Swamped

So, in other news... finally things seemed to be settling down.. I got a job.. Liam's head was healing... so we went on a week long trip. We came back from the trip on a Sunday afternoon, the day before my first day at a new job, to find water streaming out from all sides of our home. Uh oh!

Not many photos cause, well, we went straight away into damage control. Turns out the hot water hose to the washing machine sprung a leak.. a really big leak.. essentially fully gushing, for almost the entire time that we were gone! Our first floor was swamped, with certain areas having 4-5 inches of water. Truthfully.. we were lucky. In the moment, the thought didn't cross my mind, but both Ryan and I went into the flooded home, while electricity was still on with live power extension cords fully submerged. So... regardless of the mess, I'm grateful it was only loss of property and my kids aren't orphans.

24-hour emergency flood company working into late night to remove all the water.

We spent that night camping on our front lawn. There was mold from the stagnant water.. and later on, there was asbestos which put the 1st floor under quarantine. This made for a very stressful first day, and first week, of work. But hey.. at least I have job to help pay for this.. and we're pretty good at the camping thing. It was actually kind of a nice night to sleep outside, warm and perfect temps.

Damage was extensive. Drywall walls and some ceiling, most flooring, cabinets, furniture, on top of loss of various items. This is how the 1st floor looks now. It'll be a while to renovate as there are lots of details to work through.

And here's our temporary storage. The flip side is, even as we look at the stuff in temporary storage.. a lot of the stuff is not needed. This makes a good time as any to clean and reduce.

It was sad to throw away things that were total loss, but at the end of the day.. it's just stuff. I have a better understanding of situations where flooding or fires occurs and the impact it can have. This is also a reminder that the unexpected can happen. Evacuation is always a possibility, and to be better prepared. .. oh, and shut off the main water line prior to going on a trip!

Deck Progress

It's getting closer...

Oh Deck the House with Ledgers and Nails.. fa la la la la..

The deck is coming along. This is pretty much our (the kiddies and I) view.

The New Driveway

Our old, crumbling asphalt driveway has been replaced with concrete and a few embellishments:  increased turning space to get around the corner of the house (and a pole so you don't hit the corner of the house), the side area was kept as flat as possible and sawcut joints used so this area can be used as a ball court, and the turnaround area in the front of the house has been enlarged (it will be even larger when we get the retaining wall built, and extend the driveway to the wall).  This is step 1 in our deck remodel project.  The retaining wall was suppose to be step1, but we're still waiting for a permit.

Stats:  ~5000 sq ft, 55 cy, 3000 psi concrete with Buckeye fibers. 9 finishers.

Edit: This is my first time posting a slideshow. I just noticed it lost quite a bit of resolution in the upload to YouTube. Will have to play around with the settings to see if it can be improved.

Edit 2:  Connie says that YouTube, for some reason, defaults to low res.  So you have to manually set to a higher resolution at the bottom of the screen, if you choose.  I'm going to see if there's a way to set a higher default resolution.

Demo

As in Demolition. This is what I've been doing lately...






We're getting ready to extend our deck to make it more usable (the existing small, split decks are practically useless). Underneath the new deck will be a fenced in play area for the kids. We're thinking of using some sort of artificial turf to minimize the maintenance. And the old asphalt around the house will be redone in concrete creating a cleaner, safer surface for the kids (and grown-ups) to play on.

2011 Mid-Year Update

It seems to me that time is on super lighting speed. Our baby girl somewhere along the way grew out of being a newborn baby into a new toddler. Right when Ryan and I think we have the parenting thing figured out, she learns something new and stumps us once again. While we highlight some of the fun and tender moments on this blog, we fail to completely capture all the details of the good and the not-so-good along the way. As life goes, there are ups and downs and plenty of challenges. Challenges with learning how to grow as parents with Em because every step of the way is still all new. Challenges with how to balance life with having only a finite amount of time with work, responsibilities, quality time with family, maintaining contact with friends and family, exercise (barely existent), and all the in-between.


Life is much much different now than 2 years ago (pre-Em) and I remember my own perspectives back then as I tried to envision life with a husband and a baby girl. I laugh now because it has been not even close to what I imagined being settled and having a family would be like. Let's just say, climbing Mt. Everest was fun, adventurous, breath-taking... but I can't even bring a fair comparison to any adventures I've experienced with the fun and adventures we have now with Em as we see a little of us in that strong and developing personality of hers. Every day holds something new and unexpected. I see a little Ryan in her as she tries to climb on EVERYTHING... or when she takes the avocados and arranges them in a neat line across the floor. I see a little bit of myself when she adamantly and stubbornly refuses to eat the blended kale porridge mix I make her.. or when she has that spark in her eye which I know means something has caught her curiosity. It is pretty neat to look and find similarities with our personalities and our little girl.


So, long story short.. our life is, and will continue to be non-stop adjustment. As Ryan also blogged a few posts earlier, our home has required just as much of his attention lately. He's been hard at work every chance he gets at maintaining it and trying to make it more kid friendly. The avocado harvest came and went and along with it, more maintenance for Ryan.

