Merry Everything!

Our decorations this year, by night (because it was night by the time we took the pictures and I'm sure I won't have time to do it tomorrow). Mostly the same as last year, but still worth photographing.  We inherited a few more outdoor ornaments. I think our house looks best at the moment in the daytime. We still haven't quite nailed the lighting, but the candy canes, window wreaths, and hanging ornaments look very festive during the light when they're most visible.

The whole scene, this year with more hanging ornaments (and less snow, sadly):

I so badly wanted to put lights on the tree that's on the right, the one that looks exactly like a Christmas tree. We strung up our white lights that we used to use along our gutters but apparently those don't want to light up anymore. Hopefully I can snag a new set on sale so I can light it up next year. Instead, we put up some candy cane ornaments, so I think it still gets the point across.

Now could it please just snow a little? Really that's the best decoration I can think of.

A bit chilly

A few years ago, (6, to be exact) we installed a Nest thermostat as our main heating thermostat. We installed another when we added the sun room. They're only hooked up to our heat, so we don't use them for a good chunk of the year when we switch to air conditioning. But December is decidedly time for heat.

The problem is that the Nest keeps trying to be too smart. We set up a schedule where it should be warm when we get home from work, but to conserve energy, we also set up auto-away. This results in a house that knows when we are gone and therefore does not turn on the heat to greet us. This is what usually greets me at the end of the day.

And our house is so slow to heat up that this basically means we reach ideal temperature right at bedtime. So...not great.

One option would be to turn off auto-away, but of course that's there to help save energy. The next option would be to try out auto-scheduling. I think we tried it out back when we first got it but we didn't like the choices it made. But perhaps if it starts to notice what time we get home in the afternoon, it can start warming the house up in advance in time to reach an appropriate temperature by dinner. We haven't wanted to try it yet, as we enter the unpredictable holiday season, but it's something we plan to attempt in January.

Another frustrating problem with our heating - and this one isn't actually the Nest's fault - is where we have our heating systems. The first one, above, is in the hallway. We do often walk by there, but not as often as, say, the living room. And so it doesn't always *know* we are home even when we are (the whole notion of the Internet of Things is creepy, but this isn't the place to address it).

The other thermostat, which we had installed in our new room, is even worse. Look at this crazy low temperature! Why let the room drop to 58? 

Well, it isn't actually that cold in there. Without realizing what that would mean for the temperature readings, we chose to put this one on an exterior wall. And it turns out that even with decent new insulation, the wall itself is pretty chilly. So we basically just ignore this thermostat completely since it's not a true reading of the temperature in the room, and just let the other one make the heating decision. Not the best choice but we had no idea at the time.

Even when everything is working perfectly, we tend to keep our house just a little chilly (friends sometimes wear coats inside). So the fact that it's cold even for us is probably bad. But doesn't being colder burn calories or something?

Deer me!

We had to dress our baby trees. Deer have been rutting and destroying the delicate bark of the trunk. I forgot to take a "before" picture of the two trees now covered up, but here is an example of a third, a tulip tree, that still needs wrapping. Stupid deer. Eating our bulbs and hostas and now this:

Both our precious new maples are now sporting these lovely plastic wraps to help protect them. Hopefully there's no permanent damage.

In other yard news, besides the constant battle with leaves, we have begun setting up for a vegetable garden! While this isn't exactly planting season, we figured it was a good time to start turning over the soil and building the gates (to protect from bunnies and deer as noted above).  This is really more a project for grandma and her grandbabies, so D and I didn't even have to do much of the work! Here you can see some straight lines made of string to help get the fencing straight followed by the completed garden. We also rototilled some of the soil, though we'll do another round this spring and have a truckload of compost delivered to help fertilize the area. I can't wait to send the kids out to bring back a crop.

And finally, we have new decorative grasses growing along our property line, also from grandma. They looked totally dead when we planted them (you can still see the brown dead grass blades), but the green grass and fronds popped out when we weren't paying attention and they are very much alive. We're hoping it forms a fence of sorts to separate us from the empty lot and give our backyard some privacy from the street.

A place for the sump to pump

Recently it became clear that the pipe that leads out of our sump pump and into our yard had become totally clogged. Water was sitting in the little well under the black grate. D tried to snake it with our 20' plumber snake and got nowhere. A professional plumber didn't do any better. 

