May 2009

There's a lot to do right now because of the wedding coming up in 1 month, so I really haven't been all that busy. I decided to try cleaning up the grout in the kitchen and dining room again even though it really didn't do a lot last time. A few harsh chemicals made it a little whiter, but the floor was still a nasty concrete gray. Then I decided to grind into it a bit and sure enough it came up a bright white. After doing half the kitchen I remembered I had a can of white grout left over from the last house, and this was taking a long time. I'm sure you can tell where this is going...

It turns out that it's easier to just spread new grout than grind up the old stuff anyway. Enough of the old stuff has worn away so that the new grout is thick enough to stay around anyway. The difference is huge - I should've done this ages ago.


Snowy the Dog approves of this project.

I've also been busy running around trying to make the place more energy efficient. I was up in the attic above the garage for who knows what reason when I felt a draft of cool air coming up along a wall. Nothing a can of foam insulation can't take care of so I did that, and popped off every faceplate in the house to seal around those along with all the plumbing fixtures and lights I could get at. Anything that makes a hole in the sheetrock on the inside or the brick on the outside (excluding weep holes) was sealed up. It should have the added benefit of keeping bugs away.

I discovered as part of this that you're not supposed to run the furnace fan 24/7. Apparently that doesn't really circulate the air very much and also makes whatever drafts there are worse. The electricity bills should drop however much because they're not on all the time anymore. I'm almost looking forward to getting next month's electricity bill to see just how much lower it was this year vs. last year.

April 2009

Two projects this month. One is just more of the same... the never-ending radiant barrier install. But this month I found a much better deal on the stuff than I'd been getting in the past. I ordered 1,000 square feet of the stuff from Radiant Guard. It comes out to about half the cost of buying at Home Depot, and you get a warm fuzzy because it's made in the US rather than somewhere in China. In any case, I managed to finish the southern exposure in the highest attic and move on to the difficult one and cover the space above the main bedroom. I had to put a sprinkler on the roof to cool things down, and I still had to get out of there around 2:30 because the heat was getting to me.

The other project wasn't exactly something I was planning on doing... it's just one of those things that isn't done right that you get tired of looking at. The door to my closet leading from the master bathroom isn't hung right, the casing is missing entirely from the closet side, and there's tons of caulking in the corners. The gap with the door was so bad you could stand in the closet, close the door and watch the dog walking around from the gap. I got tired of looking at it every day and in about 20 minutes had the door frame taken down. That was the easy part.

Look at all that caulking jammed in the corners!



It became pretty obvious once I got it all out that the door used to open into the closet, but that really didn't make much sense so somebody flipped the door around into a slightly less awkward position. I'm not sure if it was an owner or whoever did the wallpaper and other work in the bathroom, but if somebody actually paid for this to be done they should've gotten their money back. Rather than shim anything and install it like they should, they just nailed the door frame parts to the framing and caulked over the gaps left behind. They were also kind enough to cut the little bits that stick up at the top of the frame that keep everything nice and square. This is going to be a little more difficult than I thought...



Rather than just reinstall everything, the paint on there was looking a little thick so why not have a go at removing it and starting fresh? I want to put a pocket door in there someday because it really makes no sense for the door to open either in or out in that location anyway, so this made a good enough piece to practice on.

To keep things short, I learned a lot about what not to do. Don't expect the paint stripper to do very much work. Maybe I got something that wasn't strong enough... all I know is that it did a decent job on the top layer or two of latex paint but didn't bother to do anything on the stuff down below. Second, don't scrape paint from anything you'll be looking at or standing next to with a paint scraper. It leaves a lot of dents. Especially on the trim pieces. Seriously, don't do it! The last little problem - the tool I have (don't know its name) that lets you cut wood at an angle isn't so great. It gets almost a 45 degree angle, but when you line up the pieces of wood it's not a perfect fit. But it's all back together the right way now and looks so much better than it did beforehand! This is what somebody was trying do do, but now it's done right. Nice and square, with fresh new casing on the bathroom side.

March 2009

Not a lot going on this month because I was back in Seattle pretty much the entire time. Most months are like that, but I think I was only in Texas for a few days in March.