Surprisingly, I would have thought my priority on family would take precedence, and subsequently expect that my ability and drive for work would diminish. Not so, in fact, quite the opposite. I have a renewed focus with work, because work now matters even more as it will provide for my children's future. So, when not focused on family, the other portion of my time has been focused on work. I won't go into details, but work has definitely been a challenge trying to get where I want to be career-wise in this downturned economy. It makes me understand and appreciate how hard my parents worked, and also understand that as full-time working parents, we sacrifice being able to spend more time with our kids, to try to give our kids more for their future. It is a fine balance.

So... all in all, Ryan, Emilia, and I have all been keeping busy in our own ways. I guess it's just called Life. =)

The next BIG adjustment is right around the corner with the arrival of Emilia's little brother, our baby boy. Again, I can't imagine how things will be, but we're looking forward to his arrival. Here's our sneak peak at the little guy from a few weeks ago:

Projects

There's always projects going on at the house. This is one that I wish I would've gotten a video of. We had a pine tree that was leaning against the fence and over into the neighbor's yard. Not only was it damaging the fence, but it also would've crashed into their roof if it ever fell over. Unfortunately I didn't take any "before" pictures, but you can envision from this picture of the stump how the tree was leaning.


So I rigged up some safety lines to an avocado tree to hopefully keep it from falling the wrong direction when I cut it.


I then did some internet research because I was paranoid about the tree still wanting to fall the wrong direction (i.e. into my neighbor's roof). The interesting thing I found on an arborist site was that the recommended cut is a 70 deg notch on the side that you want the tree to fall. The old method I was aware of was a 45 deg notch. But the 70 deg notch ensures that the hinge stays intact until the tree is completely down. This is suppose to provide better control of where the tree falls. So you can see here how the 70 deg notch allowed enough clearance for the tree to completely fall before closing.


And that the hinge stayed predominately intact.


It was really something to see the tree falling just the way you planned- it was "internet textbook". That's why I wish I would've gotten a video of it because things don't always go exactly as they're suppose to. And the relief of not having to pay for repairing the neighbor's roof was priceless.


Another project I recently completed was resetting all of the railroad ties that create a retaining wall along our driveway. They were starting to be pushed out and falling over. Once I started digging them out, I found out the reasons - roots and rot. Tree roots had undermined a lot of the ties, and several of the ties were crumbling to pieces. So what I thought was going to be a relatively straightforward job turned into a lot more. Hopefully this will hold out until we can get the driveway repaired and a real retainer built (projects that are in the way distant future).



The other project I'm working on is still in process, but is going to be the testbed for some planting I'd like to do throughout the property. I'd like the plants here to be either natives or succulents. I used natives for erosion control when we built the workshop so now I need to get some experience with succulents. So I figured I'd start on the front of the property that adjoins the street. And as most projects go, it grew into a little more than just planting a few succulents. First, there is no water out there so I had to run a water line from about 120 ft away.


Then I decided that I wanted to do a little hardscaping in this area so I added a dry river bed. Fortunately a friend (thanks Diane) had a bunch of river rock she wanted to part with so I made many trips carrying as much as (maybe a little more than) the poor Subaru could handle. This is the beginnings of the river bed. Once the river bed is completed, I'll add mulch and then start laying out the succulent design.



Another part of this project is to replace our old mailbox with a delivery box I've had for years, but just haven't had the time to install it. It needs a little concrete pad so that's the hole for it next to our current mailbox. I'm hoping someday to see concrete in that hole.


And lastly (for now), this is the start of a rock border I'm building along our uphill property line. The idea is to help control the erosion and weeds that occurs in this area (note: neighbor side = weeds; our side = no weeds). All of this rock has been scavenged from our property, but I'm going to need to buy some rip rap to complete it. Only about 200 ft to go...

Stumped

We've been slowly babyproofing the inside of the house, but the outside also needs a lot of attention to make this place as kid-friendly as a place like this can be. There will always be things to get hurt on, but we'll try to keep them to a minimum.

Several weeks ago, I removed all of the remnants of the old barbed wire fence, and the redundant secondary wire fence. I also removed all of the random steel rods that were driven into the ground in various spots for unknown reasons. And all of the abandoned pvc pipe stubs sticking out of the ground have been cut off, and capped below ground level.

For the past few weeks, I've been doing some not-so-fun grunt work to fill my spare time - removing tree stumps. Some of these stumps have been around for a while so they've partially rotted away, and are not too difficult to get out. But this one was fairly massive, and took quite a bit of digging and Paul Bunyan work.

Finally out - it's driveway destroying days are over.

Another casualty...


I've removed about 20 so far, but still have 24 to go - yes, I counted them :^(

The trees along the perimeter of the property have probably never been trimmed. Some of the trees had grown right through the chain link fence. So I did a bulk trimming, and ended up with this humongous pile of branches and limbs. I'll get a guy out here with his diesel wood chipper, and this will all be turned into mulch. I've been doing this with trimmings since I moved into this place, and it's been a good way of obtaining mulch for weed and erosion control.


