Mid-Week-end update July 4th
July 4th was marvelous.  We slept in until noon, installed the pot-filler in the afternoon, took a trip to Home Depot, ate dinner at 5 Guys.  It was a great day.
The one big project was the pot filler. Â Just a refresher, this is what our potfiller looks like:
The difficulty with installing a pot filler is ensuring the pot filler won’t just rip out of the wall as soon as you extend the arm. Â Our pot filler has a long reach, about 30 inches, and for those of you who know about mechanics, that is a long lever-arm. Â The torque at the base of the fixture is quite high and most pot fillers do not come with appropriate mounting fixtures. Â The base screws into the supply and there is a decorative flange that conceals the joint. Â We are using flexible Pex tubing so the pipe offers no structural support. Â With copper tubing, we do have the support of the tubing. Â If you really want to make everything secure, you should use a drop-ear.
This is basically a brass fitting that attaches to a length of copper pipe and screws to a stud of some kind to add structural support. It keeps the base of the pot from moving side to side quite well but it still doesn’t add much support against the pot-filler sagging. You can pex directly to a drop-ear but we decided to use a 3 foot piece of copper. This allowed us to use brackets to counter-act the lever-arm of the pot filler. We then pexed onto the end of that copper piece.
We used copper holders to secure the length of copper tubing to the wall.
Another necessary evil of putting in the pot filler was running a water-line through an exterior wall. Apparently that’s a no-no up in these cold parts. We lined the cavity with insulating foam and used Great Stuff to fill in any cracks.
My plans are to rent the room in case I do need the extra cash flow but i’ll see how it goes. Renting can be a bit iffy with a family so our tenant is going to have to be background checked and preferably female. We could use a service like Houston Tenant Screening Services to help us out, but its up in the air!
Overall, quite effective and we think it will hold up to lots of pot-filling in the future.
Sarah
Weekend Update – June 30 to July 1
I can’t believe it’s already July! Â The abundance of flowers in the backyard tells that summer is upon us.
The roses are mostly gone with a few stunners left holding on to the last grips of spring. Â The petunias are going crazy as they do. Â The gladioli are so much fun. Â They popped out this last week and are all abloom. Â I want to mark which ones are red, yellow, and pink so that I can group them by color next year for an even more stunning display.
I also had my first harvest this weekend. A handfull of beans. I didn’t even bother cooking them. They were a little bitter and I think I’ll pick them younger from here on out but they were fresh and crisp. Still no tomatoes though there is a little one forming. Seems late but perhaps it just feels that way since it’s been so hot.
Vector is bigger and still helping Daddy whenever it’s time to work on a project. Unless he’s tired… then he just sleeps on a chair and keeps an eye on the situation.
This weekend we tackled a couple unexpected problems. Namely: Pantry moths. On Thursday evening we drove out to the container store to pick up a bunch of glass jars. My mom always had the flower and sugar etc in glass cracker jars. I’m sure hers were genuine vintage but I was in a bind and had to make do with new.
They look quite cute in the ikea cupboard we have in the kitchen and once I have enough space to spread out, I think they will be really nice. In the short term they are making it hard for the pantry moths which was definitely the goal. The 1 gal jars were $6.99 plus I had a 10% off coupon so $6.30 per jar. I bough 4 large and 4 medium sized jars. They aren’t all full yet but I’m sure I’ll come up with stuff to stash in them.
I also stumbled upon these at Dollar Tree of all places.
They are tall enough to store pasta which is great. I had some concerns that they may be the gross plastic that makes your food taste bad and is supposed to give you cancer. I figured I’d just risk it for $1 a piece. Turns out, they are BPA free:
Food Safe, Microwave Safe, Freezer safe, Top-rack dishwasher safe. Awesome though I don’t know of any dishwashers that would fit that container on the top rack. These will be great for dried beans, pasta, etc and they look like the perfect fridge storage for batched cocktails.
You can see the place is still a construction zone. Yes that is ram-board on my kitchen floor and yes, it is the most awesome stuff ever. I’m entirely baffled how it works. It’s waterproof, ding proof, cuts easily with a knife, 100% recyclable. It’s pricey at $31 for a 50′ by 3′ roll but def worth it. Without it, our floors would be a mess I’m sure. Anyways, I wanted to show you the excellent catfood container we picked up while we were at the container store. We think that’s how the moths found there way into the house. I also had this amazing realization that these awesome heart shaped food prep bowls I got as a wedding gift make the worlds cutest cat bowls. I feel bad using such a nice gift to feed the cat but it was so cute I couldn’t resist.
As far as actual house stuff, you saw above Stefan and the cat working on the dishwasher. That is now wired all the way back to the breaker as is the stove and the refrigerator. We have wires coiled in the basement and pulled through the walls for the under-cabinet outlets and lights. Those still need to be pulled back to the box in the basement but that is fairly low priority and doesn’t have to be done before the drywall is fixed. We still have a good bit to do before the electric is done in the kitchen but we are making progress. We are learning as we go and we are definitely getting faster.
