Posted by Matthew
Sat, 13 May 2006 18:38:00 GMT
My parents let us know that This Old House has a project house in Shaw, DC. So of course we’ve been watching. This Old House is doing the renovations on behalf of a non-profit named Mi Casa that buys houses from the city, restores them, and then sells the house to a low income family (houses go for under $300,000). My parents of course wanted to magically alter our tax bracket and make us eligible. Seeing as how we are severely over our renovation budget I have been considering dropping in on Norm and . . . okay, well, kidnapping him. I know, it’s Norm. We don’t kidnap the master carpenter. But think how nicely he’d restore our banister. Anyway, a boy can dream.
The series just restarted on our PBS station a week ago so if you’re interested you can see it from the start. If Norm fails to appear in the final episodes this post will self-destruct.
Posted in Neighborhood | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Matthew
Sat, 13 May 2006 18:35:00 GMT
UPDATE 07/27/06:
We ended up getting the Nordyne/Gibson JT3BD Heat Pump. We’ve only been in the house a short time but we’ve been through some very hot and humid days and thus far it is working fine.
OLD POST:
We’re now considering installing an Anderson Envirosure 1400 Heat Pump. It uses puron instead of freon and performs the cooling by pulling heat out of your house. It then utilizes an air handler inside the house to distribute the air around the house. It is setup like an air conditioner but flipped around so that the hot coils are on the inside and the cold coils are on the outside.
Heat pumps are generally considered more efficient than air conditioners. Unfortunately, when the temperature drops below freezing the cold coil outside can ice up and it has to switch back to ac mode to heat the coil up and melt the ice. However, we don’t plan on using it in the dead of winter, for that we’ll get a natural gas boiler to send hot water to our radiators. But for cool nights in Fall and Spring it will be fine and should be as simple as flipping a switch to go from cool to hot air.
Posted in Modern amenities | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Matthew
Sat, 13 May 2006 18:05:00 GMT
One of my new responsibilities, one that I am actually excited about as opposed to terrified of, is that of Temperance Hall web master. The site is rising to the top of Google’s search results which is reassuring. I started a flickr tag, temperancehalldc, which someone contributed to and so I followed it to Hook and Ladder Beer which they just so happen to serve at one of K’s favorite places: the
Olney Ale House.
I believe we only made it out there twice, it is not exactly close by, but K and I both have very fond memories of the place. They serve a few vegetarian sandwiches but that memories are of the bread. The fresh molasses bread. Sooo good. And the beer. Mmmmmm. I’d trek out there for the bread and beer alone.
Olney Ale House
Posted in Neighborhood | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by K
Thu, 04 May 2006 05:39:00 GMT
I FINALLY got the windows for the dining room ordered today. I started on Monday, so it only took three days and about eight calls total, including:
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Posted in Remodeling: General | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by K
Wed, 03 May 2006 05:45:00 GMT
I just finally bought the toilet (Toto Aquia, hooray), the faucet (Delta Lockwood in chrome), the sink (American Standard Retrospect), the valves for said sink (some Brasstech stuff), and a toilet seat cover for said toilet (the Toto oval elongated Softclose dealie). Thank you to MI-5 (the BBC show known as Hot Spies in this household) for making all this less painful by distracting me just enough while forking over hundreds of dollars for this stuff.
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Posted in Remodeling: General, Remodeling: Bathroom | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by K
Sun, 30 Apr 2006 18:18:00 GMT
Treehugginess aside, I want central air. I have been living in the land of the uniseason, between 50 and 70 most of the year, and I get wilty and pathetic and whiny when the temperature goes above 75 or 80 degrees. Welcome to DC, wimp. Get ready for some suck.
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Posted in Modern amenities, Remodeling: General | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by K
Sat, 29 Apr 2006 16:30:00 GMT
At this point a lot of the basic stuff is done… there are joists walls and subfloors and plumbing and electric ready. Framing is going up and drywall is being put in. We get kitchen measurements on Monday. Things are moving along.
Our contractor has an odd urgent way of phrasing things that I realized the other day is probably not intentional but sends me into a panic anyway. He also tends to not give us much lead time in procuring things, but I guess some of this is my fault and I should already have windows picked out, even though I don’t have measurements.
