Inspiration #74

Wade Davis Writing Studio

Mini-blinds

Putting up mini-blinds is no fun when you don’t really like ladders. But I’m learning a few tricks:

1. Get better screws. The screws that came with the mini-blinds have lousy slots, so the driver tends to slip. 3/4" #6 pan-head sheet metal screws are making good replacements.

2. Get a longer screwdriver or driver bit. A 6 inch bit lets me use a larger power drill even though the bracket is right up against the window stop.

3. Use spacers to hold the blinds away from the window. I like to attach the mini-blinds within the window opening (between the stops) so the blinds don’t hide the casing. But I want them to be slightly in front of the window so they raise and lower more freely. A spacer lets me get a consistent distance. And if you tend to drop spacers (because you don’t have one hand to hold the spacer, a second hand to hold the bracket, and a third hand to hold the driver), then use several identical spacers and pick them all up afterwards.

Someday

Many of the details of this photo are wrong for my home office. Not enough desk space, for example. But it’s finished and filled with books, and I am extremely envious.

Mapping the electrical fantastic

Over the past few years, we’ve created a basic electrical map of the house. So I know which circuit controls each light, each outlet, each switch. I can see ahead of time what will happen if I turn off a particular circuit breaker. There’s a great-looking circuit mapper tool for doing this quickly, but we did it the slow way: two people on phones, one plugs in an outlet tester and the other flips breakers until the outlet loses power. Write down the result, move on to the next outlet. Eventually I sketched each floor of the house in InDesign, put in all the lights, outlets, and switches in their approximate locations, and marked their circuit numbers on the map. The map could be improved: I could note the electrical loads of each outlet, the date each outlet was last (re)installed, who last did the connections, and which outlets are tamper-resistant. But as is, it’s been very helpful in the last round of electrical improvements to know which circuit breakers to turn off, which circuits could be extended, and where a short-circuit might be.

In the last 6 weeks we’ve added 2 ceiling fans and switches, removed two wall sconces, and added outdoor outlets in two locations, a front porch outlet, basement outlets in two locations, and a lot of outlets in two upstairs bedrooms. We’ve upgraded numerous other outlets in the process to tamper-resistant or GFI, upgraded a couple more circuit breakers to arc-fault, replaced our outdoor lights, and done some other electrical clean-up. Oh, and we have a doorbell outside our house if you want to come visit!

What the map doesn’t show, though, is the circuits themselves: the paths of the wires to get from the main panel to their various receptacles and fixtures. And that’s become an issue as we try to figure out how to replace a few short runs of wire partially buried in the walls. The tone generator and wire tracer aren’t working to tell me where the wires go once they disappear behind plaster and lath. I suddenly find myself a fan of surface-run wiring.

So I spent an hour yesterday following circuit #1 around our basement, and another hour trying to figure out how to figure it out. Seven junction boxes, most splitting the circuit into two or three directions, and eventually seven runs of wire heading up to the first or second floor. Four of the runs are obvious: they go up directly below a first floor outlet on that circuit. But three of the runs are completely mysterious: they head up nowhere near a corresponding destination. And even worse, there are only two items on circuit #1 which are unaccounted for: a key dining room outlet, and a wall sconce and outlet on the second floor which are clearly fed by the same run. At least one run heading upstairs cannot possibly be going anywhere good. Two of the mystery runs come from a junction box helpfully mounted directly over our furnace, so they cannot be disconnected without removing the furnace.

I have a start: I’ve laid out the basement spaghetti of circuit #1 on our map. (This will be a good exercise for me to learn how InDesign handles layers.) Of course, this fall was supposed to be about finishing house projects, not starting them, so a start doesn’t really feel like progress.

Let there be light

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed the rules for light kits in ceiling fans. Prior to that, most ceiling fans with light kits took regular-base light bulbs. In 2007, manufacturers stopped making ceiling fans that took regular-base light bulbs. Many switched to candelabra bases, and others switched to CFLs. We have halogen bulbs with regular bases that we really like, though, so when we put in a 4-socket ceiling fan in 2008 that came with candelabra bases, I rewired the light kit and attached regular sockets.

