, and beejay came over and we watched crash. I really liked it. Matt Dillon will always be a bad ass in my book.

Friday, I helped my mom and dad move stuff from my grandmas house into their new house. We also took some time a cleaned up our old house… damn is it full of junk. It will be fun to remodel and sell I think. Put my house flipping skills to the test. I would love to get into that business one day.

Saturday, was the annual IWC vegan thanksgiving feast. Keller made most of the food as usual. I cooked an un-turkey for the event (i think i like tofery a bit better though). This year the event was at the church. It was nice having a big venue to hold it in for once. I think there was about 40 of us. It was a good time for sure. A group of us played star wars monopoly. Beejay won. Afterwards Chris, Keller and Anessa came over and we watched the Warriors, another one of my favorite movies.

Sunday, Amy left to go visit a friend in Sacramento. I went into high gear and decided that I was going to get some stuff done around the house. I cleaned the house up and washed about 6 loads of laundry. I got the special tools I needed to cut and install my bathroom vanity top, so I did that. I bought a bunch of supplies to finish up some of the loose projects I have around the house. I installed base boards in the downstairs bathroom, and a new light fixture as well. Speaking of electrical work, I need to take an aside here…

I decided to change out some of the old electrical sockets in the kitchen. I turned off the breakers to the kitchen before I started working. I have a healthy respect for electricity so I wear rubber gloves when working with household electricity. Removal of the old socket went well, nothing special and nothing that I havent done at least 20 times before. When I was installing the new socket, My screw driver must have brushed up against the wires… * BANG! * I hear a big bang noise, and see a HUGE spark inches from my face. it was way big and way close to my face. I drop what I was doing and went to double check the breaker… I had the electricity turned off to the kitchen, that shouldnt of happened. Thats when i learned that the socket, and only that one socket is on its on breaker, which wasnt labeled. When I walked back inside the house, I see flames…my kitchen is now on fire. A couple of dish towels, the box the socket came in, and some loose papers are all on fire, great! I was right next to the sink, so the fire was easy to put out, but still sketchy. I looked at the wires, and they are melted! I picked up my screw driver, and it is melted! The metal shaft of the screw driver has 2 big divots taken out of it. One of them looks like a weld mark, and the other on looks like the metal just melted. do you know how hard it is to melt a hardened screw driver shaft? I am damn lucky that I was wearing those gloves, or I think that my hands would have weld marks and holes in them, and I would be on fire!

Back to Saturday… I worked my butt off. Later I went to dinner at thai house with steve and naomi before church.

Sunday, I worked my ass off again. Work was really good. I didnt have any meetings or interruptions. I was in code mode all day, and I got a bunch of stuff done. It reminded me of how I programmed when I was back in school. After work, I came home and started in on my house again. I installed the new above counter sink and faucet. I had to redo all the plumbing. After a few trips to Lowes and Home Depot., I got everything working. I hate plumbing because something always has a leak and I have to fight it for an hour to get it to stop. I installed my over the stove microwave again (it had been sitting on the floor for the last 4 months!). I also installed a new mirror, and door in the new bathroom. Then I cleaned everything up, vacuumed, and mopped the kitchen, dining room, and all 3 bathrooms. nonstop house work from 5pm to 2am.

I wrote this in early june, but im just getting around to posting this

I saw this product on HGTV, called insulad, its a paint additative that adds insulation properties to the paint. They say that by adding their product to paint or primer you can improve the insulation of a room up to 20%. I figured what the heck it wont hurt anything, so I ordered some and tried it out.

yesterday I got the paint insulation in the mail, and I decided the celing of my downstairs was good enough to primer. All the dry wall patches had been made, and every thing had been sanded several times and it was smooth for the most part.

It took a lot longer then I thought it would to prime everything. I got it all over myself. Good primer doesnt clean up like latex paint does, it sticks to everything. In the shower I scrubed my arms until they were almost bleeding.

