Here are all the pictures I have left over. Have a great day..... I'm off to enjoy the High Life with Miller and wash my car....




The welcome mat is always out. I live down in Lancaster, SC. I'd put my address down but there are too many freaks out there..... Email me or call and we can set up a time for you to stop by and we can have a cold one on the front porch and ponder life's mystery's or debate who was a better frontman for Van Halen, Sammy or Dave.

Well I think this is going to do it for the site. I have done almost everything I needed to.... The house is up and running and I am one happy camper! I hope everyone who checked out my site enjoyed it..... It was hard work but it's all worth it. I know I made some jokes about mom and dad doing most of the work on this project but it's in good fun. I realize that I am one lucky S.O.B! What a minute!!!! Did I just call my mom a b$#ch???? YICKES!!! Seriously, I am very fortunate to have parents who worked thier butts off to get this place the way it needed to be. THANKS MOM & DAD!!!! To all who helped I want to say THANK YOU!!!!!! I am now an official home owner. I look forward to spending all of my Saturdays mowing the yard, asking people to please take off thier shoes before coming in, cringing everytime one of my nephews drop thier sippy cups on the carpet and last but not least yelling at the neighborhood kids "Hey you punks! Get off of my grass". I leave you with pictures of the place when I first saw it to what it looks like today.

AHHHHHHHHH YES!!!! Did you think I forgot about you??????? They just installed my cable modem!!!! I AM BACK ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB!!! LOOK OUT!!!!! I took today off because the cable company gave me the "Well they will be out there to set up everything between 8-12" speech. Gotta love the it. Actually the guys came out around 9:30 and had it all set up in 15 minutes. I cannot believe how much my life depends on the internet! I do almost everything on it, banking, paying bills, news, shopping. It's as easy as my date for senior prom! KIDDING!!!! I didn't even go to prom. Well I'm all moved in. I official spent the first night here last Sunday, 9/4/05, and it was great! It is sooooo quiet at night except for this yappin' dog across the way..... GEEZ!!! That thing sounds like it's being tortured by one of Saddam's secret police on the west side of Baghdad..... Enough about the dog. In the last week I have been unpacking stuff. WOW!!! I have found things that I forgot I had. Some of the boxes haven't been open for almost 6 years. It's like Christmas morning everytime I open another box! This is the day I moved in. Nothing was unpacked yet.
 
HE HE HE HE HE!!!! Hey check out Big Ron's back!!!! That's sweat!! I didn't think it was that hot???

HOME SWEET HOME!!!!! Well moving was not that bad. I picked the truck up Friday afternoon and that night my best friend Boike came over and of course mom & dad helped too. We had that baby all loaded up in less then 2 hours. I went to bed around midnight. Woke up bright and early ready to get into my new house...... We all went down there about 9:30AM and unloaded. Heck! That only took an hour!!!!

HELLO CHARLOTTE!!!!!! YOU READY TO ROCK?!?!?!?!? Well Bristol was a great time!! Cofer is a great host and I always feel welcome at his place....... If you like NASCAR do yourself a favor and go to the Bristol night race....... Good stuff!!!

So here is the plan.... I have reserved the U-Haul for Saturday. Actually I'm picking it up Friday and hopefully having it packed up for an easy trip down to the house to unload. I'm itching to get to the new McBride Shangi La..... I'm packing my car up with stuff so I can go to the house after work and unload it. The U-Haul is for the big stuff, refrigerator, sectional and other huge items.....I will have the place ready to go this weekend...... HOLLA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The PBR's are on ice!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm heading to Bristol for some beer drinkin' and hell raisin'!!!!! Isn't that a ZZ Top song????? My old college roommate lives up there and has tickets to the race this weekend!! GIDDY UP!!!! NASCAR is great fun!!!! SWEET MOTHER MARY! If you like to people watch then you need to go...... Let's just say that they come out of the woodwork...... I swear that there are people who save up all year so they can go to the race. Tube tops are a must, preferably ones that they 'DAYTONA BEACH SPRING BREAK 85' ... So there will be no work done to the house this weekend. Big Ron comes back from China on Saturday. The poor guy will be beat...... He just boarded the plane for home 2 hours ago.... That's right I said 2 hours ago, and I am writing this at 10:00 pm Thursday night, and he is not touching the ground at Charlotte Douglas Airport until Saturday morning!!!!! You do the math to see how long that will be...... God knows how many time zones he'll be going through..... The last thing on his mind when he gets home is doing some work at my place.... I don't have any new pictures for you. But I can tell you that all the carpet is in and we are ready to move everthing in!!!!! I hope everyone has a great weekend and let's hope that I'm not this guy at the race........



HE HE HE HE!!! Don't worry we poked him with a stick to see if he was alive before we took the picture!!!