I forgot about this silliness until we installed a new ceiling fan in the guest room last week. The last time I bought the identical fan for my office, it came with a single 75-watt-max regular-base socket. When I opened the new one, to my surprise it came with a tiny 75-watt halogen bulb. Very cute, good light output, and completely incompatible with using any new efficient light bulbs. Or even older more efficient light bulbs. In my office ceiling fan, I use a 70-watt regular-base halogen that puts out 1600 lumens. The tiny 75-watt halogen puts out 1300 lumens. The new efficiency rules are forcing me to use a less efficient light. And forget about ever putting in a medium-base CFL or LED, since the socket is wrong. This is clearly the wrong outcome of the new rules.

The ceiling fan manufacturer came through for me when I called, and sent me a couple of replacement regular-base light kits for when I want to switch to a more efficient bulb. But I can’t publicly thank them for that, because I agreed with their wonderful customer service rep that we never had that conversation and that they wouldn’t ship me anything. The correct light kits arrived yesterday, in time for installing the last ceiling fan on Thursday. Or would have arrived yesterday, if they had shipped me anything. Which they didn’t. At no charge.

A filter by any other name would taste too sweet

Lead paint chips aren’t really the problem with lead paint. The problem is lead dust, which is much more difficult to deal with. And using a regular vacuum on lead paint chips can create a much worse lead dust problem.

An important part of the solution is to use a proper HEPA vacuum (a vacuum with an actual HEPA filter and a sealed system so that all exhaust air is forced to pass through the HEPA filter). And those are expensive: the cheapest HEPA shop-vac that I could find is about $500. So contractors and painters mostly refuse to buy them, and complain bitterly (and somewhat falsely) that HEPA vacuums are at least $1000. The reality is that contractors and painters hate the new lead rules and wouldn’t use a HEPA vacuum if it were free.

Or would they?

I’d like to see Massachusetts simply give a HEPA vacuum to every single licensed contractor and painter in the state. No more excuses about the cost of the vacuum, no more reasons to spread lead dust. Just a proactive approach that makes it clear we are serious about reducing this particular environmental hazard.

And we all benefit, whether the HEPA vacuum is being used in our own home, or on our neighbor’s property, or in our workplace or school, or in the restaurants and stores we go into, or in friends’ homes that we visit. This isn’t a gift to contractors and painters. It’s the smart move for all of us.

Hot or not?

On a hot air duct in our basement:

Which director is filming your life?

David Vos:
Next Thursday, our attic insulation will be replaced. I talked to the contractor who installed the insulation wrong 10 years ago, and he explained his mistake and made prompt arrangements to correct the problem.

Frank Capra:
Next Thursday, our attic insulation will be replaced. I talked to the contractor who installed the insulation wrong 10 years ago, but he said he wouldn’t come look at the problem he caused. So I called another insulation contractor, who came out a few days later to take a look at the work required, explained our options, and gave us a quote for a reasonable amount of money.

Ken Burns:
Next Thursday, our attic insulation will be replaced. After numerous phone calls and an office visit, I finally talked to the contractor (MS) who installed the insulation wrong 10 years ago. He stalled for a while and passively refused to even come look at the problem he caused. So I started making phone calls and checking websites, since the work could in theory be done by an insulation contractor, a pest removal company (since they often have to deal with the collateral damage), or a general contractor. Several companies never answered their phones or promised return phone calls that never happened. Several others said that it isn’t work they do and offered no referral to anyone who could do the work. Two energy auditors said that the current situation is a huge problem and threw up their hands. The company with the informative website (BG) replied that they were essentially out of business. One (GB) scheduled a meeting and never showed up. One (GD) looked and said he wouldn’t do it. Two (WC and ATH) looked and promised an estimate that never came. Three companies (GW, PI, and JB) actually scheduled meetings, showed up, and gave us estimates. While it took two weeks and five phone calls to arrange the meeting with JB, they were the only ones who discussed what the right approach would be, listened to our requirements, and gave us a detailed enough estimate to assure us we would end up with what we wanted. We’ll still need to find someone to hang drywall, but we can live for a while with just the FSK paper that they’ll install over the fiberglass batts. So after seven weeks, dozens of phone calls, and nine different meetings with people looking at the attic, we finally got three quotes and accepted the only detailed one.

