Neighbor Nicknames

We moved into our current house in 2006. So, by now, you would think that we would know most of our neighbors. But we don't.

We like the ones we have met, but we haven't met the vast majority of them. Many of them I have never even seen, and the ones I haven't talked to I obviously wouldn't recognize outside of the context of our street. So (like many people), we have come up with some nicknames for the neighbors we haven't met (since we don't know their real names). For instance there are The Rich People, who live in a house noticeably larger than any of the other houses on our street (actually, the footprint of their garage looks almost as large as our house's), drive a Lexus, and own a huge boat.

Recently, it occurred to me that our neighbors undoubtedly have created nicknames for Heimlich and I. I wonder what they call me?

Anal Lawn Guy?
Anti-social Weirdo?
The Guy Who Hates Dogs?
The Doofy Dresser?
Princess Hairgel?

On Haggling

A few months ago, I mentioned that we were going to be redecorating our living room. Here's what it currently looks like:


As you can see, it's very cluttered and the furniture doesn't match with the room (because when we moved in, we just threw the furniture that we had in there). The TV is too low, and the entertainment center blocks the window on the wall behind, etc...

We finally made a little bit of progress on this front -- we bought some new furniture to replace all of the crap on that end of the room (surprising, because we never agree on furniture). We got a quote on the furniture, and then went home to discuss and measure the room. After deciding to go ahead with it, I called the salesperson and tried to haggle the price down by about 7%. She said that she would have to talk to her manager and then she would call us back.

She didn't call back for over 2 hours. Now, we had been in the store about 2 hours earlier, and there weren't that many customers. So, I can only assume that the delay in calling us back was because:

1. her manager is hard to get a hold of,
2. she forgot to call us back, or
3. it was a game to find out how eager we were to buy the furniture.

I don't know how these things work, but I reasoned that if we called her back first to find out what the delay was, she would know that we really wanted the furniture, and her counter offer could be higher (or possibly, I'm too eager to spot a conspiracy). In the end, she agreed to the price that asked for.

The furniture isn't going to arrive for another 7-8 weeks, unfortunately. Apparently, the economy isn't working in our favor (they don't have lots of inventory laying around). How could it possibly take that long to get non-custom furniture? I can only assume that amount of time is needed to harvest the wood from some endangered Amazonian rain forest, ship it here in a hermetically-sealed and climate-controlled container, before some carpenters specially flown over from Japan painstakingly hand carve each piece using only tools from the 18th century.

House and Gas Bills, Part 2

Yesterday, I posted about the odyssey we have been having with our house. If there is a silver lining to this story, it's that the insulation we installed on our third floor has greatly reduced our gas bill (we have a gas furnace). Here's a copy of our gas bill from 2008, showing our usage for the previous 12 months:


We used 74.3 MCF (thousand cubic feet) of natural gas over the previous 12 months. Over that period of time, we paid an average of just over $10/MCF -- meaning we paid roughly $750 in natural gas usage over that 12 month period (plus fees).

At around that point, we fully insulated the third floor of our house (at a cost of maybe $120, plus all of our labor). Our latest gas bill shows our gas usage for the 12 months since we installed that insulation:


Wow! What a difference! The amount of gas needed in 12 months dropped from 74.3 to 10.5 MCF (a reduction of 85%). Some of the difference is certainly due to temperature differences between the two years. Some is also due to different thermostat settings. But clearly, the majority has to be due to the insulation we installed.

The latest graph looks a little strange. It looks like we used gas in Nov and Dec 2008, and then none since. In actuality, the Nov and Dec numbers are based on an estimate of our gas usage based from previous years. Of course, this estimate was waaay too high. The graph shows we haven't used any gas in the months since Dec, because we have been living off the credits from being overcharged. For this reason, our annual usage may have actually been lower than 10.5 MCF for the past year (because that 10.5 MCF includes gas we have been charged for, but haven't used yet, since we still have a credit).

