And Finally a Fence

We've finally gotten to a place with the house where we no longer feel like we're camping. Now when we select home improvement projects, we gravitate towards the ones that show results immediately. We've toyed around with the idea of getting a fence ever since we moved in here. Our two dogs have been very reliable with the boundary, but every now and then they take off after a coyote or some moving bush. And even though they primarily stay in the yard, we can't control what comes into the yard. Also, we swap a lot of dog sitting duties with other folks. It's a always a bit of a pain to leash up the visitor dogs and then take them out. It also doesn't help that Scamp is a bully breed.

While Bob was in Australia, I called a couple of fence company's to give us quotes. We decided on All Arbor Custom Fence. Richard, from All Arbor Fence, was incredibly patient with all our questions, let us change our minds a million times, and in the end he and his team installed our very own awesome fence.

We decided to go with a 5' fence, cedar in the front and chain link along the sides and back.

The posts go in.

The beginnings of the gate.

From the front of the house.

The finished product.

Off the master bedroom

Side View

From the front

One of the 6 gates.

Pepper already enjoying her new found freedom.

With the shiny chain link and the gravel pit style back yard, we kind of look like a state penitentiary. But the shine will wear off in the coming months, and once we get some grass and other plants, it should start to look like home again.

Temperatures are dropping

As it's been getting colder these two guys have been cuddling closer at night. We don't really mind because happiness is two puppies warming your feet.

It's also time for Scamp's sweater season. Before we send him off to daycare or outside, he sits patiently as we put his Fido Fleece on. The cool kids at daycare may make fun of him but he needs it. This seems to be the most ideal coats for Scamp because of the almost full belly coverage it gives. Although Scamp has fur, he's almost bald on his belly and gets cold very quickly. Sometimes we become lazy and leave the fleece on. He loves to lounge in it.

Trees

I love trees. I love jewelry with trees, picture frames with trees, and the trees in my backyard. As much as I love the trees, I hate bugs. And at the Pitt we have female box elder trees, which means I get to suffer through these guys, in the late summer and fall. It's disgusting. The entire side of our house will be covered in these little red suckers. They don't bite, the don't hurt the tree, they are just there. And once it starts getting colder, they creep into your house.

This year was exceptionally bad for box elders, so we made a big decision to cut out all the female box elders in our yard. 4 big beautiful trees. Since we were having those cut, we also had an apple and huge Siberian elm cut down as well. The apple tree was in a really bad place, and the elm was in danger of falling on our house.

One of the large box elder trees was very close to our property line and I being the good neighbor decided to talk to the neighbors about the tree. This is how the interaction went: 

Orsi proceeds to house with KEEP OUT signs

Neighbor: Are you my neighbor?
Orsi: Yes. I came to talk by about this tree...box elder problem...
Neighbor: I don't care what you do. I hate tree's. I'd cut down every tree in my yard if my wife let me.
Orsi: Ummmm. Great. I really like trees and would miss them if they were gone.

So I guess we don't have to ask the neighbors about future trees and I was happy they were cool with it. So the trees are gone and the yard is pretty bare. With the geo and missing trees, we look pretty rough out there.

Not necessarily home rennovation related...

There are certain traits about my mother that make drive me insane.  Her and my dad came to Ann Arbor to pick up their farm fresh chickens and go to Ikea. (Side note: My mother didn't start visiting me in Ann Arbor until they built an Ikea in Canton.) So I accompanied them to Canton, and at the checkout line, Maria has to go to the food market. She bought every random thing imaginable. On our way out we had, stale bread, Swedish chips, and weird fruit cookies. She took one bite of everything, didn't like anything, and then left it all with me.  This makes me crazy. She can't leave the store without buying junk food, that she inevitably leaves with me.

What's worse? As we're walking of Ikea and I'm rolling my eyes, I realized, OMG, I do the exact same thing to Bob. Sigh. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Electrical

Last year we got a really good deal on insulation, so we went ahead and bought enough to roll out another layer in the attic.We were able to roll it over the bedrooms, hallway and into the formal dining room (AKA baby grand piano room), but the living room, kitchen and weird back room were never done because the electrical was (is) a hot mess. It made more sense to figure out what to do with the wires first, and than roll out the insulation.

 Fast forward a year and we were still trying to decide what to do with the electrical. After a couple of big pow wow session, we've had success. I thought no big deal, Bob will climb into the attic, we'll get the wiring in, and bam, we're done.

And then pieces of the wall started to come down.