HOT DOG!!!!!! The carpet is in!!!!!! HE HE HE!!!!! I can see you all now saying FINALLY!!!!!! Jamie did the finished touches this afternoon. IT LOOKS GREAT! As soon as he left I started moving things in. Of course stuff I could carry. I've come to realize that I'm not 21 any more...... I carried in a bed, night stands and a few nick nacks. That is all I did tonight. Not sure when the move day will be. Big Ron is in China until Saturday and I'm headed to Bristol Friday. I might need to take a day off during the week and do it then.

So this has been bugging me since I bought the place. The previous owners had quite the little entertainment system. They had two satellites, cable TV and of course a phone. They had it so they just had wires everywhere around the house. That had to go. This is what was left by them.


The madness had to end! So I went to Home Depot, as I do every freakin' night, and bought a electric box and a PVC pipe. Consolidation is the name of the game!!!! I'm happy the way it turned out....




A little bit cleaner look. I'll be planting a bush there too. That will conceal it even more. I also took my friend Aaron's advise and replaced all the dead bolt locks. Being a foreclosed property I would really hate the previous owners unlocking the door and beating me to a pulp because I took thier house.

THIS IS MY ROOM AND I CAN DECORATE IT ANYWAY I WANT!!!!! Welcome to my garage!! This is how I see it. I'm a single guy and my thinking was, "Well who cares what it looks like as long as it fits my needs." That's changing. I don't want to be that guy that you know as soon as you step foot in his house that he's single. You know what I'm talking about. A big ass TV on top of two huge DJ style speakers. A Lazy Boy and a picture of a woman only wearing a bra holding a beer with a caption reading "Man's best friends". I knew that the garage was all mine to decorate because unless you are a guy who can appreciate working on cars and drinking beer you're not setting foot in there. Getting it in working order was a dream for me! This is my first. I have either lived in an apartment or at someone else's house. I knew this day was going to come. I've been planning it for years. I was always collecting and saving stuff to decorate my garage ever since I was a teenager. WHAT THE CRAP!!! That's almost 20 years ago!!! GOOD GOD I'm old!!! HELL! I should just go and get a hip replacement and a membership to AARP while I'm at it.... As you can see, there is still furniture that will be going into the house as soon as the carpet is ready. However that did not stop me from setting up my workshop and tool cabinets.


I set up a killer sound system too!!!! It's made up of old stereo equipment I have had since I was a kid and stuff I found..... Look! See the CD player on the top? That was the first one I had. Mom gave it to me on Christmas day 1986! It still ROCKS! I bought the amplifier when I was in 7th grade. I thought I was this HIFI bad ass back then. I think it was $250 and I had to mow a ton of yards to save up for it. HE HE HE HE!!! I went online to see if I could get a manual for it and found out the company no long exists! FOLKS!!!! I smell a collectors item!!!! I found the speakers up in my brother's attic the day they moved in. The previous owners left them. Their lose!! SUCKERS!!!! I know I said this earlier but THEY ROCK! I also put up some old beer signs I had when I worked at a beer distributor for a short time, YUCK don't get me started on that debacle! I have some nice Mustang anniversary pictures and some old Earnhart posters. YEAP! This baby will be looking good when it has the Mustang sitting pretty in it!!!

Well Big Ron is off to China for a week. So that leaves mom and I. She was not sure what she wanted to do with the kitchen. One day she wanted to paint it. The next day she wanted to wallpaper it.....WOMEN!!!! GEEZ! Well she finally made up her mind. Wallpaper it is. So we cruised over to Lowes and picked some up.


Yeap! That's my feet propped up on a chair watching her work. What a trooper huh!?!? Actually I was taking a break from working out in the garage. It was like 114 degrees out there!!! As a guy down in Talladega told me, "It's hotter then the hubs of hell!" Whatever that means... Anyways, she finished one of the walls and will get it all up tomorrow. The place should look great.
During last week I showed the house to my friend Joe. I told him that the refrigerator I was getting is black and the dishwasher and oven were almond. He said that almost all companies make dishwashers so you can just reverse the front cover of them. They are either almond or black. So while I was eating lunch I started to look it over. Sure enough there were two plates that I just simply turned around and wa la!!! I have a black dishwasher!!




I did some more stuff this weekend but DANG!!! My bed is calling me. I'm beat. I guess being outside for the last two days when it was 100 degrees will do that to you. I'll tell you all about my other projects tomorrow.

Welcome to your new home baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!


This is what Big Ron gave me!!!! It's Nana's clock that she had to the left of the TV in her house. I always remembered this clock! BY GOD I thought it was gone forever but Big Ron had it in storage. Now to some, hell who we kidding, ALL of you reading this the clock is pretty gaudy looking and I can see where you are coming from. HOWEVER It's from my Nana's house. It's a part of the McBride heritage. Nana had it made for Russ, my step grandfather, to commemorate their 25th wedding anniversary. It has 25 silver dollars for the numbers. Pretty cool huh????? I hung it in the garage. Come on!! Did you think I was going to put it in the living room????
I know I have been leading you on about the carpet. Well!!!! It's almost done....... Jaime, the carpet guy, was over at the house Saturday and Sunday working on it. The two bedrooms are done and the reason for the rest of it not being done is of an epiphany I had Saturday morning. OK See if you think this is a good idea.... There is left over hard wood flooring from the front door entrance. I think it would be a good idea if he does the back door too. Here I laid it out to see what it would look like.