James Ivory:
Next Thursday, our attic insulation will be replaced. Our housekeeping staff had noticed that the work needed to be done, and of course made all the necessary arrangements. We wrote a check for a perfectly reasonable amount of money, thanked the nice people who did the work, and did not let some silly subplot distract us from the real drama of our lives.

Dear electrician

I know that my house has been ill-favored by the code compliance gods, and all previous work was done by monkeys who had been blinded by a combination of hubris and feces. But it’s my house, and I want to like it. So please be temperate in your immediate verbal assessment. The evolving color in your face (previously a healthy pink, now white headed towards green) is sufficiently expressive. And trust me, there has been positive progress. The panel is no longer quite the circuit breaker ceviche that it once was. A lot of leaky old wiring has been removed or replaced. And we started a wiring chart of the house, so you can see which circuits are truly overloaded instead of having to guess based on the scorch marks.

We’ve tried to come up with a priority list and a wish list. Perhaps some items on the wish list are more achievable than we’ve feared, and perhaps your weekly rate is more affordable than your daily or hourly rate. We won’t know unless you tell us.

We know you’ll find some unexpected problems. Tradespeople find unexpected problems whenever they work on our house. Hell, they find unexpected problems whenever they drive down a street near our house. Just keep us informed, and remember that while we’re the present owners, we neither designed nor built the house.

Guest room amenities

What are important amenities in a guest room? I’d love to hear your thoughts on what is important, what is helpful, and what is more of a detraction than a help.

A comfortable bed is obviously central to the mission of a guest room, though everyone has different tastes in mattresses. (We’re changing our guest bed from a king to a queen, which seems to be large enough for many people when they’re traveling even if they’re used to a king at home.) A variety of nice bedding and pillows allows you to adjust the bed to your personal preferences.

A guest bathroom is a lovely amenity, but not one we can add here.

A light that you can adjust and turn off from the bed was a huge upgrade in our own bedroom, so I’d like to provide that. I don’t find fan remotes all that important, since I’m not usually trying to change the fan speed in the middle of the night. But having a fan and windows you can open is important.

Guest towels. Somewhere to stash your luggage and hang some clothes. Convenient power outlets so guests can charge their cell phones, laptops, and cameras. Power outlets near the bed for CPAP machines, laptops, alarm clocks, etc. Window shades and/or curtains so the light level from outside can be adjusted. Some books to read. Can there be too many books in a guest room? A television? The purpose of a television can be handled by providing a computer, and an internet connection seems far more vital when traveling. A landline telephone might be an annoyance if you don’t turn off the ringer, since guests probably don’t want to answer the phone and certainly don’t want to be woken by it.

Little shampoos and soaps? Candles? Fresh flowers? Pen and paper? A mini-fridge and microwave? How far should a guest room go towards imitating a hotel room, rather than learning from it?

I don’t mind lots of bookshelves, as long as they’re mostly filled with something interesting. My parents turned the bookshelves in my old room into file storage, and that makes it much less pleasant to stay there. What guest room mistakes have you seen?

Who owns your house?

I think of ownership of an object as a question of who gets to make decisions that involve the object. If I own a chair, I can paint it, smash it, sell it, give it away, or move it to the attic. I don’t own my house in quite the same way.

1. You own your house. That was easy.

2. As long as you have a mortgage, the bank that holds the mortgage owns your house with you. The bank probably gave far more money to the previous owners of your house than you did. You have much more control over your house than the bank does, but the bank is essentially a (mostly silent) partner in your house ownership. If you owned your house outright, you could tear your house down or reduce its value in a more limited way, and you could sell it for whatever amount you wanted. The mortgage means you can’t do some of that without the bank’s permission. If you don’t keep paying your mortgage, the bank can kick you out and do what it wants with your house, because it’s their house too. I’m not thrilled about sharing ownership with the bank, even though I don’t want to do anything that the bank wouldn’t agree with, so I sought a shorter loan term the last time I refinanced (i.e., found a new bank to share ownership with me).

3. Your local government owns your house with you. They exercise this ownership through zoning restrictions, building codes, and building permits—these affect what you are allowed to do in the house and how you are allowed to change the house. And since failing to pay your property taxes can allow your local government to take your house, they have a similar ability to foreclose on you that the bank has, even though the local government didn’t actually pay the previous owners to turn the house from their house into your house. Or is that starting to feel less completely like it’s “your” house?

