It’s been almost 4 months, but the updates to our dining room are finally done!  Thought we’d share some “Before & After” pictures of the changes we’ve made:

The "Before" Picture

The "After" Picture

We started work in the dining room back in July by removing the old wallpaper.  Once the wallpaper was down, we ran new wiring for the wall sconces to replace the old knob-and-tube.  We then had the walls skim-coated with a fresh layer of plaster to fill in some holes and cracks and smooth everything out.  With the plaster work complete, we installed picture frame molding below the chair rail and then painted the upper portion of the walls gray and the bottom the same shade of white as the rest of the trim in the house.

We still think the room needs some work from a decorating perspective, but we’re so happy to finally be done with the other updates.

We’re starting to think about replacing our water heater with a new tankless one.  The water heater we have now is still working fine, but it’s started making all kinds of loud cracking and popping noises as it’s heating the water.  It also looks like it was manufactured in 1996, so it’s getting pretty old and we imagine it won’t be too much longer before it stops working completely.

The main reason why we’re thinking about installing the new one now, though, is because the water heater, which used to be located near the old boiler, is now in a room by itself.  When the previous owners replaced the boiler with a new furnace, they also relocated it to a more central location in the basement.  As part of the project to replace the water heater, we’d like to move it to the new utility room also to free up some space where it currently is and help to clean up the mess of plumbing in the basement.  Because we’ll be relocating the water heater, we expect there will be more plumbing work involved than what would be required for a typical replacement, so we think it might be a good idea to get started on it while our water heater is still working rather than waiting until we have no hot water at all.

Our current water heater and the mess of plumbing that goes with it.

For the new water heater, we’re thinking about getting a tankless one that can be mounted on the wall in the utility room.  We like this option because of the increased energy efficiency of a tankless water heater, but also because of the space it saves.  Our plan is to relocate the water heater to the new utility room and mount it on the wall near the furnace.  Access to gas and water lines will be fairly easy from this location and routing the exhaust out the side of the house shouldn’t be a problem either.

The location for the new water heater.

We’re still researching the different brands of tankless water heaters to try to make a decision on what we think would be best for our application.  As long as we pick one with an efficiency greater than or equal to .80, though, we’ll be eligible for an income tax credit equal to 30% of the total cost of the water heater and installation (up to a max of $1500).  We’re also looking into any rebates we can get from our local utility provider that might help offset the cost and help us make the decision about whether or not now is the right time to start this project.

We had an electrician out for a few hours this morning to replace the old knob-and-tube wiring powering the wall sconces in our dining room and wire them to the light switches for the room (rather than having them only switched at the light fixture).

New Junction Boxes for the Sconces

The job turned out to be a little more complicated than we expected due to a portion of the window framing extending into the stud bay where the new wire was being fished from the basement, so we wound up with a couple more holes in the walls than we expected, but we’re hoping the plasterer will be able to patch and skim coat over them so that they aren’t noticeable when he’s done.

A couple extra holes in the wall ...

Even after this, we still have some knob-and-tube wiring in the dining room that we’re probably not going to replace, which powers the chandelier.  The ceiling is in such great condition that we don’t want to tear into it to run new electrical, so we’ll just have to live with not being able to replace all of the knob-and-tube in the room.  There’s also knob-and-tube running up from the basement to supply power to the light switch.  We are planning to have that run replaced when the electrician comes back on Friday to do some work by the pool.  Once that’s done, we’ll be one step closer to having all of the knob-and-tube in the house updated – we think all that’s left is just a couple of outlets in the living room and a few light fixtures on the main floor.

For the dining room sconces, we’re planning to reinstall the same ones we took down since we believe they’re original to the house and match the chandelier.  We dropped them off today at a lamp & shade store to have them re-wired (and hopefully shined up a bit).  They think it’ll only take them a week or so to get them back to us.  We’re excited to get them installed again and actually be able to use them more now that they’re switched with the rest of the lights in the room.

After finishing the repairs to the deck almost a month ago, the weather finally cooperated with enough dry days in a row that I could scrub and stain the deck boards so they all matched again.  We’d noticed that the deck boards had taken quite a beating over the winter even before we started on the project to reframe the deck around the tree, and after patching the decking with new lumber, it needed a coat of stain even more.

