Minimal work on the house this weekend

Working this weekend to pay some bills so will not make much progress on the house.

Travel and Cleanup

Made a quick trip to Dallas on Wednesday to get a few things done and then Waco on Thursday to meet with someone about the Waco property.  Returned Friday midmorning and continued the cleanup in the front of the house.

I gave the neighbor permission while I was away to help himself to the stack of plywood that was the old ceiling covering in the carport.  The stack was 3/4 reduced by the time I got back.  Glad someone could put a use to it.  The rest I will cut up and either burn when the burn ban is lifted or take to the dump when it's time to do the finally perimeter cleanup.

I moved the flatbed trailer back around to the left side next to the relocated construction debris that I'm hanging on to until the renovation is complete.  Ya never know when you might need something out of the pile!

The debris and trailer is gone.

Eventually, carport access will be from either side and the apron in the front where the current 'driveway' is will be built up probably 2' to be near level with the street.  It will be landscaped in someway and will serve also as off street visitor parking.

Hey, I did see we finally had some rain while I was gone.  Not much but a lot of the vegetation around the property looked less....shriveled.

Wiring and Cleanup

Stove wiring.
Installed the new 220v 6-3 wiring cable for the kitchen stove which is being relocated from it's original position on the inside wall to the other side on the outside wall.  The cable run snakes up the outside wall, across the ceiling, around the chimney and back down the other side to the electrical panel.  With the voltage so high, as a safety feature it was important to NOT have a junction box somewhere in the middle so I measured about six times to be sure I got the right amount of cable; 55 feet.  When all was said and done I was gratified that I only had to cut six inches off the run.  At $3.00 per foot, too few feet would have be an expensive aggravation!

PHEW!

General exterior cleanup.
The 100+ degree afternoon was spent cleaning up the two piles of construction debris that had been piling up out front and under the carport.  I felt it important to show the neighbors that some progress was being made.  The key was to find a logical place to stack it all so it would be out of the way and wouldn't have to be moved again on some other future project.  The left side of the house further back off the street under a tree won out. The borrowed flatbed trailer will be moved back there too.  I ran out of time last night and won't be able to do any work for a couple of days so that leaves the two cast iron bathtubs and a pile of insulation remaining.  Not sure yet what to do with the insulation as putting it out with the other stuff will risk it getting wet and soggy should it rain.

Overall, it's a vast improvement on the curb appeal!

Irrigation system; Phase One Complete

As I think about the obvious, the irrigation system in being installed in multiple phases;

1. Lay the 2" lake source water pipes
2. Install a concrete foundation for the pump
3. Purchase and install the pump
4. Begin install of water lines for sprinkler system
5. Complete install of of sprinkler system
6. Anything I forgot (not necessarily in the above order)

Phase One Complete
210' of line has been laid out down to the mouth of the channel which is pretty much bone dry.  The "foot" or the water inlet fitting allowing water into the pipes but not out has also been added.  It's protected inside an old tire that someone generously left in the bottom of the channel.

The start

See the shovel?  The end.

The tire generously left for me to use!

It's going to leap!  Cross pieces will be buried

Nearly done.

Done!  Wow, that is BRIGHT!

I designed the valve end with cross pieces that turn down into the ground to insure there is no flexing due to tidal action.  They also support the old tire whose purpose is to protect the head from prop damage should someone venture up the channel when the water is low.  Also, on a windy day, the wind can push water up the channel and the ensuing currents can wreak havoc on a water line if it's not adequately secured.  Since I don't want to be poking around there in 2-3 years time (or later this year for that matter), it's more than adequately secured!

The last step was to fill the pipes with water so that when the lake fills, the pipes will already be full of water and will not float away.

And now......I wait with bated breath for possibly a long and plaintive howl from the lady next door when she looks out her family room window and sees my bright florescent orange marker stick.  It is rather bright!

Oh well, sorry, thems the breaks when living on a lake channel!  Not going to have someone plow over my water inlet valve!

Weekend progress; Irrigation Pipes

I worked this weekend so not much time to get anything done.


Saturday, July 23, 2011
It was HOT when I got off work so I waited until about 8pm for the evening heat to let up a bit and then got down in the channel and laid about 100' of pipe before it got too dark to move forward.

Sunday, July 24, 2011
Earlier this morning before work, I had a chance conversation with the neighbor across the channel about the potential of dredging the channel down some 4 additional feet making it then a "deep" channel.      We talked about it last year before I bought the place and the topic came up again, raised by me.

From a resale perspective, deep channels have more value than shallow ones.  Of course this year, it doesn't matter how deep you make it, it still going to be bone dry.  There's also a logistical problem to contemplate....what to do with the yards of dirt that have to be removed.  In this lake, you can't simply "move" dirt around, you have REMOVE it to somewhere NOT in the water.  Hauling it away can get a little spendy.  One option is to simply buy a vacant lot in the subdivision that will NEVER sell and simply dump the dirt there and level it down so that after a season or two, it's level and overgrown again.

