house – Page 10 – A picture and a thousand words

We do not want for pine trees

The sunset a week ago was sensational and golden – the light hummed.

Pictures are a meager reminder, but pretty enough to post. From the driveway, looking west across the cul de sac:

And looking north up the street:

I love our house, neighbourhood, and proximity to everything (especially work), but every time I try to take pictures of the sky I understand why I sometimes feel so hemmed in here. Quite the change from our apartment up on the hill overlooking the lake. Generally it just feels cozy, but man are those trees tall.

We’re faced with a particular challenge regarding the trees now that football season is nigh. We’ve been essentially living without a TV since we moved in, mid-October. We have internet and cable through Comcast. No love lost there, both for endless billing snafus and general quality of service. In our old apartment, Kevin actually bought an HD antenna and connected it straight to his computer, and we used Media Center piped through to the TV to watch our shows on the networks in HD. No ESPN or Fox Sports, but otherwise everything that we wanted. Meanwhile, we kept calling Comcast to cancel our cable tv altogether, and they’d give us a six-month package analog cable package that was cheaper than internet alone. So we went from a $125/month cable+internet package to a $50 analog-tv+internet package. Nice.

When we moved to our new house and for the first four months, our TV room was in total disarray – no walls, the storage dumping-ground of the house, etc. The TV was occasionally plugged in, but we found that when the TV was connected our precious internet was spotty. (I may have some of these details wrong – Kevin is the wiring expert – but this is the gist of the situation.) The Comcast guys came out to test the line into the house, which seems to be functioning perfectly, so it’s likely the house wiring that’s the problem. Kevin did some analysis and there were several splitters (which degrade signal strength), plus signal gets weaker over longer lines, plus he suspects that the coax cables that run through the house are damaged/inferior. Back in March or so, Kevin unscrewed the TV connection where it entered the house to boost our all-important internet stability. So no TV until we reconnected for the Olympics, and now we’re mere moments away from football and needing a solution. Kevin just bought a spool of coax cable, and he’s been researching roof-mounted HD antennas which he could wire down to the utility closet that holds all of the house networking. My understanding is that the cable could go to the closet, which connects to his computer via the cable he ran last winter, which connects back through the closet to the XBOX 360 (a Media Center Extender) and so we could watch TV in the family room. (I sometimes feel like I should make an effort to understand this better, but he’s so good at it that I just trust his judgment and wait for the TV to turn on.)

The only hitch in the plan is that we are surrounded by enormous trees. Kevin bought a compass (on sale at REI!) and spent a good while up on the roof scoping out the visibility in the appropriate directions. It *might* work. We also had a tree guy out to give us estimates for removing some of the behemoths around the house, so that also might help further the plan. (In terms of feeling hemmed in, I felt very justified by his evaluation – our trees are between 65 and 100 feet tall. Wow!) We’re a bit conflicted about priorities for tree removal . We can only take out four per calendar year, so which goes first? The ones that block the southern sun? The ones dumping pine needles onto the roof? The ones preventing football happiness? We should get quotes back in the next few days, which should help narrow the options considerably. 🙂

A great Sunday

Apparently once I start on a “burning down the projects” kick, it spreads everywhere. I finally measured, cut, and painted the last of the trim yesterday afternoon. Working with the garage door open was quite pleasant – good light and a good breeze. It started to rain (and then started to POUR) while I was midway through the cutting, so I took out a sponge and “washed” my car with the rain water. You can’t use any soap here because the drains will contaminate the streams where the salmon swim. I emailed the car-washing czar in Kirkland and he said that I could wash with a vinegar/water mix (which I did), but when I followed up with the Redmond guy two months ago he essentially forbid all activities that involved removing dirt/pollution/pine needles with water as being completely toxic to the environment. My skeptical side is totally at war with my ecological and rule-following sides, and so I’ve now decreed as personal law that I can sponge off my car in a hard rain. Too much thinking about a simple rule.

The painted trim looks pretty, but I just can’t wait until it’s in the room where it belongs and the garage floor is empty!!!

I tidied up the ceiling edges in the family room while watching the Olympics last night. They really look great now. (None of the walls in that room follow right angles so I couldn’t use a square or tape – it all had to be done freehand, but I couldn’t be happier with how crisp it all looked when I walked in this morning. Perfect!!) I worked on painting trim, the mantle, and the french doors while I was on the phone with various family members this afternoon. Great progress. We have a few hours of measuring, sanding, and refining cuts in one of the evenings this week, and then maybe we can rent a nail gun next week to secure all of these trim pieces in place (all 81 of them), a few more daubs of paint over the nail heads, and then we will be done!!

