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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Jan 26, 2023 8:57:45 GMT -5
Well, I'll say this for the new water heater -- my wallet is a lot lighter, but wow! Our water is REALLY hot now!
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Post by Floyd Dinnertime Barber on Jan 30, 2023 16:24:38 GMT -5
A couple of years ago we got new ceiling insulation and a solar powered roof vent fan at the farmhouse. We went to a "free dinner" promoting it, and yet it turned out not to be a scam. I had looked into it, and it checked out. The farmhouse had fiberglass batting in the ceiling 65 years ago when it was built, but it had gotten packed down to the point that it basically had no R value anymore, and the place was almost impossible to cool, and really expensive to heat. After the new insulation was installed, we've been able to heat and cool it for a lot less money. The same outfit had another ad for another dinner, and I inquired about, not knowing it was the same bunch (I thought it was going to be about solar electric, which we are also interested in). We don't really qualify since we already used their product, but they invited us anyway, if I am willing to say something about our experience. Since we had really good results, I said I would.
Good insulation, in general, is a good investment.
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Post by ganews on Feb 4, 2023 13:35:22 GMT -5
Our home alarm system* Frontpoint sent us an updated system that runs on 4G or something. Except they didn't send us a new controller box, they sent a new radio circuit board and antenna with instructions on how to open the controller box and do the replacement. Which was fine, but I'm thinking to myself "most people have trouble with Ikea instructions, how is this working for them".
*I've always been against this. It's a lot of money every month for no benefit except letting you know after someone has broken in, and giving you a scare once every few years when some weird thing sets off a motion false alarm. We would be better off making fake home security yard signs and leaving them up.
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GumTurkeyles
AV Clubber 
$10 down, $10 a month, don't you be a turkey
Posts: 3,065 
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Post by GumTurkeyles on Feb 7, 2023 7:21:57 GMT -5
Our home alarm system* Frontpoint sent us an updated system that runs on 4G or something. Except they didn't send us a new controller box, they sent a new radio circuit board and antenna with instructions on how to open the controller box and do the replacement. Which was fine, but I'm thinking to myself "most people have trouble with Ikea instructions, how is this working for them".
*I've always been against this. It's a lot of money every month for no benefit except letting you know after someone has broken in, and giving you a scare once every few years when some weird thing sets off a motion false alarm. We would be better off making fake home security yard signs and leaving them up.
Have you considered filling your home with snakes? |
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Feb 14, 2023 11:37:09 GMT -5
We accepted the proposal from the septic tank excavation/install people back in late November. Sent them a 20% deposit on December 1. And haven't heard boo from them since. I have kind of been assuming that they just don't do any non-emergency septic replacements until the weather warms up again in the spring, but we all know what assuming does. So yesterday I emailed the guy to be like, "Is this still happening?" And he responded about 90 seconds later with, "Yes, I was planning to bring my tree guy down this week to talk about which trees need to come down. We're having such warm weather!" The nervous, sweaty, "ha ha" was unspoken.
I am under no illusions that he was actually planning to do anything this week, nor do I expect him to do so now. In fact, I'd rather they wait until late March or early April at this point anyway, because it's not an emergency and I'd prefer we do have our entire back yard excavated when it's warm enough that the re-seeded grass will grow in quickly after it's over, so I don't spend the next eight or ten weeks looking at a dreary brown mud field where my backyard used to be. But I guess it's reassuring to know that they didn't just take our $11K and run?
(Meanwhile, no news from the contractor who agreed to install my new range. The range is in the back of my garage now, and considering the age of the two cars that park in there with it, is the most expensive thing in there by a wide margin. I am weirdly torn between being really anxious to get the fucking thing installed and have this over with, and with being really anxious about everything going wrong and needing to do extensive further kitchen repairs and not wanting the contractor ever to show up. So I'm giving him a lot of space. I mean, I reached out to him about the job, had him agree to do it, then was like, "Oh, I won't even have the range for another four months." So the fact that it's been less than three months since the range was delivered to the appliance people, and only one month since it was delivered to me, is kind of like... I don't feel like I should be squeaky-wheeling for at least a few more weeks? Sigh. I hate this whole thing.)