Anyway, with no water NOW would be the time to do it!  But, not until the lot next door is mine!

Same as yesterday, when I got off work this afternoon I waited till about 8pm for the heat to break a little and then set about laying another 90' of pipe  That makes about 190' of pipe thus far.  The neighbor across the channel came out again so I ended up shooting the breeze with him till it got to dark again too proceed any further.  His dogs good naturedly tried to terrorize "the Boss" but she held her ground.  She took a few swats at them to show them who's the real big cheeze and put them in their place.  They got the point.  I think she understood they weren't going to hurt her, rather they were just showing their bravado....poorly I might add.

I will add pipeline pics tomorrow sometime.

Channel cleanup continued

As mentioned in an earlier post, the neighbor across the way scraped and leveled the dry as a bone channel in preparation for the fall rains.....assuming we get any.  Seems to be a drought year!

I decided there was no time like the present to get my own irrigation pipes laid.  If I waited too long and we encountered an unexpected rain bringing lots of water, it would be a once in a five or six year opportunity lost.  So, I trouped off to Lowes and purchased 230' of 2 inch pipe.  

230' of pipe is probably overkill but today the water is 300' or so away.  230' would maximize the available irrigation water during a drought year.

It seems everyone has the same idea:  extend, extend, extend.  2" and 1.5" pipe and connectors in that order is a HOT commodity at all of the local hardware stores this year.   Everyone is extending their irrigation lines as far as they can afford to so pipe and connectors sell out almost they day they are restocked.  I figure it's better to overkill now than to regret later not having done it when I had the chance.  I'm not going all the way to the current water's edge....that would be overkill!  A drought like this doesn't happen to often....still....with global warming........

Dressed in jeans and long sleeve shirt on a 100+ degree day, I started clearing a patch at the proverbial water's edge where I plan on placing the 2hp irrigation pump when the time comes to buy it (no need now, no water!).  It was potentially dangerous work (for me) because the vast majority of the vegetation appeared to be Poison Ivy hence my stifling attire.  In fact, the lot next door which I plan to buy is nearly all poison ivy.  I'll have to get someone else to come in and clear it....but....I digress.....

Just as I finished I clearing a patch down the embankment, I found the official property marker stake.  Oops, three feet too far to the right.  Well, one thing led to another and I decided to clear all of the underbrush from the right side property line left all the way over to the concrete walkway.

Clearing the underbrush out removes any eye distraction between you and the water.  It looks good.   Later when I buy the lot next door, I will clear out the sightline between the back porch and the channel entrance.

The neighbor' soon to be boat house

The neighbor probably won't be too happy with me when he gets home to see three piles of debris in his freshly scraped channel but he'll have to get over it. It's at my end anyway.  When the burn ban is lifted I'll burn the piles down (we can do that here in semi-rural Texas).  They're mostly leaves, vines, and small shrubs.  Hopefully when the first rains come, as much as it's needed, I'll have time to burn them rather than having to manually move the piles elsewhere to dispose of or burn them.

Since the usable channel/creek pretty much ends to the left of my lot, I don't plan on clearing the underbrush left of the sidewalk leading to the water's edge.  When sitting on the patio, you tend to face towards the right side of the sidewalk towards the logical view which is out to towards the mouth of the channel.  When I pickup the lot to the right and clear the back portion, for sure, that will be direction everyone faces.

The view from the patio

Nothing between me and the imaginary water! 

The view from water's edge

Uh oh, there's the Boss

 The "Boss", forever doggin' my trail.

The Boss approves!  Phew!

In-spite of all my efforts to protect myself, I STILL managed to get a 4" stripe of poison ivy on my inside forearm.  JEESH!!  Glad it was only 4"!  I've had worse.

Exterior lighting

This week I worked on additional electrical stuff.  It's almost done.  Yeah, I know, I keep saying that but it gets truer each day!

I installed a commercial quality timer to control all of the exterior lighting which will consist of four post mounted wall lights for the carport and perimeter lighting mounted to the underside of the eaves to highlight the round nature of the house.

In addition, and not controlled by timer will be two porch lights mounted on each side of the entry door and five or six flush mounted ceiling lights all controlled by the traditional light switch.  The flush mount lights won't be used that much but can be turned on as needed when doing work outside under the carport.

Carport post lights
I want to keep the front area lit but not so much so as to be a nighttime distraction from the house itself or to the neighbors across the street.  I found this Craftsman style light at Lowes.  I like it because it has a round cover with a small cupola keeping in style of the house, round with a cupola.  I'd install a 25w bulb to keep the light level low, to enhance the stained glass inserts, and as mentioned, to keep them from being a lighting nuisance to the neighbors across the street.  The objective is to attract the eye without overpowering it and negating the curb appeal.