Flush with future victories, and fresh off a phone call with my Dad, we started reconsidering room layouts. We moved the TV to the left of the (blue-tape-free!!!) fireplace, and put the couch and the armchair on the wall opposite.

Plus sides: uses the space well, no diagonal angles, puts the huge long wall behind the couches (and therefore broken up by furniture and our pretty lamps from my parents once we buy a new dining room chandelier), you can see the yard & fireplace from all of the seating, there’s room for a game table and reading chairs, if we want them, etc, etc, etc. It’s such an oddly shaped room (and we’ve been doing storage/demolition/painting/window work in it for so long that we’ve never had a chance to really gel with it. Plus, we unplugged the TV back in February since it was interfering with the (much more important) internet signal, and so we’ve barely used the room.

The major downside is that it is much, much more wiring work for Kevin, and that it has to happen in the crawl space. :-/ You can see that right now we’ve just strung a coax cable from our utility closet to the TV, and held it down to the carpet with blue painter’s tape. The final solution would involve punching through the wall by the fireplace and running the same cable under the floor.

But still, we’re both huge fans of the new layout. It’s a much better use of the room. We spent a few hours watching Olympics there this evening and kept remarking how much we liked it.

Meanwhile, in other house news, Kevin found a hive of yellow jackets outside our front door. I don’t know how we haven’t noticed them/been stung, since the hive is literally a foot from our major entrance/exit. In any case, Kevin was coiling a hose, got stung twice, and declared war.

At twilight, he decided there was actually still too much activity, so he waited to strike until after dark. Early signs look promising that he got everyone. It’s a pity, since I think that we’re pretty live and let live, but not on the front path. :-/

In the last of the Sunday night news, Kevin found a Shrimp Curry recipe in my new birthday cookbook, so I played sous-chef and chopped and he put together one of the most amazing-smelling dishes we’ve ever had in our kitchen…

What a great way to cap a cloudy Sunday of tub-cleaning, painting, sweeping, vacuuming, furniture-moving, Olympics, knitting, and a water change for the fish. 🙂

August flowers

Since we’re already in August (!), it seems time for a flower roundup. The hydrangea in the side yard has started flowering! The blue is gorgeous. Here’s my shot of the view from the house:

And Kevin’s shot with the macro lens and the tripod:

The roses keep blooming, and they’re really getting prettier and prettier. The biggest one is about 5″ in diameter.

Our sunflower is alive, but deeply unhappy. It’s very pale, stunted (only 16″ tall), and doesn’t follow the sun. Sorry, dude. If I could cook you up more light, I would.

I meant to take a photo of the daylilies of the front yard and then the rains came and I missed them. Also lovely while they lasted.

Total Adulthood

Want to see something exceptionally exciting?!

Why, yes, it *IS* a new energy efficient water heater!! With earthquake straps and an expansion tank, and pressure/temperature valves in all the right places!!! We’re completely delighted. The Town of Redmond came to inspect it on Friday, there were a few corrections that the water heater company made on Saturday – but now we’re (probably) just one follow-up away from being up-to-code and good to go!

For those of you who haven’t been following the saga, the water heater that came with the house turned 14 in May, according the paperwork duct-taped to the side in a plastic baggie. Our furnace (November ’93, according to its pedigree paperwork) shares ductwork, which needed to be brought up to code. The gas lines were out of date, and we had insufficient seismic support. Replacing the water heater was our first priority when we moved into the house. We wanted something energy efficient and with a long warranty. We started with Sears, bought a water heater, but they source out the installation to a local company that wanted to charge us $2000 to bring everything up to code. I spent two months trying to get our money back before I finally succeeded (moral of the story: avoid Sears, avoid Fast Water Heater Company). Kevin took mercy on me and took over, and we went through the guy who told us we were up to date and not to bother with a permit from the town (riiiight), and the company who special–ordered a water heater for us and then tried to install a different one and wouldn’t refund the money for the heater or the installation after the installer left with water heater in tow. We spent a few evenings roundly abusing the entire industry, threatened lawyers and small claims court (we got our money back), and leapt back into the struggle.