Tomorrow is the holiday and we have big plans. We are going to finish up the kitchen electric and plumbing with help of Gold Medal Plumbing and Drain and get a big hole in the kitchen wall ready for the gas and drain for the laundry room upstairs. The kitchen windows come on Friday and If all goes according to plan, we will get those installed next weekend and work on water supply and electric for the closet/laundry room. Then we can have the drywall installed and start getting our kitchen to start looking like a kitchen again!
Have a wonderful Independence Day and don’t forget to remember what this day is all about!
Sarah
House Update – June 16 and 17
This weekend was all about the kitchen. Well, all about the kitchen and the porch. Well, all about the kitchen, the porch and the cat.
Saturday morning we finally got the stove installed.
We decided on a slide-in White Fridgidaire. We purchased it from FullHouseAppliances.com and we could not be more pleased with the service. The stove arrived with some cosmetic damage and the store shipped out a new enameled top. That top arrived chipped again and they had no qualms about sending out yet another one. Great customer service, we are very pleased.
Out of boredom with take-out and sandwiches, I broke down and bought a really nice toaster oven this week so we were finally able to cook meat in our new house! Good to know: you can make shake and bake in a toaster oven. We got this really nice Oster one. I highly recommend it. With the convection mode, things cook nice and even and you can really control the temperature much better than with other toaster ovens.
It’s just $79 and was a super life-saver. I regret not buying it earlier! I had it for just 3 days before the stove was installed. I should have bought it right when we moved in!
The other purchase of the week was this nice dehumidifier. The basement has been quite damp. I think the digging of the porch footings did a number on the soil around the foundation of the house and the fact that the porch doesn’t have gutters yet isn’t helping things. We have a bit of mold growing in the basement and we need a good dehumidifier to keep things dry.
We have also had good luck with these little condensate pumps. We have on on the furnace, one on the hot water heater, and one on the dehumidifier. They come with the tubing which is handy though we have had to buy extra tubing to run over to the drain. Not a big deal all in all and they are super easy to install.
We bought it on Amazon, as usual. We spend more than $600 a month on Amazon. It’s amazing how much your spending habits change when you can comparison shop online and when you come to rely on the convenience of 2nd day delivery. We price check everything at home depot with Amazon.com to see what we can save. In general, you don’t pay sales tax with Amazon but that’s quickly changing as states wise up to the loop-hole. My pocketbook is sad but I know it’s the right thing to do..
On Saturday, after getting the dehumidifier set up and the stove in, Stefan went to work making a jig for the balusters. The toe-rail of the porch is a 2 piece design with a peaked top to prevent water from resting on the toe rail. This requires that we cut a notch out of the balusters.
To make things more complicated, we are putting the balusters on the diagonal. We built a nice jig to ensure we are cutting the balusters at the correct angle.
While Stefan was working on these odds and ends, I continued painting the handrails and toerails and the sides of the balusters. I used a very nice spray gun that I LOVE! I talk about it here:
Here you can see my handsome husband in his ppe (personal protective equipment) cutting balusters all day.
Two hundred and ten balusters later, we have all the pieces cut so the porch guys can start finishing up that project. We primed all the pieces and elected not to paint them since we really want to spend our time getting the inside of the house up to par. The primer will protect the wood until we get around to painting everything with the Sherwin Williams Duration Exterior paint we are planning on using on the porch.
Vector is starting to get curious about the rest of the house. We need to put some doors back on the gutted rooms and we should be able to let Vector have full reign of most of the house in a couple weeks. For now he is confined to the piano room and the bedroom. We do bring him into the kitchen when we are working on dinner but we set a scrap piece of MDF across the door and he’s got maybe another week until a 2 foot barrier will no longer be an obstacle.
Sarah
Kitchen Electric Plan
On Saturday, we are hoping to get the bulk of the electric done in the kitchen, our electrical contractor will come in and hopefully finish the job as soon as possible. We’ve already pulled a good bit of the wire. We just used the old wire to pull the new. Since we don’t have any more breaker slots in the electric panel, we’re going to have to get creative. We do have a couple circuits that we can replace but we are going to have to get a new panel at some point. We already have a 100 ft extension cord running to the 3rd floor to power my super handy and necessary nightlights. That house is CREEPY in the dark and only half the overhead lights actually work so the nightlights aren’t going anywhere fast.
Kitchens have a rediculous number of circuits. The high points of the electrical code:
- Lights are on their own circuit
- there must be 2 circuits for under cabinet outlets
- you must have an outlet every 4 feet above countertop
- outlets within 2 feet of a sink must be GFCI
- The refridgerater needs its own circuit
- the garbage disposal needs its own circuit
- the dishwasher needs its own circuit
- the stove needs it’s own circuit
Add all that up, and we are up to 11 circuits in the kitchen alone.