Entry Door Lights
I'm going to install two lights on either side of the entry door.  I couldn't find an exact match to the ones above but I did find a nice complimenting Craftsman style.  Given the distance between the two, I don't think anyone's going to comment on the differences.

An Alternative Option
I also found another Craftsman style I really like too.  It comes in two sizes, larger for the entry door, and smaller for the carport posts.  I like them because they are an exact match to each other and because they are in brushed nickel which would match other trim items I plan in installing throughout the house.  Brushed nickel seems to me to be somewhat timeless, or not so "trendy".

Perimeter lighting
I bought a set of low voltage lights the other day that I was going to attach to the underside of the eaves but after experimenting, I found I didn't like the quality of the light they put out.  Too harsh.

A number of years ago on my Dallas house, I installed rope lights hidden in channels.  I really liked their effect.  They bathed the house in a soft non-distinctive downward pattern of light and eliminated the clutzy looking uplight solar sticks that are so prevalent today.  I bought about 10 boxes last year on sale at Lowes anticipating replacing the ones I had but since I'm likely going to sell the Dallas house I may just install them here.  I'll bring them back the next time I'm in Dallas and see how they work out.

If you've got an opinion on any of the options, feel free to share your thoughts!

A little channel cleanup

2011 is proving to be a drought year.  It's been long, hot and DRY.  Very little precipitation.  My trees are starting show signs of distress with several dropping their leaves.   The lake, a Ft. Worth/Tarrant County water source, is way down, sucked dry by the folks to the west.

The creek/channel behind the house which was full last year, is now dry as a bone, the water line now 300' away in the main channel.  Since I've been focused on the house and working weekends, it's not been an issue for me.  The boat is still sitting on it's trailer at the Dallas house.

Last year, the neighbor across the water way had a seawall installed and eventually will have a boat house with a the standard lift.  The channel was dredged slightly and then the seawall added.  With water present you can't see the bottom of the channel to see how smooth (or not) the sea wall installers left the bottom of the channel however, with no water, it was pretty obvious where the mounds and craters were so he rented a BobCat and set about leveling the bottom.  He was gracious to scrape the channel by my place to remove the high weeds.  It looks a lot better!

The view standing at the edge of the channel by the house looking towards the lake:

See that club of bushes/trees on the right?  That's the empty lot next to me that I want to purchase.  When I do I can have the channel dredged up to the point just beyond that clump making the channel deeper.  It's still useable but would be safer and more practical for a deeper hulled boat.

Zoomed in view down the channel.

There's no water under that jet ski and only a couple of inches if that under the pontoon boat hanging in the boat house.  The grassy patch to the right is in front of my neighbor’s house immediately to the right of my place on the other side of the empty lot.

In the channel looking up.

The end of the the "creek" or what could be a continuation of the channel if someone chose to dredge it further.  It peters out to just a run off creek bed around the curve back there.

Now is the time for me to get moving on installing my own PVC irrigation pipe and a pump to provide a free source of water for the property.  Over the last several months at work there has been an almost daily run on various sizes of PVC pipe as many people around the lake are doing the same thing, extending their irrigation lines further into the lake.  For some, the water is so low, there's no way they can extend it far enough.  Next time we have a fresh supply of pipe and the required couplings, I'll lay down 200' of 2" pipe and hook it to a 2hp irrigation pump.  Even so, it will still be about 100' short of the water's edge.

Eventually the water will return, it always does.  That's the nature of things.

Windows Update

Lowes came back out today for additional measurements on the master bath windows.  To have the windows open required 14.5" clearance between the studs so I had to reduce the three intended windows down to two.  Oh well!

As mentioned in my earlier post on this subject, I was going to replace the bedroom windows with shorter versions and then frame in the lower section to reclaim the wall space inside.  The outside would be covered over with a stacked stone veneer.....HOWEVER....

Considering the difficulty I had framing out the new kitchen window with it's curved wall, I figured the Lowes installers were going to have an equally difficult time and time is money.  The difference between  Lowes installing the windows versus me was that I could take all the time I needed whereas they would be on a limited time basis and not potentially not be able to spend the necessary time to make it right should they encounter problems.

Since I didn't want to do that particular work myself, I decided to change course,  get over my phobia of having furniture across windows and have the existing windows replaced with full size replacements rather than shorter ones that would require framing out below them.

Flexibility.  The key to a longer life!

Minor odds and ends

It's feels like it's over 100 today.  When it gets like that, things slooooooow down a bit.

I was back working on electrical needs today.   There was no outside power source anywhere and that always frustrated me in my Dallas house so I opted to install four strategically placed outdoor power receptacles.  The power source for each is the closest indoor receptacle with the wire simply passed through a hole drilled in the stucco.  I had thought about actually recessing the entire box into the wall but the thickness of the stucco made that prospect uncertain so I opted to mount it on the surface.