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Post by Powerthirteen on Feb 20, 2023 16:54:48 GMT -5
It wasn't until after I painted a feature wall in our dining room that I realized I had essentially chosen the same color as our house's exterior.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Feb 26, 2023 23:06:14 GMT -5
I scheduled a dryer vent cleaning for Friday, long overdue. And I’m realizing there are two vents on the exterior and I'm not sure which one is for the dryer! Neither really make sense. The dryer is on an inside wall in an inside room. There’s one vent on the side of the house, maybe 5 feet up, and one on the back of the house more like 12 feet up. Neither is a logical path from the dryer… which probably explains why our dryer is not very efficient!
(No, I don’t think it vents through the roof, that would make too much sense.)
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Feb 28, 2023 10:38:24 GMT -5
Of all the crazy things... I just got a call from the septic excavator guy! He apparently DID bring the tree dude to check out my yard! And it turns out the only trees we're going to lose are the one that was in the actual septic plan proposal (I'll miss it, but it's a scraggly weird thing that doesn't define the landscape or anything) and a small, half-dead pear tree that was in the yard when we moved in, has never produced a pear or even noticeably blossomed, and is now leaning at a 45-degree angle with jaggedy broken roots sticking out of the ground at the base. I can't say that second tree is going to be that huge a loss. So, after months of panic and dismay, it sounds like my yard might get through this without too much irreparable damage!
(Note: the tree dude did offer to take down the half-dead shade maple that was the reason we bought the house in the first place. It used to be a majestic presence that provided a calming arboreal canopy to the entire backyard. But an early snowstorm about ten years ago wrecked its shit, and we've been watching it die by inches ever since. We're not ready to let go just yet.)
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Feb 28, 2023 11:17:51 GMT -5
Our shower is being weird. It has done this before, but not quite so consistently.
We have a decent-size shower stall in our master bathroom; we put a metal drain cover over the drain to catch hair because we were consistently getting slow drains and I hated using so much Draino on it. I clean the hair off the drain cover every morning after I shower.
For the last week-10 days, I turn the water on to get it warmed up, then get in a minute or two later, and there's standing water in the shower. I remove the drain cover (which does have holes in it, they're just smaller), after a minute or so the water drains, I put the drain cover back on and everything works fine. TWBE usually showers after me, and he hasn't mentioned any similar problems, so it seems like this is only happening when the shower first gets turned on for the day. And like I said, it's not like I'm standing there for 5-10 minutes in standing water (or I would have called a plumber already). I'm just not sure what IS happening or why, and I'm reluctant to use caustic chemicals if they're not needed.
Any ideas?
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Post by Floyd Dinnertime Barber on Feb 28, 2023 23:34:24 GMT -5
Our shower is being weird. It has done this before, but not quite so consistently. We have a decent-size shower stall in our master bathroom; we put a metal drain cover over the drain to catch hair because we were consistently getting slow drains and I hated using so much Draino on it. I clean the hair off the drain cover every morning after I shower. For the last week-10 days, I turn the water on to get it warmed up, then get in a minute or two later, and there's standing water in the shower. I remove the drain cover (which does have holes in it, they're just smaller), after a minute or so the water drains, I put the drain cover back on and everything works fine. TWBE usually showers after me, and he hasn't mentioned any similar problems, so it seems like this is only happening when the shower first gets turned on for the day. And like I said, it's not like I'm standing there for 5-10 minutes in standing water (or I would have called a plumber already). I'm just not sure what IS happening or why, and I'm reluctant to use caustic chemicals if they're not needed. Any ideas? I have a small, maybe 18-24 inch plastic drain snake with little spikes down the edges similar to these, that works really well for hair clogs near the drain entrance, where most of our clogs seem to form. I just take the drain cover off and snake the drain with it, and usually, lots of gross, slimy hair comes out and the drain then works normally. I have used it in the tub drain and the bathroom sink drain. |
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LazBro
Prolific Poster 
Posts: 10,282
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Post by LazBro on Mar 1, 2023 8:05:13 GMT -5
Yeah, time to put the snake to it. It's gross, but if you've got an occasional clogger, it's so, so satisfying.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Mar 1, 2023 8:46:18 GMT -5
Funny enough I tried just taking the drain cover off this morning (the extra one, not the "real" one) and then put it back when I got in the shower, and it was fine.
