Annuals and a Perennial

We aren't usually fans of annuals - I don't really enjoy gardening so planting something only designed to last one summer seems like a waste of time. But this year we had a large patch of mulch from where the oak came down that needs to sort of decompose before we can plant something lasting - the arborist said to wait at least a year before putting in another tree or shrub. So this seemed like the perfect excuse for some colorful annuals. And as for gardening, well at least I had "help":

Lots of purple and white pansies to fill in the space - maybe we should  have planted them tighter and bought more...

Now I thought the whole point of annuals is that they are really robust for their season of glory, but these guys are already looking pretty sad. Hopefully the recent rain will perk them up a bit. Or I just wasted $60 on plants that will be dead and gone by May.

In happier plant news, we have what looks to be a happily established new tree. The zelkova that we planted last year to replace the white oak that we took down in October is coming alive! We were worried about it because it didn't start budding until this month, but now it seems healthy and alive.

For a better idea on where this and the annuals are on our property, you can look at this post from before the oak came down.

Fingers crossed they all make it through the summer and our forgetful, careless, and haphazard watering.

Classing up the Closet

Our master bedroom walk-in closet already was classier than most - back in 2010 when we redid the bedroom, I painted the closet a pale shade of blue and reinstalled some of the bars so that the clothes slid around better. As closets go, it's pretty nice in there.

The lighting left something to be desired though - an exposed bulb with a pull cord. Fears of having a CFL bulb break over our head led us to put a cage around it a couple of years ago, but it certainly wasn't pretty. 

Worse, the fixture had some kind of short, possibly from the metal base and screws. Sometime it wouldn't turn on and sometimes it flickers and sometime it would only turn on if we turned the cage or jiggled it, and every time, it was a little scary. The electricity in our old house has always been somewhat of a (fire-hazard) mystery.

So for a long time, we've wanted to replace it with something a little less "unfinished basement" and a little more "elegant dressing room." After discussing a few options, we decided to splurge for a very impractical but awesome upgrade - the Ikea Kristaller (don't click the link if you want to be surprised by the big "reveal" picture at the bottom.

Fortunately, the wires, while old, all looked like what they were supposed to look like - no surprises there.

One "oh duh" surprise that happened literally minutes after purchasing the lamp: this lamp is designed to be used with a switch (as most are) and not with a pull cord. And we certainly weren't willing to have an electrician come and wire us a wall switch just for a closet. Crud! We had just gotten to our car and decided to turn back and look into returning it, knowing full well that returning something to Ikea is a miserable multi-hour process.

Our ticket said something like 690. We estimated that moving through almost 30 returns before us with just two lines open would be something like 3 hours. I think we'll keep our $40 lamp, thank you very much. Oh, and as if it were a sign from above (or below) - see what number they were handling when we walked up?

Now calling customer 666...

Incidentally, Ikea is tricky because this lamp was $40 but it took 3 rather specialized light bulbs, each costing $7. So really we spent over $60 for the lamp. Still not worth waiting 3 hours to return.

Fortunately, Home Depot sells a kit for $3.50 that can convert a lamp to a pull cord, used most often as a ceiling fan switch replacement. Drill a large hole into the lamp:

Screw in the pull cord, attach the wires, and voila! Pull cord lamp!

The install was pretty simple - standard lamp fare, given how many lamps we've installed in this house.

We removed all the links and have the chandelier hanging at its highest possible spot (without doing anything dramatic like trying to cut the pipe and rebuild it, etc.). Practical? No way! It gets in the way of the clothes a little and doesn't even light all that well. Amazing and makes us smile? You bet!

Worth it!

(Yes there's still some ugly orange insulation visible. We might paint over it or we might try to go all in on this ornate look and buy a fancy ceiling medallion instead.)

Make Basement Great Again: Dump the Pump

A few months ago J noticed that she hadn't heard the sump pump run in a while. I agreed to look at it, then forgot. We both did. A few weeks ago I noticed the basement seemed a bit damp. A few days ago I finally put it all together and opened up the sump basin.

Yuck. Full to the brim with oily water. At least it hadn't overflowed. I unplugged the pump. After removing about 8 gallons of water with the bilge pump, I had only reduced the water level a couple of inches.