And the drywall dust came creeping back. As usual nothing is as it appears. There were live wires going to nowhere, dead wires everywhere and random lighting everywhere. Bob and dad were only able to put in the recessed lighting in the living room and sort out some of the wires in kitchen. So what should have been a weekend project, has turned into a couple of weeks projects.

Dad trying to figure out the hot mess.

Bob pretending he knows what he's doing.

Three of the 6 recessed lights in the living room.

Geothermal Finished!

These past two weeks, DTE has finally finished the electrical work outside. The lines are buried, and we have a brand new fancy electric meter! It's funny they didn't replace the old meter with an electric meter. So the geo is officially done and we should soon be getting charged for it.

The final, final step? Landscaping the backyard after this disaster. Stay tuned.

Fall!

Ode to my favorite season in pictures:

Dogs running around without heat exhaustion:

 

 

A day at the pumpkin patch:

Some fall decor at the Pitt:

Driveway

As you may remember from the master landscaping plan, Bob and I would really like to have our driveway paved. Not because we had a particular problem with the gravel drive, but because there was a huge dip from the driveway into the garage. The Cavalier's underside always hit the dip, and if I had more than 2 people in the Versa or a loaded car, than it would also hit the bottom. We thought that until we had the money, we were just going to have to suffer (well the cars suffer mostly). Another, less annoying problem, but still pretty annoying, was the bottom of our driveway. See our house seems to be at the bottom of a slight hill in our street. This means we get all the water, you guessed it, at the foot of the driveway. The original gravel was laid in such a way that the water just pooled up at the end. This meant a lot of muddy feet in and out of the house.

So we were talking to Tom over at Todd's Services, you may remember them from our master landscaping plan, about re-leveling the backyard, planting grass etc. for next year, when I off handedly asked if there was anything they could do about the driveway now with new gravel. Would that be a waste of money? or would it help us out in the long run (pavement)? Turned out it was a good idea and reasonably priced. We chose limestone gravel, which when it rains becomes almost cement like.

So in this first picture you can see where the dip is because it extends past the driveway and into the walkway a bit. I don't think the picture shows how bad the dip really was:

 

And the rest of the driveway:

I know the Versa is dirty. Try living on a dirt road - it's just not worth washing your car.

Introducing our new bed!

We always said that if we were to get a new bed, it would be a glorious king sized bed. It was one of those things that we talked about, but didn't really expect to get for another couple of years. We had gotten our queen size Sealy bed six years ago. At the time it was extraordinary. A plush pillow top was the selling point for us, but later on became the bane of our sleeping existence. You see we sleep in the middle of our bed and over time, that plush pillow top formed a big dip in the middle of the bed. It became so severe that every time I had to get out of bed, it felt like I was climbing out. Yet the bed was still comfy. Then, earlier this summer I began waking up with back pain. At first it was a night or two a week, but than it became every night. I couldn't sleep more than 5 hours without waking up in pain. X-rays and blood work showed nothing so I moved forward with physical therapy. I dreaded sleeping in the bed at night. So we finally bit the bullet and bought a new bed. I knew that I didn't want anything with coils, or a tempurpedic.  So we got a natural latex bed. I was also pretty set on getting a platform bed frame, which is incredibly hard to find. So after a couple of weeks of searching and not finding anything within our price range, we decided on the Ikea Malm bed frame. It's low to the ground, clean lines, and does the job. A king size bed also meant that we had to get new sheets, new comforter and new pillows.

Can you find Mr. Scamp?

Odds and Ends

Well the geothermal saga is not quite complete. We're still waiting anxiously for DTE to finish their portion of the work. We've still got a mini trench in the backyard waiting on electrical. Other than looking pretty ugly, everything is working. If you're considering geothermal, I cannot stress enough how much your backyard will suck once it's all said and done. I keep joking with Bob that the only reason they give you a 30% tax credit is so that you can do all the landscaping that's required. Haley's warned us about the yard, but you really don't believe it until you see it.

We're getting ready for a Europe trip to a cousin's wedding, so I feel like we're in a bit of a mad rush to get everything together before we leave. What is everything? You know the usual stuff like laundry, cleaning, yard work. With the size of this house, I feel like I start cleaning on Monday, finish by the following Sunday only to start all over again.