After I was done, I hung out for a little but then went to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I had a crazy headache and my nose was really messed up. It was kind of hard to breath also. I felt like I was going to puke when i was getting dressed. It was only when I went downstairs that I realized that we had locked the house up, including all the doors and windows before amy and I went to sleep. The fumes from the freshly primed celing had no where to go except hang out in the house while we slept. I imediatly opened the doors and turned on some fans. I wonder how many brain cells I killed while I was sleeping

At the expence of some brain cells and my general health, The downstairs is looking good though. Im really excited to see it start coming together. The next step is getting a hopper gun and an air compressor and spraying some light texture on the celing to had all the spots that arnt 100% even.

slowly but surely im getting stuff done to my house…

• drywall work in the kitchen around my new garden window
• finish dry wall patches throughout the kitchen, dining area, living room (had to cut holes
  to install new recessed lights
• master bathroom complete remodel (currently the only thing in the room in a new tile floor, i
  need to patch the walls, install new baseboard and all the fixtures, furniture, toilet and shower
  doors
• reroute the coax cable in my house through the attic crawl space
• window coverings for my computer room, and guest room
• install doors in upstairs (currently none of the rooms have doors, not even the bathroom!)
• buy and install some drystack stone on my fireplace
• retexture the ceiling downstairs

I had to craw around my fiberglass insulation attic, cut more holes in walls (more dry wall work needed now… blah). After several hours, I had won. coax cable aint got nothing on me!

Why havent I updated this recently? It could be due to the fact that I have been working like a

mad man at my job. The project I have been working on since august is coming to a close. Im the

*ONLY* developer on the project, thats a good thing and a stressful thing at times. Its cool

because I build things the way I want, but it also sucks because when things come down to the

wire, im the only one there for support. Ive been putting in extra long days this week, Monday I

worked from 8am to 11pm. I dont mind it though, I get paid by the hour, and I got a pretty gppd

raise last week, so Im not complaining. I could be doing something other then thinking and typing

all day, I could be doing something like construction work… wait.. I do that at home in my

spare time.

My condo is a major construction zone. Current projects include but are not limited to:

• drywall work in the kitchen around my new garden window
• finish dry wall patches throughout the kitchen, dining area, living room (had to cut holes

  to install new recessed lights

• master bathroom complete remodel (currently the only thing in the room in a new tile floor, i

  need to patch the walls, install new baseboard and all the fixtures, furnature, toilet and shower

  doors

• reroute the coax cable in my house through the attic crawl space
• window coverings for my computer room, and guest room
• install doors in upstairs (currently none of the rooms have doors, not even the

  bathroom!)

• buy and install some drystack stone on my fireplace (this is what I want to do)
• retexture the ceiling downstairs

I have even more things that I plan on doing to my house. Its just going to take me a lot more

time and a lot more money. I ordered new kitchen cabinate doors and drawer fronts (style : single shaker,

color : cherrystone maple. The price was really reasonable compared to what i got quotes for.

I guess building materials are cheap, its the labor and skill that cost alot in construction and

remodeling jobs.

Im also doing some free lance work for a Skincare company and for a speaker company. Im a very very busy guy.

notPop has been suffering lately due to lack of attention on my part. When I started notPop I

wanted to create something with my computer that would become a living creature. Something that

was always growing and changing without neding my interaction. I think I was very successful at

that. Right now I view notPop as bush that I planted in the ground years ago. When is was small,

it was easy to care for, now that its grown very large, its wild and out of control, I need to

trim it up and get it back into a managable state. I think im going to start devoting 1 or 2

nights a week to notpop regardless of what construction/remodeling job I have going on.

Also sitting down in front of the computer more will encourage me to drop quick notes and

enhancements into my blog.

on top of all of this stuff, im planning on starting a clothing line. Am I ambitious to take on

all of these things, or am I just retarded?

Monday night, im finishing up my computer room in my new house. All I had left to do was install the new over head light…wait, no electrical over head, the wall switch controls a single socket. The celling light didnt have a cord, it was ment to be hardwired to overhead electrical. I decided that the best and only solution was to tap into the electrical socket that is controlled by the switch. It was a long night. computers are easier to work with then houshold electrical. I shocked myself 3 times. My fingers are kind of numb still. The light looks good though!

I got the keys on Monday, shopped more at Ikea. I bought some stuff but didn’t realize that a fort lift had stick its forks through the box destroying the bookshelf inside. I have another trip to Ikea to return stuff I guess.

Since Monday I go to work, get off work, go to my house, work my butt off, go to my old house, sleep, repeat. I’m so tired, and I have soooo much more work to do. It’s the most rewarding work I have ever done though. I love the fact that its mine and I can do what I want with it!