4. The state government owns your house with you, since building codes are primarily decided at the state level. But this is enforced at the local level, so it’s functionally the local government that owns your house with you.

5. The federal government does not own your house with you, according to the 3rd Amendment, at least as long its peacetime. Whew.

Attic daydreams

The staircase to the attic could have 14 steps at a 10" run and 8" rise instead of the current 14 steps with a 7.1" run and 8" rise. Since we can’t move the bottom of the staircase, a longer run would take us into the Land of Inadequate Headroom (LIH). But we can solve that by adding a landing 2 steps down, creating a Landing of Adequate Headroom (LAH). So you wind up on the landing, turn around, and go up the last 2 steps into the main space. The main attic space can then go the entire width of the house, interrupted only by a railing around the stairwell and a chimney.


View towards the LIH from hovering over the staircase


View towards the LIH and the existing finished room from the chimney


View towards the chimney from the existing finished room


View towards the LIH from the existing finished room


View towards the existing finished room and the LIH from the turret at the front corner of our house

If you go up the stairs, you reach the LIH over the 2nd floor bathroom. The LIH has an 8-foot peak and the roof slopes down at a 45° angle, so there’s 4 feet of width where the ceiling is at least 6 feet high. And 8 feet of width before you reach 4-foot kneewalls, if we put in kneewalls. I’m tempted to put in extremely short kneewalls, maybe 2 feet high, creating 12 feet of width. The LIH is most useful as a natural light source for a window at the back of the house, with perhaps a small reading nook at that back wall. I’ve always wanted a staircase landing with a window and a reading nook, and we can’t create that on the 2nd floor without removing our only bathroom.


View towards the LIH from the existing finished room

The structural question is how to support the LAH and staircase. The LAH is over our 2nd floor hallway where there’s a lowered ceiling, so it’s the right place to lower the attic floor. But apparently floors don’t support themselves.

While the ultimate dream would be to add a small bathroom up there, there’s no good way to get the plumbing into place.

There’s also questions of wiring and HVAC. We may have to put in a secondary electrical panel in the attic. A/C could be a mini-split and a couple of ceiling fans, and I’m hoping we could divert a heating duct up through a second floor closet, but it’s a sizeable space to try to keep comfortable.

The insulation, drywall, flooring, paint, and windows seem reasonably straightforward. And then we could have a 450 sq ft room in our house (plus LIH, minus stairwell and LAH and chimney), whereas no single room in our house right now is much over 160 sq ft.


View facing towards the back of the house; existing finished room is on the left


View from the LIH, with the staircase down behind the avatar

I love the smell of cellulose in the morning

Up in our attic, we have one finished room, though it’s becoming less finished as time goes on. The ceiling in that room is thin sheets of something that isn’t sheetrock, and in 1999 a contractor added cellulose insulation above the ceiling.

Now the ceiling is falling in, because the cellulose is too heavy, and the cellulose is falling all over everything. The contractor won’t do anything because it’s been too long, even though they’ve learned since then to do things differently. So I need to find someone who can add enough strapping to hold the ceiling up or sheetrock the ceiling to cover everything. We’d love to tear it all out, spray foam the roof, and finish the entire attic, but that’s not likely to happen in the next 2 months. And I’m not actually convinced the ceiling has 2 months left.

This same room had a squirrel break-in which damaged the windowsill and the floor, and a Delonghi space heater that tried to set fire to the room. I never saw this room until after I moved into the house, even though it’s the largest room in the house. I’m wondering if I should go back to pretending it just isn’t there.

Basement bulkhead

Here are photos of our basement bulkhead entrance. (Sorry to those of you who really don’t care about this, but we needed somewhere to make these photos available.)

The current metal doors (49" across, 70" long) are level with the ground at the bottom and about 36 inches above ground at the top. They’re set on a masonry surround which is crumbling (at least the part that’s above ground). The masonry surround opening is about 40 inches across, so we just need doors that have an opening of 40 inches or larger. It has a masonry top landing that’s roughly level with the ground, and a built-up angled lip that you have to step over. From the inside of the masonry top landing to the house is about 43 inches (level with the ground); from the outside of the angled lip where the doors end to the house is about 65 inches (level with the ground).