Ok, so our house isn't quite a passive house [wikipedia.org] yet, but we just took a huge step in that direction. We just saved ourselves several hundred dollars in gas bills every year.

[Back to Part 1.]

House and Gas Bills, Part 1

I wanted to post an update about our house, but first a recap of the odyssey:

In February 2008, the water pipes above our kitchen froze and then burst. It's a long story that you can read about in my previous posts. The contractor who fixed our house told us he thought the problem was the full bathroom that we have on our (uninsulated) third floor of our house. He thought the pipes froze on the third floor, and then froze downward.

During the summer in 2008, we fully insulated the third floor of our house (or as much as was practical to insulate). It ended up being a big job, but it was worth it if it would prevent our pipes from freezing again. Well, it turns out that wasn't the cause of the problem, because in December 2008 our pipes froze again. Since we knew exactly where the pipes were, we opened up the ceiling in the right spot, and Heimlich thawed out the pipes with a hairdryer before they burst. In the process, we discovered where cold air was entering our house and fixed it, hopefully preventing our pipes from freezing again in the future.

For the past six months or so, we have been living with holes in our kitchen ceiling. We had gotten to the point where we didn't even notice them anymore.


Well, I finally got around to fixing the holes (see above picture). We also placed a (borrowed) remote temperature sensor in the ceiling near the pipes. We will monitor the temperature near the pipes over the next winter, and if everything is hunky dory (translation: if the pipes don't freeze again) we'll finish off the job next spring.

More tomorrow.

Kitchen Computing

One of the things that I have wanted to do (but will probably perpetually remain on the back burner) is put a computer with a touchscreen monitor in our kitchen. Mind you, I wouldn't want to waste any counter space, so the computer would have to be hidden away somewhere, and the monitor would be mounted to the underside of the cabinets.


Ok, why would I want a computer in the kitchen? Porn. No, it's so that I could bring up recipes on the screen near the stove (bypassing my current wasteful process of printing every recipe I want to try out). It would also allow me to set up playlists of MP3s, or listen to the internet feed of my satellite radio service. Or, I could watch clips on YouTube or Hulu while I am waiting for things to boil or reduce.

Currently, we only have one timer in the kitchen, which can be problematic when cooking multiple things at the same time. A computer would allow you to run multiple timers at the same time (and label them so that you know what they are).

Having a computer in the kitchen may also solve another problem... Whenever Heimlich and I get into one of our dumb debates while we're cooking, we won't have leave anything unattended to Google for the answer ("NO! I'm telling you, when 'diction' is used in the context of singing, it has nothing to do with word choice!").

And finally, it's solves the issue of me trying to check my email every 5 seconds, even when I'm cooking.

Image of touch screen from bobsee's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

More Plumbing Problems

Buying a house might have been the worst idea that Heimlich and I ever had. That's right. Worse than my haircut. Worse than the plan of buying a laptop that had Vista installed onto it. Worse than the idea to try to hike the Lanipo Trail, which was so rough that we could only manage to average 1mph and never even got close to reaching the goal. Worse than our idea to do a walking tour of Potsdam, and were so sore from all of the walking that we couldn't walk right for the next few days. I think you get the idea.

We're now having yet another plumbing problem at our house. Every time we have a problem with the house, we discover that it has been caused by the half-assed work performed by the previous owner (exhibit A).

We have two showers in the house. Last year, we discovered that the drain pipe in one of the showers was leaking, so we repaired it. And just recently, the drain pipe in the other shower started leaking. Which means that we had to punch another hole into our kitchen ceiling to get to it (see below).


I cut the really long hole into our ceiling a few weeks ago, when a pipe froze. We created the hole, thawed out the pipe, and then closed the gap where cold air was entering our house. Luckily, we hadn't patched up that hole yet. Because now we have another hole in that same section that we can repair at the same time.

