Feel the Heat

I don't know what the codes were regarding attic insulation when our house was built in 1973, but I find it hard to believe that the codes called for, um, ZERO insulation back then. Okay, our house doesn't have zero insulation in the attic, but it might as well. The attic has 35-year-old cellulose blow-in insulation in it that doesn't even cover the 2x4 rafters. So, on a good day we have something along the lines of R-5 insulation up there. For reference, current code calls for R-49 in the attic. Because of this, the heatpump has been working overtime all winter (and the previous 35 winters before that I'd assume...). When the heater turns off, you can literally feel the heat moving upward and being sucked out of the house.

Since we're still waiting for the new flooring to arrive, we're taking care of some final projects that need to be addressed in the meantime. One of those projects is insulating the attic.

After doing some research about insulation options, we decided to go with the Owens-Corning AttiCat system. This is the one that you can rent at Home Depot. We originally were going to go with insulation that is made from recycled newspaper treated with a fire retardant since it's "green" and earth friendly and all that crap. But, after comparing the two, the paper-based insulation would have been a couple hundred dollars more expensive and weighed about twice as much as the fiberglass-based insulation.

So, this morning we went down to Home Depot and bought 23 packages of the AttiCat insulation and rented the special machine to blow it into the house. This stuff is pretty cool and it's really easy to do. All you do is plug in the machine and drag the hose up into the attic and have your lovely assistant (Sarah) feed the bricks of insulation into the machine. The bricks expand about 16 times in size when fed through the machine and then it pumps it through the hose and all you have to do is "spray" the insulation into the attic.

This was the attic before we started adding the extra insulation. The gray stuff on the bottom is the old insulation that's covered in 35 years of dust. It's maybe 3 inches thick.


And after two hours of crawling in the attic blowing insulation around, it looked like this:


It's kinda hard to tell when you compare the before and after pictures, but there's 18-24 inches of insulation filling the entire attic now, giving it an R-value of 50-60 or so (MUUUCH better!). The results could be felt right away. It's amazing how much warmer the house feels now and the heat has kicked on a lot less than usual this evening.

Another great thing about this product is the mess was pretty minimal. After blowing 2000 cubic feet of insulation into the attic, this was the mess that had to be cleaned up. And most of this mess was because I accidentally dropped the hose when it was on and blew a bunch of insulation around the place.


We should have done this months ago!

Happy Puppies

With the gorgeous weather we had this past weekend, we had to get out of the house for a change instead of spending all of our time working on it! So, Sarah and I met up with some of my car nerd friends and we went for a leisurely cruise up to Bellingham. Of course, I-5 isn't very leisurely or interesting, so we took the back roads there along Chuckanut Drive. It's a beautiful drive that takes you through La Connor (where the Tulip Festival is every year, the tulips were dead and gone by now though unfortunately), and through a few small towns and then along the water through some great twisty roads that invite a little "spirited driving."

Once we arrived in Bellingham, we all got lunch at the Weblocker Restaurant. Then, we went to Larrabee State Park to hang out on the beach for awhile before heading home.

Lucy and Leroy had a blast at the beach! We already knew Lucy loved the beach since she's been to a few of them now, but this was Leroy's first time playing in the sand and water and he loved it!

Leroy HATES getting baths, but when Lucy jumped in the water to chase a stick, he went in right after her without a second thought!

After swimming, they frollicked on the beach for a bit and helped themselves to a roll on a stranger's towels.


After that, they played some football with us guys.


And my friend Bird snapped a "fantastic" candid shot of Sarah and I:


(I can only assume I said or did something asinine just moments before this photo was taken...)

More work in the yard

While we're waiting for the new floors to arrive, I've turned my attention to the front yard. A few posts back, I updated you on the beginnings of that project. Since then, I've made a pretty decent amount of progress. The first part of the retaining wall is now complete and I've filled it in with about three cubic yards of dirt. I still need to bring in another yard or so of good topsoil to really level everything out before I lay down the new sod though.

Looking pretty good, huh?

Here's a good detail shot of the retaining wall. The black fabric you see along the top is a weed blocker that will help keep weeds from growing through the rock. It also helps keep the dirt from leaching out when it rains. It will be hidden once I lay the sod. I still need to pressure wash everything to get rid of the moss and dirt from the blocks. It will look pretty much new once I do that.


Talk about increased curb appeal! Can't wait until we can paint the place in a couple months.


While I'm talking about the yard, our neighbors across the street (Barry and Pat) deserve a huge THANK YOU. The entire transformation of the front yard has essentially been free for us since it just so happens that they were digging up and redoing their back yard at the same time we decided to tackle our front yard. All of the stones for the retaining wall came from their yard, as well as all the fill dirt I needed. We totally lucked out on this project!

