Windows again

Back in 2010, we replaced all our upstairs windows. The home has all its original 1950s windows with the exception of 3 in the back of the house that got added when the previous owners updated the kitchen. While we were still living on the first floor of the house, we got new vinyl, triple-pane windows upstairs, so they'd be waiting for us as we moved ourselves upstairs. We don't open the windows too often but at least now they have screens in them so we can when we want. Plus they offer some better energy efficiency and, icing on the cake, we got a tax refund for them. Unfortunately, I remembered to blog about the process of getting estimates and some follow-on work, but seem to have completely forgotten the most interesting part (from a photographing perspective) - the installation.

Well we used up that tax refund but this year we decided it was finally time to update the main floor windows as well. We decided - due to our minimal free time thanks to the baby - to only get 2 estimates: 1 from the company #1 who did our upstairs windows (we did have some issues getting them to replace the screen but in all we are very happy with the windows) and 1 from company #2, our second choice company from 2010. We were 99% set on using the same company but wanted another estimate for comparison. It was a surprise to us - we ended up deciding to switch companies. Time will tell if we made the right decision. In the end, the two companies had identical prices (last time, #1 was cheaper by about $100 per window) and similar products. #1 offered us triple-pane to match our upstairs and #2 offered us only double-pane but with almost comparable energy values. There are way too many values to compare easily- it had a higher U value (good), similar solar gain and light transmission, but higher air infiltration rating (bad). The results of our energy audit, however, indicated that windows do not represent a significant source of energy loss.

There were 3 deciding factors:

1. Most important - the vinyl edging felt more sturdy and welded together and looked a lot prettier. Almost like wood trim. While the upstairs and downstairs will not match, we thought it was more important to have a more "wood-like" look for the main floor since it is more visible. Our upstairs window frames are more hidden by aluminum siding (rather than standing out from red brick) and, obviously, higher and harder to see.

2. We liked that they are going to install tempered glass in the bathroom. We got into a little discussion with #1 over whether tempered glass should have been installed upstairs during the first round of new windows. When #2 came to give us an estimate a few weeks ago, they said we definitely need tempered glass in the bathroom to stay within code, because the window is close to the tub. #1 says we don't, because the window isn't in the shower/tub, but confirmed with #2 that the actual rule says that you must install tempered glass if the window is within 5 standing feet of the shower/tub. To my mind, it is - actually both bathrooms are. So maybe they are interpreting the rules differently. Either way, better safe than sorry and I wish we had pushed the issue in the upstairs bathroom.

3. The biggest question we had was how to deal with the giant picture window with two smaller windows in front. #1 suggested making the two smaller windows casement windows. #2 wants to keep them as regular double hung windows, which we prefer. The only problem with going with #2 is that they would charge a few hundred extra dollars if we break the installation into two phases (i.e. doing the regular windows this round, then the picture window plus side windows in another year or so). #1 didn't charge extra to come back again later. We didn't necessarily want to get it all done at once, purely because it is so expensive. But we might as well bite the bullet and do it all together - that way they all match and we deal with the mess of installation only once.

Which brings me to the last point - remember that we did the upstairs before we had any window dressing or furniture...Even though I knew logically that it would be more complicated this time around, I groaned yesterday when they called to schedule the installation and reminded me that I have to remove all blinds and curtains AND move furniture 4'-6' away from every window "or as far away as you can." Yikes...:

Well I guess I know what we're going to be doing this weekend. Sigh...

But hey, at least this window that broke over 4 years ago is finally going to get fixed:

j

Happy Hawthorn (and other things)

Our new hawthorn seems to be settling in nicely:

The bees like it too. These pictures are from a few weeks ago. Now the flowers are gone but the flower remnants (not sure what they're called - if this was a rose, they would be the rose hips) seem to attract squirrels. I wanted to snap a picture yesterday when we saw one hanging out on a tiny limb, but he was too fast for me.

A long, mild, wet spring has made our garden finally come alive. Plants that we'd given up on are in full bloom and plants that bloomed last year, like our clematis, are stronger than ever. I'm sure it will all look dried out and downtrodden come July, but at least it's pretty now.

We've been continuing to clear out the space in our backyard to about where we think our property line ends (we still haven't gotten it officially surveyed and it borders an empty lot). We kept the two strongest looking trees that must have grown from seeds/acorns. However, they're too close together to both live, so we're trying to decide which to keep (it would be too hard to dig one up in tact and move it, plus we don't really have another space for a new tree).

The nearest one is a tulip tree - we even found a flower to prove it:

Not sure what the second one is. The leaves have two different distinct patterns. Any guesses? I'd like to figure it out before deciding which one stays.

One more pretty picture to leave you with - another creature enjoying our yard:

(Never seen a blue one outside of special butterfly gardens!)

