I'm almost there! I got the entire thing primed and most of it painted. In retrospect I should have used a different paint, definitely not a rattle can. The MDF sucks up the paint, and ends up looking splotchy. It's not too bad after two coats, but the edges soak it up the worst.

I also got my yoke taken apart so I can mount it through the hole after the paint is done.

And finally I did a test fit. I love that Saitek included some M4 screw holes in the bottom of the yoke. It makes mounting this thing a dream!

So tomorrow I will apply the last two coats of black paint on the front of the cockpit. I thought about cutting out holes for the FIP's, but without having one in hand I decided I better wait on it. When I do cut out those holes I may take the time to roll another coat of paint on it. I'm too impatient now though, I want to get it done and fly!

So I ended up sick the last couple days and wasn't able to work on the cockpit like I wanted to. So today we made a quick trip to Home Depot, and after getting home I got started.

First I ripped off the top that I put on there the other day. I replaced it with 1/4" MDF. I'm much happier with it.

After the glue dried I used my router to chop of the side excess and round the corners. Next I used the rest of the board to put the front of the cockpit on.

I then followed the same thing and routed the excess off making the shape beautiful! I then sanded down the whole thing making sure all the corners were nice and rounded.

The last thing I did was cut out the holes for my yoke to go out, and for my panels to mount.

As I sat here looking at it I realized I screwed up. I needed to mount the right panels further towards the center. That would have allowed me to install additional switches on the left edge. The big one being an engine 2 magneto switch. Oh well.

While I was working on that Katie and Thomas did some weeding. Thomas does not like grass, and did not want to crawl on it.

As some of you may have heard over the last year I've been doing a lot of flight simulation. It started when Microsoft released Flight. The best part of that game was the multiplayer, as I found a whole group of people to fly with. Eventually Microsoft cancelled Flight, so our group migrated heavily to FSX. I've been flying more and more, and have decided it's time to build a dedicated cockpit.

I looked around online and found this page with someone's first cockpit. I thought it looked fantastic. Simple, yet provided all the functionality I was looking for. So tonight I began building.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get the boxes all done, Friday get the front of the dash done and get my equipment in an initial mounting for a group flight scheduled for Saturday.

Oh yeah.. picture of Thomas...

There comes a time when you have to ask yourself, should this website be used just to post cute pictures and video's of our baby.








The answer of course is yes. Afterall, who can say no to this pleading face:

Some videos Katie took of Thomas (All available in 720P HD!)

I've really been sucking at posting, and I think it's mostly due to the hassle of getting pictures ready. So I decided I'm just going to upload them to the gallery for now... Perhaps I'll add them to the posts later.

So...

Introducing Thomas Johnson!

Born at 10:24 PM, 8lbs 8oz, 19 inches long.

Well the nursery is done (mostly), baby is here, and I have not posted anything. So I'll fix that for a bit. First off is the nursery.

So the last time we mentioned the nursery we had re-caulked the wainscoting (bead board), and Katie repainted over it. In the end it worked out somewhat ok. It's still possibly flakey, but most of the problem areas are along the top, where he shouldn't be able to eat it for 6 years. (And since it's not lead based paint of course, the effects would be minimal).

So I say mostly done above as there is minimal decoration. We didn't decide on Thomas until after he was born. So decoration will come.

The doctor has decided to induce labor tomorrow, May 30th. I'm excited, nervous, and down right scared to death. I have no idea what to expect, how much it's going to hurt (although according to my sister-in-law who had her baby on Saturday, it's not pleasant), or what, if any, complications will arise.

Someone please tell me I'm up for it. Not just the painful labor and delivery part, but the whole mommy thing. I always thought I'd be a great mom, but now that it's really real I'm starting to wonder.