I'm 99.9% sure I want him to install it.

DOH!!!!!! Well I was hoping to have some pictures of a freshly carpeted house for you but it won't be tonight. All the padding is in place but no carpet. See....


I do have a picture of the carpet. What do you think of the color???


Hopefully by tomorrow it will all be laid out..... Of course I need to give the guy installing it a break. Check it out, he is a nurse that works the grave yard shift every night. He gets off at 7am and immediately goes and installs carpet till about 1pm. WOW!!! Wonder how many Red Bulls he downs in a day...... Oh yeah, when I was at the house I saw that he wrote a short note apologizing for smoking in the house yesterday. Very cool for him to do....
GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY!!!!! I just received some great news!!!! No I'm not saving a bunch of money switching to Geico. Big Ron is giving me a family treasure for the house. I can't tell you what it is yet but it's going up this weekend. Let's just say that it's something from, I think, the early 70's and it's priceless!!!!!! Details coming soon....

I think the Beastie Boys said it best when they sang "HEY LADIES"..... Check out the hard wood floor!!!! Very impressive if I say myself. It was very cool to walk in and see that the hard wood section was put into place BUT!!!! As I walked in my nose picked up a hint of cigarette smoke! Now for the record I do not have a problem if you smoke, even though it's one nasty ass habit, but don't be going into someone's house and smoke without permission!!!! Not cool. Before I left the house I wrote a little note asking the guy to please not smoke in the house. Anyways, If you see to the right of the wood section you'll see a gold vent for the A/C. Rest a sure! That is sooooo gone. The people loved gold. All the outlet and light covers were that color. I have replaced almost everything with white. The A/C vents are next on the list when I go to Home Depot. I'm there so much that the check out lady knows me by name. Too bad she has never seen a dentist. She'd be alright lookin'. That reminds me! I need to floss before I go to bed tonight. The carpet should be in tomorrow and I'll have some pictures posted by that night.

We had some left over paint after doing the front bedroom. Mom, the interior decorator, thought it was best to use it up and paint the laundry/pantry/room you enter from the garage. Heck people, I don't know what to call it..... Anyhow, It still need a second coat but I think it will turn out nice.

Now I know I'm old! The gutter guys came today and installed gutters. I was as excited to see them as I was when I was 7 and it was Christmas morning. They look GREAT!!!!! AND! They did the work without me paying them yet? God bless the honor system. Don't worry the check is being sent to them tomorrow morning in addition to a note telling them what a great job they did. I spent most of the evening working out in the back yard. There was this crappy looking tree stump that I dug up. I dug it out along with a honeysuckle bush that I plan on planting on the side of the front porch. After I pulled out the bush I saw it was intertwined with another plant. $20 bucks says it's poison oak. Better go and take a shower. That stuff makes me look like I have leprosy.


As for the hole in the yard..... You are looking at the official fire pit! Hell!!! I live out in the country. I can burn anything I want without a home owners association getting their boxers in a wad, because there isn't an association! YEAH!!!!! Seriously I plan on using it to burn all the debris around the property. There is a pile of wood that looks pretty nasty that will be the first to go along with any dead branches and other goodies I find. I figure that one weekend I can just hang out there and keep the fire going with all the crap I need to get rid of.

I worked on the deck too. It's all pressure washed and sealed. I also took down two satellite dishes, anybody need one, that were mounted on the railing. This probably was a conversation the people had, "HMMMMMMM????? We only have enough money to 1. Make the mortgage payment or 2. Pay for satellite service. What should we do honey? HECK sweetie you know I need my MTV Cribs and I love the late night pay per view! Pay the satellite bill." Here's a before and after of the deck. Improvement?????


Before I call it a night I wanted to let everyone who read about the hard wood floors that I Googled 'Chicks love hard wood floors' and I got a few porn sites and some pages dedicated to medicating erectile disfunction. There were no scientific studies to be found. And NO I did not check out the porn sites. They were not free!!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Have a good one.....

We then set our sights on the side of the house. There was enough mold on it to make penicillin for the whole ER at Carolina Medical Center!



Big Ron mixed up some bleach and water to take it off. Just don't get it in your eyes. It's like getting spayed with pepper spray. Not that I would know anything about that. Back to cleaning! We sprayed it down and the mold just rinsed right off.




OH YEAH!!!! I almost forgot! I met one of my neighbors and his wife. A couple about my age. Two kids. They are twins. What a handful that would be. Two toddlers! YICKS!!!!! They were telling me how one weekend the people who lived in the house before me backed a U-Haul to the front door and started throwing everything they could in to it as fast as they could. I guess they were in a hurry. Being foreclosed on will make you do that. My neighbor told me that the guy got the truck stuck in the front yard. That would explain the huge ruts I discovered when I mowed. NICE!!!!!!!!!! Anyone have extra dirt so I can fill them in????