But a snake is not a bad idea to have on hand.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Mar 3, 2023 15:17:09 GMT -5
Got our dryer vent cleaned this morning - it was desperately needed. Airflow has improved from 1 m/s to 5.2 m/s so that's huge.
HOWEVER... determined the way the ducting runs - up the wall and through the ceiling, from the front of the house to the back - it measures 42 ft. which is way over the code standard of 35 ft, and that's without bends. And it sounds like the standard airflow is more like 8 m/s. So this should help a lot but we're never gonna get amazing short dry times because they were too lazy to design the house better.
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Mar 9, 2023 10:38:53 GMT -5
The tree cutting is done. They told me beforehand that we were losing one big tree, one little tree, and then some "scrub" around the back of the property line where our yard meets wooded parkland. The big tree is a big loss, and the spot where it was looks lopsided and empty, of course. The little tree is literally no loss -- I think the spot where it was looks better now without it (it was leaning nearly to the point of falling and was mostly dead). The "scrub", though? Jesus Christ! They were merciless! They cut all the branches off a couple of towering pine trees up to about 15 feet up the trunks. They took down a crabapple sapling next to the side of the garage (I'd been told it was staying). They razed way more shrubbery than I realized was even along the back of the yard, and clear-cut the branches off the bases of a bank of hemlocks up to a height of about eight feet. They cut a big, head-height branch off a tree in my side yard that has nothing to do with anything. And they completely cut down a mature lilac that was against the fence at the side of the backyard. UGH.
In all, though, it still could have been a lot worse. And I have to remember that the entire yard is still going to be dug up, emptied out, re-filled, re-contoured, and re-grassed, and is going to look a LOT different when it's all over*, so I can't even really judge what it looks like right now. But still. I'm pissed about the lilac and the branch from the gum tree.
*We have a dumb swingset area that was here when we moved in and we've never done anything about it. It's a big rectangle outlined by railroad ties, with what was once a mulched surface. We hoped ignoring it would mean that it would go back to nature, but the lawn never spread into it. Then we put in a couple of rows of, like, the supports you see in vineyards, hoping to establish blackberries in the spot, but that never took. So now it's this weird eyesore of empty vine-support struts and weeds, all squared off like a deliberate thing. I'm VERY happy that it's being taken out in this whole septic-replacement affair. So while we've lost a lot of older-growth tree/shrub landscape, we're gaining a lot of aesthetic improvement for that.
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Post by Powerthirteen on Mar 9, 2023 18:05:41 GMT -5
Got our dryer vent cleaned this morning - it was desperately needed. Airflow has improved from 1 m/s to 5.2 m/s so that's huge. HOWEVER... determined the way the ducting runs - up the wall and through the ceiling, from the front of the house to the back - it measures 42 ft. which is way over the code standard of 35 ft, and that's without bends. And it sounds like the standard airflow is more like 8 m/s. So this should help a lot but we're never gonna get amazing short dry times because they were too lazy to design the house better. Hey, at least you probably didn't have a mouse family's worth of old turds in your dryer duct like we did. Sounded like a rainstick when we ran the dryer for the first time after I cleaned the lint out of the duct. |
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Mar 21, 2023 15:15:09 GMT -5
HOLY SHIT, the contractor just got back to me (after my "ahem, remember me?" email last week) that he can do my range installation this week. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am assuming now that it's all going to go wrong, because I can't imagine this all actually being over.
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Mar 22, 2023 13:18:36 GMT -5
Update on the range installation: the contractor did not, apparently, mean he'd be able to come today.
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Baron von Costume
TI Forumite
Like an iron maiden made of pillows... the punishment is decadence!