I then took a flashlight to the basin and looked more carefully to see if anything looked amiss. There's supposed be a float switch that activates the pump. I whacked it a few times, but nothing happened. Then I realized that it was still unplugged.

Success!

Well, not quite. The float valve thing keeps getting stuck in the bottom of the sump basin. So it doesn't turn on when the water rises. I managed to wedge it in the 'up' position, so every few days I just plug it in and let it run for a few minutes.

Eventually we got a plumber out and he said the oily water was from the pump itself. The seals have degraded and oil is leaking out. He also said the check valve, which controls whether water goes in or out, also needed replacing. In a few days he'll get us a quote on replacing the pump and check valve. Hopefully it won't be much. In the meantime, I'll keep manually activating the pump to control the water.

Spring has sprung, again

The problem with keeping a house blog for so many years is that the stories all start to look very similar. For every spring that we've lived here, we've thatched and overseeded the lawn and hoped to make it look healthy. There's only so much to be said about it. So let's just dispense with that this year. We're doing it and keeping our fingers crossed, as usual. The yard is looking mostly the same, too. So here are just a few updates for this spring.

First on the side of the house - the snowdrops our neighbor gave us came up beautiful, though perhaps a bit short-lived. A fun sign of early spring:

Our cherry tree, which seemed to have a growth spurt last year, is looking happier than usual, and awed the toddler with its pretty pink flowers:

We decided our 6 year old, homemade door wreath was looking a little sad (it shed flowers every season) so we bought a new one that makes us smile:

I can't decide if I should paint the hanger so it blends into the door better or not. Also I feel like the wreath would look better hanging a bit lower but apparently a 12'' drop (which this is) is standard. Thoughts?

Finally, a question - many of our flowering plants, like these hyacinths, are already looking singed (the leaves on the pink and purple) and shriveled (the purple in the back). It's been relatively cool and not particularly dry, and other plants I've seen around town look healthy, so what should we be doing to keep the around longer and happier?

What would you do?

So for about 2 months now, we've had a person come clean our house every two week (yay, New Year's resolution!). It works out well, despite my discomfort with hiring professional help for things I am able to do myself. But I must admit that not cleaning a bathroom or dusting since 2015 has been glorious.

We have an interesting relationship because I have only see her a total of 3 times. She is only available to clean on a week day when I'm at work, so besides our initial meeting and a couple times she has still been finishing up when I get home, we communicate only through sparse notes and me leaving her pay on the table. I have her phone number but have never felt comfortable calling her. We also have a small language barrier, which always feels much more insurmountable over the phone than in person.

There are small things I don't like - she could perhaps be a little more aggressive with the grout lines, and I occasionally see spots she's missed, but really, it's much better than I have ever done. The most annoying thing is that despite our efforts to declutter the night and morning before she comes, she always finds things to "put away" and then we scramble to figure out where she put them. It's almost like a scavenger hunt, though, and my toddler actually finds it funny. (Oh, and also, we've blamed some things on her, like when the cleaning lady "apparently" dismantled the toddler's cluttered lego structure when it was really us. She makes a very useful scapegoat.)

Today though, I came home to discover that our silk table runner had gotten bleached:

It's a sentimental piece that we bought when we traveled to China, and we actually have managed to keep it stain-free all this time despite the toddler's (and her friends') best efforts. So it was a bit heartbreaking to see.

So what to do? We certainly don't expect her to pay for it, especially since it's not about the money. Do we ignore it completely? Do we mention it in two weeks in a small note of "please be more careful next time"? Do we actually take the plunge and call her to mention it? We are leaning towards a note, but do a few lines on a post-it risk more confusion than a call or just ignoring that it happened?

First world problems, I know. But having never really hired regular help, I'm left completely clueless as to how this works.

A mouse in the house

Shortly after Christmas, one of our cats escaped out the basement door. Not-so-coincidentally it was the same day this happened. In the commotion of dealing with the water and having the plumber over, the door was left open for a couple of hours. The snuggly kitty stayed in and the mouse-killing-always-trying-to-escape kitty left (we did get him back about a month later, fortunately).