We've had a super busy week. After one or the other of us being sick for nearly a month we finally felt well enough to get some stuff done around the house. Monday we went to Ikea to get some dressers to use as nightstands. (Our bed is really tall.) Which had the glorious side effect of giving the two of us enough storage to use Mike's old dresser in the baby's room. Mike put the dressers together while I finished re-painting the seams in the beadboard that he had re-caulked (with the right kind of caulk). Tuesday, Mike went mountain biking with Jason, while I spent time with my parents. We didn't get home until after eight, so we just did some much needed housework. Wednesday we had our birthing class, which meant we didn't get home until nearly 10, then we finished the touch up paint in the baby's room. Thursday we went shopping for some Closetmaid fabric storage bins, which were a pain in the butt to find at the Wal-Mart. I ended up not liking any of the colors, so we didn't even buy any. When we got home, Mike hung up the curtain rod in the nursery then we finished organizing and moving our clothes around. Tonight we shall: get Mike a haircut, go up to his mom's house to help her with her sprinklers, then go out to dinner and a movie with friends. After what I'm sure will feel like too little sleep (because even 12 hours feels like too little sleep these days) I'll wake up, attempt to make myself pretty, and go to a baby shower for my sister-in-law and me!

The crib is coming next Friday so stay tuned for pictures of the finished nursery!

For those of you waiting with bated breath to see the pictures of the finished nursery, we have bad news. It might be a while. Sadly, upon applying the 'final' coat of white paint to the bead board, we realized that we used the wrong silicone to fill in the gaps. We've been frustrated, disappointed, and down-right pissed all last week trying to figure out how to remedy the situation. We've tried scraping and peeling it off, which has not worked. We tried ignoring it, which also didn't work. Now we are going to try to put a thin layer of paintable caulk on top of the non-paintable silicone. Honestly, if it doesn't work we'll just have to live with it, but neither of us is very happy with that scenario. So wish us the best of luck, and the energy to try again.

We're about at the end. So no pictures for two reasons, to hold of the suspense of the final reveal, and two, not much interesting happened last night. When we got home Katie immediately got to work, while I cooked dinner. By the time dinner was done she had completely finished filling all the holes. After dinner she took at nap while I finished siliconing all the seams. Once it dries, the bead board is ready for paint! Katie wanted to get a bit extra done so she quickly finished painting the closet. We're going to take a night off tonight, and will be with family tomorrow, so the final painting should be on Monday. Stay tuned!

Tonight we got a later start. After getting home I first had to cook dinner (Salmon and grilled vegetables), before we could start. Katie worked on filling the nail holes, while I started applying silicone to the seams and corners. At 9PM I decided we needed to call it quits for the night, so we didn't quite finish.

Since I don't have many pictures, here's the results of my spraying the first coat on the bead board, along with a first coat on the trim.

Tonight when we got home I immediately started on the chair rail. I finished cutting all the pieces I would need, and dry fit them to ensure proper fit. Next Katie came in and helped me level them out as I nailed them in. I got to use my finish nailer, which worked great! We got all of them hung quickly.

The last thing I needed to do was trim out the corners. I took out my dremel tool to carve out a bit of the base boards for the trim to slip into. Once it's all siliconed and painted it will look great!

Tonight we got home and I got to work. I started cutting the last of the bead board. After all my pieces were cut we did a marathon to hang them. One, then the next, then the next. Katie electrocuted herself again. It actually went really quick.

After that I wanted to get some of the trim cut, so I measured the one that would be cut short and made that 45 degree cut. I also cut another quickie that would be full length, but just need 45's on both ends.

It's starting to come along much quicker, and I can see the finish line. Tomorrow I'll try to finish the chair rail, then will be some corner trim, putting silicone in the gaps, and filling the nail holes, followed by a last coat of paint.