Leroy had a bad day

Leroy had another round of shots on Friday morning at the vet. As usual, he was excited to go to the vet because all the girls there love him and he never misses an opportunity to say hi to people.

All went well at the vet so Sarah and Leroy went back home. However, a couple hours after they got home, Leroy developed an allergic reaction to his leptospirosis shot and his head started to swell up! And I don't mean it got a little inflated looking; poor Leroy looked like a bobble head doll! His neck also started to swell to the point he was having a hard time breathing, so Sarah quickly tossed him in the car and back to the vet they went!

Adding insult to injury, Sarah got pulled over on the way there. Not for speeding, but because she didn't have a front license plate on her car (my bad!). Luckily, the officer saw Leroy's giant head and let her off with a quick warning

Once at the vet, they shot Leroy full of steroids and Benadryl. The swelling stopped soon thereafter.

Leroy is doing much better now after a few days of rest and relaxation.

Not a happy puppy:

Time Flies When You're In A Garden

Let me tell you about my Bad Ass Garden!

Be prepared this summer to enjoy tomatoes, corn, zucchini, cucumbers, pickling cucumbers (yes I make homemade, knock your socks off, jalapeno pickles), spaghetti squash, rhubarb (it is sad to note that rhubarb doesn't produce much in the first year, but wait until next year for some rhubarb pie!), blueberries, raspberries (thanks to our neighbor Diane who loves to give me starts), giant pumpkins, oregano, chives, onions, basil and a large pot of rosemary. I also decided to grow some peppermint along with three types of lavender.

It's all been planted in raised beds that were tilled up with steer manure and peat moss. I checked the soil pH, the drainage is fantastic and I gave each start a little jump with some fish fertilizer. Let me just tell you that fish fertilizer made my hydrangeas rally after little care for the last 2 years.

I used a Jiffy greenhouse to plant marigold and snapdragon seeds. The starts look great and I've planted a few of the marigolds in the vegetable bed as I read that they are a pest deterrent.

Another fun and ultra simple thing to plant are sweet peas. I planted them just outside the downstairs patio door so that when you open the door in the summer, they will smell just great. I got a wild multi colored set of seeds which are doing really well. In the last photo below you can see how I made a trellis from stakes, nails and twine to hold them up as they start to get longer and want to travel.

I still have 3 rhododendrons that died on the side of the house to dig up. I purchased a pink hydrangea and a purple rhody to take their places.

I also want to find a purple lilac tree and a pink dogwood. Both are blooming right now and they look awesome!

One last thing that I did was transplant a begonia from a plastic pot from the store to a lovely green ceramic pot which sits right outside our door.

So now the rain has come and the forecast states it will rain for the rest of this week. I'm super stoked that I got the garden planted! I will post more when things start to really take off!!!

Hope you enjoyed this post! If you have some gardening techniques to share or starts you want to get rid of let me know!

I'm planning to get some horseradish and green beans in soon along with some multicolored poppies and nasturtiums.

Almost There

We reached a major milestone this weekend: we ordered our new wood floors!

FINALLY.

We decided on a style called "Cappuccino Maple" by Simple Floors. We really liked their selection and the quality of their products couldn't be beat in the price range we were looking in.

From the get-go we wanted a dark wood. We also wanted the hand-scraped look, not a super-smooth finish, and wide planks. Oh, and it had to be real wood, not laminate. The flooring we chose is what's called an engineered hardwood. What that means is the flooring is real wood, but the planks are not a solid 1/2" thick piece of Maple, Oak, or whathaveyou like with traditional wood flooring. Instead, with engineered wood flooring, each plank has a 3/8" thick plywood base and on top of that is a 1/8" thick layer of the flooring quality wood (in our case, Maple). 1/8" of wood doesn't seem like much, but wood flooring really doesn't wear out or anything, and unlike laminate flooring, it can be refinished.

The bad news about ordering the new flooring is that they just planted the trees the floors will be made from about a week ago, so it will be another 10 years or so before we can get our flooring delivered. Okay, it's not quite that bad, but we do have to wait 4-5 weeks before it can be delivered. Sad face for us.

So in the meantime, here's a few example pictures of the flooring we chose:

Iron Chef: Renton

Kitchen remodels are expensive. REALLY expensive. So, we won't be doing that for at least a couple years. However, that doesn't mean we can't give the kitchen a makeover!

After starting on the front yard a couple weeks ago, "winter" finally hit us and it's been raining buckets for about two weeks now. Since working in the yard in the wind and rain is pretty miserable, I decided to turn my attention to the kitchen for a couple weekends. If you recall, our kitchen was pretty darn ugly. Usable and in good condition, but outdated and ugly nonetheless. At least the dishwasher, refigerator, oven/stove and microwave are new though, so we didn't have to worry about those.

