DIY - Bookshelf From Wooden Boards
Time after time I love to excel as a Do-it-yourself guy, for today's DIY article - how i built bookshelf for our rural house from wooden boards.Let's start that we have a complete mess in our master bedroom, as we don't have any storage to store stuff. A time ago I built a king size bed frame, again from boards, see: DIY - Bed Frame King Size Rural Style, now it was time to put in order that mess.Can you find a cat there?Wooden boards for bookshelfThose boards are leftovers from roof works done in Summer 2015, see Meet the New Roof (Pictures Before and After)Almost thereLook who have found a nice shelterFinal result
Restaurant Kala in Tbilisi
Restaurant Kala in Tbilisi's Old Town actually is one of the first restaurant I've visited once set my foot on Georgian land back in April 2011. I have spent countless evenings here, enjoying Georgian red wine, listening to great live musicians and of course trying dishes.I would list Kala as a medium priced place, with pleasant atmosphere and great service.Interior at Kala restaurant in TbilisiSalmon sandwich served with French friesBasically here at Kala they serves both Georgian and European cuisine. VISA cards accepted.
Connecting The Dots - Water Pipe And Pump Installation
This day marks a huge milestone - for the very first day, since house was originally built in 1896 - house will have a fully automatic water supply. This day also marks the end of the planned major tasks for Summer 2016. Gosh, that was a mad ride - let me explain, in order to get water supply inside house, at start we had to drill a bore hole, see:Drilling Borehole , then we had to completely rebuild some walls for house and construct both pump room and bathroom. As it might sound straightforward, it involved a lot of planing, managing, constructing a of course money,Now was the day we could connect the dots, and it started with an excavator arriving in our yard:Excavator arrivesThe…
Demolishing Inner Walls To Build AAC Block Walls
In today's home remodeling series a story how I continued to build a bathroom and how we demolished an inner wall to later rebuild it from scratch, again with aac blocks.Let's start with what we got:Wall to be demolishedAll major tasks for this Summer (2016) have been done, what's left - to rebuild two inner walls, one for bathroom, second for pump room. In above picture - pump room.Demolishing guyEdgars helped a lot this Summer, he is my demolishing guy today.Wall being demolishedA very spacious space actually. If at the right - it's planned to store all auxiliary equipment, like water pump, washing machine and boiler, then at this room it's planned to build a kitchen in future.View…
Preparation Works For Bathroom - Breaking Ceiling, Demolish A Wall, Pouring Foundation
Ok, it took a long, but here I'm returning to the building bathroom from scratch worksHere is what we are going to do today:At first we will need to break ceilings or floor at the loft, then we will remove existing inner wall and then we will pour in foundation.Following works were actually carried out during two days, but for the ease of this article works from both days are featured here in one article.LoftHere you can see loft for our house, flooring (if we can call it so) is completely damaged. A year ago, while replacing roof we removed a few tons of sand from here, see: Unloading Few Tones of Sand from LoftAs you can see from image above, outer walls for upcoming bathroom…
Reading Terminal Market Philadelphia
Reading Terminal Market is an enclosed public market found at 12th and Arch Streets in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Over one hundred merchants offer fresh produce, meats, fish, artisan cheese, groceries, ice cream, flowers, grilled cheese, baked goods, crafts, books, clothing, and specialty and ethnic foods. Every space in the market is rented out; three of the vendors are descendants of original market merchants. The market is open every day of the week. The Pennsylvania Dutch merchants (a small but significant minority) generally do not operate Sunday through Tuesday.I've been 3 times to the United States, three times I've been to…
Rock Garden Extended
