Studio711.com – Ben Martens

If all goes well, I won’t remember at least an hour of today. After a lifetime of sinus infections and being unable to breath out of my nose very well, my ENT doctor has recommended sinus surgery. They’re going to knock me out for about an hour, straighten my deviated septum, reduce the size of my turbinates (parts of your nose that help warm the air as it passes but in my case are blocking sinus cavities), and clean out some of my ethnoid sinus cavities. It’s going to be pretty unpleasant for a few days, but hopefully going forward I’ll be able to breathe better and have fewer infections.

I wonder what the doctors would say if I tried to wear the GoPro on my head all day.

For the second year in a row, we’ve had our annual church picnic at the Trenkamp home instead of in the back yard of church. They have a wonderful setting for the picnic and it’s so nice of them to host us all! This year was the first cloudy day in almost two months, but the rain held off and we had a wonderful time. There was plenty of food, cornhole, horseshoes, Kan Jam, and socializing. We hope you can make it next year! Instead of doing photos, I tried to put together a little video.

After putting the acrylic cover over Tim’s incredible paint job, I decided to give them a few more upgrades. First I drilled two rows of 22 holes (0 – 21) in the back of the board to use as a scoring system. You just move the golf tees along as you score points. It’s quick and easy and there’s nothing extra to carry along with the boards. I put some black paint in and around the holes, but it doesn’t match the rest of what Tim had there already so I might sand it down and redo it the same way he did. The paint makes it look like my holes are way more uneven than they really are. I need to get some white paint and draw a couple numbers or markers on there for easier counting.

My boards have foldable legs on them so they don’t take up as much room in the car. They’re a great feature, but they can be a little difficult to slide in and out of the car as the legs are dropping down. Dad suggested some magnets. We picked up some cabinet magnetics latches and those are working quite well.

I don’t have any more immediate plans for them, but I have lots more ideas of things I could do. I’ve seen people add lighting around the bottom of the hole for when it gets dark, and I also think I could whip up a nice digital scoreboard that would attach to the back of a board for even easier scorekeeping. That can probably all wait though.

I posted a couple weeks back about the amazing paint job that Tim did on my cornhole boards. Yes, that’s really paint, not a decal!

The paint didn’t adhere real well to the MDF and we were concerned that it would scrape off as soon as we started playing. So when Dad was here over the weekend, we bought some sheets of acrylic and applied them to the top of the boards. That involved securing the sheet to the boards with screws (countersunk so the bags wouldn’t catch), trimming the sheets to match the size of the boards and then cutting out new holes to match the existing holes. We weren’t sure how we’d do the trimming and cutting but after experimenting with a Dremel, we switched to the router and it worked remarkably well! I had a bit with a bearing on the bottom the same diameter as the cutting blade. That rode along the edge of the wood while the blade cut the acrylic. We were able to quickly cut an exact match for the boards!

The other concern with this plan was that the boards would end up being way too slippery, but surprisingly they were LESS slippery than before due to the static from the protective plastic that was on the acrylic. I think that will wear off over time and once the boards got a little dusty, they played very close to the original, unpainted boards.

The only downside to this approach was that as the boards heated up in the direct sunlight, the acrylic started to warp a bit. It doesn’t expand at the same rate as the wood underneath. That wasn’t a huge deal though so hopefully this will be the final solution.

Eventually the acrylic will get scuffed up but it should be a pretty quick job to replace them and keep the boards looking like new!

Back when Tim and I were roommates, he had the idea to paint my cornhole boards. He started by drawing a John Deere logo on one but that’s as far as it got. He recently borrowed my boards and when I got them back, wow! I now have the best looking cornhole boards around! He did this all with tape and paint, not decals. It looks incredible! Thanks Tim!

Tyla’s first birthday surprise this year was staying a night at Treehouse Point. It’s a local bed and breakfast made up of a bunch of individual treehouses. It’s pretty difficult to get a reservation, but somehow I got lucky and snagged a spot in the Bonbibi which is their newest treehouse.