Unfortunately, while he was away a mouse got in the house. I came down with the brave new toddler early on a work day. The snuggly kitty was acting very odd, hunkered down in front of the oven. With a heavy heart, I looked under the oven with a flashlight and .... yeah.

Obviously the mouse didn't get into the house from that area - otherwise he would have disappeared. Since we had one potentially effective cat in the house, I pulled the oven away from the wall. Snuggly kitty rushed in. 30 seconds of squeaking later he came out with the mouse! Then he jogged to the dining room table, released the mouse to play, and promptly lost it. Idiot.

But I did see where the mouse went - it bolted to the corner of the dining room where the baseboard heating pipes run. After waiting a few minutes, I stuck my face in the corner. It certainly had at least an inch of space and was quite drafty. The quick solution was to fill in the corner with steel wool and seal the entire length of the wall with expanding foam.

It doesn't look too good, but it's a bit less drafty and hopefully more mouse proof. I may try to razor off the excess foam in the future and see if it's paintable. If I could paint it black, it would be invisible.

Snuggly cat was disappointed with the solution, though.

Squeaky clean

Excuse the delay! We left you a month ago with some indecision over whether to get a new dishwasher. Perhaps you thought our silence meant that we weren't sure what to do. Well that is definitely not the case. In fact, we'd practically hit the order button by the time I posted the blog update, and we were schedule for delivery 4 days later (and on a federal holiday, even better!).

So this guy was on the way out:

In all its grungy glory (since the water wasn't heating, the walls and seals of the dishwasher were starting to look pretty disgusting):

So a few days later thanks to a Best Buy sale that included free shipping AND installation (and removal of the old machine), we were on our way to getting a Bosch 500 series in our kitchen. We'd read some negative reviews but they were all related to some features of a "European-style" dishwasher, mostly because they don't heat dry the dishes. But since our previous model was a Bosch that heated the same (less effective but less energy-sucking) way and we liked it, we figured the new one would be fine.

Out with the old:

In with the new:

It obviously is no bigger than the last one, but somehow, it just gobbles up all our dishes and silverware and still doesn't get full. The third rack is nice, but that doesn't even seem to be the reason - we think the interior space is larger. Maybe the walls have gotten thinner? No idea, but we love it.

 Buttons and a countdown for different cycles:

And a floor light to tell us when it's on since it's so quiet (actually, it really isn't much more quiet than our previous one, but it certainly isn't noisy).

Most important, our dishes are clean and residue-free and the dishwasher seems to be heating everything nicely. For once, a fast decision on a home purchase seems to have been the right way to go.

It's (Not) Getting Hot in Here

I think we've probably been in denial about this one for a few weeks (or more). Lately our dishes haven't seemed all that clean when they come out of the dishwasher. They don't have food on them, mostly. They just seem to be foggy. Of course we refilled our Jet-dry, but that didn't help. We cleaned everything out and ran a load of vinegar and baking soda. No luck. We splurged on fancy liquid detergent instead of Target brand powder. Nope. We even tried the power breaker and resets.

In fact, after the excellent suggestions from my mom that maybe it wasn't heating enough, we decided to finally run a load when we were home and awake enough to pay attention (it seems like we usually run it as we are going out for the day or when we are going to sleep).

Cool. Uh oh.

Usually our dishwasher heats up to probably just under boiling.

Searching fixes for this suggests that a repair will run us at least a couple hundred and that it is not, unfortunately, a do-it-yourself type job.

We looked up our dishwasher to learn more about it - turns out, our Bosch is quite a pricy model (or it was). It's been very good to us for 6 years - no complaints until now. And we don't want to downgrade to something cheap, especially if it doesn't do a good job of cleaning dishes, which so many of our friends and family seem to find with their own dishwashers.

Fortunately, our favorite home review website, The Sweet Home, highly recommends another Bosch. The reviews on pretty much every website for it are astoundingly high. With delivery and installation, it would run around $900. We also have the option of "cheaping out" and buying one step down for about $600 and lose what appears to be a magical third shelf at the top (this seems like it would have been amazing when we were still washing bottle nipples and other tiny parts, but still looks pretty cool for silverware, etc.).

Is it irresponsible to think that this might make more sense than throwing money away hoping to fix the old one? This feels like the standard used car dilemma - how much money do you put in before you give up and get a new one (not that we've put money into this dishwasher before, but still)...