But I did manage to get a few things done. Because this house is in Texas and the back of the house faces due south it can get a little warm in the main bedroom. The living room faces south and also has windows to the west, but they're sheltered by trees and the pergola and it doesn't get hot in there. The main bedroom though - last summer it would routinely get above 86 in there, which is a good 8 degrees or more than the thermostat is set to. It could be more, but my thermometer runs out of numbers around 86 or 88 and if it was hotter in there I don't want to know about it. So since it's March and it's already hot out I decided to do something about it.

Because replacing the windows would've been insanely difficult and expensive I decided to go with tinting instead. Beforehand the blinds were hitting 100-110 degrees when closed, so they were basically acting like giant radiators dumping heat into the room. Elle and I went to Lowes and got some tinting that blocks 70% of the energy from coming into the room and went about installing it. It's really a weekend project if you go slow and take lots of breaks. Pretty easy to do, but you absolutely have to have a helper. The tint will stick together and drive you crazy without someone holding it still. That will ruin the piece you are trying to install and you'll have to start over. But seriously, it's a very easy project to do yourself.

The results? The room is now the same temperature as the rest of the house! It dropped a good 5 or 6 degrees and is much more comfortable to be in. The blinds are now only slightly warmer than room temperature. When I had them off I could really tell what 10 years worth of sun has done to them. They're Everwood by Hunter Douglass so they aren't supposed to change color due to UV exposure, but you can tell they've been exposed to a harsh environment. The green (ick!) pleats were faded nearly white on the sunny side.

We also got replacement parts in for the blinds. At only 10 years old they were starting to look pretty sad. A part that holds the cloth sashes up is made entirely of plastic with two thin arms supporting the whole thing. Of course the arms break off and the blinds look run-down pretty fast. There's a solution to replacing them though - Fix My Blinds. They sell replacement parts for all makes and models, and they're stronger than what the originals and should last longer. We plan on ordering again later to get rid of the 1990s hunter green sashes on the blinds in the main bedroom, and fix a defect on the blinds in the laundry room.

February 2009

The new trees came in! I went to Millenberger and walked around the back lot where they keep the big stuff. I picked out a cedar elm that's about 30 feet tall and a live oak that's maybe around 25 feet. It's not a true DIY project because I didn't dig the holes the trees were planted in, but it took a huge earth mover to dig down 4 feet and I'd rather farm that out than stand out there with a shovel and pickaxe for a week! The one problem out of all this... the vitex shrub tree things that were there beforehand. I cut them down myself which was pretty easy to do. But I didn't take into account what to do with the wood. It's stacked up in the back yard, waiting for me to do something with it. Hope I can figure something out before too long!

Before:





During - you can see why I didn't want to dig the holes! It was impossible to get a pic of the bottom of the hole since it was pretty much 5ft around x 4ft deep.






And After! The big challenge will be getting them established. Texas is in a horrible drought right now so that means lots of water. They aren't a lot to look at right now, especially since there aren't any leaves yet. The tree guys said they'll look a lot better next year (as in, 2010).

January 2009

I've mostly been working on the pergola. This is a never-ending project... Anyway here are the pics. I've been using Sikkens wood stain. It's oil-based and rated better than anything out there. This is a job that I don't want to do again for a long time and the results have come out great.





I've also been working on the other never-ending project... radiant barrier material isn't cheap stuff. Anyway the attic above the garage is finished now and now I'm working on the attic above the second floor. Elle and I found this top secret passage into the space above the main bedroom. You have to remove the back panel in a hamper upstairs and that reveals a pretty big hole you can crawl through to get in there. It's a sea of gray in there - nothing to stand on anywhere except for the beams and it's a 12 foot fall if you step between them. Unfortunately this is a pretty big space and heat has been a problem in the living room and main bedroom last summer, so I have to install the barrier stuff in there. Fun tims. :/ Here's a view out into the abyss



Not exactly home-related, but I managed to fix the fridge. It was getting loud when it ran... this rrr-rrrr-rrrr whenever it ran. The compressor was loose, but when I was working on it I noticed the fan wasn't turning anymore because it was blocked by a piece of the cardboard material that keeps dust out (or something... it has to have a purpose I guess). Anyway that was an easy fix. I sat on this problem way too long.