It was at the start of the September (2016) - we were finishing wall replacement works and already had installed first bearing beams, there were still some things left on home remodeling works, but all the major tasks were done, and everything was done to preserve house for the winter (as we will be absent)It was good day to spend some hours in garden and continue shaping our rock garden, please see:Building a Rock GardenShaping Rock GardenFirst plants for Rock GardenShaping trail in the rock gardenGravel and soil from pond is used to form trail and on the sidewals soil for the plants.Would you believe, if I told you, there was actually a dump bellow the rock garden just a few…
Outer Walls from AAC Blocks + Installing Bearing Beams
As Summer of 2017 is approaching really fast, and I still have so many not post processed images from home remodeling works performed during Summer 206 in Adobe Lightroom library, I decide to extend articles and feature more info in fewer articles.In today's article I'm sharing a two day construction works performed at the start of September 2016. In day one I continued to construct walls from aerated concrete blocks, and in fact continued to install new rows in the day two + we finally installed two bearing beams, and it's just a matter of time and glue hardening to finish construction works for the so called "pump room" and start thinking of how to get water supply inside…
Philadelphia Greyhound Terminal
There is a super cheap way to travel across the United States using intercity buses. Back in the Summer 2013 I made a long journey from New York to Houston, Texas for about USD 200 per 2 persons using MegaBus. Last time I was in the US, we decided to go to Philadelphia from NYC using Greyhound, the ticket price was very cheap some 24 USD, again for two persons. When we traveled back to NYC, we bought even cheaper - USD 10 tickets for return way. Either you are on the budget or you just love to travel by buses, greyhound and megabus are great choice. The Philadelphia Greyhound Terminal is the primary intercity bus station in Philadelphia,…
Night Office 2016
It's in the far future I will build a fancy working space in our rural country house, for now we are still busy of replacing log walls with aerated concrete blocks.For now to perform digital nomad activities I'm left with what I have a laptop and high speed internet - and I cannot complain.See: My Outdoor Working Place During Last Summer (2015) and My Summer Office 2016It was on the cold September night, I had to finish some works online, and I opted to enjoy one of the last Summer evenings outside.It was planed to build a nice outdoor summer terrace for evenings like this, but we didn't managed this year, though it's among top priorities for next home remodeling…
Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Secaucus, NJ
Once in the Burger bar - order burgers. That's how in short I could describe my experience at Red Robin Gourmet Burger in Secaucus, NJ.Located in the some building were La Quinta Inn & Suites Secaucus Meadowlands, in which we stayed during my latest US trip Red Robin was an oblivious choice for meal. They indeed have gourmet burgers and super delicious milkshakes. Red Robin Gourmet Burgers in SecaucusNo wonder it's called Red. Everything is so red around you.Fish & Chips at Red RobinI wouldn't order them once more. Yes they were eatable, fur far from fish & chips IMHO. Remember - once in a burger place, order burgers and not fish & chips. That's a life lesson I…
First Rows of Aerated Concrete Block For Pump Room
Let's keep building walls from aerated concrete blocks - the material I really love - it's easy to install, it's durable and it should be cost effective in combination with proper insulation.Today I was left alone, no handy hands, completely on my own - at start I was worried, but result turned out really good.Walls from aerated concrete blocksYesterday I did the soil grading, and this part of the house starts looking decent. A couple of days later, we will dig another trenches and for the first time in house's lifetime water will be inside the house. Amazing. But, not so fast, there are still a lot to do, like to finish this wall at first.View toward house
How To Install GlobalSight Translation Management System on Linode VPS (Ubuntu 14.04)
There are plenty of translation management systems available on the market, some are better, some have features that other's don't have. And some are paid while some are Open Source (free)
In today's servers article series I will share my configuration I used to install Open Source GlobalSight translation management system on Linode VPS running Ubuntu 14.04
It took me about 8 hours to get it finally runing, but using following tutorial you should be able to manage it under 2 hours (including some testing).