Posts: 4,684
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Post by Baron von Costume on Mar 23, 2023 10:02:58 GMT -5
Update on the range installation: the contractor did not, apparently, mean he'd be able to come today. Mentiroso! --- So they are finally rebuilding the house next door and while I'm glad they didn't stick in two tall microthin infills instead I've got to whine a bit about the fact that the replacement house is this rather sprawling super boring box. Honest to god at first glance it looks like 4 year old's drawing of HOUSE. |
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Mar 23, 2023 10:34:24 GMT -5
Mentiroso! --- So they are finally rebuilding the house next door and while I'm glad they didn't stick in two tall microthin infills instead I've got to whine a bit about the fact that the replacement house is this rather sprawling super boring box. Honest to god at first glance it looks like 4 year old's drawing of HOUSE. Ugh, boring new-builds are such a drag. My neighborhood is at that age where a fair number of the houses get treated as knock-downs or in need of complete overhaul when they're sold. And it drives me nuts how uninspired so many of the renovations end up being! It's not like the original houses here are teeming with period style or flair, but the vintage is late '50s and the style is sort of a mishmash of ranch/colonial, so it's not as though it would be difficult to work some elements into a renovation that would help keep some element of the neighborhood's charm. But noooooooooo! All the renovations people make are to churn out like you've said, 4-year-old-style HOUSE houses that are weirdly devoid of any flair or character. It's like a style called "Children's Drawing Brutalism" or something. The house next door to mine was renovated by a flipper a few years ago, and they kept the entire original shape of the house (so no expansion or significant floorplan overhaul; they just took out the walls between the living room, dining room, and kitchen) but redid all the siding and trim to remove all the decorative elements. Then they painted it two tones of gray, and listed it for $300K more than other houses on our street sell for. (They did not get that much for it.) |
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Baron von Costume
TI Forumite
Like an iron maiden made of pillows... the punishment is decadence!
Posts: 4,684
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Post by Baron von Costume on Mar 23, 2023 10:52:34 GMT -5
Yeah, to be honest my only thought in this case was 'maybe they got a promise of an earlier start time with a simple build?' cause the fire was cleared away almost a year ago but I know new home starts are super long range at the moment.
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Mar 23, 2023 13:15:21 GMT -5
DON'T WORRY, EVERYONE -- MY CONTRACTOR ALSO HAS NOT SHOWN UP TODAY! Whew, that's a relief. I'm not sure anyone wants to live in a world where my kitchen repairs are finished.
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Post by Dr. Rumak on Mar 23, 2023 14:36:24 GMT -5
We are considering knocking down and rebuilding our house in NC. Rest assured that it will not be a boring home.
Also, we are finishing some upgrades on the Florida house. We had our bathroom redone last year, and are having the other two bathrooms upgraded now (one is just new floor, paint, and vanity, the larger one is getting the tub replaced with a shower as well, because we want the house to be friendly to those who might have accessibility issues). We will still need the rest of the inside of the house painted and a new stove before we put it on the market.
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Mar 24, 2023 8:27:16 GMT -5
THE CONTRACTOR IS HERE! THE CONTRACTOR IS HERE! He seemed really flummoxed when he took a look at the range out in the garage ("Did... did this come with a manual?"), so I'm not feeling confident. But he's here!
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Mar 24, 2023 14:44:50 GMT -5
Old appliances are out, cabinet box is cut, wiring and plumbing are aligned, range is in the kitchen. The only things left are to cut the counters and actually install the thing. But apparently that's waiting until tomorrow morning, so for tonight we can walk around the range that's taking up most of the kitchen floor. But serious forward progress has been made!
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Mar 27, 2023 10:50:56 GMT -5
Old appliances are out, cabinet box is cut, wiring and plumbing are aligned, range is in the kitchen. The only things left are to cut the counters and actually install the thing. But apparently that's waiting until tomorrow morning, so for tonight we can walk around the range that's taking up most of the kitchen floor. But serious forward progress has been made! The contractor came back on Saturday morning and the rest of the install took about four hours. There's a fine coating of granite dust over everything in the kitchen, but oh my god! MY NEW RANGE! IT IS MAGNIFICENT! And after having been a surly jerk about my even asking him to take this job in the first place, the contractor remarked to me afterward that it ended up being a fun challenge for him. He said he's never once been asked to cut a counter -- he's always getting jobs where he's taking out counters and doing replacements and full remodels. He apparently really enjoyed the novelty of trying to preserve a kitchen while doing a retrofit. So everyone was happy with this job in the end! |
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Post by Powerthirteen on Mar 27, 2023 14:57:59 GMT -5
8 months after buying this house I only just noticed that there's a big ol' RV power outlet on the exterior wall. Who knows what else I'll discover over the years?
Also, even after all this time I still go through phases of obsessively worrying about every tiny creak and groan and rattle of the house and start imagining that something down in the crawl space has started catastrophically destroying my house. Don't care for that. Kind of hope it goes away at some point (which of course will be when something catastrophic happens.)
