Window and Trees - a pictoral post

The two Chinese Pistache were planted yesterday. They are taller than I expected but a little spindly. In 3-5 years they should be beauties. If you intend to see the trees in the two following pictures, look closely. The second picture is a bit of an optical illusion with a much larger tree helping to fill out the Pistache's canopy. I've been trying to get a shot of the trees from across the street but work trucks are always parked out in front of our house obscuring the view. I'll take the work trucks thank you.

Those large trucks have been unloading our windows! We have all but one in as of this morning.

Front office window looking out West

Living room looking out

Kitchen looking out

Looking into the mudroom

Front of house with one set of new windows and one set of old.

I love this shot of the house. Our front lawn reminds me of a very zealous political enthusiast's. At the urging of E, I took down two of the older signs. It still makes me giggle, just not as much.

Once the house is insulated and sealed up, I expect E will wander around from room to room taking measurements of sound with the new windows open, and closed.

Three Doors and a Window

Two new Marvin doors went in today. One big set of horrific double doors came out, if you could even call our master bedroom doors that much. I prefer to think of them more as a glass sieve that water, wind and dirt came through but kept the really big chunks (such as raccoons) out. Although, I never really tested their limits on keeping raccoons out. I always assumed they could keep a raccoon out, which was probably a good assumption since after every rain, I had to throw my whole body weight against the doors in order to open them. Let me add to the list of things they were good at; not opening and closing.

The back of the house is prepped for tomorrow's door installation.

Can you spot the small dog?

The side yard with our spiffy new kitchen door.

The mud-room door.

I have it on good authority that a window showed up at the house as well so with any luck, the first of 17! windows will go in tomorrow as well. I am of course counting each of the large front windows as three in total, a center picture window flanked on either side by a tall narrow casement window. Count it as 13, count it as 17, either way the windows are going in.

I can't wait to get home on Sunday and see it all!

Reflections and Good News

After a month of opera, I feel creatively revived and ready to tackle some more projects on the house. I have next week back at home, then I hit the road again for another 6 weeks. I've had the luxury of dreaming about the house again, much like when we first put the offer on the house. I've had several "brilliant" ideas.

The first of my brilliant ideas was inspired by a post on apartment therapy.

Not to fear cleanly folks. There won't be any grease spatter besmearing the chef's image in my kitchen. However, while fixing a delicious espresso drink, there might be a little something extra to reflect upon. The built-in residing in the dining room has a mirror above the center portion. I want to create a similar built-in feel with the coffee/wine buffet in the kitchen.

The buffet in the kitchen consists of 2-24" upper cabinets (12" deep) hung over 2-24" base cabinets (12" deep). The unit will be placed in the corner of the kitchen on the wall closest to the dining room and opposite the dining room built-in. It is flanked on the other side by a pantry. The upper doors are glass with divided lights that, bare with me, mirror the dining room built-in.

We already have two huge mirrored closet doors that we removed from the cottage apartment. With a few measurements, a glass cutter and pair of pliers, I'll have a cool and free mirror detail. An added bonus is that the buffet will go in directly across from the glass kitchen door - reflecting sunlight!

Good News - The issue with the hole in the ceiling of the small bedroom, mentioned in this post, has been taken care of. It is only a matter of when I can get the ceiling and wall work scheduled.

Indeed the walls need quite a bit of work as well. What started out as a room with four complete walls and an intact ceiling as turned into a larger project than anticipated. I admit, my penchant for well done details and gung-ho demolition attitude turned the lower half of the room into the unstable environment it is today. When I tore down the wood paneling masquerading as wainscot, I left behind exposed lathe and crumbling plaster in my wake. But that was only the beginning. When the exterior dry-rot work was going on, something not so surprising occurred, an interior wall began to migrate south. Below is a picture of such a corner in the small bedroom. The upper corner sports a hairline crack which has since turned into a 3" gap with the plaster slowly sliding down the wall.

