December 28, 2006
Owned by a House…
Being a “home owner” is great, as long as you don’t want to do anything else. You may remember from a previous blog that shortly after buying our house a friend asked how I liked being a home owner. I said that we really owned a mortgage, not a house yet. His reply was “you can’t think of it that way, think of it like this, the bank owns the house and the house onws you.” All that being said, we are – for the most part – enjoying the time in our house. We have been quite busy doing things to it, which is part of the reason we have not updated our blog in a long time.
So here is a summary of what we’ve been up to lately.
The New Roof, July
The first major project on the house was the roof tear-off and re-shingle. We hired it done mostly because of the slope of the roof and the hill that the house sits on. Neither of us liked the idea of coaxing friends into climbing on the roof, especially when I wouldn’t even go up there! My knees get shaky just thinking about it… and then came the question of where to put the dumpster for the THREE LAYERS of shingles that would be coming off. Usually it would sit in a side yard or driveway, but none of what we have is even close to flat, so that was not an option. The company we hired pulled a permit and a dumpster sat in the street for 4 days while they filled it with the brown, green, and black shingles that were on the roof over the course of its 80+ year life span. The original layer was 1ft squares as opposed to the 1×3 ft sheets that they come in now. Our yard was quite a mess for a few days, and we’re still finding the odd piece of shingle in the grass every now and then, but for the most part Alliance Roofing did a fabulous job.
mélange of shingles at the front corner, and start of day two
end of day two – front yard spic and span, and half done with the back roof
last section to go, and the dumpster filling up
Furnace demo and replacement, September/October
The second major house project began in September with the destruction of Ye Olde Octopus that took up a full one-third of the basement. Our friend Erik works for a commercial HVAC service company and his grandpa has a company that does residential heating as well as plumbing projects, and they’ve talked about him taking over the business. His grandpa agreed to help him work through quoting our project and answer his questions start to finish, and we agreed to be patient as he worked evenings and Saturdays.
Dan and Erik set to work demolishing the old furnace on a Saturday morning in late September and after six hours with a sledge hammer the octopus was dead and the boys were two tired puppies. Erik worked evenings and weekends for the next few weeks and fired up the new furnace in late October. Unfortunately, it wasn’t completely hooked up until the second day AFTER it started snowing, so for 2 very long days our house was very cold. We both worked long days and went out for dinner! But when it was turned on, it warmed the house up quick, and quietly, and now we have a much larger basement, and when summer comes, central AC too!
Wiring, October
In conjunction with the furnace / AC project we also did some wiring, adding a new circuit in the basement so that there is more than one plug, putting a sub-panel in the garage to replace the really scary bare wires that hung overhead going out to the garage, and installing a heater/light/fan in the upstairs bath. But these aren’t really things you take pictures of. We were lucky enough to find a small gap next to the sewer stand pipe, which went all the way from the basement to the attic and threaded the new wires through that small gap. We now have 4 outlets in each of the upstairs bedrooms, instead of the 4 ½ that we had previously on the whole level.
Removal of a messy messy mulberry tree, November
Our friend Paul helped us one Saturday morning to cut down an overgrown, out-of-control mulberry bush. It took two loads in our little pickup and one with our other friend Dave’s big pickup truck to get all the brush and sticks and stumps to the city compost dump, and now we have a bigger backyard. Or maybe it just seems that way. A 15 x 30 foot backyard needs all the help it can get!
That very same day we raked up our leaves and delivered them to the dump also. Who knew that such a small yard could acquire so many leaves?! But then, we do have 3 very beautiful maple trees.
Plaster work and Painting, December
We finished the painting in the back bedroom and now have a squatter, ah hem, I mean someone staying with us (hi John!!) who’s working at the Y and going to Community College in downtown.
Insulating, December
Through the two new attic accesses that Dan created and trimmed out in the back of two closets, and through the back of the medicine cabinet (ie – door to Narnia), we blew 80 bails of insulation into the attic and now that new super-efficient furnace runs even less. But again, this is not something one generally takes pictures of.
Others
A new overhead light in the living room. Keyless entry keypad for the overhead garage door. New faucets on the kitchen sink, one for filtered water and one with a sprayer head. More things you just don’t take pictures of.
So there, now, if you’ve made it through all of that, you’re up to speed on the goings on at 1057 Fuller Ave SE. Hope you’ve enjoyed the show. Come back and see us again soon!
your host for this episode : dan; 07:53 AM | Comments (1)