Redecorating Living Room

In what is sure to be the first part of an extended series, I'm going to mention that we're at the beginning stages of redecorating our living room.

There are multiple problems with our living room. When Heimlich and I moved into this house, we just took all of the furniture that we had before we met, and threw it into this room. The result is a room that looks like it was decorated by a bunch of color-blind people trying to make an anti-Martha Stewart decorating statement... when the reality is that we've just been too busy and lazy to get it done right.


The problems with our living room include: not having enough sitting space for guests when we have people over, the TV is too low and too far from the couches, it's too cluttered (this is almost entirely my fault), and Heimlich has always hated the wall color.

So, we're right at the beginning stages of figuring out how to fix it, which will probably include painting, and some new furniture.

Oh, and by the way, I have no problems with posting a picture of our living room to the web, because we don't own anything that anyone would want to steal anyway. Our TV is easily the smallest among anyone we know, and the most expensive piece of electronics in there is the Playstation 2.

Home Improvement Kick

A little while ago, I posted about how I created a hole in our kitchen ceiling to tend to a frozen pipe. That has kind of started us off on a whole home improvement kick.

After that happened, we finally got up the motivation to do some demolition work in our basement (which we have been meaning to do since we moved in 2 1/2 years ago) and redo the drywall there, too (since we're going to have to do a bunch of drywall work to fix the kitchen ceiling anyway). So, those walls have been ripped down to the studs:


At this point, all of the demo work has been done, and we're getting ready to hang some drywall.

Another Pipe Freeze, Part 2

Last week, I started an explanation of the crisis that we had at our house last week. This is the second and final part.

An addition was built onto our house by the previous owner, making our kitchen huge, and adding some other 1st floor rooms. It was probably the main reason we decided to buy this house in the first place. During the recent sledgehammering, I discovered that air from outside is somehow getting into area above the ceiling in the addition. After some investigation, I found out that there is a small gap between the floor joists in the original house, and the joists in the addition, allowing cold air (above the kitchen ceiling) to go from the addition into the original part of the house (see below diagram).


Below is a picture of the corresponding area, after I jammed a whole bunch of insulation into the gap between the joists.


Of course, there is still the question of how cold air is getting into the area above the ceiling in the addition. But at least we have hopefully taken enough action to prevent the pipes from freezing again in the future.

Another Pipe Freeze, Part 1

Last week, I alluded to a crisis that we had been having at our house.

First, some background: About 10 months ago, a pipe froze above our kitchen and burst, doing a lot of damage to our house. Insurance covered the repairs, but in the process, discovered that the floor joists in that area had been improperly notched, creating a potentially dangerous situation that had to be fixed. So, we had the joists reinforced (and a bunch of new insulation was crammed into this area) before our kitchen was put back together.

The consensus among everyone who looked at the damage was that because the third floor of our house (which contains a full bathroom) was not fully insulated or heated, it allowed the pipes to freeze. The pipes then froze downward, and one just happened to burst above our kitchen. Over this past summer, Heimlich and I spent a lot of time fully insulating the third floor of our house, to prevent this scenario from repeating itself.

About a week ago, the temperatures dropped into the single digits again, and the same water pipe froze. After trying just about every technique that we could think of to thaw out our pipes, I eventually took a sledgehammer to our kitchen ceiling, and then Heimlich thawed out the exposed pipes with a hair dryer.



Obviously, the problem had not been solved by us insulating the third floor of our house... But the most important thing is that we were able to get the pipe thawed out before it burst.

More tomorrow. [Go to part 2.]

ACK!

We're kind of having a crisis over here. I literally have not slept at all since 7AM yesterday morning. I wish that were an exaggeration. And it culminated in me taking a sledgehammer to my (beautiful) kitchen ceiling this morning.

Let me tell you, after I have been up for more than 24 hours straight, I'm not the most coordinated person (as you might imagine). At that point, the last place I should have been was on a ladder, swinging a sledgehammer overhead.