Here we have the kitchen in its "before" glory:
To get the party started, I removed all the doors and drawers from the cabinets and cleaned everything really well with Simple Green cleaner. I then gave them a light sanding and re-cleaned them with the Simple Green. Once they were dried out I gave everything a coat of primer.

Looking better already:

Once the primer was cured it was time to add some color. We decided on a color called "Vessel Gray" which is steel gray color. It's a nice neutral color that adds a bit of modern look to the kitchen.

Finding a place to lay out all the doors and drawers to dry was a bit of challenge.
Once I was done with the cabinets, I turned my attention to the counter top. It's just a plain-jane laminate counter top, but it had yellowed/discolored a bit over the years and had a lame pattern printed on it. It was in good condition otherwise, though. I found a new paint made by Rustoleum that is designed specifically for painting old laminate counter tops. It's a Xylene-based paint and is supposed to cure to an epoxy-like finish and also wear as well as a regular laminate counter top. With that said, I was pretty excited to try it out.

For anyone reading who has seen this stuff and has been wanting to try this with their old counter tops: DON'T. This stuff sucks. First of all, the stuff smells REALLY bad. The whole house smelled like a chemical plant for three days after I applied it. Just being in the house for more than 10 minutes gave me a headache. Also, the stuff is really difficult to work with. It dried quick and gets tacky really fast and it drips easily too when you're painting verticle parts of the counter. It's supposed to "self-level" to even out any imperfections in the paint... it doesn't. Once cured it's supposed to resist staining and chipping... it doesn't. Hell, even putting something heavy on the counter for an hour or so results in a divot forming in it.

Long story short, the counter looks better than it did before, but I'm far from impressed with the stuff. It looks good from afar, but far from good I guess you could say. Sarah says she likes it though, so maybe I'm just being too much of a perfectionist.

Me high as a kite from the Xylene fumes while painting this crap on.
Once the counter top fiasco was completed, I finished off the kitchen by putting all the cabinet doors back on with new hardware, adding a new sink and a new faucet. I also ran a water line to the refrigerator so the ice machine works and I also added a garbage disposal while I was installing the new sink.

Before I show the "after" pictures, one last look at the "before":
And now the moment we've all been waiting for...


The "after":Looks like a whole new kitchen, huh? Once I can tear out the ugly linoleum that's in there now and install the new hardwood floors (hopefully next month), it will really bring it all together.

Oh yeah, I also added some under-cabinet lighting to brighten things up a bit and give a nice ambiance to the kitchen when it's not in use.
Not bad for $400, huh?

Overall, I'm really happy with the transformation. It will definitely do for the next year or two until we can do a proper remodel on it.

Man, I love Craigslist

After this weekend, we were left with this huge pile of rocks and about 300 pounds of scrap metal from taking the fence down. I also put the old water heater, french doors and a mini fridge out with all this stuff.
By the time I got home from work yesterday, this was all that was left:

The rest of it should be gone by the time I get home tonight. Go Craigslist.

UPDATE: Everything was gone when I got home from work except for one of the large stones. Anyone want a free rock?

http://seattle.craigslist.org/est/zip/1649769424.html

And another update! Here's what our pile looks like now:

DIRTy work

Sarah and I were locked out of the house this weekend so Ron could work on painting the upstairs. Luckily for us it was beautiful out so we took advantage of the weather to start work on the front yard.

Before I get into what we did this weekend, let's do a quick recap of the work on the front yard thus far.

When we first moved in, this was the front of the house (yes, there was a house back there):

After that big fir tree committed suicide by throwing itself on the power lines, we cut down almost everything in the front yard (and a bunch of stuff in the back yard) and made this two-ton pile of yard waste (there's an Audi hidden behind that pile that you can't even see):

After we got all those branches chipped up and hauled away, the front yard looked like this (much better, but not better enough):

Here's what the house looked like from the street after round 1.
Alright, now that we've reviewed what was accomplished in November, back to this weekend's progress.

The chain link fence in front of the house was ugly and served no real purpose. So, I tore that out. Taking the fence down was easy. Getting the posts out was not so easy. However, after a couple hours of work, I was victorious. Goodbye fence.

While I worked on the fence, Sarah dug up all the old plants, along with all the random bricks and stepping stones that were in the yard. There were a lot of them. You can see them all stacked up in front of the house in this pic.