Magical Corian

About a month ago, I did this to the counter:

We weren't entirely sure what kind of counter we had, and I was almost certain the previous owners said it was Silestone. But it turned out that looking up at the underside of the counter from inside the cupboards revealed a label and we have Corian in "Midnight." That still didn't help us know what to do though yet again the care instructions make it sound invincible (or certainly invincible to an essential oil which, I confirmed, would merely cause mild irritation to the skin at full concentration).

So, for a while, we did nothing. And that may be the best thing to be doing. Just going about our normal business, here is the same spot as of yesterday, in different lighting:

I tried deliberately to choose angles and lighting where the ring was most dramatic, so you can see it has faded significantly. Not a clue why or how. Are we somehow re-adding oils? Orange oil is a known cleaning product so maybe the essential oil just "overly cleaned" the counter and now it is becoming shiny with grease? Regardless, it looks like if we continue to ignore this problem, it will go away on its own. For once, benign neglect seems to be the way to go (now if only that same strategy worked with our yard...).

How to make your room bigger

The red rug in our living room was a discount buy that I have regretted for years. It started shredding at the corners within months of purchasing it. Therefore vacuuming it became particularly challenging (occasionally I would forget to be careful, drag the vacuum to the corner, and suck up a nasty chunk of threads) and small red yarns made it to every room of the house. This, for example, was one of the better corners:

Unfortunately I could not find a rug in a similar color that I liked. I'd been checking all the usual suspect websites for a few seasons, to no avail. And then, this weekend, we wandered into an estate sale...The rug must have been meant to be because it was still waiting for us the following day when we went back to see if they would take less (and, in fact, it already had been marked 50% off, which was exactly what we wanted to pay). And so with a little muscle, we had it rolled, into the car, and then into our house.

One problem:

Yeah, it's a little big.

We knew that already, of course. We knew that our red rug was 5'x8'. And we measured for the 8'x'10 on Saturday and new it fit tightly, if at all. But it was a beautiful Bokhara rug made in Pakistan. The first "Persian" style rug that I ever liked, mostly because it was very simple. And, even better, it was only $300, which was far cheaper than even smaller, less high quality rugs at stores I'd been checking out like Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel.

So we resorted to the back-up plan. The sitting area of our living room had a little extra space to work with.

In fact, it fit fabulously! Just under the front legs of the sofas - enough to tie the space together (and also to anchor it in place until we get a rug pad). I was worried that such a big rug, especially a patterned rug, would make the room feel small. But in fact, we now essentially have more usable space in the living room because we usually tried to stay on the rug (especially now with the baby requiring a little extra padding while she learns to roll over) and so we now have a few extra square feet to work with, right up to the furniture.

And the teal rug works well in the entry way. Though now the room color scheme is a little too divided, with blue on one half and red on the other (there's a red fan above the fireplace, if you recall). So I have to try to bring more blue elements to the sitting area.

Sadly, I think the best way to do that is to refinish the coffee table, which now clashes with the rug in a slightly different shade of red. Refinishing it the first time was awful, but hopefully the current paint job will act as a base coat to prevent some of the problems that I encountered. Or the project will end with me throwing the table to the curb in a fit of rage and hitting Craigslist for something else. But either way, teal is the name of the game.

Reclaiming more yard

We have a sizable backyard but much of it isn't usable lawn. We've been cutting away at it little by little, beginning with the big project of 3 years ago when we pulled back a ton of ivy. Last week we made a little more progress after a long hiatus.

On the side of the house next to an empty lot there is what must once have been a garden set off with railroad ties. Whatever the original intent, we inherited a mess of ivy, random plants, and even a few stray saplings that had found a safe place to root. It seemed like a small and manageable area to tackle this spring. We didn't get a true "before" picture but this is early in the process:

 And here it is when we wrapped up for the day:

 And an arial shot:

We pulled up almost everything up to the first railroad tie divider except for the biggest tree (think it's an oak - we'll take a picture next time we're out there) and some random strawberry plants we found growing in the corner. Once we clear the second half, we'll pull up the railroad ties (ugh!), rototill up the remaining bits of ivy and weed roots, and try our best to entice some grass to grow. This area of our yard is dangerously close to our property line (we can't figure out where it is and haven't cared enough to have someone come survey) so we're not going to do much more than that.

What else have we been up to? Well we've been lucky to have some great spring weather and a very tolerant baby, so we've been setting her up outside with us in the shade and doing our usual annual yard maintenance (mostly to no avail, but apparently we are eternal optimists in this regard...).