The problem was that after the PVC pipe immediately jutting out of the little well, the pipe was all corrugated black drain pipe that can easily tear. So the snake may have just reached a curve and then broken through, or coiled on itself or who knows what. Likely the pipe itself got holes in it ages ago and slowly filled with dirt and debris. All we could figure out was that water wasn't draining.

D started out trying to find and unearth the black pipe but quickly realized that the path it took through our yard was curvy at best. He dug up a lot of grass and dirt trying to track it before we decided to cut our losses, abandon the black drain pipe, and start with a whole new path. This time he bought much sturdier PVC pipe, the same diameter as the short piece that was already there - 1.25''.

Then he dug a giant trench through our garden. I would have been sadder except that plot was a mess anyway. After years of attempting to grow lilacs there, beginning in 2011, trying to add more in 2013, and then significantly reducing their number in 2015, they're now pretty much gone (one of the newer tiny ones is still barely surviving in a corner). This gave D a lot of space to dig.

Here it is from the other direction:

He tried to angle the trench so that it got deeper as it moved away from the house, but it is mostly just level. The pumping water from the sump ought to keep it moving though. Then he bought a special two-compound epoxy to attach the pipes together to each other (with a junction).

After that, it was just a matter of filling in all that dirt. No small task of course, but it's finally done now. The garden isn't as awful as you'd think from all that digging, but it will need a refresh in the spring. At least now the water is flowing, which is good since we're having a wet fall. That sump pump has been working hard and now the water can get out.

Bye September and October

We must have been sleeping off the effects of our kitchen remodel because September came and went without a single post and October almost did as well. We even missed our ninth house-i-versary (that's totally a thing). At least it wasn't the big One Oh. The truth is, we didn't really do much to the house all last month. This month, however, has been all about the yard. It's definitely fall, folks.

First though, a bunch of pictures from the summer that I never posted because I was too distracted by kitchen stuff. Our butterfly bush by July had gotten higher than our gutters. Until it fell down under its own weight and just sort of lay on the grass for the rest of the summer (leaving a nasty empty spot under it where all the grass died, but at least the butterflies were happy):

 Our new crepe myrtle did indeed bloom a cotton candy pink and seems to be happy in our yard.

We had a ton of black-eyed Susans and quite a few echinacea (though we'd still like more of the latter):

 Even our tiny primrose was happy and bloomed much of the summer (foot for size reference):

 Some red tiger lilies:

 Some fragrant pink lilies:

But of course, all that is in the past. A few weeks ago ago, we trimmed back, cut down, and otherwise groomed the front gardens. We got rid of the dried husks of black eyed susans and cut down the long iris leaves that we always leave until spring. We cut the butterfly bushes back to almost nothing, after the one near the house had grown so big that it was taller than the house and then had fallen into the yard and driveway (we didn't want to trim it too early because the butterflies and bees were enjoying the flowers so much). For a couple weeks in a row, our yard waste collection looked like this:

We've had a few other yard adventures that I hope to share with you soon. Let hope that almost two-month hiatus doesn't hit again!

The Kitchen, Finally

Let's cut to the chase, since I made you wait a few weeks, before I show you some process pictures. The bottom line is that we LOVE LOVE LOVE our new kitchen. We did not, however, love the process. I was too frustrated to blog about the progress while it was going on, after the initial few days. Communication issues, scheduling delays, etc. But it's all done now and we couldn't be happier with the final outcome. So without further ado, kitchen money shots:

So to backtrack a bit from where we left off earlier this month, here are some installation pictures for the counters. They set the join between the two pieces just to the left of the sink, using giant clamps to hold it in place.

I wasn't thrilled with the join. I had suggested going to the right of the sink (which is usually under the drying rack or at least a little more hidden) or at the sink itself, but our installer preferred to do it away from spots that are constantly wet and I think also wanted smaller pieces to work with, though he didn't admit it. The two sides weren't entirely smooth and I could feel a little edge, which was very annoying when wiping things like, say, messy peanut butter, from the counter. He argued that up to 1/16'' was acceptable but agreed to come back and try to smooth it, especially since he had to even something else out as well, and I was much happier with the result the second time.