Looks a lot better already, huh? However, now we have a bunch of ugly rock walls all over the yard.Lucy helped by barking at the shovels and rakes. Leroy helped by laying in the sun and rolling in the dirt while we worked. He's growing up fast and is almost Lucy's size already and he's only 15 weeks old. He is also a momma's boy and follows her everywhere.
On Sunday we tore out all the rock walls in front of the house. Holy crap some of those rocks were big! Lifting and moving all those things was hard work, Sarah and I were paying for it today with sore muscles.
You can see here how the pile of rocks is almost as big as my Passat. Sarah really busted her ass with me this weekend and she moved some serious rocks. If this whole nursing thing doesn't work out for her, I can always put her to work standing in front of Home Depot.

I love Craigslist. Where else can you put up an ad advertising 6 thousand pounds of rocks, 300 pounds of scrap metal, an old mini-fridge, old French doors and a busted water heater and get 30 emails in an hour from people wanting to take it off your hands? It's already all been claimed and should be gone by the end of the day tomorrow and it's not costing me a cent to get rid of it. Yay for Craigslist!

By now you're probably wondering just what we're going to do with the front yard now that it's all torn up. The plan is to build a new rock wall, but using a different kind of rock. Also, we're going to build the wall all the way around the yard instead of through the middle of it. Then, we'll fill it in with a few yards of dirt and make it one large level area instead of the two-tiered design it currently has. To finish it off, I'll throw down some sod and enjoy my luscious green lawn.

Speaking of building a new rock wall, we totally scored on Sunday morning. Sarah and I went to Home Depot to pick up some supplies and look at their concrete block selection. When we got home, I was getting a few blocks out of the car that I'd bought to help me figure out how many I would need. As I was unloading the car, my neighbor Barry noticed the blocks and said "hey, are you gonna need a lot of those blocks?" In a glorious stroke of luck it turns out that Barry is re-doing his back yard and taking out a few walls made of the exact same rock we want to build ours out of. SCORE! By the looks of it, it should be enough to complete about 1/2 to 2/3 of our project, which will save us a nice chunk of cash.

Paint update

Painting has commenced! The walls are retextured and we've started priming. Can't wait to get rid of the salmon/baby blue/browish/yellow/pink walls!

Light at the end of the tunnel

After taking a few weeks off to replenish the bank account, we are back in action!

After finishing up all of the construction and laying the sheet rock, I called on my friend Lee to take care of the mudding, taping and sanding. Doing this kind of work is kinda like doing body work on a car: any one can do it, but it takes a special touch to make it look good. Lee has that touch. I don't. I'm far too impatient for that kind of stuff, so thanks Lee!

Once the mudding and taping was done, I took some time off work to give myself a couple three-day weekends in a row to really go to town and take care of all the little things that needed to get done so we could get ready for paint finally. I installed some recessed lights in the living room, re-did the window sill on the big window in the living room, added proper vents in the roof for the stove fan and bathroom fan, prepared the attic to add more blow-in insulation, did some miscellaneous repairs, did a lot of sweeping and cleaning, and just got everything ready for paint.
After several long days of crawling around in the attic, sanding walls and vacuuming, we're 100% done with construction and are ready for paint!

Here's how everything looks at the moment:

Looking from the dining room to the living room. Looking from the corner of the living room to the kitchen.
Looking into the living room from the hallway (and some of the new can lights I installed, I only put bulbs in three of them for now though).

Living room from the dining room.

Looking down the hallway from the living room to the master bedroom.

Lucy and Leroy wondering why I'm not playing with them.

The master bedroom, the entrance to the walk-in closet and the new French doors I installed (more on those later).

Making our final color decisions for paint!

Painting commences this weekend!

Operation: Where is the hot water?

It's been awhile since we've done an update on the remodel. The main reason for that is because we took a bit of a break from working on the house from about the middle of January to the middle of February. After the first part of the remodel in November and December, followed by the holidays, our wallets needed a break!

The final straw came during the second week of January when I decided to tackle the issues we'd been having with the hot water heater. When we moved into the house, we noticed that despite the fact we had an 80-gallon hot water heater, we only had enough hot water for one ten minute shower. Assuming it just needed new elements, I picked some up at Lowe's one morning and proceeded to drain the tank and go to work. Well, once I had it drained and torn apart, I look inside and see the bottom of the tank is covered in sediment, the elements are covered in mineral deposits, the dip tube is broken off and the poor old thing was just looking generally haggered. After realizing this, I said "screw it, I'm just gonna buy a new hot water tank!" So I did.

Luckily, my buddy Austin was hanging out with me that day so I had some help to drag the old hot water heater out of the house and then drag the new one in (not to mention the use of his A4 Avant to get the new one home from Lowe's). Now we have a shiny, new, energy-efficient hot water heater. All hail my manliness. And Austin's manliness too (you happy now Austin? =P).

Also, as an added bonus our electric bill dropped significantly last month. This new hot water heater will probably pay for itself in under a year!