Dueling Ladders

I finished the 1/2 posts this weekend Here's a view post painting on Saturday:



As I was finishing these up, Jim went to Homer to pick up some hardi-plank/board-fake-wood stuff to cover the crappy porch soffits (no way we were going to strip thick paint while looking up - imagine neck aches, paint chips in the eyes, and no way to leverage the scraper...) Anyway, he comes back with the materials... and a new ladder! He was so excited about his new ladder, I had to capture it on camera. Warning, though - this is rated PG-13 for some gratuitous use of mild profanity... sorry Mom.



Just to put my reply in context, we've been using a little 6-foot wooden step ladder, left in the garage by the previous owner, for the past 4 1/2 years. Jim likes to say that it wobbles, but I contend that has more to do with the uneven ground than the actual ladder. Besides, if you follow ladder guidelines and don't step on the top two steps, it's all good.



So anyway, Jim used the new ladder to put up the cover-up soffits



And I used the old ladder to paint.



Luckily, both ladders do their job!

Then today we put the remaining railing and balusters up. It was not without problems. But I won't point them out, because we don't think anyone will actually notice them. Here's the pictures





A couple of side notes:
-The roofers are scheduled to start sometime this week.
-We turned on the pellet stove for the first time this season.

Follow Ups

Ta da! So here it is - this is the picture of warmth, ladies and gentlemen! Gather yourselves around because this is the first time in many months that the kitchen has been above 70 degrees! No longer do I have to do my homework bundled in thermals, sweatshirts, and wool socks while sitting on my hands... no no no! Now I can sit comfortably warm in front of the fire (or really anywhere in the house) It's a miracle!

And just in time, as the latest oil fillup was at an all-time high of $3.69 per gallon. We're still working out a few of the bugs, like what settings to leave it on during the day to minimize the pellet usage while keeping the house a reasonable setting when we're gone. We've been using about 1.5 bags per day. Most people say to not bother trying to use the thermostat. We might try it... maybe.

Second followup is on the house appraisal... it came in right at my estimate. I think the appraiser was being nice. Anyway, the refinancing continues on track.

In the Nick of Time

So, while I was at school Monday night, Jim constructed the hearth frame. Then while I was at school Tuesday night, Jim & his friends Adam & John laid the tiles out and cut them. Then yesterday, Jim got out of work early and started tiling. I helped him finish grouting late last night. But giant kudos to him for doing it all! I'm now working from home today waiting for the contractors to come to install the stove. Here's the pictures.

Home is where the Hearth is

While the majority of this weekend was spent doing (or casually avoiding) homework, we did get in a trip to Home Depot Saturday evening - ah yes, once upon a time I used to spend my weekends dancing the night away, and now I spend them at giant big box stores for home renovators! Their selection of trim tiles was not very fantastic, but they had some white cove tiles in stock. I unfortunately forgot to bring a sample of the subway tiles I had, but decided it would be better to just buy the tiles and hope that they matched. (turns out they were a "close enough" match) The interesting thing is that Homer now carries a subway tile in stock, an option that did not exist 3 years ago when I was buying mine. I suppose they have become home mainstream again now. I will say, though, that they are inferior to the DalTile special order subway tiles that I have.

The rest of the evening was spent trying to lay the tile out into a configuration that would work for the stove. This is where the best and the worst of working together comes out. Luckily, while Jim and I approach things differently, the collaboration generally makes the plan better.

This is what we laid out:

The blue tape is the outline of the stove. This size meets all the requirements, and hopefully is not too intrusive in the room. I will have to say that working in the herringbone pattern makes things a lot more confusing than working on the square. We were trying to figure out the angles for the corners, so of course I took on a mini engineering project to figure it out. I'm sure that a high school junior could have figured it out in a fraction of the time, but my geometry skills are a little rusty....... it took me the longest time to figure out that my calculator and Excel default arctangent calculations to radians. And then it wasn't until this morning that I realized that we should make all the angles 135 degrees (instead of one at 131 and the other at 139) to be in line with the layout of the tile. If I've lost you with my math ramblings, just remember that my mind was rambling around this for an hour last night.

