New Shades

Last Christmas my folks gave us some money to purchase shades for our windows, we finally got around to spending some of that money.  We purchased shades for our basement and bedroom, because Menards was having a 51% off sale on Levolor shades.

If you haven't noticed shades are stupid expensive, so we were pretty happy to find these at a decent price.  The only issue is that the middle window is 5 feet wide, so there is quite a bit of weight on the strings.  They have worked fine, but I worry about that a bit.

We ordered 5 shades at 36" wide (60" tall I think) and 2 at 60" wide.  We wish we had ordered for the middle floor as well, since they are working pretty well.  We paid $61 for the 3 footers and just under $100 for the 5 footers, $539.62 all together.

Gravel -> Blacktop

When we built our house 4 years ago we had to bring in a ridiculous about of fill for our driveway.  As a result we had/have issues with the apron on our garage sinking as well as the walkway to our front door.  So we have been hesitant to pave our driveway.

This summer the kids have been biking and triking around on the gravel quite a bit and we thought it was time to upgrade.  Last year I had gotten some quotes on the cost and they all seemed to come in at a consistent 7-8 thousand dollars.  This year I got a couple more quotes and had one at $6370 and one at $9000.  We went with cheaper options, as how bad can they screw it up?

That was about a month ago and we have been very happy with the improvement.  The kids love it and can play out there was an hour or two, which gives Jen opportunities to get some work done, or Facebook on her phone.

I also had to apron of the garage mud jacked for $400 so that the blacktop could be installed at the correct height.  This worked out pretty well too.

Vapor Intrusion... Who knew?!

I received an email from Aria Cahill regarding this infograph. Seems like some good information and another reason I am happy we were able to address our radon issue.  Apparently there are other chemicals in the ground as well that act similar to radon and will intrude into your basement.  It appears that the mitigation is the same as for radon, so we are covered.

Radon Mitigation Success !

After reading an article in newspaper about radon in the Twin Cities, Jen thought we should test our basement (since we had just put in a gas fireplace).  Test came back with a reading of 10 pCi/L, 4 is the EPA recommended level.  So we bought an electronic meter and stayed out of the basement for a week.

We placed the sensor in the same location to verify the accuracy with the other test.  The reading for the electronic meter came back at 12.  The directions say to place the meter 20 inches above the floor, but since we are always crawling around we thought we would get a reading on the floor.  On the floor the reading was 25-30 pCi/L.

So after doing some reading I found that typical installation fees for mitigation systems run $800 to $1200, which I thought was a bit excessive for the materials involved.  Being a DIY kind of guy I installed the system myself and now the reading is 1.2 pCi/L on the floor!  We are very happy.

Cost:

• Fan - $100
• Pipe - $50
• Drill rental - $70
• Incidentals - ~$50 ?

So for about $300 I was able to install the system.  It wasn't too hard and it was very satisfying to see the reduction in the reading.

Utility Room Wall.

We are working on finishing the basement, we needed to make some room in the family room so we could lay out the carpet.  I thought it would be a good time to finish off the wall for the utility room and build some shelving in there to store boxes while we were working in the other room.  Started on a Sunday, and got half of it up that day, and finished the rest during the week.

Stuff goes in, stuff goes out

We had our required septic pumping (every 3 years) and all went well.  Not a big deal, and it was good to have such a critical part of our home checked out with a clean bill of health.  Total cost 2 hours and $225.  We went with Schlomka Septic, for no particular reason and the guy was chatty and had some interesting stories to tell :).

Notice of Valuation

Received our property tax statement for this year and the estimated valuation for next year...
The value of our house:

2011 - 390k
2012 - 380k
2013 - 330k (est.)

Our taxes went up a bit in 2012, even though the value when down a bit.  I am sure hoping that we see a big reduction in 2013 though.  Pretty insane what the value of our home has done.  When it was appraised for the initial loan it was worth 540k (the appraisal).  When we refinanced in October it appraised for 430k; that hurt because we had to pay 60k to stay under 80%.

Oh well, it is in our best interest for the value to go down, because we have no plans to sell it for many, many years and our taxes should go down with the value.  Only negative is that we would like to get a HELOC so that we can do some improvements.

Chimney Sweep

Well it has been two years (didn't burn as much the first year) since we built the house, so it is time to have the chimney cleaned and looked at.  Fireside recommended Smart Sweep as a good guy to call.  Jim Smart came out to the house at 11am (on time), was great with Nick, explaining things to him (and me) and very clean.  He explained that it was something I could do in the future with an investment in a few tools.

I can recommend Jim highly enough, he was professional and friendly.  The fireplace looks great, and we are excited to try it out (once it cools back down).

Total cost was just under $250, so I think I might invest in the tools and give it a go once in awhile.  But when I need a professional, I won't hesitate to call Jim.

MNPR Yeah

Received our MN Property Tax rebate.  $940 on a tax bill of just under $5000.  That is pretty nice, does that mean that we didn't make a lot of money for the tax that we pay on our house (I think so...).

Anyways it is very nice, too bad they did away with it in the new state budget (I think I heard that).

Broken water pipes

Ran into some problems with winter with exploding pipes in the garage. I went to turn on the water to the garage faucet and was met with a "turn it off, turn it off" from Jen who was in the garage.