For paint color, we ended up with Halcyon Green, which if you look at the paint chart from the previous post, is in the second column from the right, second one down. We are thrilled with it - bold but also muted, decidedly cool-toned, and somewhere in between blue and green.

Here it is, with our old light fixture and old (now dreadful) olive-colored blinds. If you scroll back up, you'll note that D mostly won the light fixture contest from our mood board and we went with the Pottery Barn McCarthy 3-Light Pendant. Though I don't dislike it, the finger prints may quite possibly drive me crazy. Though I think back to the original light when we first moved in (the first one we replaced, our first foray into do-it-yourself), and I think of how far we've come.

When the kitchen job was finally done, we did the finishing touches, like swapping out the annoying corded olive roman shades with some beautiful cordless gray ones from Home Depot. I don't remember having such pretty options years ago when we settled for the last ones. Obviously cordless and affordable shades have made huge strides in 9 years. Who knew?

I may delve into some of the smaller details of our kitchen in future updates (the under-cabinet lighting deserves its own post, it is so awesome) but I'll leave it there for now. One more upgrade off the to-do list.

State of the Kitchen

Our counter is in. It has been for a while but it's hard to appreciate given the rest of the mess. We're very happy with the color and pattern and impatient to keep going. Due to some supply and schedule delays, it's been like this for about a week now. We have a few pictures of the installation in progress, but they're on a different camera, so I may post them later. Here's the finished view:

Then yesterday, the rest of the project began. First was electrical day - setting up the recessed lighting. Here's our ceiling "before" picture - just one sad little light in the middle and a spotlight over the sink

After quite a few hours of labor, having to measure and check for joists and then carve out a few extra holes in the plaster to help feed the wiring...

 We got to this! Obviously there are some holes that need patching.

Here's a view of some of the planning that went into it. He kept having to measure out four even spots for the light, only to find out that one of them would be in line with a joist. Then he'd have to start over. Oh, and note the super classy yellow circle above where the hold light was. I guess the previous owners were too lazy to take the light fixture off when they painted the ceiling.

Speaking of painting, we have a tough choice to make. A quick trip to Sherwin Williams and I came back with a range more or less of a similar tone to our current color. The kitchen/dining room, you may remember, is the only room that we never repainted. We were happy enough with the color when we moved in. While I couldn't find an exact match at the store (keeping in mind that this paint is also at least 10 years old), I found one pretty close, called Svelte Sage.

Svelte Sage is the top sample (of two) on the very left. We knew we definitely didn't want to go any more beige/warm, so I started from there and moved cooler. They're laid out more or less from light to dark (up to down) and then warm to cool (left to right). I took a picture with the lights on and then in natural light.

Any suggestions? I have my own ideas but I'm curious to hear yours.

Asbestos Free

Today the air quality tests confirmed that our basement is now asbestos free. Three weeks and quite a bit more money later, a problem we never knew we had has now been fixed.

When the plumber identified the insulation that he believed was asbestos, we immediately called in a team to test it. The company took it off to the lab and said that it was 10-20% chrysotile asbestos. Apparently this stuff comes in different varieties. We had another company come out to do the abatement and they identified yet ANOTHER pipe covered in asbestos insulation, this time unwrapped (the first pipe had something like packing tape covering the insulation). Yippee. Fortunately it was in a corner of the basement that we rarely use, leading into the unfinished bathroom that I usually forget we have. Can you see it there, running parallel with the back wall and above the orange spray foam (seriously, even our energy efficiency company working right next to it didn't noticed?).

 Here is a picture of it from inside the unfinished bathroom:

So the day of the abatement, a team of three worked for about two hours. They shut themselves up in the unfinished part of the basement, ran this loud vacuum device, and did their thing. For obvious reasons, we left them alone.

Then a couple of days later after the dust had settled, they came back and ran a little fan for an hour that circulated air onto some sticky pads - apparently a more sophisticated and sensitive test than the industry default of using sticky tape to just pick up surface lint, or so they said (either way, it was included in the price - which was their minimum price anyway). So off it went to the lab and, as of today, we are officially clear:

Asbestos-free party anyone? I wonder if they sell theme decorations for that? I'm thinking Hazmat suit.