I finally got an invite to Google’s new GrandCentral. If you haven’t heard about this FREE service its amazing. This company issues you a local phone number. When someone calls that number you can have it ring to as many different numbers as you like. GrandCentral is not a call hunting service, all the phone ring at the exact same time!

You can upload your address book and the service will filter your calls. Each contact can be placed in a Group. Groups can then be personalized to only ring certain numbers. For example. After uploading business contacts you can have those contacts only ring your cell and office number. Friends and family can be forwarded to home, office, and cell. You inbound home number can be set to only ring during daylight hours.

My new “follow me number” is (720)279-4709, use that to contact me PLEASE.

The service is invite only right now, but if any of you want an invite let me know.

This Summer has been all about curb appeal. The outside of our house was looking old and run down. The home was built back in 1995 and had not really had any exterior updates since it was new.

A few weeks ago we had the guys from Choice Painting tackle the outside walls, trim and gutters. Zane the owner and his crew did a great job. If your home is in need of painting and are in the Denver Metro area call Zane. You can reach him and his crew at (720)229-4486. Nicole and I had no trouble picking out colors. Our HOA(home owners association) has a few booklets that home owners can use to pick out paint schemes. Instead of spending endless hours thumbing through the booklets, we decided to drive around the neighborhood and find a house color we like. We then just matched it up to one in the book, easy.

With new paint on the outside we had a few other things in mind to get the house looking better. We replaced the front storm door with a Pella roll-a-way screen model called the Montgomery. The top half of the glass moves up and down. Attached to the top of that glass is a rolling screen. The stock color poplar white matched our trim color perfect, almost like we had planned it. The installation was not without problems. The door was build about 3/32″ wider at the top than at the bottom. A little custom work to the door jam was in order. I started with a palm sander but was not getting very far. So I pulled out a tool I usually use on a Jeep project, the angle grinder. Don’t worry I used a flapper type sanding wheel, not a cutting blade. After that, and few minor adjustments, it’s working fine and really makes a good seal. I think it will really help keep the cold out this coming Winter.

Now to tackle the windows. Most of the windows in the house are working great, however one window did need to be replaced. The large window above the front entry had a broken seal and was getting quite a bit of moister in it. It had to be replace before it started letting water into the walls. After calling around Accent Windows had a great price. With that great price came less than stellar front end customer service. They were sometimes hard to reach. We finally nailed them down on an install date. The crew that installed the window was great. They were knowledgeable and made very quick work of the job. After the job was complete Choice Painting came right back over and touched up the trim and no extra cost.

To upgrade the other windows we added some 2″ blinds to the windows on the front of the house. The windows in the other areas of the house will get the new blind treatment when the budget allows. As you can see from the photo, I should be hanging the final blind above the garage instead of picture taking and blogging. “I know honey I will get right on it after I am done here.”

The total cost of the updates was around $2800. Not really that bad considering some of the paint estimates we got were more than that.

Trevor turned six this past week. It sure does seem like time is really flying by. The picture here was taken when Memaa treated us to dinner at Red Robin here in Castle Rock. Papa was out of town and could not join us.

Trevor had a great week. Sunday, Nicole ordered The Fun Bus for wild party here at the house. The Fun Bus is a school bus with the seats removed. They take the kids through an exercise routine while playing games in the gymnastic padded bus. While the kids enjoyed the party so did the adults. It was quite quiet for about 60 minutes, then the bus time was over and pinata time started.

Nicole and I would like to thank everyone for coming.

[iPhone post]