More on this after I regain my sanity...

Never Moving

Earlier this year, I mentioned that the facility that I work at might be relocated to the Nashville area. For a while, all of our long-term (personal) plans were put on hold while we waited to find out if we were either going to move or whether I was going to look for a new job. Fortunately, it was announced later that although the facility I work in is moving into a brand new building, it will be built nearby.

At that point, we reverted to our previously plans of moving closer to work in a few years (Heimlich and I both currently commute a long distance in the same direction). We weren't thinking about moving immediately because of the downturn in the housing market and because Heimlich doesn't think that she has built up enough seniority at work to feel long-term job security yet.

Recently, it has occurred to us that she may never have the kind of job security that we would want before moving, due to the nature of her job. So, our current thinking is that we're not going to be moving. At least, not for the foreseeable future.

The upshot is that we love our house, and we'd get to stay in it. It is a modestly-sized house, so we are living well within our means. And it is also a very nice house, with refinished woodwork throughout, so we love having it. We have also spent a lot of time and money fixing it up, and it's finally at the point where we want it. Here are some shots from a few years ago, when we bought it:



We're also in the inner ring of Cleveland suburbs, meaning that if Heimlich needs to find a new job, she would have the best chance of finding one around here. If we moved closer to where we both work now (out in the country), her job choices would be very limiting.

We also live in a great city (Lakewood), with tons of like-minded people, and almost everything within walking distance.

The downside of staying where we are is that we both have long commutes right now (which become even worse when it snows). I'm putting around 30k/year on my car. However, our commutes are against traffic, so even if the drive is long, it isn't in stop-and-go traffic.

House Moving

My old PhD advisor is moving a house (as in the house itself, not the contents). I would never have the confidence to wheel around a house without worrying that it was going to tip over in the process... The big hole in the following pictures is where the old foundation was.





More pictures on Flickr [flickr.com].

Akron and Murfreesboro

It was announced a short time ago [ohio.com] that the Bridgestone/Firestone North American Tech center will be moved to a brand new facility either in Akron, OH (where it is currently located) or in Murfreesboro, TN (near the corporate headquarters). The tech center currently employs somewhere between 600 and 1000 people in facilities that are nearly 100 years old.

Originally, there were several options on the table, including an extensive renovation of the current facilities, and building a brand new facility in some other locations. All of those other options have been eliminated from consideration.

Both Akron and Murfreesboro are located about an hour away from a major city. Akron is located near Cleveland, OH, and Murphreesboro is located near Nashville, TN. Other than that, I really did not know much about Murphreesboro (having never been there before). So, I decided to do some research. Here is a rundown of the two cities:

	Akron, OH	Murfreesboro, TN
Population:	209,704 (2006 estimate)	100,575 (2008 special census)
Population Density:	3,497.3 people per square mile	1,764.9 inhabitants per square mile
Racial Makeup:	67.22% White, 28.48% African American, 0.26% Native American, 1.50% Asian (source)	79.85% White, 13.89% African American, 0.28% Native American, 2.69% Asian (source)
Median age:	34	29 years
Median income/household:	$31,835	$39,705
Average Temp:	49.6F (Cleveland, OH)	59.1F (Nashville, TN)
Nearby Professional Sports Teams:	Cleveland Cavaliers, Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Browns	Tennessee Titans, Nashville Predators
Sales Tax:	6.25%	9.75%
Job Growth	-0.66%	17.85%
Median Home Price	$74,900	$142,000
% population with commute 45 mins. or longer	9.6%	18.5%

In summary, it appears that Murfreesboro is whiter, more affluent, and booming. Whereas Akron is suffering from the malaise of much of the industrialized northeast US. From my point of view, the biggest minus of Murfreesboro (other than it being far from family and friends) is the average temp. Does any of this make up for the fact that I would be totally useless in the summer because of the heat?