Next project is an outdoor infant swing hanging from the ol' oak tree :^)

Ah, Cool Air!

We finally replaced our old, shoddy air conditioner which never really could cool the house. I'd been monitoring vendors and prices for several years, but hadn't come across a good combination. That is until one of Connie's co-workers recommended a guy name John Christian at Nova Heating & Air. I had always felt that a large part of our problem was the poor ductwork in the attic. Only one guy I had previously talked to had addressed this issue in his quote, but he was way expensive. Most guys would just focus on the air conditioner side (it was a known fact that our old 4 ton unit was undersized). But John immediately said that all of the ductwork had to be replaced, and that our returns were grossly undersized. Since his price was reasonable and we qualified for the Federal Tax Credit, we decided to go for it. We'll also get some payback on our electrical bills with the increased efficiency as the new unit is rated at 16 SEER while our old system was only 10 SEER.

This is the outside heat pump (it's a Carrier 5-ton unit with a 2-stage compressor). It is so much quieter than the old unit. The fan coil (with variable speed drive) is located in the attic space.



Our return duct was undersized so we added a second return in the hallway.


This is the new thermostat. What's the big deal about a thermostat? I wouldn't think too much, but this is our 3rd one. John initially installed one of Carrier's high-end thermostats, but it just did not control the temperatures properly. We would have wide (up to 5 deg) swings in temperature no matter how we set it up. John thought that maybe it was defective so he installed another one. Same problem. So this time he switched to a different thermostat made by Source1. This did the trick as the temps are now tightly controlled.


A cool feature with this thermostat is that it works with wireless sensors. That makes it really easy to experiment with different locations until you find good spots to sense temperatures. You can have the thermostat control to its internal sensor or average multiple sensors. I have a second inside sensor that monitors the first floor temp.

This is a temporary location for the outside sensor. Being able to sense outside air temp opens up more control possibilities...


We're thinking about adding on a feature called "Free Cooling". Now of course nothing is free, but by knowing the outside air temp and adding an outside air supply to the fan coil, we can program the thermostat to use outside air instead of the heat pump when the outside temp is cool enough. Since this house retains heat well into the evening, this should save a lot of energy by not running the heat pump when we don't have to. We could (should) just open up the house in those situations, but more often than not, we forget about that and you hear the AC running at the strangest times. With the Free Cooling mode, it will "open" the house for us automatically, and allow us to be lazy bums :^)

This Old House, Part 1

In preparation for the new baby, we've been busy getting things ready around the house. Connie's been taking care of researching and acquiring the amazing number of baby things we'll need. Thankfully we've had family and friends who've been able to provide us with a LOT of stuff. I've been focusing on the house since I haven't really done much with it since I moved here about 5 years ago. My time was consumed with getting the outside under control since it had been neglected for a long time by the previous inhabitants (i.e. renters).

The first thing I did to make things more kid-safe was replace all of the electrical receptacles with tamper-resistant outlets. I didn't realize these were available until I went looking for them. We were going to just do the plug-in plate things, but the house is really dated (70's style) so it was asking for an upgrade. So every receptacle in the house now looks like this.

In the kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry room, I also installed GFCI outlets since that had never been done.

To keep things looking uniform, I also replaced all of the old style light switches with these new ones. Some incorporated dimmers (the little slide switches adjacent to the main switch) to help with lighting control.

And to make it a little easier to find the light switches in the dark, I used illuminated switches in certain spots. An interesting thing I found is that some illuminated 3-way switches won't light up in certain circuits. I think it has something to do with a voltage differential they require to operate, and there are varying residual voltages in the 3-way circuits here. Another project for the future.

An outgrowth of replacing all of these outlets and switches is that I traced just about every electrical circuit in the house. So we now only have one unknown light switch (seems to be an abandoned 4-way) and a couple of circuit breakers that don't seem to connect to anything (they're both switched off, and I haven't noticed anything not working). I also found an interesting DIY job on a 3-way circuit. Whoever did it thought they didn't have enough wires in a cable to wire up a 3-way circuit. So they used the bare ground wire as a hot lead. Yikes! Needless to say, that's been remedied.

The house has always been rather dim (ok, almost like a cave) so I upgraded the lighting in a lot of locations. In the living room, I added some recessed lighting.

The master bedroom, Connie's office, and baby room got new surface mount ceiling lights.

And the bathrooms all got new lighting fixtures.

I also finally replaced the stairway chandelier that had been missing since I removed the giant fish hook chandelier when I first moved in.

The kitchen needs a complete remodel. But that's something for the distant future. So for now, I just cleaned up the existing lighting, re-wired it to balance out the circuits better, and replaced a bad ballast and all of the fluorescent tubes. So it doesn't look much different (except maybe cleaner as you don't see the silhouette of dead bugs any more), but the lighting is way better.

The lights on the outside of the house are really dated looking and some have been falling apart.

I've got all of them replaced except the two at the entry in the above photo. Due to the rock wall, these are going to require some carving to get them to fit. But eventually they'll look like this one that is installed in another area.

There's more that's been done and will be done, but I think that's enough for now.