Fourth try was apparently the charm, though, since Brennan gave us the lowest quote by many hundred dollars, gave us a heater with a 10 year warranty and good efficiency scores, and did a great job installing it. Our permit inspector likes them a lot as a company and said we got a great price. All’s well that ends! 🙂

But that’s not all! While I was at home on Friday, we also had insulation installed!! Hurray! Our house (built in 1975) still had the original insulation (some sort of sawdust mix in the attic, the insulation equivalent of cardboard). There was also an addition (the family room that we’ve been working on for windows, trim and carpet…) built at some point in the 80s, but the geniuses who installed insulation in the crawlspace installed it upside down. So, we had people remove the reverse-insulation, install R-19 insulation (fiberglass batts) under the entire house, and blow in R-30 insulation (fiberglass blow-in, looks like cotton) into the attic above the fishroom and bedrooms. Yay!! We are now at the max R factor recommended for our area!! Last year, I cringed when the furnace went on. I could just picture walking outside with infrared goggles and watching all of that nice hot air funnel out of the roof in an orderly column into the sky. Now, no hats indoors next winter? 🙂

I would have taken pictures of our pretty new insulation, but I’m not so much of a crawl space or attic person… instead, “oooh”, the water heater expansion tank:

So, THE most exciting things this week are insulation and water heaters? All sorts of things we’ve done have seemed like things that adults do (get jobs, pay bills, get married, buy a house). But to define happiness for the week (more like the month!!) as a new water heater and good insulation? Incurable adulthood. We are now old. 🙂 Rock on.

The Great Tree Massacre of Aught Eight

Our neighbour, Paul, asked us today if we would mind trimming back the lilac the lilac next to the driveway, since he was having a hard time reaching his gate and mowing. They’re good neighbours, and I appreciated that they waited until after the blooms were done, so I went out about an hour later with the clips and pruned it back and up. The entire thing looks a lot more even now, which is nice, and I think that it will get more sun which should help with the last of the very persistent moss.

Once I was outside, I weeded the front gardens, pruned back a few bushes that had gotten gangly, and then decided to finally just do something about the maple. Two branches later, I can present before and after shots:
View from the street, before:

… and view from the street, after:

View from the house, before:

… and view from the house, after:

The ground actually gets sunlight now! I think that going up another branch in the middle would entirely be a bad thing, but at least now I can walk under it without stooping, and maybe we can scatter some grass seed and have a chance of it growing. 🙂

By that point I’d filled one yard waste bin and decided to move to the back. I pulled weeds from the rock wall (you wouldn’t believe the number of ivy starts that grow here in a week), pruned the Japanese maple, trimmed the lilac at the side of the house up a bit, and then decided to cut down a tree. We have a pine tree right outside our bedroom window that is just below the maximum size before you need a permit. The poor thing is surrounded by five enormous trees, and tried to compensate by growing as an “L” – it only has one branch, but that was as big as the trunk.

So, I cut it down, snipped and sawed it up, and had just about filled the second yard waste bin when Kevin got home from golf. He did a good job being impressed at all my progress. 🙂 I mentioned that we should probably think about cutting some of the branches on the larger pines at the side of the house – there are a bunch that hang over the roof and side yard, blocking light but not providing any privacy. I’d sort of meant it as a project for another day, but he was enthusiastic starting (and I know better than to stop a project like that when it has momentum!), so he spent another hour cutting down branches – he ended up taking down about 12 big ones from the roof, and then I took down another two from the ground. Even at 8:00 pm, there was an impressive amount of extra light. I can’t wait to see how it looks tomorrow morning from the bedroom.

Here’s Kevin sweeping up pine needles, and our new sky view! (Plus good perspective just how big those trees are – he’s only about 10′ away from that trunk!)

And here’s about a third of the tree carnage. It looked like a major hurricane had hit.

I spent about another hour clipping and sawing the branches into three big piles. There are also branches that fell in the front yard that I didn’t get to before we lost the light. Delicious hamburgers on the grill for dinner, and we are both going to sleep VERY well tonight!

Trim

We’ve had stacked trim just sitting in our garage for a few months now. I needed to rip 12 of the boards down to width, and the guys at the lumber yard were quite clear that the only way to do it was a table saw. We both researched, but the things are expensive, you have to store them, and there are safety concerns… Brian suggested way back in March that I look around at local places and see if someone would do the cuts for us for cheap. Sounded like a plan, but it took me a while to find a place. Meanwhile, there’ve been stacks of MDF blocking all the space in our garage.

Something finally clicked this week, and I found Hardwoods Supply online: six minutes from our house, open on Saturdays, and willing to make 21 10′ cuts for me.

I loaded the wood into the car, drove over, unloaded, they cut it up, reloaded, drove back and got everything restacked in the garage by the end of the dryer cycle (40 min). Nice. A very, very good use of $30. (And the guys were great. The one ringing me out was tickled at how mortified I was when I signed my maiden name on the credit card bill — I haven’t done that in months.)