About GlobalSight Translation Management System
GlobalSight is an open-source Globalization Management System (GMS) that manages and streamlines all of the tasks…
La Quinta Inn & Suites Secaucus Meadowlands
La Quinta Inn & Suites Secaucus Meadowlands was our first hotel in United States, during our latest trip here. We booked this hotel as a secret deal on hotwire, as we wanted to get a reasonable price for a hotel with easy access to the Manhattan, New York city.Our booking price was about USD 140 per night here.Once our reservation was confirmed, it turned out to be located in the New Jersey, we paid for a limo service about $140 to get here from JFK airport, after a long flight, see: About Tbilisi - Kiev - New York Flight by Ukrainian AirlinesJust off I-95, this Secaucus hotel offers easy access to Manhattan attractions with a bus stop right at the hotel. It features spacious…
Grading Soil Around Foundation
I could probably come up with an article How to grade soil around foundation, but I'm not an expert on this topic.In today's home remodeling series I will show with images how I leveled soil around foundations using just two tools - a shovel and a rake.Technically speaking, here is what you should know about grading soil around foundation:Proper grading around the foundation of your home keeps many potential issues at bay. Without the right grade, water collects at the base, causing erosion, foundation cracks, mold and unhealthy vegetation. To ensure a proper grade, slope any landscape additions away from the base of the structure, so water flows farther out into the yard.Let's start with…
Zen Ramen and Sushi House, New York City
Nestled in the middle of financial district, New York City, we discovered this place by an accident. After wondering around Manhattan, I took the wrong subway ride and once we left subway, we were in a cool neighborhood somewhere in Midtown.This place promised some 50% discount on some select sushi and we decided to go inside.Zen Ramen and Sushi house in New York Cityif you don't read Japanese you should take a careful look around, as it was bright banners that attracted our attention, and just then we notices this might be a sushi place.Sushi set at Zen Ramen and Sushi houseWow, that was something really great. I would say the best sushi I have tried (though I haven't tried them too much…
Constructing Foundation From Fibo Ceramsite Blocks For Pump Room
The long story short - we are continuing to build a pump room, a room to store inside pumps and other aggregates, earlier this Summer we drill a bore hole and we are looking to draw in water to the house. For that we need a pump room.Unfortunately the old log walls have been rotten and we started to replace them with aerated concrete blocks, prior to that we had to strengthen foundation. During foundation works we found out that there are parts were there are no foundation at all for house, it has been sitting just on few stones for more than hundred years. We had to change that.The task is neither complicated nor hard, it involves a lot of dealing with different things, planing,…
How To Open A Bank Account in U.S., As A Non-resident Non - citizen, Wells Fargo Bank
Long story short - after the long and painful check operations, originally sent from the U.S., and redemption in Georgia (or probably in any country except USA), which takes at least some 40 working days and huge bank fees for check procedures - I decided enough is enough, I'm going to the United States and I will open a bank account there, in order to receive direct payments to my bank account instead of checks.
Yes, there are companies in U.S. which sends checks instead of direct payments for international partners, Amazon Associates, for example
If you are looking for a way how to open a bank account in the USA without actually visiting USA, this guide is not for you, as to make it…
My Start at Investing on Mintos Peer to Peer Lending Platform: Depositing Funds
I first heard about Mintos.com peer to peer lending platform at the start of 2016, later that year I decided to give it a try, as I was looking for investment opportunities especially in Georgia.
Back at these days Mintos operated already in Georgian lending market. I even made an article later that year, see: Invest in Georgia - Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending - Mintos.com
Both individuals and entities can invest through Mintos. Individual investors must be at least 18 years old, have a bank account in the European Union or third countries currently considered to have AML/CFT systems equivalent to the EU, and have their identity successfully verified by Mintos. At the moment,…
When Foundations Crumble - Home Remodeling
When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? Psalm 11:3Today was meant to be an easy day, we had to continue foundation works, pouring in concrete, nothing complicated in fact, just a manpower to carry gravel with wheelbarrow for some 100 meters from the pile to the concrete mixer. I had two workers helping me out today, what could go wrong?It was planned some visitors will arrive in the evening and we will grill some meat and look on overall progress of home remodeling. See: Home Remodeling - How It All StartsWork in progressAuthor of this blog standing next to the concrete mixer.And then it happened:Rock fall on the foundationA minor landslide and rock…