We've had a few visitors this past weekend and we headed over to the Big House for a game. Ladies and gentleman, this was my first football game since my freshman year of collage and I missed the one thing I really wanted to see; the half time show. How is it that after four solid years of playing in high school marching band I still have no idea what goes on, on the football field? And it's not for lack of trying (or rather my friends trying to teach me). I guess it just didn't stick. I've included the picture below as proof that I was at the game (and why didn't anyone tell me my underwear was out)?

We're also trying to price out a couple of outdoor projects before this year is over. Our driveway has this huge concrete ramp into it, that the Cavalier always bangs against on its way in and out. We thought our only solution was to tear everything out and re-cement it, but it looks like we may be able to throw some additional gravel down and make the ramp a little less steep.

Also, the lilies need to be replanted before real fall sets in. And the entire front walkway really needs to be weeded. These are both Orsi initiatives, because Bob has minimal interest in the garden.

More from Tantre

Our farm share's have been awesome. We're into potato season and there's nothing better than potatoes. So today I made some potato leek soup:

 

And fresh bruchetta with a summer squash cakes:

 

Next to potato's, tomatoes are the best! We're also getting more beets than we know what to do with. So if you've got beet recipes out there, send them our way.

The Stairs

Our big indoor project for this year was moving the staircase to the basement, perpendicular to where it is currently situated.  The stairs were in the kitchen and it looked more like a bar than a staircase. See picture below.

In addition to the questionable location of the stairs, the construction of the stairs also left a lot to be desired. The height of the steps where completely variable from 6 inches up to 11 inches and the head room left a lot to be desired. By moving the stairs, we've opened up the kitchen, because we clearly needed more space :-)

 

Bar like railing is gone.

 

Reminiscence of old stairs

 

The floor getting filled in.                

 

The new stairs going in.

The new stairs.

Geothermal Part 3

The geothermal installation is complete, including the various extras (humidifier, zoning, filtration). The first it was installed it was actually quite cool outside, so the system basically didn't run. Then we left for vacation, during which it was apparently very hot here. Our house sitters told us the house stayed cool :) Now that we're back, the house is indeed very cool. Interestingly, the humidity level is high enough (50-55%) that the humidifier never runs. But we expect the winter to be much dryer (we were super itchy last winter because of it).

Anyway, here are some more pictures of the last bits.

Here's the loop field connection to the pump.

Different angle of the same space. Both water heaters are visible on the left, the furnace is in the middle, the humidifier is to the right if the middle, and the pump is on the far right.

The space to the right of the furnace. I'm not sure what the box on the left is (it's either a thermostat connection or the humidifier control of some kind). The box on the right is the zone controller. In the middle you can see the thermostat for the basement zone.

Here's one of the vent controls for the zoning. The circular device opens or closes the line to the vent. A bunch of these are set up to control the flow of air to each zone (so only the parts of the house that need it are cooled or heated).

Update: The box on the left (two pictures up) is for the wireless thermostat (one of our zones has a wireless thermostat because it was easier than running a line there, and we'll be moving walls in there soon anyway, so this was just easier for everyone). If you look very closely, above that box and little closer (half cut off by the top edge of the picture) is the wireless antenna (a small gray box on the duct).

Geothermal Part 2

The geothermal installation is almost complete. As usual with these things, it went over schedule a little, so the system won't be turned on until tomorrow. But the trenches have been filled back in, and it's mostly a matter of making the final connections and setting up the zoning system.

Here are some more pictures.

Taken from the roof, this shows 4 of the 5 trenches with the loops in them. Each trench is 150 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 6 feet deep.


Here I am standing in a trench.

Artistic. Taken from the back of one of the trenches facing towards the house.


Here is the yard after the trenches have been filled back in. It will take 6 months for the ground to fully settle, after which it will have to be regraded and then we can plant grass in the spring.


DTE gives a reduced electrical rate for geothermal systems, so we'll be getting a separate meter just for that.


Here's the tubes from the loop field coming into the basement (the entry into the house is shallower than the actual field, presumably to make it easier to work with). Also visible is the second electrical panel for the geo equipment.

The geothermal furnace is on the left, and the water heaters are on the right (there's one behind the visible one there). Also installed but not visible here are the humidification system and the electronic air filter.

Geothermal - A Few Pictures are Worth a Thousand Words

So the time has come to install the geothermal. We chose Haley's Mechanical to do the work. We'll fill you in on all the exciting things to come soon. But for now, these pictures will give you a snapshot into what we are experiencing.

 The Mound has disappeared. The calm before the storm.

There has been a lot of adventures. Electrical, cable, down trees. Stay tuned for the nitty gritty!