Baby next to her hawthorn tree:

Thatching up some dead grass, followed by over-seeding with new seeds that didn't actually seem to root, followed by - quite a bit later - some fertilizing weed and feed when it became obvious that we had a weed problem more than a lack of grass problem. This year, remembering your advice last  year, we saw we had those little flowers in the lawn and tried to take action. But unlike last summer, we are not going to spread compost and reseed the whole thing again. Too much work. D would like to hire someone to aerate the lawn for real, since last time we thought we'd hired someone to aerate the lawn they did it by poking holes in it, instead of pulling out plugs to loosen up the soil

We realized - to our annoyance - that we are much better at getting grass to grow from nothing than from fixing what we already have. Especially because the front lawn is inundated with liriope that had spread and mixed with the grass. Sometimes I'm tempted to try to uproot the whole front lawn and start over. Or get a professional to do it for us. Our best attempts at over-seeding, fertilizing, etc. seem to be going nowhere.

And of course we couldn't focus on the lawn without some serious care of the gardens. Here we are weeding and mulching the flower beds:

We never get everything we plant to come back but this year our plants have definitely filled out a bit (except for losing our giant rosemary plant to the harsh winter). This fall for the first time since we put these things in the ground, I want to start dividing up some of the heartier things like the irises to spread them around.

Have you done any gardening lately?

Moving to an LED world

When we moved into the house, we bought a lot of Philips 100-watt equivalent dimmable CFL bulbs. A few have gone out and we have learned that no one sells 100-watt equivalent dimmable CFL bulbs anymore. Since we do not want to replace our lamps and switches we need to switch to LED bulbs. Which, as of now, generally are dimmable. The problem is that they are very expensive; it now takes $25 or so to get a light bulb. The benefits are more lumens (light) for the energy used, faster turn on, and better lifespan.

CFL bulbs promised crazy lifetimes when they came out. They are better than the old incandescents. They go for years instead of a year. But not as much as the advertising would leave you to believe. Hopefully the LEDs will go longer.

The only reasonably sized and reasonably priced 100 watt LED dimmable lightbulb is the Philips 19-watt A21. So we bought a pair for our living room. The light quality is about the same and they seem a bit brighter. We also got a lot of Philips 10.5 watt BR30 flood light LEDs for the basement since they were on sale for about $10. They are far brighter than the old CFL flood lights.

I did a quick little comparing of the old CFLs versus the new LED floods. Both use about 10 watts of energy.

Old bulb:

New bulb:

Looks about the same, right? Well, not quite. The new bulb required an exposure 15 times faster than old bulb to look the same to the camera. So, for the same energy, we get a lot more light.

Most expensive soap ever

A year ago Christmas, I got a soap making kit. Not the dangerous kind that involves lye, a very simple kind called "melt and pour." Basically it is like buying a huge block of soap in bulk, nuking it in the microwave, adding fragrance, color, and bits of things to exfoliate, and then letting it resolidify. Turning soap into soap. Not rocket science. Not even real soap-making. (Bear with me, this is going to turn into a house issue soon.)

Because I am running out of fancy soaps, I thought last night would be a fun time to try this out, finally. I melted the soap base, ground up some oatmeal (to make it exfoliating), and added some essential oil that I got with the kit. I've worked with essential oil before - as a kid even. And I theoretically know the rules - it's strong, so you shouldn't let it touch your skin undiluted. You should add it with a dropper in small quantities. But there was so much soap that I decided to just pour a tiny bit in, rather than add it with a dropper.

The bottle doesn't have a spout. I dribbled a little oil down the side. I didn't think that something that goes into soap, lip balm, face products, hair products, etc. as a natural fragrance was that bad. I stirred everything together and poured the soap into the molds.

I cleaned and wiped down the counter. It dried.

I noticed I missed a spot.

I wiped again. It dried again.

I  RUINED THE SURFACE OF OUR COUNTER TO MAKE CHEAP SOAP!!!!

Not really sure what to do. I recall that when we bought the house they said our countertop is made of Silestone (can't seem to actually verify this - there are no brand markings stamped on or anything). Even reading the website makes me think that this essential oil should be fine and should never have caused this much damage. Silestone is pretty resistant to everything and has very few warnings. Here's one I can find: "Do not use paint strippers, caustic soda, or products with a ph of more than 10." I obviously can't test the ph of the product but apparently I should have categorized it up there with paint thinners. Checking the internet for similar problems yielded nothing. Everything that comes up when searching for essential oils and counters and sheen (or something similar) covers making a natural cleaner with water and essential oil.

We're going to try this next, but I have major doubts that it will have any effect (and even if it does, won't it be temporary?):

Loss of sheen on the surface of the Silestone countertop may be due to the use of products (waxes, sprays, sealants, etc.) to try to bring out its lustre, although these products lose their effect over time. This lack of sheen therefore has nothing to do with the original mechanical sheen of the product when it leaves the factory. To recover this non-natural sheen, a multi-purpose furniture spray that is suitable for the countertop can be used.