Sink Hole

Yet another mystery has been solved. Ever wonder where the run off from the roof goes? We have. There are two drains, now two triple sized drains since our new roof, with downspouts attached to subterranean pipes. We previously discovered that the downspout on the western side of the house drains out to the street. The piping is intact and fully functional which is a HUGE surprise. We'd previously noticed the eastern drain seemed to be directed towards the front of the house along the East side of the house, but had until last week, been unable to find the outlet.

E and I were on our way out for a run when he decided to disconnect the drain from the exposed piping and run the garden hose down the opening for 10 minutes. Still at a loss after walking along the curb, I noticed a damp spot on the sidewalk in front of the house. Logically following the damp spot to the lawn (o.k., weed garden) I noticed something of a bulge in the yard. Yes, I said there was a bulge in the yard. It was something like a potbelly. When E tapped it with his foot, the belly gurgled and squished. The 3' patch jiggled a bit and then stopped. Again, "tap, tap" followed by a "jiggle, jiggle". Our yard was either growing boils or we had very own underground aquifer just under the surface. The weed garden was tightly knit enough to keep the water from rising to the surface, instead, 10 minutes worth of hose water lay trapped under the yard, jiggling and generally creeping me out.

Yet we do have an almost fully functional drain system. We know where the water goes to at least. It is away from the house. Suppose we'll have to do something out how it plumps up in the yard, but that is a detail. I'm a big picture person at the moment. It is easy to be a big picture person when sitting 100s of miles away in a different city.

Since I am sitting 100s of miles away, I'd like to include a gratuitous pet photo, because, I can.

I have left Sophie in charge of things while away.

She has informed me that she enjoys her new position of power.

Trees(s)

We passed our first general inspection on the inside of the house. The electrical, plumbing, tankless water heater, gas, framing and sub-floor were all under scrutiny. There were several things he asked the plumber to take care of but we have a signature and can now start insulating. The funniest thing that came from it all is that the inspector told E, he trusts E is doing things right because he knows me and that E is accountable to me. I love it. Thankfully E found it funny as well.

We also received word that our windows should show up in several weeks. We know this because they've asked if they could use our house to film a training/marketing video on window installation. We are guaranteed our windows will be installed right. We'll have proof if anything goes awry too. I'm crossing my fingers that Marvin will throw in a free window with the deal. I don't have high hopes though, but a girl can dream.

We've come to a close on the major construction projects. Our moat has been filled and our yard shouldn't see too much more heavy traffic. This means we've started planning tree plantings. First up is getting trees planted into the easement through our city urban forestry program.

Chinese Pistachio: I've seen it described as the new urban darling. It grows to a mature height of 30' with a width of 25'. Growth is up to 3' per year. It is a drought tolerant and super hearty plant, resisting winds and infestations. The fall colors are gorgeous. Female trees produces pretty berries and flower. The males create pollen which might induce allergies and I'm not sure I want to subject myself to that. Bring on the mess making berries! The best part is that given we have a double lot, I think we can easily get the city to plant two trees, one to each side of the house.

Look at the pretty tree here: click me...click me!

Guest Blog by E

Since the boss is gone for a couple of months attending to her singing career, I've taken over the general contractor position temporarily. The electrical sub-contractor finally did the under-cabinet lights (what a pain!) and the porch light and we are now finished with rough electrical. I've scheduled our rough inspection (plumbing, electrical, and framing) for this upcoming Wednesday. Roof final will happen as well. Hopefully we pass, and we can move along to insulation.

Speaking of insulation, there are many options as to how to do the ceiling. I investigated the new high tech spray foam... but the company wasn't interested in our house. Blow in cellulose seems like a good option to me, but K doesn't like it. (not exactly sure why...) So we're going to do good ol' fiberglass rolls.