And Katie adds: "P.S. we still have to finish the missed spots in the *)(@#$ closet! (Don't ever paint a closet)"

Time for the complex stuff. I started measuring and cutting the bead board. We found out quickly that our base trim was not very level. Oh well, we'll do the best we can! So we started applying it. Liquid Nails on the back, some brad nails in the front. It was nice to be able to use my new nail guns, the brad nailer worked great! It was during this time Katie electrocuted herself. That got me a little concerned about what I may do to the boy, but he was moving around later in the day.

We kept working. I would measure and cut, then call in Katie to help glue and hold it, while I nailed it in. We got about 1/3 of the way done and ran out of glue. It was time for another Home Depot run.

This one we knew would be bad. Another gallon of paint, glue, other small needed tools, and the chair rail. Another expensive trip, hopefully the last one.

When we got home I started work on the chair rail while Katie took a nap. What I did was route out the bottom to fit flush over the bead board, and against the wall at the same time. Basically to look like this:

So I took each board and ran it over the table router a couple times to get the depth I wanted. It worked perfectly!

Once I was done I took them all downstairs and sprayed them with a first coat of paint. Back upstairs I hung a couple more sheets of bead board, and called it a night.
(cell phone pic)

Yesterday we did some errands to get ready for the weekend. First we stopped at Sears over lunch to pick up a router table I bought. Second stop was after work at my moms house to grab my dad's old router. Went home and I mounted them together, perfect fit! We then did a bit more painting. I had gone to far with the blue in some spots and hit the ceiling, so Katie covered those up. She also finished the window casing, and the closet frame. I got more of the bead board painted, along with the other side of the closet doors.

Tonight was more errands than painting. We ran over to Katie's parent's house to borrow her dad's jig saw. I didn't think about it when we were at my mom's to borrow hers. That was alright though as we also borrowed his miter saw for some trim cutting. After picking them up we went out to dinner with them then headed home. I did get the last of the bead board coated with a single coat of paint.

After taking the day off the nursery yesterday, we went back to it today. First step was a Home Depot run. We picked up an extra gallon of white paint, and got our bead board for the bottom of the room. At 4'x8' sheets, they wouldn't fit in either of our vehicles, so we had a worker there cut them exactly in half for us. The first one was way off, with one board being about an inch longer than the other, but the rest were fine. We ended up with 10 sheets 4' by 4'. We squeezed them into the back of Katie's Outback and headed home.

Once home I began painting downstairs, while Katie painted in the nursery. I got out the sprayer and started applying a first coat of paint to each of the boards, as well as painting the closet doors white to match the rest of the room. Katie continued in the closet but it was slow going. After I was done I brought up the sprayer to use in the closet. We masked off all the carpet in the closet, and I started spraying. It went so much quicker and better than rolling & brushing. Some quick back rolling and it was mostly done. It does look like I missed some spots, so we'll have to hit those again later.

Today after work we continued working on the nursery. Katie masked off the ceiling, and we cut in the rest of the blue on the walls. We decided to paint the closet as well, and decided to do that in white. So we slowly began that, and quickly realized how much it sucks. We didn't get very far on it. We also started painting around the closet door and window in white as well.

More to come!

The time is coming quickly, so it was time to start setting up the nursery. There was a lot that Katie wanted to do, so we planned to start early. Here's some before pictures (click to embiggen!). Wall and ceiling the same color. The trim and door were the same before we moved in.

First step was to pull down the speakers and the light fixture. We were finally going to get rid of the beige ceiling paint. Katie picked up 2 gallons of ceiling paint, which is pretty flat, and kind of thicker. It actually went up pretty quick. We waited about 20 minutes after finishing and did a second coat. After the bulk of that dried I reinstalled the lights and speakers into the ceiling while Katie did the edges.

We did some cleanup to prepare to paint the walls next. We had painted a spot of the color we wanted, and were happy with the color. So we started off the walls. (This picture shows the color well.)

The nice thing was we weren't doing the whole wall, as we had other plans for the bottom. Two coats and we were done for the day. Here's a few shots of the room at the end of the day. These two are cell phone pictures, so the color is off.