And also - black or stainless? The fridge is stainless but the microwave, oven, and current dishwasher are black. We are leaning towards black if we buy at all, since the fridge is separate enough from the rest of the appliances that we feel like it can be an outlier and we don't have to work our way to full-stainless.

D has found one on sale for $800 (including installation) at Best Buy in the time it has taken me to write this post. We might have already made our decision...

Edited to add this nifty flow chart D found, that is helping us slide towards replacing:

Very Alarming

Almost exactly one year ago, we blogged about some fancy smoke detectors that we had installed when one of our three old ones died and we realized how old they all actually were. We spent a lot of time researching the difference between the various sensors, batteries, etc.

Well one thing we have since learned - don't bother getting a 10-year battery because it will start spontaneously going off in under a year.

Our Home Depot alarm that is on our main floor, arguably our most important smoke detector, kept going off uncontrollably and with absolutely no cause. It quieted down when we took it outside. The problem was that with an unremovable battery, there was no way to keep it quiet. After leaving it outside for a few days to "reset" (or so we thought) and then leaving it sitting up high on a shelf for a few days to see how it would react, it managed to stay quiet. We thought we were safe. And so we put it back up where it belonged.

Only to come home two days later to it going off (all day apparently - more on that later). I couldn't get it to stop beeping, even by holding down the reset. I finally tossed it outside until I could calm down my poor scared toddler.

When it finally stopped and D tried to bring it back in, it immediately began its shrill alarm just by him picking it up. He finally had to fully turn it off (which breaks it in the process) and out it went.

I ordered a basic $7 one that requires a 9V battery. It's not fancy but it's definitely better than having nothing installed on our main floor at all. I wonder if we got a dud or all the "10-year" ones die so quickly.

New Year's Resolutions

New year, new home improvement plans - here are some of ours for this year. Do you have any?

1. Major project: remodel the breezeway into an indoor space:

We plan to start talking to contractors and possibly an architect soon. This is beyond the scope of anything we've done to the house before (ugh, we will actually need permits...). Wish us luck and stay tuned.

2. Hire cleaning help. Not so much an "improvement" for the house but for our life. We decided to try to budget for someone who will come in every week or two to clean, and plan to start looking for someone soon.

3. Reach goal: convert to natural gas. More on this to come but it seems that we would have to make some major fixes so that a natural gas water heater could vent out correctly from the basement. We thought converting would be a relatively minor upgrade, but now we think this might have to wait a while longer yet (and possibly be pushed off indefinitely if we should have to unexpectedly replace a major oil- or electric-powered appliance)

4. Replace some doors. This has been on the to-do list since 2013 so obviously it isn't particularly pressing. But I want a new basement door and new hallway doors, if we ever find a good general contractor.

For most of these, our big hurdle is that we don't have very many "go-to" people to call to work on the house. Our lack of time and the increasing complexity of the projects makes us want to turn to professionals. However, our lack of time isn't helping us launch the starting phase that involves doing research and getting quotes. If you're a local reader and have recommendations, let us know!

The cup overflows

When J went to the basement, she heard some odd dripping noises. She asked me whether something was wrong with the dehumidifier. I headed into the basement and quickly saw the problem.

The drain at the base of the exterior stairs to the basement had clogged. With the endless rain we have been getting, water had gotten high enough to go over the sill and creep into the house. I took this photo after I spent a couple of minutes with the very useful bilge pump to get some water out. I did get sprayed several times before setting it up correctly. Crucially, I had to put a log over the hose so it wouldn't flop into my face.



After doing that I could get most of the water out in about five minutes. The problem was that in 10 minutes, the water filled back in again. Water apparently was seeping through the walls.

I was putting so much effort into the pumping because it was very uncomfortable to stand on the stairs while trying to manipulate the snake. I first tried the toilet auger, because the clog usually is in the first couple of feet. But I couldn't make any progress. I then moved onto the 25 foot snake. After I ran about 10 feet into the drain with no effect, I decided to call a plumber. I then tried the auger again. Not working. By now the water had filled up to the sill again, so I re-drained it with the bilge pump. Seriously, it is amazing. Buy one if you ever think you need to drain something quickly by hand. The plumber still had not shown up, so I decided to try the snake until he showed up. Well, I beat the plumber.

I have not measured it yet, but I think it took about 15 feet of snake to clear the clog. Ugh. I think I may buy a drill powered snake to speed the process up in the future. It's a huge pain to hand feed that much.

Holiday Cheer

It feels like October but the holidays are upon us. This year the decorating is similar to previous ones, but we made a few tweaks.

Like last year (when, apparently, I forgot to take a picture) our tree is nestled between both sofas, tucking it a bit more out of the way so that the toddler can't do too much damage and it can't get knocked over by cat or child. We've now had the tree in all 3 available corners of the living room over the last few years - I like that we have some choice on where to put it.

We bought new lights this year, too, based on a review on The Wirecutter, our go-to place before we shop these days. and bought GE Colorite LED lights. I know they're energy efficient but no, they still don't look as nice as the old fashioned kind. Also we found it weird that there is so much purple in there, a color they don't usually include in colored lights. But as it's our toddler's favorite color, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The fireplace looks mostly the same except this year we used live greenery we bought at a fundraiser, instead of the plastic one (ugh look at all those toys!)

Now I remember why we use artificial - needles everywhere!!

I went all Martha Stewart and made a felt tree for the toddler to decorate, though mostly she just wants to tear off the gingerbread man's eyes...

We skipped the outdoor lights this year - it seems I only have the energy for them alternating years (I did it last year. But we do have a new wreath and some more greenery.

After looking around our neighborhood, I decided I want to put wreaths in both upstairs windows. Of course my new front door wreath (that I bought last year on sale) does not seem to be for sale anymore, so I won't be able to create a matching set - or even anything complimentary, from at least a quick glance at all my usual stores. So I might need to start fresh next year. If I do, I'll have to remember to buy a thinner wreath - this one is so fat that we had to put it on our storm door since putting it on our front door pushed the storm door out a few inches.

Now we just need a little snow to add the real finishing touches on the making the house feel Christmasy.

A Place for Everything (and everything in our place)

It's that busy time of year when we don't actually have time update the blog because we're too busy decorating, raking, or shopping. None of those are really blog-worthy anyway.

But one lingering conundrum we're having in this season of gifting - TOO MUCH STUFF!

Our living room AND basement are loaded up with toys - both annoying small ones that come in pieces (blocks, crayons, puzzles, doctor kit, train) and big ones that take up a lot of space (foam wedges, slide, basketball hoop).

We're trying to figure out the best way to take our rooms back. A longer term plan, that we'll start looking into this winter, is to convert our sun room into a finished playroom. But for now, we'd just like our floors clear. We clean up every night but even when everything is "away," it's still cluttered.

We cleared a shelf in the office and started putting at least some of her toys there - trains on the right, doll accessories and puzzles on the left, plus some of her favorite books (the rest are upstairs in her room which is full to the brim with toys too).

Thanks to a disciplined daycare, the toddler understands the idea of "cleaning up" and we're working on taking out just one thing at a time. But there's still the matter of simply not having enough space (or at least not enough hidden space). We don't have the room or inclination to buy a separate piece of dedicated toy storage like this, since we want it to blend into our decor, but we could use some ideas.

Moms and dads out there, what works for you (besides just owning less stuff, which is also a very good option but rather impossible thanks to too many generous grandparents)?

Still a Few Surprises

Most time when a house surprises you, it's not good. Bad wiring, a busted pipe, etc. And after living here 6 years now, there are not too many surprises left. But recently, we found one.

For all this time, going up and down the basement stairs several times a week at least - to clean the kitty litter, do laundry, run on the treadmill, etc. - we blindly assumed that this was an AC vent. It looks like an AC vent, and was not in a completely illogical spot, given that our upstairs intake is on the wall on the stairwell.

But when we worked with the HVAC company this summer to optimize our new AC, we realized that it was not hooked up to the house's ventilation at all.

We finally popped off the vent. And found a lightbulb socket! Pop in a new bulb and...

Ta-dah! Operated on the same switch that turns on the overhead light in the stairwell:

Minor, true. But still a fun little surprise. The toddler now claims it is "sunny" when she climbs up and down the stairs.