So far I’ve managed to cut 12 pieces to their proper size. I have about 35 pieces to go (25 are straight cuts, the rest mitered), but all of a sudden I’d had enough fun for one afternoon, so the rest of the cuts and the painting will have to wait till tomorrow. Still, it’s a great start.

View in early June

It has been raining, cold and dismal here for the last week, but we’re finally at the time of year where everything is so green and the flowers are so bright that it’s not so bad. Here’s the view of the front yard from my computer/sewing machine>

With all the flowers are starting to fall — I’ll miss their color. They were so saturated and brilliant while they lasted.

Curtains

I’ve been meaning to figure out curtains for my office. My desk is set up right in front of the window, which is generally lovely, but on dark days and at twilight it seems to lack privacy. I had a bunch of white cotton and lace curtains that I bought at my church’s annual rummage sale for my Boston apartment. I just went on a massively nostalgic photo tour to find shots of those curtains in action, and here they were in my Boston Bedroom, circa June ’04.

(All I can think of is the T, the Red Sox on TV and the game day crowds, Kevin’s thesis, tulips bought on the way home, carrying groceries up three flights, and the way that the air smelled after dinner while everything cooled off.)

For Boston, I’d sewn sets of curtains together so that they would be longer. For this house, I pulled out those seams and sewed a channel for the curtain rod at about 2/3 the height. I found a spring-loaded curtain rod at Ace Hardware for about $4. Now, I can sit behind them and see the trees and sky, but anyone in the road or the neighbours can only see the top of my head. Perfect.

Or, during the day, I can slide them open and watch all the goings-on in the front yard.

I’m all pleased. 🙂

Playing Catchup

My mom pointed out that the blog has been a little bit quiet recently. I know! I’ve been feeling bad about it, but most of the major activities of the last three weeks (work, taxes, replacing the water heater…) just aren’t blog fodder. If you know what I mean.

See? 14 years old, way out of code, I could go on, but it’s really not interesting. (If you live in Seattle or the Eastside and have water heater people recommendations, we are ALL ears. We’re on company #4 and only moderately hopeful. A backup plan might be just what we need.)

I’ve been enjoying our new lawn mower. 🙂 Taking it out for a spin after work = so satisfying. We seem to have a lot of moss, plenty of clover (and a bunny who comes to munch on it in the evenings!!), and about three kinds of grass. I’d like to plant more, probably just from seed, but I’m not sure how to match what we already have. Any advice?

Kevin went out last weekend and came home with a ton of crafts supplies. Not exactly the norm? Turns out that he wanted to make a light box. (if you think of product shots, where you just have a white background with diffused light and a vague shadow, and no specific lines or horizons, you’ll get the idea.) Apparently you can also tint the light, and there are other benefits. In any case, 45 minutes and $8 later, he was able to take pictures of my sock progress. 🙂 The colors aren’t true and I’ve tripled the progress in the last week (1″ till the heel turn!) but you get the idea.

Finally, try and tell me that THIS doesn’t make you want to improve every switchplate in your house… Just when you thought you might be reaching the end of the pri-1 house projects, the internet comes through again! 🙂

An utter trim failure

I’m feeling totally thwarted.

I got all geared up after work to finally go buy trim for the family room. We were able to save about two thirds of what we had orginally, and now we have to match the windows, doors and base trim, plus find something to be a shelf on top of the bump-out. All of the existing trim is 9/16″ thick, and most of it is 2¼”, 3″ or 3½” wide. NONE of these dimensions seem to be findable. The guy at Home Depot said that trim sizes cycle in and out of fashion, so we may just be out of luck. I’m skeptical, but concerned. Also, the bump out is 7″ to 7⅜” (the people who built the room had a very loose interpretation of square…) and boards seem to come in 7 ¼” or 11 ¼” widths, not the 8″ that I want. So, foiled times two.

I really was hoping to buy the boards tonight, cut them all to size with the miter saw (by hand. whew.) tomorrow, paint them on Friday, nailgun them up on Saturday, and then be done by Easter, but this puts a crimp in the plan. I’m going to call around a bit tomorrow before I start getting really discouraged. Keep your fingers crossed.

And I was so close to finishing the top to the quilt, but it looks like I may have measured wrong…

… since the trim for each of the four sides is exactly 1 ⅛” short. I’m perilously close to running out of the light pink fabric, so I’m letting it marinate for a day before I assess the damage. The trim trends just aren’t running the right direction tonight.