Recently in Home Life Category

We've been finishing up a bunch of projects this week in anticipation of getting the house assessed to refinance our mortgage. In the closet that had the leak that started it all, I got around to finishing the mudding, while Kris finished painting a corner that had gone naked since we moved in almost three years ago. I repaired the wall from our new bathroom window and Kris painted it. I just got done replacing trim that the previous home owners seemed to have forgot. We hired someone to repair the wall damaged during our front door replacement. And then, we hired someone to fix the cracks and paint the high walls of our stairs.

Day one was promising with some cracks replaced, but others were missed. Day two included the missed cracks and sanding. I could tell they sanded because of the grime that was left behind. It was everywhere. No one closed doors to rooms that weren't being worked on, and it was obvious that no covers nor plastic had been placed at strategic locations. A chat with the painter revealed that they had in fact cleaned (at least that's what he said.) Nonetheless, I spent two hours cleaning up everything that was left behind.

This really makes sense given the outward appearance of our hired painter. Constantly smelling of smoke (you would think working in paint fumes would be enough) he doesn't carry himself like an organized man would. He nearly forgot his jacket within our house on a 10-degree night. Notes are lost or left at home. Paint colors are forgot.

Owning a home and keeping up with the maintenance teaches many lessons. The most recent is that if you interview a someone that doesn't look like they can keep their own house clean, chances are they won't keep yours clean either.

We went from this:

to this:

In the second shot, you can see that there was a bay window that was removed and replaced with two regular windows. Our best guess is that when the street was widened, the sidewalk was moved closer to the house and the bay window was a casualty. The other small discoveries included (original?) brown paint, and a whole lotta bug nests and spiders behind the tiles. This is all in prep for the insulators coming this week, and new lakeshore fern (siding) the following week.

And of course, every hard day has to end with a relaxing beer or two:

You can see some more shots of the day here.

I have the pleasure of introducing Stephen the Squirrel to the world. Everyone, meet Stephen.

Stephen had the pleasure of living in our attic and walls for about 36 hours. I don't think he liked it. At least, he told me as much through hisses and teeth chomping when I finally met him face to face. The tricky little guy snuck into the hole left by our broken gutter. Dad and I did a fine job replacing the wood that fell down with the gutter.

Turns out, we did too good of a job since Stephen, who snuck in when we weren't looking, couldn't find a way out. He scratched, clawed, and explored every nook and cranny in the house. Up walls, down walls, in the ceiling, below the floor, all over.

Kris did some hunting herself and found a small Havahart live trap, and I set it up with some peanut butter and put it in the attic. I left it on the insulation and crossed my fingers. I checked on it this morning and found it tipped on its top, set off, with no Stephen inside. So I cleared off the insulation, found some old, empty mouse poison cases and an old cane. So I through the poison cases away and used the cane to prop up the insulation and clear a nice spot for the trap. Then I left for a run.

I entered the house after my run and listened. (Stephen was most active when we were away.) I hear a bunch of clunking from the attic. Success! He wasn't too pleased with me though. But I did have a heart and let him go in the schoolyard across from the house. The first thing he did was bolt for a puddle of water, took a few hits, and then to the nearest tree and he was gone, (but not forgotten.)

How energetic is your home? Ours isn't. Ours is old. Nearing the century mark, this year's extreme winter did quite the number on our exterior. One hundred plus inches of snow will do that. You may be familiar with ice dams. Well...there's ice dams, and there's there's gutter busters. We had a gutter buster:

I found that walking home from a long week of work on a Friday night. Guh. Shortly thereafter, we noticed water damage to the walls in the closet directly under the roof with the now defunct gutter. I carefully peeled some pieces of plaster off, and saw the sun! Yup, no insulation whatsoever in the closet. More plaster started to fall away on its own.

I was comparing energy consumption with friends who noted that their bills were half of ours with twice the house. Hmmm...something's not right here. So I took the last years worth of our energy bills and compared them to the national average. We scored a 2.8 out of 10. Ouch. I followed some links and found a home energy efficiency inspector. We met this morning and talked about all sorts of issues with our house. He had two tools that were quite revealing.

The first was a thermal imaging camera. The results were like results promised by X-ray goggles promised in kids' comic books. We could see studs, beams, and the immense lack of insulation in our second floor. The only way you can see the beams is b/c they are a different temperature than the insulation between them. On our second floor, our beams were lost, and the lathe behind the plaster showed through. Meaning: No Insulation Whatsoever. Ugh.