If one looks at the energy department guidelines for insulation, one would see that the recommended R value in our region is between 30 and 60. I did a little recon at Home Depot and priced out the various form factors of Owens Corning Insulation and determined, to my surprise, the doing a double layer of R19 and then R30 is actually cheaper than doing a single layer of R30! How is this? R30 faced (required on the 1st layer or if only doing 1 layer for a vapor barrier) only comes in batts, which is significantly more expensive than rolls. R19 comes in faced rolls, and R30 unfaced (for a 2nd layer) also comes in rolls... so it looks like we'll have R49, which seems pretty high to me. A benefit to doing 2 layers is that we can place them perpendicular to each other, and therefor reduce the possibility of leaks around seams and such. Of course, before we insulate we'll need to go around and carefully seal all the holes with caulk or foam sealant. Every hole drilled for electrical and plumbing is a potential energy leak, and needs to be sealed for the most efficiency.

At this point in the project, doing electrical work is boring and tedious and my mind has started to shift towards the solar water system. The solar sub-system, which will work with both the domestic hot water and the radiant heat, is a closed loop system. A pump moves fluid around in a loop and transfers heat from the roof-mounted collectors to a big storage tank via an internal heat exchanger. I picked an evacuated tube collector because they are more efficient than the cheaper flat panel collectors with higher water temperatures... a necessity when using the system to help with the radiant heat in the winter. It better work!

Evacuated Tube Solar Collector

Yesterday I put the 82 gallon storage tank (with a double heat exchanger) in the drain pan. The tank weighs about 400lbs empty, a good 320 lbs more than I care to lift. Luckily for us, the previous roof leaked, which caused me to cut a hole in the ceiling of the utility closet, which in turn provided a perfect spot to suspend the tank with 2 tie-downs. Each tie-down claimed it had a 340lb working load rating... but they seemed pretty strained at only 200lbs each. Whatever though... they did the job and I was able to hoist the tank up a few inches and slide in the drain pan.

The next step is to strap the storage tank to the walls for seismic events, and plumb 2 fiberglass-insulated copper pipes to the roof mounted collector. Then I'll attach the delta-T circulator pump (pumps only when the temperature of the water in the collectors is higher than the water in the storage tank), the pressure relief valve, the expansion tank, the air eliminator valve, the temperature sensors, and a few other things and the solar water plumbing will be finished. Too bad we don't have any need for hot water yet (we don't have any fixtures installed!), as we'll be ready to collect the sun's energy quite soon!

Above: TACO Delta-T Solar Pump

Above: Expansion Tank

Above: Air Eliminator

Finally, PG&E stopped by a couple of days ago and gave me an earful as to how our electric meter is just kind of dangling off of the house. The PG&E guy asked me to add a couple of temporary straps to secure the meter, which I did. I'm not that enthusiastic about working around the power wires coming in from the power company... there are no breakers if something goes wrong. I'll be quite pleased when our stucco is done and the meter is firmly secured back to the house.

E

While the cat is away

E has not been at play. He has been working hard while I've been out of town.

Last update I received:

E wired the last circuits in the kitchen: microwave, dishwasher, sockets. The utility room electrical has been done. The GFCI circuit in the front bathroom has been hooked up. Several outlet boxes have been replaced and secured. Several of them were done before the dry rot demo on the outside of our house, but since they were on the walls that were removed, they ended up dangling. The only wiring left to take care of is the outlet in the laundry room, under cabinet lighting, and living room sockets.

We are also in desperate need of a label maker. Yes, it is a need. Who doesn't need a label maker? With the whole house basically rewired, we've been keeping track of all the circuits in the fuse box. Once we are final, I'd like to make it more permanent with shiny new, legible, labels. Legibility being the key.

Before I left however, we had a sad bit of news. There was one more corner of the house that had some possible dry rot. The contractor and his crew working on the project opened up a test hole on the back corner of our house, on the exterior of the master bedroom. The hole grew, and grew, and grew.

At this point, we should be free and clear of rot and termite damage. Should.

I've finally gotten around to removing some serious hazards from the property. So far, I've carted over 30 gallons of toxic materials to the household hazardous waste drop off facility. When we purchased the property, there was a mess of grand proportions outside. Remember? Part of the mess included buckets of old paint, stain, oil, chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, and mysterious unmarked containers.

Here's a shot of one of our two waste piles before my two trips to the dump site.

Here is an after shot. Notice, I still have another trunk load to go.