- Fridge
- Stove
- Vent Hood
- Garbage disposal
- Dishwasher
- Under cabinet outlets
- Under cabinet outlets 2
- Under cabinet lights
- Overhead lights
- Remaining outlets in room
- Microwave cabinet outlets
Now, a lot of these rules make sense. You can also do what I did and call Globird Energy that offers Cheap Electricity in your local area. For example, having the lights and the outlets on separate circuits insures there isn’t that awkward dim when the toaster oven turns on. The dishwasher has a big heating element that would trip the breaker if the circuit was shared with a microwave for instance. In fact, that was the case at our most recent apartment and we just didn’t use the microwave when the dishwasher was on… I guess that’s not considered a legitimate fix. Regardless of the necessity of these rules, they are the rules and we’ll do our best to abide by them. Unfortunately, there is no way we have enough breaker space in our electric panel. This is a picture from before the AC and Heat were put in. That took up the remaining 5 breaker slots. We are at 100% capacity in the box at this point.
Fortunately, we can make do until we get a new panel. It’s just a matter of time and energy to get a new panel. We do want to go ahead and pull all the wire and put in the appropriate electric receptacles to make everything up to code as soon as we have the resources to do so, which is important if for example you want to sell your house, but there are Chicago based house buying companies which can help you with this, since they can buy the house from you, for a reasonable deal.
We are doing something a little different with the outlets above the counter. I’m planning on buying wholesale led strip lighting to place under the cabinets instead of outlets in the backslash. I like the clean look of no outlets. This picture from AccentOnDesign.net shows what I mean.
For the under-cabinet lights, we are still undecided but we know we want LED puck lights. Ikea sells a set that is by far the cheapest at $29.99 for a set of 4 but Stefan doesn’t like the way the set is connectorized. I figure we can make it work. We are still looking into other options. LED is great because they don’t get too hot and they last forever. Halogen is the ubiquitous choice for puck lights but they generate so much heat that no-one wants to turn them on!
I’m also planning on adding lights to the 18″ glass door cabinets. I think that will really look great. That will take a lot of lights and they wont’ be used that often so those will almost definitely be the cheaper Ikea lights. They are specified to have a light temperature of 2700 Kelvin which is right where a warm white incandescent would be. With the white cabinets we certainly don’t want to be in the cooler 3200 Kelvin range.
There are 14 glass doors on the upper cabinets and there are about 8 feet of under cabinet length.
I’m thinking 2 to the left of the stove, 2 to the right, and 4 more on this side.
and 2 on this side. That comes to 10 under-cabinet and 14 in the glass door upper cabinets. That’s $180 for lighting if we go with the Ikea model. All-in-all not horrible. The strip outlets are in the $30-$50 range and we need 2 short, 1 long, and 1 medium one. I’d say we’re looking at $120 for outlet strips. Of course, none of this can be installed until the cabinets are in and the cabinets can’t go in until the drywall is re-done after the windows are replaced.
For overhead lights, I’m thinking of one light above the kitchen island and one over the kitchen table, this will be part of my kitchen remodeling project. The microwave cabinet needs a pair of outlets and there are a couple more places in the kitchen where an outlet would be handy. Between the basement door and the entry door as well as next to the bathroom door. One under the window next to the stairs would also be nice. Honestly, I see these being used for guests to charge cell phones and us to charge our laptops while we are working on the kitchen table. Nerdy reason for even more outlets but I know how we work and needing power everywhere is certainly a part of how we live.
The kitchen is also going to have some hi-tech updates. Â I would like at least one ethernet jack. Â I’m thinking in the wall between the basement and entry doors. Â I foresee that housing a beautiful secretary desk that serves both as my mail catch-all as well as some display space. Â Also, I just love secretary desks and the drawers will be a great additional storage.
Something like this one I saw on Craigslist a while ago is what I’m thinking:
I know I had said Hoosier cabinet in that spot but it would really need to be narrow and I don’t know if I’ll find one I like. Â I’ve also always had a thing for secretary desks!
In addition to an ethernet port, I also want a monitor under mounted to my cabinets.  The mounts are fairly inexpensive:
And the monitor can be any HDTV with an HDMI input. I’ll run the HDMI cable through the floor to the basement to a desktop PC sitting in the basement. HDMI retains signal quality for distances up to 50 ft so we should be fine on that respect. I’m planning on using a remote keyboard and mouse. I wish I had the perfect drawer to store them in but I think they are destined to sit on the counter top. I can always stash them when I’m trying to clean up.
That’s the wiring plan for the kitchen. Should be a good weekend of pulling wires and dreaming about the new technology we want to sneak into the house.
Sarah