That's pretty much as far as we got. I left today open for church and struggling with advanced financial WACC calculations. But now I think we're ready to draw and cut out the platform on the next free day.

Happy Birthday to Me

It's my birthday today, and I have the great pleasure of spending it in the airport... Somehow it seems like every time I fly, there are storms raging across the country. I was in Milwaukee yesterday for work and a little visit to my college roomate, Lynne. Usually I fly a direct flight there, but I was late scheduling it, and couldn't very well justify the $500 difference. So today I'll probably spend 12 hours in airports and on airplanes.

I have a little house project that I've been obsessing about lately. That's usually how my projects go - I get really obsessed and learn everything I possibly can over the internet and talking to people... and I can never really get satisfied until I try to do it. Although Jim will tell you that I only get about 80% done before I get obsessed with the next thing. Hence I have things like mostly complete bathrooms without crown molding to cover the gap between the walls and the ceiling. Or there is also a quilt I started late last year - that's totally pieced, but not done with the quilting and binding. And then there is the tv stand that I was hell bent on making that was going to use an inexpensive IKEA console and a motorized telescoping lift to take the tv up and down through the top of the console to hide it out of sight when we weren't watching it. Ya.... finally I finished putting all the drawers together because I realized that the contraption wouldn't get made any time soon, and I was tired of IKEA flat box components all over my dining room.

Right now my current obsession is pellet stoves. For those not living in New England and unfamiliar with old drafty houses, we spend about 6 months of the year paying astonomical prices for oil to heat our house to a slightly uncomfortable 65. You get kinda used to it, but you have to wear lots of fleece and wool socks and hide under lap blankets. I hate the cold. And even more I hate paying $500 a month for oil. So when my last bill was at $3.50 a gallon, I had had enough, and started on a search to make changes. I covered all my windows with plastic - only helps a little. I looked at a bunch of websites for replacement windows - too much money right now. (Note that I have a internal conflict with replacing my windows. Some of the ones that I have are the old polished glass, and I'd hate to lose that charater.... but they are also really pretty crappy & energy inefficient at this point - and I have worked on reglazing and repairing 2, to only mediocre success) Anyway, I came to the conclusion that at a somewhat reasonable price point, we'd be able to buy a pellet stove and it should pay for itself in two winter seasons.

The model we chose is the Lopi Leydon in the "oxford" brown porcelain enamel. It's pretty. One of my friends called it room jewlery. I just can't wait to have warmth in the house again.

There are a ton of requirements on the venting, so it's probably going to create some weird piping situation on the back of the house. But that's in the area that I eventually want to add a mudroom (wish list dream-sometime in the future kind of thing...) and switch the doorway etc, so one day it might look ok. It will come out of the dining room between the back door to the kitchen and the window and go up to the roof line. Anyway, you can't see it from the street.

The stove just came in this week. And in an effort to NOT make this a 90% done job, we're actually going to have the stove shop do the installation. So that is supposed to happen sometime mid February.

Our responsibilities in this process will be to pick the stove up (save myself sales tax, since we bought it in New Hampshire) and have it in the room. We also have to get the appropriate permit & inspection from the town.

The other thing we have to do is put together a fire proof floor pad. As you can imagine, the ones available through retail are kind of hideous, and getting one made out of a stone slab is kind of out of the price range I want to spend after shelling out all the money for the stove. So first I went hunting around on the internet for Victorian hearths to see what kind of look might be appropriate. I found this website with some pretty cool tile jobs (I especially like the Victorian Kerbed Hearths) But of course, these are out of the UK, and buying the beautiful kerb tiles would probably cost more than a stone slab. But it is still good inspiration. I also like the herringbone look.

So I went hunting around in the basement and found several boxes of the left-over subway tiles from the kitchen and bathroom (word of advice - 30% extra is more than you need). Hopefully when I get home this weekend (this flight just got delayed again) Jim & I can head to Homer and get the rest of the supplies - plywood, 2x4s, and some cement board. The only 10% danger I foresee is that I don't have edge tiles... which means either ordering them or buying what Homer has in stock (which is never really a good option)