We need to remove the existing doors and the existing masonry surround that’s above grade, and replace that all with something.

If the masonry surround were parallel to the ground instead of sloped, we could get bulkhead doors with angled sides.

It makes sense to build up the masonry surround so that it’s higher than grade, so that water can’t get under the doors easily if there’s a heavy rain and the driveway floods a little. But the back end of the bulkhead doors need to be about 36" above grade, which is a steeper angle than normal.

We could build a new masonry surround that’s sloped like the current one, and get flat doors to mount on that. But then we can’t get the bulkhead door that looks ideal for us, which is the ClamDoor:

The ClamDoor is a fairly lightweight one-piece door which lifts up, doesn’t need painting, and comes with angled sides so that it can go on a flat surround. But if the back side against the house is 31 inches high including a 6-inch flange (covered by shingles in this photo), then the back opening against the house is only 25 inches high. Which means we need to make the masonry surround 11 inches higher than grade to get our 36" high opening, and that’s pretty high to step over. We’d end up with something like this photo from the Lucigold website:

So how do we make the ClamDoor work for our house without losing headroom as we exit the basement and without having a crazy high masonry surround?

Working my way up

For flooring, wide oak boards cut in curves and wandering paths to minimize wasted lumber by Bolefloor.

To put on that floor, an Art Nouveau rug from Sawbridge Studios, and perhaps one of their cherry and birdseye maple tables.

On second thought, maybe Lisa is right that the flooring should be on the wall, so you can see it properly.

And maybe that proverbial guidance counselor was right that I should go into a high-paying field, so I can actually afford this stuff.

Tempo lib(e)ro

Now I just need a cat

I wonder if we could scale this up for Dobbie. She loves perching high up on the back of the couch or on the end table.

Good for Ames

We’ve been using an Ames plastic garden cart for the past couple of years, and we were really happy with it until it cracked down one side. Well, I figure, it has a lifetime warranty, so I’ll call the manufacturer. They took the info, didn’t demand that I fax them a receipt, and are shipping out a replacement. It’s just a big plastic shell and an axle and wheels -- the axle and wheels are replaceable, but the plastic shell isn’t, so they’re sending an entire replacement unit and suggested that I keep the old axle and wheels in case we need them later. Good service in just 5 minutes on the phone.

In other news, I’m looking to change my cable service to Ames. We’ll only get HGTV and gardening web sites, but I’ll appreciate dealing with Ames instead of Comcast when the cable goes out.

Avoid Renewal by Andersen

Renewal by Andersen just wasted 90 minutes of my life. On the bright side, they were finally honest about the fact that the only way they can sell their windows is like a bad timeshare. Informed customers of theirs are unhappy customers, according to the rep I just spoke to.

Renewal by Andersen will only provide pricing if both homeowners sit through the sales pitch, even though we don’t need the sales pitch. It’s infantilizing. We already have some Andersen Woodwright 400-series windows, and we like them. We don’t care if the outside cladding is vinyl like those or the Renewal’s fibrex composite. We’ve looked at glass samples, and wood samples, and we have both types of screen, and we know what windows we want. But we’re not allowed to buy them, because we’re not allowed to know how much they cost.

I’ve seen this sort of high-pressure sales tactic for overpriced timeshares, bad insurance products, and DirectBuy (an incredible scam). And now Renewal by Andersen’s windows. It makes me wonder: What’s so wrong with their windows? Or is it just their pricing that’s bad? Because there’s no way they insist on this if there’s nothing wrong.

Renewal by Andersen has cancelled the appointment they had made for Wednesday morning to measure our windows and give us pricing. So I won’t lose that time as well dealing with Renewal by Andersen.

I’m surprised that this issue didn’t turn up when I searched gardenweb, my usual go-to source for helpful opinions about house products. And the admission that informed customers are unhappy with Renewal by Andersen windows was really startling. If you’re considering replacement insert windows from Renewal by Andersen, I’d reconsider. Take a look at Pella (but not their special low-end Lowes line), Marvin, or Harvey.

Someday we’ll remodel our bathroom

Source: freshome.com

When we do remodel our bathroom, it will still be 1/6 the size of this bathroom. And it won’t have a fireplace.