December 2008

Loads of updates!

The simple stuff first... my parents were nice enough to give me an extra digital dimmer they had lying around in their garage. That was really cool.

I also ordered a bunch of furniture from Motif in Austin, and it came in way ahead of schedule. So now the living room / family room are getting closer to being set up even though there's still a lot of work left to do. Also picked up a desk for the office so we can ditch the tiny sub-laptop sized thing Elle had and my green 1970s office chair.







I decided to go ahead and do some work with the trees in the front yard. I walk around the neighborhood a lot and there are all kinds of different houses, with different landscaping things going on and then there's this place... They say that winter is the right time to do this sort of work, and I've already started on the HOA paperwork and looked into different places that sell trees. Apparently these things are sold in much bigger sizes than I thought they were. At this point I have a budget and know what I'm looking for, so I'll just get the biggest and healthiest ones I can get.

And the hard stuff... summer cooling bills were nuts, so I decided to try and do something about it. The biggest problems were the fact that it seems really humid most of the time, the main bedroom is always warmer than the rest of the house thanks to some big windows that face due south, and the attic is an oven. Right now I'm working on the attic, and it looks like the best way to keep it from getting so hot is to install a radiant barrier. Since it's not hot out it's the best time of the year to get started with it. Guess I'll find out if it did anything once summer rolls around again.

I also started another project (ok fine, in late November). Not on purpose... it was raining outside and I got out the scrub brush to try and clean up the weathered, gray cedar wood the pergola is made of. The little spot I started cleaning up came out really nice, but you can't just have a clean spot and leave the rest alone... I borrowed my dad's power washer and it took care of blasting all the gray stuff and algae in a couple of afternoons. I'm about halfway through staining the wood at this point. I'm using Sikkens brand stain. It's not cheap, but this is enough of a hassle so that I don't want to have to do it again anytime soon.

Here's what it looked like before. The wood is gray and nasty.


After cleaning the wood, with a little stain. I'm surprised the wood came out this clear after being exposed to the elements for 3 or 4 years.


It's going to take forever to stain the whole thing...

August 2008

Another backdated post, but I'm getting caught up...

I've been working on a few things, but it's mostly small stuff. The easiest was the new garage door remote to replace the one that wasn't there when I moved in. Speaking of garage stuff, I sold the Porsche. There are three cars trying to share two spaces in the garage, and I really didn't drive it much anymore so might as well sell the car. Sad to see it go, but I've moved on to bigger and better things.

I got to do an emergency plumbing repair when I walked out of the office and started heading downstairs when what's this...? Water's dripping out of the cabinet in the upstairs bathroom. I close the shutoff and mop up the mess, and try to figure out what's going on because I didn't touch anything. When the previous owners replaced the fixtures in the upstairs bathrooms they kinked the line that runs from the shutoff to the faucet and today just happened to be the day that it finally decided to let go. A couple of trips to the Lowes that's around the corner 5 minutes before closing time and I've got it taken care of.

Since I'm slowly scaling up the projects I wanted to do something that I've already done before in another place I lived - replacing the old school toggle light switches with the new, wider ones. It's pretty easy to do. Just turn the switch on, run back and forth down to the breaker panel to try and find out if you guessed the right one, and remove and replace the switch now that the power is off. All you need to know is how to operate a screwdriver. I put in dimmers where there are dimmers already, nothing fancy at this point. Also did GFCI outlets because that was an item on the inspection report. The house was built just before January 1, 1993 and they weren't required yet at the time.

I've decided to try and do something about the trees in the front yard. They grow like crazy - these Vitex things and look like they've been cut on a bunch of times. I'm not sure if they're exactly trees or giant bushes, but if I can't do something with them I'm going to have to get them out of here and go with actual trees.

Kind of on a tangent, I'm starting to think about what kind of furniture would go good in the living room. The stuff in there now will go into the formal living room someday. No idea what to get yet, but I want something modern. Still plenty of time to think about it while I save up.

This is the living room right now






This is the front living room where everything will go once I get new furniture in a few months. It'll just have to look empty for a while...