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Mar 27, 2023 15:15:54 GMT -5
8 months after buying this house I only just noticed that there's a big ol' RV power outlet on the exterior wall. Who knows what else I'll discover over the years? Also, even after all this time I still go through phases of obsessively worrying about every tiny creak and groan and rattle of the house and start imagining that something down in the crawl space has started catastrophically destroying my house. Don't care for that. Kind of hope it goes away at some point (which of course will be when something catastrophic happens.) I've been in my house for 17 years and still feel that way about every creak and groan and rattle! If you find a way to make that go away, let me know!  (The best part is that after 17 years some of the things that are in creak/groan/rattle stage are the stuff we put in new since moving in. I can't keep complaining forever about the sketchy DIY guy who owned it before us!) |
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Post by ganews on Mar 27, 2023 18:04:58 GMT -5
8 months after buying this house I only just noticed that there's a big ol' RV power outlet on the exterior wall. Who knows what else I'll discover over the years? Also, even after all this time I still go through phases of obsessively worrying about every tiny creak and groan and rattle of the house and start imagining that something down in the crawl space has started catastrophically destroying my house. Don't care for that. Kind of hope it goes away at some point (which of course will be when something catastrophic happens.) Does than mean you are well set up for a home electric vehicle charger? |
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Post by Powerthirteen on Mar 27, 2023 19:06:37 GMT -5
8 months after buying this house I only just noticed that there's a big ol' RV power outlet on the exterior wall. Who knows what else I'll discover over the years? Also, even after all this time I still go through phases of obsessively worrying about every tiny creak and groan and rattle of the house and start imagining that something down in the crawl space has started catastrophically destroying my house. Don't care for that. Kind of hope it goes away at some point (which of course will be when something catastrophic happens.) Does than mean you are well set up for a home electric vehicle charger? I could be if I wanted, yeah. I need to finish mapping out all the circuits on my board (only like six of them are labeled) and then probably get an electrician in to talk about splitting one of the 15 amp circuits that currently has ~40 things on it. I’d also like to figure out how to get a dedicated circuit in the garage for a freezer, and sort out some of the home wiring involved in the additions that were done out there. It’s a standard 50-year-old suburban house wiring rats’ nest. |
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Mar 30, 2023 11:05:10 GMT -5
With the looming threat/promise of a complete backyard overhaul when the septic system gets replaced (if it's ever getting replaced?), I ended up taking a long trip down memory lane yesterday going through our Flickr archives to see what the yard used to look like. We've been in our house 17 years, and I was surprised to see A) how my memory of when major changes happened was all out of order, and B) how much things really have changed around here. Hugs and I have been keeping something of a daily journal on Flickr off and on since 2008 -- we stopped for a few years in there but got back to it again last year -- but we rarely took wide-angle pictures of our house or yard. Now we have regrets! So we've vowed to keep a better basic documentary record of our crumbling pile, just so future us can look back in another 17 years and be like, "Wow, I did not remember it looking like that." Anyway, one of my favorite "baby stately Dick N Hisses Manor" photos is one from before we even took a lot of pictures -- it was the day we started planting our orchard. We put in an Enterprise apple, a Granny Smith (they were the only ones the local nursery had), some kind of cherry (the deer were so obsessed with it that it never stood a chance), and a Peregrine peach. This was 17 years ago tomorrow:  Man, that front yard was such a weird, unlandscaped wasteland! It was just a big, empty, patchy-grassed lawn with nothing but a tall locust tree breaking it up (you can see one branch there from that tree, and the very tip of the mulched circle in the ground under it). We've, uh, added some stuff since then (and lost the locust tree to lightning) -- I couldn't resist trying to get this exact photo again today:  Only the Enterprise apple tree is still in place, the one at the edge of the lawn farthest to the left; all the other fruit trees have been planted since that first year. The orchard looks a little more impressive either with leaves or early in winter before the annual pruning, as an aside. It appears a little scraggly here... Regardless, this comparison is cracking me up today. |
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(The best part is that after 17 years some of the things that are in creak/groan/rattle stage are the stuff we put in new since moving in. I can't keep complaining forever about the sketchy DIY guy who owned it before us!)