So yeah, not a high point of my weekend. And honestly I'm a little afraid to use the soap, knowing how potent the fragrance is. I'm scared I put in a little too much since I was so imprecise with adding it. And after seeing what it did to the countertop, well....

Most expensive soap ever. Sigh...

Winter is coming...

Not the season, the tree. When grandma and grandpa promised our baby a tree for Christmas, I knew exactly what kind of tree to get - a Winter King Hawthorn. A name that really does sound like it's coming right out of Game of Thrones. All hail the Winter King! I'd read about them in some home improvement magazine and they seemed perfect:

• Maximum heights of about 35 feet, so nothing too giant
• Robust and resistant to disease
• Generally able to survive owners with bad gardening skills
• Lovely white flowers in the spring
• Red fruit that birds love to eat in the fall
• Peeling silvery bark in the winter

Sounds perfect, right? Hawthorns usually have big thorns (which certain birds use to impale their prey) but I'd read that the Winter King didn't. That was a bit of a mistake - turns out they don't have the big thorns on most hawthorns, but they may have some:

"In addition to all of its beauty and ease of culture, ‘Winter King’ does not have the long, sharp thorns that its wild cousin does.  Although it is not always completely without, the thorns it may possess will be small and few.  So if thorns are your concern, do not be concerned with ‘Winter King’.  Although without the thorns, you won’t get the very cool loggerhead shrikes either."

Not a huge problem though because Hawthorns don't make good climbing trees. So the tree that arrived today, which is a true Winter King, does have some thorns, but not many.

Even better (for busy new parents) - grandma and grandpa paid for delivery and planting. The nursery arrived first thing this morning and got to work. We'd already figured out where we wanted it and used our local 811 service to make sure that we weren't at risk of bursting a pipe or breaking a power line. The root ball wasn't as big as we feared and we probably could have planted this ourselves, but it was nice to have pros do it and give me some tips along the way:

They checked with me to make sure the tree was oriented correctly (we set it so that the larger branches should grow out to the sides, parallel with the house and the street). They mixed compost in the soil as they planted it:

They showed me that we should keep this trough structure to be able to touch the root ball and assess dryness and also because it makes a well for water. In addition to the info sheet that we received, they walked me through all the watering suggestions (2 minutes of hose time each morning for the first 3 days, then 2 minutes of hose time during the hot summer) to help this hawthorn get established. Then they added some mulch on top (keeping the same trough structure):

 Ta-dah! This sweet little girl has her very own tree now!

Odd Inspiration

We finally got around to something that was on our notional to-do list for a few years - paint the front door. The black was a faded dingy not-so-black. And the dark color trapped so much heat between the storm door that opening it in even a 65 degree sunny day was a blast from a furnace.

I've taken many walks around the neighborhood to try to find inspiration but never could settle on a color. And I recently found my inspiration in the oddest place:

A cute outfit I bought my baby last weekend in the loveliest soft blue-green immediately made me think of what a beautiful color it would be for our front door. And this weekend was the perfect time to do it - warm and cool enough that we could keep the door open and dry enough that we wouldn't have to deal with humidity slowing down the time between coats. 

So armed with a pair of 3-6 month-old pants, I set off off the paint store. We usually stick to Sherwin Williams but a few blogs I read recommended Benjamin Moore, so we decided to try them instead. I purchased a quart of Aura for exteriors after the woman at the store told me that, even though I was painting a light color on black, it was guaranteed to cover in two coats with no primer. Also bucking our usual policy of buying a few sample colors, I compared a few of the paint tiles and picked a color within 5 minutes. Can you guess which?

I went for the second tile from the left on the bottom strip, Sea Mist Green. I almost chickened out and went for the more muted, grayer Covington Blue (top right) but decided against it.

Meanwhile, D was busy removing the hardware from the door:

You can see how much the black had faded from where it was covered by the door pull:

And so the painting began. Since I usually do the jobs that requires a brush and a steady hand, D watched the baby and assisted (and took photos) while I did the work. First, cut in and fill in the panels, doing my best not to create drips:

Then the inner cross beams and then the outside. Here it is after one coat - they were not kidding when they said Aura would be able to cover up the black.

Here it is all finished the next morning with the hardware back on (even though we could recoat a within a half hour - we waited until just before bed to put the hardware back on to really let the paint dry).

The only problem is that whoever painted the door black painted the inside edge of the hinge side black as well:

See it there, with a little of the new aqua where I let the brush go around the corner?

I was planning to use a little artist's paint brush there to cover the black today, but we realized it might look weird with a little strip of aqua paint visible on the inside of the house - the black mostly looks like a dark shadow. Ideally this edge would be white, but we don't have the original white paint used on the door and we learned once before that getting the "right" shade of white is important. So we're just going to leave it black for now until/if we paint the white door and all the trim.

And so ta-dah - here's our cheery door, all for only $25 of paint and a couple hours of effort: