Thursday, May 27, 2010

Wired For The 21st Century

Today we made big strides toward more modern living. I had an electrician switch out our old 100-amp service panel with a shiny new 200-amp panel. If a breaker box can be beautiful, this one is -- especially compared to the one that was there. Evidently at some point in the past, a fire had occurred in the old panel. Based on its location in the basement (directly under the dishwasher), I would guess that a water leak had dripped its way in to the old panel and caused a fire. There are still some charred-but-useable wires that were blackened when the panel caught fire. I'll be changing out all of the old wiring as we remodel, so the burned wires will be okay for now.

The best part about the new panel is that it will allow us to move ahead with central air-conditioning. The house is still heated by a boiler and radiators, but the only A/C in the house when we bought it was five window units. Because the exterior walls are solid masonry, the house is a bit like a cave. That is, it stays reasonably cool. Lots of big trees around also help fend off direct sunlight. The last few days have been a bit uncomfortable though, because the temperatures have been in the mid-80's. The temerature in the house isn't too auwfully hot, but with no central A/C to remove the moisture from the air, the humidity level inside has been less than comfortable.

When it became obvious earlier this week that the warmer temperatures were going to hang around for awhile, I was inspired to get on the ball and get one of the window units installed in our bedroom. I had removed the units when the weather started cooling off last Fall. The previous owners left them installed year 'round, which explains why their winter gas bills sometimes reached the $500 to $600 range. Ouch!

Now that we're using the window unit at night, my wife refers to our bedroom as "the hotel room". It has that familiar hotel room A/C sound kicking on and off throughout the night. And although the unit is very small and rated as an "Energy Star" appliance, it really uses the juice. I borrowed a gadget from a friend of mine that tells you how much it costs to run a particular electrical device. You just plug the gadget into the outlet, plug the appliance into the gadget, then use the buttons on the gadget to enter the local cost per kilowatt hour (this info is on my electric bill). After running the unit the first night, I was amazed to see that this tiny A/C uses about $2.00 of electricity over an eight hour period. When you think about cooling a small bedroom for only 8 hours a night costing $60 per month, you can begin to see how much more efficient a central A/C system can be. Our last house had a new 15-SEER Carrier brand A/C that only cost about $60 per month to cool the entire house.

Speaking of central air, I have a couple of different contractors coming tomorrow to give bids on installing a system. I am really hoping that with the 30% federal tax credit on geothermal systems, we just might be able to afford that option. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

A Fresh Dumpster and The Attack Of The Carpenter Ants

The city solid waste services came and emptied the dumpster, so we're ready for the next big mess -- tearing out the plaster ceiling in the basement and removing one of the basement walls. I'm not looking forward to the dust, folks. There is nothing as fine and choking as plaster dust. I bought a bona fide 3M filtration mask, though. It's the rubber type with screw-on filters that can be changed out as needed. I highly recommend this kind of mask rather than the cheap white cup-shaped masks that can be bought almost anywhere. The cheapies let lots of dust in because they never really can form a seal on your face like the rubber masks. If you want the good kind, you'll probably have to go to an industrial supply type of store. I bought mine at Grainger Industrial Supply.

I don't have a clever segue into the ant problem. All I can say is we got 'em. Big ol' honkin' black carpenter ants. They were running amok recently when I started tearing off the old rotting deck. I thought they'd decided to pack their bags and head to a nice tropical locale, but I think they were just hanging out under a rock, planning their revenge. So it looks like I'll need to make a call to the exterminator tomorrow. My wife has made it abundantly clear that she does not  like the ants.

Don't they eat those things as a delicacy in some parts of the world?

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Where to start? The jackhammer!

With so many things to do on the house, it can be a bit overwhelming sometimes to figure what needs to be done first. We start talking about something that we want to do to the house, and then we realize that before we do that thing, this other thing needs to be done first. Oh, but before we can do that other thing, there are these two other bits of work that need to be done.

My wife and I love the "finish work" -- you know, the nice aesthetic things that make a house a real gem. But before we get to any of that, we've realized that there are a lot of "infrastructure" improvements that need to be made. Although we had two or three options as to our first substantial work effort, getting the basement waterproofed recently became an obvious first step. Our recent Spring rains made it clear that we needed to just bite the bullet and fix the basement.

A little over nine years ago, we owned a house that was built back in the 1940's. It had the same classic leaky basement problems as our current home. We had a company trench out along the inside of the basement and install a sump pump. Let me tell ya, these guys earned their money. The basement in that house was what I call a "bathtub basement" -- that is, the entire basement was completely underground; there was no way to walk out of the basement, except going upstairs to the main level. What that meant was that all of the concrete that was broken out had to be schlepped upstairs, two 5-gallon bucket-loads at a time. As you can imagine, these guys were hulks.

The trench/sump system worked like a charm in our other house, so we called the contractor back to give us a bid on our current basement. The company we used is locally owned, but is a franchise of a national company, Basement Systems. The parent company's website is www.basementsystems.com. I highly recommend you have a local representative come look at your basement if you are having water problems. We looked at several companies before we selected Basement Systems and no one had as good a solution. Don't let a contractor talk you into digging out all around the outside of your house with a backhoe (likely destroying all your landscaping) -- this interior trench system really works.

The bid came back quite a bit higher than we were hoping, so we opted for a lower priced sump pump (the one they initially recommended consisted of a pump, a back-up pump, and a battery back-up pump). Since our basement will always remain a workshop, finishing room, and HVAC room, we didn't need the extra security of the deluxe pump system. Worst case, if the power goes out or the pump fails, the water will overflow into the floor drain that is just a couple of feet from the sump.

One other somewhat crazy idea I had to save money was to ask the contractor if they would lower their bid if I jackhammered the trench in the basement myself. After some figuring, they offered to knock $1700 off of the price of the job if I did the jackhammering and prep work myself. Being a cheapskate (and always looking for an opportunity to use a new power tool!), I decided to rent a jackhammer and give it a try. It was about as cheap to rent the jackhammer for a week as it was for three days, so I just kept the thing for a week, which set me back $210. I also had to rent a roll-off dumpster from the city so I would have a place to dump all that broken concrete. I haven't had the city pick up the dumpster just yet, so I'm not sure what the total charges will be. They charge a fee to pick up the dumpster, plus a per ton charge. We'll just have to see how much money I actually ended up saving when it is all said and done.

The day after the contractor installed the trench system and sump pump, we had a torrential rain. Not a drop of water in the basement! Woo hoo! It rained again a couple of times last week and the basement stayed dry. Our first milestone done!

This coming week will also be a banner week. On Tuesday, an electrician will be upgrading the electrical panel to 200-amp service. Then on Wednesday, we meet with the architect we've chosen to begin discussing plans for our kitchen remodel and our master bedroom addition.

Off to bed with me. Maybe I'll dream about jackhammers.....

Friday, May 21, 2010

Here we go!

This is it -- the first posting. We bought our house back in September (2009), but I didn't really get inspired to do the blog until my wife and I watched "Julie and Julia" last weekend. If you've seen the movie, you'll understand the blog inspiration.

Here's the scoop on our house -- it is a 1915 Craftsman-style Tudor Revival. We bought it from the estate of Clay and Frances Cooper. Mr. Cooper was a University of Missouri football coach for around 40 years, and everyone I talk to has only good things to say about him and Mrs. Cooper. They bought the house in 1957 for the princely sum of $18,000. The Coopers raised eight (count 'em: eight) kids in this house with only ONE (count 'em: ONE) full bath. Somewhere along the way, they added a half-bath in a closet off the landing that leads to the basement. I'm not saying the half-bath is small, but let's just say that you need to know which way you plan to face before you go in.

The house needs absolutely everything: re-wiring, re-plumbing, central heat & air (it still has a boiler and radiators), new kitchen, new bathrooms, MORE bathrooms, and a real garage. There is no damper in the fireplace, nor are there chimney caps on the flues. Until last week, the basement ran rivers when it rained (I'll post later about the jackhammer adventure in the basement). On the brighter side, the house did come with a brand new roof when we bought it. Unfortunately, the roofers weren't so clever with the flashing around the chimney, so I need to do some work there, too.....

With all the issues the house has, though, we absolutely love it. Hope you enjoy following along as we make it into our "forever" house. I will post some pictures soon.