We went hiking at Niagara Gorge on Sunday. It was s o nice to get outside in a teeshirt and run around. Here it is from the top, we hiked down to the bottom.


It was cool to touch the ice when you are all hot and sweaty from hiking in the sun. If only it felt like that in the winter.


Apparently, they are having some issue with New Zealand Mud Snails


We were with a guy who had a broken arm and walked with a cane. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to take him on a frozen cliff path hike. I guess he survived so it was good.



The water was so pretty.


Check out the waves


We finally got down to the shore


At one point we found the last pieces of ice and chucked them in the water to take out our winter aggression.

(e:terry) caught this one right out of the water. Yes, this is how people get swept away and die.

::Download Flash Video::

Then the ice boom broke or something because all of a sudden there were a million icebergs, some of which were a good 10 feet long.

::Download Flash Video::

Once we sat own in the sun, off came Terri's top. She is the most unbashful woman I ever met, I think it is cool that she exercises her right to be topless. The visitor center viewing area about 200 feet above quickly field with dude's watching her from above. It wasn't remove enough for me to take anything off - next time we will have to go to Zoar Valley, lol.


This is Dave's cousin Pat.


On the way back up, the other topless terry was playing Karate Kid.


Here are Dave and Otsi.


And (e:matthew), (e:terry) and I


I took this picture for (e:jacob). It is the new indian casino. I thought the design was pretty cool and he would like it.


On the way home I took some pics of the river overlooking Grand Island. It looked so beuatiful. Too bad it is so disgustingly polluted. I remember working at this factory on that road for a day (as a temp computer specialist) where their primary business was burning formaldehyde to make other chemicals. The woman I worked with was covered in growths and their was a yellow line on the floor that separated the clerical staff from the workers that had protective gear on. I quit after one day despite the secretary telling me that an air purifier would help make it safe.



Then there is the oil refineries at River Road. They smell so freaking bad. That whole area should be moved somewhere more remote and away from the water.

Garangelo's at 1197 Hertel between Delaware and Colvin is pretty tasty. I had the very best Italian Sausage sandwich I have had in years there.



However, I did not like drinking tap water out of plastic cups, not being given complementary bread and then being charged when we asked for it, or their calamari appetizer. The appetizer was made with the weakest excuse for calamari. They were so tiny and had no meat to them and this is coming from someone who has written 24 journals about Calamari. I didn't even bother taking a pic of it.



The italian wedding soon was really good.


The stuffed artichoke looked delicious but I was too full to eat one. I tried to bring (e:enknot) and (e:jon) there for lunch today but they are not open for Lunch anymore. That kind of sucks because honestly, I thought it was more lunch quality ambiance.

When we realized it was closed we tried Kabob house on Hertel and it was closed, then Romeo and Juliet's and it was closed too. Hertel might be cheaper than Elmwood but it was virtually dead at lunchtime unlike Elmwood and A-town which are both hopping at lunch.

We ended up going to (e:enknot)'s house and (e:megan) cooked us some fine home cooked spaghetti for lunch.

As per (e:leetee)'s suggestion we decided to stop at Gothic City Collector's Cove this weekend. It is located at 1940 Niagara street right by the giant porn store where Niagara meets Military. They have a lot of stuff but most of it is in a better state of being sorted than at Horsefeather's (e:paul,43525) I would suggest anyone interested in antiques and collectible stop by. Even if you are not a collector it might be fun just to check out.



I am not sure what the building used to be but I think it was a church of some sort.

They had these two giant devil pillars for sale. Both were identical. I wonder where they came from. They were huge and iron.




Here is their card and website which is just an ebay store

Did you ever see the movie, The Mist? That is what it is like right now in my house. The smell, polyurethane, is downstairs in the living room, dining room and drawing room and it is slowly creeping past our plastic boundaries toward us. I was standing in the shower with the window open to try and get some air. Eventually, it will consume me.

I can't believe I am going through this again (e:paul,31499) The smell is giving me Post Traumatic Stress Flashbacks to those days (e:paul,31500)

The guys from Amherst refinishing are almost done with refinishing our wood floors. They are going to recoat the foyer one more time on Wednesday, but other than that - it is done. If you have them do your floors after reading this, tell them paul from estrip.org is where you found out about them. The floors generally look amazing. Way better than I ever thought they could. The living room, dining room, office and stairs look sensational. When we bought the house two years ago, all this wood was carpeted with nasty indoor/outdoor carpeting that the cats peed on (e:paul,32610)

stairs
Stairs Before


Stairs Sanded


Stairs Shined




Dining Room
Dining Room Before


Dining Room After




Living Room
Living room before



Living room sanded


Living room after




Office
Before


This is the best repair job that they made. There was this awful section of parque floor added and the floors were so scratched up.



Office After


Check out the whole thing.


Foyer
The foyer does not look as great as the rest of the rooms but it is because the floor was previously so damaged. From afar it looks great.





Below is a pic of where the old bathroom used to be, in the before stage. Can you believe these floors could ever be fixed? The first stage of removing the modern bathroom added under the stairs was me ripping out the moldly linoleum. It was so bad it was bubbling. (e:paul,32720) The second stage was (e:paul,43489) when pat did the deconstruction of the structure.

This left this to deal with.

Foyer Bathroom Damage Before


Foyer Bathroom Area After
The bathroom is the most complicated repair. unfortunately, they told us the way our sub floor is made, it was impossible to lay down the floor stippled, as they did in the office, so the fix is more obvious but honestly - anything looks better than the giant shit hole in the floor from above, lol.



But upclose the foyer floor has a lot of damage from years of neglect. I think someday I will just have it totally replaced as I really don't like the way it looks compared with the rest of the house.

The mold spots got darker way darker and greener. Here they are before.


These spots are from this moldy marajuana grow room that the previous owner had in the basement directly under this room. It was full of sinks, dirt, fertilizer, dead plants and a dead pet turtle that wandered in and created a maggot extravaganza.

We had the entire room demolished and removed (thanks Pat) shortly after buying the house. It still had pot plants all molded to the floor, and smelled so terrible of mold when you opened the door to it, that you could taste it afterwards for hours. I remember one time (e:theecarey) and I drank a bunch of gin to try and kill the taste, the first time we discovered the room.

Too bad it happened that way because as Keith from Amherst Refinishing pointed out, the floor is amazing in that the boards are solid oak and span the entire room in most cases as a single plank. He said it would be impossible to get that nowadays.

Here is the good side of the foyer afterwards from two angles.



And here are the damaged areas after they were fixed. The black stains are form cat pee, water damage, mold.


Around this vent was really moldy and rusty when we bought the house.


I think the previous owners would put their shoes on it in the winter. That caused the furnace pipes to rust which ate a giant hole in them. We had those replaced, which stopped the problem (thanks again Pat) (e:paul,32742)

The one thing I was not sure about were these faint lines. I don't remember them in the before pics but maybe the moldy marks spread or stained when the machines went over them. They are hard to see in this pics but they span across the foyer.


Conclusion
All in all I am very satisfied with the work of Amherst Refinishing and would recommend them to anyone. Our house had some particular challenging spots and overall it looks 1000% better.