As you can see once I removed the pipes from the sink there is a small blown out area on each copper pipe. I had to find a tool to remove the nut from the pipe, as it is located in a very difficult to reach place. I found the "vertical" wrench you see, it didn't work too well, it slipped on the nut. I was able to eventually get it off though.

I bought steel flexible pipes to replace the copper pipes and they went on very easily. Hurray problem solved till next winter. I will have to make sure to drain the pipe this winter... I didn't realize there was a value on the turn off to drain the pipe... DUH!!

Pull-up Bar

The homemade pull-up bar I constructed. 1/2 inch vertical pipes, and a 3/4 inch horizontal bar. Couldn't find a 3/4 inch flange to attach to the joist. Also, I am not sure the larger flange would have fit on the joist.

I attached some 2x4's to the webbing to hopefully add some support to the flange screws. I don't have any concerns about the vertical force on the joists, but I am a bit concerned with lateral movements.

It has worked really well for the sets I have done so far. If it ever feels unsecured, I figure I can put blocking between the joists. Total cost was about $35.

Long lost update

So needless to say it has been awhile. Jen and I have had a busy life the last couple weeks. We introduced our new son, Nicholas, into the world and finished moving into the house.

Our folks have been over numerous times, we planted seed on the hillsides around the house to slow erosion. Then of course it didn't rain for 2 weeks... But it finally is today, hurray!

Today I am finally running some Cat5 to the bedroom, so the internet isn't so slow. I can now just remote desktop to my PC and work from there.

Concrete problems

Looks like Lighthouse is going to have to come out and do some work... Like jack hammering up all the surface concrete they poured. I just hope it doesn't look like that under the garage floor. We haven't even started driving on the apron or garage floor yet, but I suspect they would crack pretty badly if we did...

Would love any advise people would have on alternatives and if they would be sufficient or not. I am sure LH will try to fix this as cheaply as possible. Or maybe it will be the responsibility of the sub that poured the concrete. Not sure.

Kitchen Table

This is the kitchen table that we put together for about $30. We went to Basset Furniture to look around and found this table top in the clearance area for $50 (I think). It has some pretty significant flaws, hence the low low price (I think it probably retails for over $1000). Jen and I hemmed and hawed about it for probably an hour with the manager there, eventually he said to just take it and shop there in the future.

Of course we could take it that day since we had the golf, and um yeah that wasn't going to happen. So we came back the next day with a truck and they gave it to us.

Fast forward to a couple weekends ago and I bought 4x4 Douglas fir posts and some paint. So for about $30 I built the legs.

The chairs were a Walmart clearance item for $50 per. Which we thought was pretty reasonable for dinning room chairs. We couldn't find anything cheaper.

Rock around the house

While Jen was working on seeding I was working on putting in edging, landscape fabric and rock down around the house. You haven't lived till you have hauled rocks of rocks around the house... You can see the bags in the lower picture. This is going around the garage on the Rich Valley side of the house.

Seeding the hillside

Here is the the hillside that runs next to our driveway. The driveway had to be brought up to grade with many dump trucks of fill... We starting seeding the area last weekend, then my folks brought over some extra straw bale then had gotten. Jen did most of the raking and seeding.

One more thing

I am also building some shelves in the basement to hold our copious amounts of "stuff". FYI the top shelf is still in progress...

This setup has been replaced to go all the way across to the wall I built for the utility room now.

Up goes the mailbox!

We put the mailbox up Sunday night. It was pretty cold and the ground was hard, but it went up without too much trouble.

The move is just beginning

90% or our "stuff" is now in the new house. It is pretty amazing how much stuff one (or two) acquire in such a short amount of time. Our task now is to separate the wheat from the chaff. We are hoping to empty 1/4 of the boxes to good will / trash/ craigslist, whatever.

As of today, we have the kitchen mostly cleared out and the mudroom down to a couple of boxes. The hardest part for Jen, I think, will be going through her cloths. The hardest part for me will probably be going through the copious boxes of random computers parts that I have collected.

We still have the garage to move over and a few things from the utility room. Oh and I ordered a TV for the family room...

Start the Move

The house is ours as of yesterday. There are still a few things that contractors will be stopping back to finish.

We started moving some stuff last night, and then packed some boxes. We are going to be taking car loads over, unpacking and taking the boxes back to repack. Kind of an involved move process, but it will allow us to sort and put things away as we go.

The cable was installed yesterday, so we have a Comcast phone number now... It was free for 6 months and reduced the install cost, so it would have been foolish to turn it down. Of course now I have to remember to cancel it.

We also bought a "Magic Jack" it is so ridiculously cheap and actually works. We are going to switch our cell phones to pay as you go and then use them like a pager.

I moved our 37" TV over last night to try out the cable. The TV doesn't have a tuner though, so I brought over my computer to use the tuner in that. Unfortunately, I ran an hdmi cable in the wall and thought I had a hdmi to dvi adapter (the TV doesn't have hdmi only dvi). But it was the opposite "gender". Radio shack wanted $38, and Menards wanted $30 for the correct adapter. I found one on Amazon for $1 plus $3 shipping...

So I thought wouldn't it be nice to have a small local business that stocked cables and adapters for a resonable price...

FYI, I am just going to be patient and order the adapter. I brought a monitor over to hook my computer up to.