Photo
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…
Darbnīca Cafe Liepāja
Centrally located on Lielā street in Liepāja, Darbnīca Cafe is another nice addition to my Liepāja restaurant reviews (they are few, I know). We travel to Liepāja once in a while, during our Summer's in Latvia, mostly for buying some construction materials for our home remodeling works or handling some financial tasks (banks and so on). It was on early September morning I had to handle something a bank, and we agreed to have some…
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 demolished All 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 guy Edgars helped a lot this Summer,…
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 works Here 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. Loft Here you can see loft for…
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…
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 Garden Shaping…
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…
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…
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 2016 It was on the cold September night, I had to…
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 Secaucus No wonder it's called…
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 blocks Yesterday I did the soil grading, and this part of the house starts looking decent. A couple of…
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…
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…
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 City if you don't read Japanese you should take a careful look around, as it…
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…
When Foundations Crumble - Home Remodeling
When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? Psalm 11:3 Today 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…
Central Park, New York City
Central Park is an urban park in Manhattan, New York City. Central Park is the most visited urban park in the United States, with about 40 million visitors yearly, also it's one of the most filmed locations in the world. Central Park should be on every travelers, going to the NYC, bucket list, I first visited it in the Spring 2012, and was really amazed of an elegant urban/nature solutions in the middle…
First plants for Rock Garden
Last summer we not only concreted a lot and demolished walls, but planted some plants and trees in the surrounding territory. See: Planting an Apple Tree (Doch Melbi / Daughter Melbi / Дочь Мелбы) After we shaped a little bit our rock garden it was time to plant first plants. First plants at rock garden For the record - thyme and rosemary
Shaping Rock Garden
It was on the same day when guys and I demolished walls and poured in concrete for home foundation, while the better part of me, decided to shape a little bit rock garden we recently formed from stones used at cowshed's foundation, during pond excavation works. See: Building a Rock Garden and Pond Digging - Part 3 - The Result The idea was simple, we are looking to plant some flowers and plants into rock garden, we…
Independence Square in Kiev
Maidan Nezalezhnosti (literally:Independence Square) is the central square of Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine. One of the city's main squares, it is located on Khreshchatyk Street in the Shevchenko Raion. The square has been known under many different names, but often it is called simply Maidan ("square"). I had a brief chance to visit and make one photography of Kiev's Maidan Square at the end of 2016, during unplanned short Kiev city tour…
Rooms Hotel Kazbegi
Located at the base of Kazbek Mountain in Stepantsminda Village, 7 km from the 14th-century Gergeti Trinity Church, Hotel Kazbegi features a lobby bar with a library (I even got local Georgian Forbes magazine in English) and free Wi-Fi. We booked our stay at Rooms hotel Kazbegi in the middle of December 2016, and were accompanied by friends of us, who luckily had a ground transport and were able to take us there, as speaking of public…
Let's Keep Demolishing Walls, Construct Foundation From Ceramsite Blocks And Pour In Some Concrete
Yeah, let's do that - another day on steroids from my home remodeling adventures during late Summer 2016 (August) Frankly speaking, by now, browsing through the images from last Summer works I'm getting a little bit dizzy - it looks way too dramatic. On the other hand, we already had experience and knowledge about demolishing walls, see: Remove a Wall to Finish Foundation Concreting, also constructing missing foundation…
Hiking trails near Turtle lake, Tbilisi in Winter
I'm fond of hiking/trekking trails near Turtle lake in Tbilisi, I have done several routes, with my favorite being unaccessible anymore after the Tbilisi flooding in June 2015. See: Failed attempt to complete Tskneti - Turtle lake hiking route Now, since it was about a year since our latest hiking activities in Georgia, on a lovely's Sunday morning (February 5, 2017) we decided to catch a taxi (see: How to Get around in Tbilisi by Taxify…
Tasty Ukrainian Cuisine on Khreshchatyk street in Kiev
Wow, my first (yet, only one) Kiev restaurant review and I can't remember name of this place. Shame on me. On the other hand it was not planned to make any Kiev restaurant reviews this time, as we were having just a layover flight in Kiev before departing to NYC. See: About Tbilisi - Kiev - New York Flight by Ukrainian Airlines Unfortunately our flight was delayed for 10 hours and instead of waiting at Borispol's airport transit area…