He gave us three days to come up with a showerhead (not so hard except for the whole have-to-order-it-online part since we can’t just pick it up and run it over). Last night he basically said “I need to know if you already chosen the windows for the dining room. They have to be 35×75 or smaller” and suddenly I feel judged and stupid like of COURSE we should have windows picked out. I know this is all in my head and that the judging and whatnot is not there, but I feel that way anyway.
So, this weekend we have to decide on said windows for said dining room, buy the sink/faucet/toilet/drain/light for the bathroom so that we have a leg up there, and send the contractor the next million dollar installment. I am thinking we should also decide on what to do about the kitchen window and get on that, as well. Next week is cabinet time. Then we can worry about sinks and countertops. The ongoing lamp-buying debacle continues in which I am outbid on every lamp I try to get on eBay. Right now we have light in the kitchen, dining room, foyer, and possibly hall. Ideally I would also like living room and main bedroom fixtures before we move in. Just because it might take some time to find the actual lamps we own once we move and it would be nice to be able to see in those rooms in the meantime.
I just saw last night that the owner of a small local DC natural food market (called, optimistically and enthusiastically: “Yes! Organic Market”) signed an agreement to put a store in about a block away from our house. This makes me very happy, even if it won’t be there until 2008. The yuppie in me wanted a Whole Foods there, but I feel less guilty about a nice local chain that only has four other stores, and it will not cause parking nightmares in the neighborhood like Whole Foods would. Granted, the wine and cheese selection will be nil, but if I ever open my wine and cheese shop up the street it means less competition for me.
Posted in Remodeling: General | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Matthew
Fri, 28 Apr 2006 15:27:00 GMT
Last night I watched an alarming program on global warming. I was already freaked about our potential gas bill after peeking at our neighbor’s bill in January. Having an old house is great but not if you’re paying to heat the outdoors. Our place didn’t have insulation but that’s been rectified. We still have a bunch of windows to replace once we get in there.
At any rate, electricity is another concern since I’ll be working at home all of the time and thus be home consuming electricity all of the time. The green electricity offerings in the area are encouraging
Pepco Energy Services offers 100% green electricity at $0.1147 /kWh for 12 months. Washington Gas offers a $0.1225 /kWh rate. Compare that with the $0.1143 /kWh that I pay to PG&E for baseline usage. This year and last we used over 400 kwh of power for 3/10-4/10. We went over the baseline usage and paid a more painful rate for a small portion of power. Seems like green electricity is competitive and there isn’t really a reason not to do it.
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Posted in Modern amenities, Purchase | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Matthew
Fri, 28 Apr 2006 07:17:00 GMT
I’ve started to look into fixing all of the modern appliances that regularly drive me bat shit.
First, connectivity to the Internet. I need to compare the evil Comcast with services from RCN (http://www.rcn.com/). At first glance RCN’s 20Mbps download with 2Mbps upload for $90/month seems like the fastest speed I can obtain for a reasonable rate. My employer pays for $50/month so it is not as outlandish as it might look at first glance. T1 service is around $300/month which is still out of reach for a single home (but several homes . . .hmm). Sadly, I couldn’t find a provider that offered it in 20011.
RCN offers phone services as well but it is not clear from their site if the service is over VoIP. The second things on the list to fix is removing all dependency on the PSTN.
Unfortunately, I think it may have already been wired into the house. The only equipment requiring a TDM line is the ancient Tivo that I hope to replace anyway and a possible security system already installed in the house (likely to be non-functional). Turns out ADT is on top of it and offers a cell based service. Interesting. Wires come into the basement and everything becomes wireless.
Posted in Modern amenities, Purchase | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by K
Tue, 25 Apr 2006 04:29:00 GMT
Even though things were quiet for a while (in that we didn’t hear a lot for a week or so) there has been stuff going on at the house. The electrician has rewired everything, the bathroom floor joists are removed and replaced, insulation has been going up, an AC guy came by today to give us an estimate (on ducts and also AC, separately, in case we want to do the AC proper later even though it makes sense to get the ducts in now), and most excitingly, the kitchen beam is now in. Check out the pictures.
Now we have to pick a bunch of tile out for the bathroom floor. They are going to finish up some stuff this week and should be ready for that stuff soon. I think we know what we want, but we have to order it from Rockville and have someone pick it up and deliver it to the house for us. Whee. Also, time to make a sink decision so the plumbing rough-in can get in.
Posted in Remodeling: Kitchen, Remodeling: General | no comments | no trackbacks