His second tool was a big blower that he put in our front door. He used that to put a 50 Pa pressure difference between the inside and the outside. At that pressure difference, every minute there was 3800 cubic feet of air blowing out of our house. With all that air blowing out, laws of physics say there has to be air to replace it. With the fan on, air was streaming into our house through "thousands" of holes. We could feel drafts throughout the whole house; windows, doors, wall outlets, and the gaping hole in our closet. Turns out, the target for a house is to get lower than 1000 cfm. A recent award winning house in Wisconsin reached less than 300 cfm. We've got a long way to go.

So now we turn to removing the old siding, blowing in insulation upstairs, and then layering more insulation to the outside and reside the house. Throw in a new porch at the same time and it'll be a busy summer. Looks the like reroofing project is on hold.

Bottom line, when purchasing an older home, get a home inspection that includes thermal imaging. It may cost a bit more, but worth it.

I started with this YouTube clip about elitist bicyclists. (So true.)

Which led me to this clip of two professional cyclists fighting.

Which led me to this clip of two guys racing in their cars. (I drive a Focus, though not like that.)

Which led me to this clip of a car vs. bike crash. (Whoa.)

Which led me to this clip of another car crash. This time with a scooter. (I can't believe how he gets up after that.)

Which led me to this clip of another Greek driving lesson.

Which led me to this clip of another crash, set to really bad music.

Which led me (finally) to this clip of one more crash.

Which I didn't watch because I remembered the macaroni noodles on the stove that now had been cooking way too long and were totally soggy.

Damn Internet.

It's gotten so cold here, school was canceled. Here are some examples what happens when it's this cold:

• Bottles of wine in the non-insulated back porch froze, popping the cork on one bottle, and nearly popping it on another. (Not the best quality stuff.)
• I washed a load of workout clothes and three them into the dryer and went to bed, thinking they'd dry. However, I checked on them the next morning to discover that not all the clothes had not dried completely. It was easy to tell which ones hadn't, because they had ice and crunched when they moved.
• I drove the car into work today, mainly to warm it up. It sits outside 24-7, and it sounded worse and worse every time it started. It barely started this morning, but begrudgingly did. As I drove up the street to the office, I noticed the car wobbling. The tires had froze where they were resting overnight and the flat spots caused the wobble. I could almost hear the car sign as I parked it in the heated garage under my building.

If you're really bored in the cold, you could always boil water and throw it up in the air and watch it rapidly evaporate.

One more thing: When it's this cold, chances are that your car and all the meal parts inside it are just as cold. So, when you shut off the car and take the key out, do NOT put the key in your mouth to gather your stuff from the car. The cold, metal key will stick to your lips and tongue and it will not feel good. Just ask Flick.

I just realized that I haven't shown you pictures of our new basement stairs:

Click through to see the project from start to finish.

Frank: I told my wife I wouldn't drink tonight. Besides, I got a big day tomorrow. You guys have a great time.
College Student: A big day? Doing what?
Frank: Well, um, actually a pretty nice little Saturday, we're going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond, I don't know, I don't know if we'll have enough time.

In college, you spent your idle Saturdays doing nothing, then a half-hour before the liquor store closed, you hurried down the aisles for the last case of cold beer. If the ladies were coming over, you might get a handle of something to mix.

After you graduated, you might've spent your Saturday's browsing Target for toilet paper, shampoo, and knick-knacks to decorate your apartment with.

Now, as homeowners, we spend our Saturday perusing things at Menard's. Not that I'm complaining. It's just interesting to see the progression.

Kris and I are now moving into Phase Two of adulthood. (Phase One was getting married.)

It all started Saturday night when a new e-mail announced a new house within our price and location specs. It announced an open house, too. That night, we were out and about for dinner and drove by the house to scope it out. Hmmm...looks like it could have potential, but we decided that the open house would have to show us more.

And that it did. We were amazed to find a beautifully restored kitchen that opened to an actual dining room which spilled over into a nice living room. Upstairs features three bedrooms, each with large, walk-in closets. The basement holds lots of potential with enough room to stand up straight and then some. (You'd be amazed how tiny and low the ceilings are in basements in older houses.) We were so intrigued, we had to see everything twice.

We continued to two other open houses, but enlisted the services of my parents and sister to view the house and provide their opinion. We were at the grocery store when we got their positive report. We engaged our buying agent from there and got the wheels started. Two hours later, we were back inside the house with our agent, who was equally impressed with the home. We prepared the offer letter on-site and crossed our fingers. We stopped on the way home for a small bottle of Asti, not enough to jynx us, but enough to celebrate.

Three hours later, popping the cork never felt so good. The current owners accepted our offer and we are now potential home owners. Whoa.

But, please, don't take our word for it. Take a look for yourselves. Many thanks to all for your support, advice and well wishes. On to Adulthood. (And please, don't ask what Phase Three is. We're taking this one step at a time.)