Our room was barely bigger than a double bed (or was it a queen?) but it was exceptionally nice inside. There was power and a small heater which we obviously didn’t need. We spent the evening relaxing down by the river and reading our books.

At breakfast the next morning, we were chatting with one of the lady’s who works there. She said that Animal Planet has been on site quite a bit lately filming for a new reality show called Treehouse Men. The guy who builds the treehouses is apparently quite famous in the treehouse community and the show features his work. I think that the facility also serves as a school for people who want to learn to build these structures. It could be an interesting show so you might want to check it out. It’s currently scheduled to air on 8/22 after the finale of Tanked.

It was a very unique night and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. If I had to nitpick I’d say it’s unfortunate that they are so close to a fairly busy road. It would be more peaceful in a different setting but they can’t very well pack up and move! If you’re interested in staying, you might want to make reservations now. I’d bet they’re going to get a lot more busy once the TV show airs!

I wrote a couple months ago about the renovation I oversaw of the house on the church property. The final step in that project was fixing up the landscaping, but we wanted to wait for nicer weather. The big day arrived a couple weeks ago and Tim had a great plan laid out for us and a bunch of nice plants picked out. The main projects were taking down two small trees, removing a bunch of bushes, taking out a huge out-of-control rhododendron, and moving a LOT of rock from the planter area to the church driveway. We rented a Dingo to help move all the rock and rip out the stumps and that ended up being the best decision of the day. There’s no way the work would have been finished with out it! I posted a bunch of photos at the end of this Facebook photo album but here is a before and after photo that shows part of the area we worked on.

Tyla’s company operates a booth every year at the Kirkland 5k and they encourage their employees to run. This year Tyla, Chelsea, Nancy and Megan all ran. Tim and I watched from the side of the road and snapped some photos.

My wisdom teeth are a mess. I started typing out the details in this post, but really it’s just gross. Suffice it to say that many dentists and oral surgeons have taken a peek inside my mouth but since I wasn’t having any pain at the time, they reluctantly decided to just leave well enough alone. One of them is starting to cause some trouble and thankfully it’s one that they think they can get out of my mouth so this morning I’m having done. The oral surgeon said he didn’t want to attempt it unless I was under full anesthesia and I happily agreed to that. Hopefully I’ll come out of the surgery with only a little pain and none of the nasty potential complications. I’ll be out of commission for a couple days though. Bring on the soft foods and video games!

Maybe Tyla will bring a video camera along in case I act like this kid:

PS. Happy Birthday Mom! I got you bloody tooth remnants.

For the last couple years, I’ve been the property guy at church. Normally it’s just small tasks and general upkeep, but late last summer, I started a huge project. The church received a very large anonymous donation designated for remodeling the house that’s on the church property.

In the past, the house has been used as a place for our Pastor’s to live, a place for our teachers to live, and extra space for classes and events. It has been falling in to disrepair and that seems to have accelerated the last couple years since no one was living there.

I gathered a bunch of input from people who had lived there before and other congregation members, got bids from two contractors, and finally signed a contract. There’s way too much to cover here, but this is a small subset of the improvements we made:

• New trim and doors throughout
• Interior and exterior paint
• Complete kitchen remodel and all new appliances (except the fridge)
• Combine two bedrooms into one master bedroom with walk-in closet and move bathroom entry to be a master bathroom entry
• Add four windows in various places
• Remove existing exterior door from kitchen and replace with sliding glass door
• Refinish hardwood floors and add new carpet in master bedroom
• Reconfigured guest bathroom and added a full bathtub and shower.
• Added a paved driveway

I was responsible for drawing up the basic plans and work item list, but from that point I handed over the reigns. Our general contractor was Jim Lawrence of Lawrence Construction Company and I highly recommend him. We’ll hopefully be giving him a call in the future for some work on our house. He finished the project quickly and did a lot of the interior design himself which removed a lot of decisions from my plate.

It would be much better if we had more “before” pictures, but here’s comparison of the old kitchen and the old kitchen to give you a little taste of the scope of this project.