Lawn Care

I'm slowly becoming one of those crazy lawn people. I wish I were kidding. You know those people who spend an inordinate amount of time trying to keep their lawn looking like a golf course? Those people that go out and pick up individual leaves off their lawn in seasons other than fall? It's either that or complete insanity that I'm heading towards... Is this what homeowning does to a man?

The other day, I caught myself looking for lawn care weblogs to start reading. Lawn care weblogs!?!? As if most weblogs weren't boring enough to read (take this one for example) -- and now I'm looking for ones that just talk about this or that fertilizer to try...

Anyway, for any other crazy lawn people out there, I did find The Green View [greenviewblog.com], which is a weblog all about lawn care.

I also found a link to an EPA guide on eco-friendly lawn care [newdream.org].

If anyone sees me buying pink flamingos to put out on my lawn, please shoot me and put me out of my misery.

Kitchen

I have been posting about the disaster in our kitchen. Hopefully, this will be the last post on the subject for a while.

The last time I posted about my kitchen, the ceiling had been repaired, but the room needed to be repainted.

It is becoming increasingly likely that we will be moving in the next 5 or so years. Everything is so uncertain at this time. But anyway, although we loved the color of the walls in the kitchen, we felt that they did not look good in pictures, and may make the house more difficult to sell at a later date. So, we decided to go with another color (since it had to be repainted anyway). Here's a picture I took of our kitchen back when we bought the house:


We decided to have it changed to a more neutral color. Here is a picture of the kitchen in the new color:


The big cubby hole on the upper left is where our microwave normally sits. We are currently in the midst of cleaning everything top to bottom, since a ton of dust got all over the place during the demolition process.

Hopefully, our house will return to normal soon.

[More entries on this subject: Feb 18, Feb 19, Feb 25, Mar 6]

Enough with the Snow Already...

Dear Terence,

You are a dumbass.


The next time there is a forecast for a foot of snow and near-blizzard conditions, check that you have enough gas for the snowblower. Because it will take about 5 seconds, and will save you from having to drive all over the city in the middle of the storm, looking for the one gas station that is crazy enough to try to stay open in those conditions.

How they ever let an idiot like you get a PhD is beyond me.

your snowblower

House Update

A little while ago, I posted about how our kitchen is a disaster area due to a pipe freezing and then bursting. Here's an updated picture:


We're almost there. The joists have been repaired, a new ceiling has been put up, and the texture on the ceiling has been replicated. Speaking of the ceiling texture, I have to tell you that I never really looked closely at our original ceiling. To us, the new texture looks really exaggerated, but it's really hard to say. Here is a closeup of the way it looks now:


It's entirely possible that it looks almost exactly the same as the original ceiling, but the texture looks exaggerated to us because we are scrutinizing it right now.

At any rate, we are close to having a normal kitchen again...

[More entries on this subject: Feb 18, Feb 19, Feb 25, Mar 12.]

Houston, We Have More Problems...

It isn't my intention to turn this into a home improvement weblog, but my house has been preoccupying my mind as of late.

Last week, I posted some pictures of our kitchen after a pipe burst. Our intention was to rip the ceiling down, put a new one up, repaint, and then everything would be back to normal. Well, of course, things never go that easy...


The above picture is of the floor joists in the kitchen ceiling. We had our first look at them ever after the ceiling was pulled down (having only owned this home for 2 years). These joists support the 2nd floor bathroom, which has a really huge bathtub in it.

The finishing work on our house was beautiful, which was one of the reasons that we bought it. And since then, we have found that a ton of the underlying work was done in a really half-assed manner (see above picture).

The thing that is wrong with the above picture is that several of the joists have been cut almost all of the way through so that pipes could be run. Those joists are now sagging from the weight of the bathroom above. Obviously this has to be fixed first.

So, like every other home project known to man, it is expanding far beyond the original scope, and doesn't seem like it will ever end...

[More entries on this subject: Feb 18, Feb 19, Mar 6, March 12.]