 Caulked and ready for the plug.

 Done.

Repeat that three additional times around the perimeter!

Hole in the wall - 2

Finished framing out the kitchen window today.  Not sure why it took so long!  I removed the studs and then added an upper and lower frame.

It was pretty challenging to deal with curved surfaces.  Even with a couple of nifty tools to get odd angles correct, it still took several hours to get the floor to ceiling 2x4's cut down and properly positioned.  I had to measure and remeasure dozens of times to get even close.  While the stucco on the exterior of the house is very uniform in it's texture, the inside of the walls were very un-uniform so the 2x4's had to be trimmed by 1/4" their full length and then notched in one spot to allow for a pretty significant bulge in the stucco on the inside.  

It took so much contemplation to get the measurements right that while doing that the other side of my brain completely redesigned the kitchen layout.  As a result, the stove and sink will be moved from their original spots.  I'll get it down on the floor plan and post it at some point.

After I managed to get both the upper and lower frames in, I figured it would be better to create a template using cardboard and tape to get the positioning and angles correct on "paper" before taking the jig saw to the one piece curved sill plate.   Fortunately, from within the bowels of the house during demolition, I came across a 2x6 that had been curve cut and was at one point supposed to be a window sill somewhere else (actually I found two).  It came in handy in creating the correct curve of the house.

It came out looking pretty good!

Once the windows are installed, I'll go back and trim the window out (if Lowes doesn't do it for me) and add a trim piece along the front of the sill and underneath to give it some bulk.

A New Door

In July 2001, I undertook the first renovation project on my Dallas house.  One aspect was the removal of a set of double hung aluminum framed windows and replacing them with a set of french doors.  Not just any french doors, but ones with the mini-blinds sandwiched between the glass.  One of the best moves I ever made even though the doors have been opened maybe all of 4 times since then.

Somewhere around 2005 my sister purchased a single garden door of the same style but never did anything with it.  Several years later on yet another holiday weekend at my place, I expressed a desire to replace the solid rear door leading from the family room to the carport and driveway with the same style min-blinded glass door.  On a later Thanksgiving weekend some 3-4 years ago (I can't remember exactly which one) Sis showed up with the door in the back of her truck and essentially gave it to me.  I stored it in the back corner of the garage and promptly forgot about it, my interest in further renovations on that house somewhat waned.

I lost my sister in September of 2008 to the return of breast cancer after a long courageous battle with the insidious disease and 6 years remission.  I got a call at work on a Monday that she was in hospice care and she was gone by Friday.  I knew her cell counts had changed but I had no idea she was that sick.  It was so unexpected.....it was so FAST!

The other day I was thinking about her in the midst my ongoing project and I suddenly remembered the door!  The door!  So Tuesday, while I was back in Dallas, I dug the door out of the garage.  The box was showing signs of age (who isn't?) but was still intact.  It was a heavy SOB.  It's at times like this when I wish I had an SO to share the load with!   I managed to get it loaded into the truck for it's journey back to the lake.

After a side day trip to Waco to talk with a man about selling the Waco property, I returned late on Thursday and hit the hay!  On Friday afternoon, after cutting a hole in the wall (see previous blog posting), I decided to install the door too.  Well....., somewhere between Wednesday and Thursday I lost Friday.  I completely zoned and had no idea it was Friday and that I was scheduled to WORK that day....just like every FRIDAY before that.   To me, on that day, it was Thursday!

If I hadn't gotten a text message from a coworker saying she "missed me" at work, I'd have thought Saturday was Friday and showed up Saturday on Friday's schedule and missed 7 hours of work on that day as well!  Does that make sense?  If not, read it again.  JEESH!  A minor faux paux of which my coworkers have not failed at every opportunity to remind me of it.

Anyway, the day was not a total waste.  The door is in and in my humble opinion, it fits well in the design of the house and is much more welcoming than the original one.

The outer "entry" door in the side of the garage:

The outer entry door and the original front entry door still in place inside the garage:

The original entry door with garage removed:

The original entry door removed:

Sis's new 15pane, enclosed mini-blind entry door:

More welcoming, don't you think?

It sure makes for a VAST curb appeal improvement!

Thanks Sis!

A hole in the wall

The plan has always been to install a picture window in the kitchen and today was the day!  Well, at least to cut the hole and start the framing process.

Lowes came out the other day to do the measurements on all the other windows and sliding doors.  The final submission of the order is pending my framing out this particular window.  Since they're installing everything, I needed to get this one cut and framed in so I could provide them with the actual rough opening size. 

I measured about 30 times before drilling the pilot holes and making the first cut.

Scary stuff when you think about it cuz once you cut, you can't go back!

Sweet!!

The view!

I'll finish out the framing on Monday.

The Boss!

The Boss approves!