After scrubbing the deck with a deck cleaner

Close-Up of the Deck Before Staining

Since the old decking was pretty dirty, had some moss growing on it, and still had a pretty good coat of stain in some spots, I started by spraying the deck down with Olympic deck cleaner using a garden sprayer.  I let it sit for about 10 minutes before scrubbing it with a stiff-bristled brush and rinsing away all of the cleaner.  From the smell, I’d guess the cleaner had a pretty high concentration of bleach and it did a pretty good job of cleaning the deck boards off, although it didn’t remove as much of the stain as I was hoping it would.  We borrowed a pressure washer and tried that next, but didn’t want to damage the decking by turning the pressure up too high, so we wound up not getting much more of the stain off than what had already come off over the winter & during the cleaning.  The people at the paint store suggested sanding the deck down to bare wood for the best results, but that would have required us to counter-sink all of the nails and screws, which is no small undertaking on a deck the size of ours, so we opted to stain the boards as-is and deal with it later next year if it didn’t look right.

Samples of the New Stain Color

For the stain, I picked a shade of Sherwin Williams Deckscapes called Yankee Barn, which might be a little redder than the old color, but blended pretty well, overall.  It is a semi-transparent oil based stain to allow some of the grain to show through.  Before staining the whole deck, I tried staining some scrap pieces of wood from the repairs we had just completed.  Initially, we thought the color matched pretty well on the old and new wood, but it dried a lot lighter on the new wood than the old lumber that already had a patchy coat of stain, so we wound up applying two coats to the new boards and only one to the older lumber.

The end result looks a lot better than it did before we stained; just having things a uniform color really helps.  The new deck boards are barely noticeable and stand out more for their smooth texture than for their color.  It’s not quite as perfect of a finish as I would have liked – the new coat of stain couldn’t soak in to the old deck boards uniformly because of the old stain that was still there in some spots, so it has a shinier finish in those spots and more of a matte finish where the old stain had worn off and the new stain was allowed to soak in.  All in all, though, we think it turned out pretty good.  Our only concern now is that the new coat of stain will start to peel over time in the places where we layered it on over the old stain.  If that’s going to be a problem, we’re hoping it at least takes a season or two before it’s too noticeable!

The Newly Stained Deck

We finished up work today on our deck to fix a problem where tree roots were pushing up on the framing, causing a “bump” around the tree.  We started by re-working the framing for the deck around the tree to give the roots more breathing room and then replaced all of the decking that had been removed for the framing work.  Here are “before” and “after” pictures … it’s a little hard to tell from the pictures, but the “bump” in the deck is definitely gone now:

The "Before" Picture: Tree roots are pushing up on the deck's framing causing a bulge around the tree.

The "After" Picture

We had some trouble getting the old deck boards up in one piece without them splitting or breaking when we tried to remove them, so we wound up replacing some of the decking with new lumber when we put the deck back together.  The new boards we put down are 2″ x 6″ cedar decking.  We aren’t sure if the rest of the deck is cedar or redwood – it’s really red in color when we cut into it and doesn’t smell like cedar, so we thought it was redwood, but the people at the lumber yard thought cedar instead.  Since we weren’t able to find redwood at any of the local lumber yards, though, our only option was to patch it with cedar and hope everything blends ok when we re-stain the deck.

Our next project now is to work on cleaning up and re-staining/painting the deck since it took a bit of a beating over the winter and we need to make all of the new work blend in with the old deck boards.  I’ve done a little reading on the best approach for re-staining a deck and it sounds like we’ll start by giving it a good scrubbing with a deck cleaner and then follow up with a fresh coat of paint in the railings and facia board and a couple coats of stain on the decking.  Since there’s rain in the forecast here every day for the next week or so, though, it’s likely that it might be a couple of weeks before I’m able to really start working on it …

We took a break from our project to fix the deck yesterday and decided to work on running some speaker wire and ethernet cable to it instead.

We usually have an old boom box with us when we’re out on the deck so we can have the radio on in the background.  Since it’s not water-proof, though, it’s kind of a pain to have to haul it out every time we want to use it.  We did some research last summer on wireless outdoor speakers, but the stability of any of the wireless products we’ve ever used is always questionable, so we decided it probably wasn’t worth the money.  Since we have the deck all torn up anyway, though, we were able to get access to the conduit that runs from the house, under the sidewalk and to the deck.  The junction box is in a place that would be impossible to get to with all of the deck boards back in place, so we decided to run some speaker wire while we had everything opened up so we can add some wired outdoor speakers later.

Existing conduit for power and coax runs from the house, under the sidewalk, to a junction box under the deck.

The conduit had power and coax running through it when we started, but we’ve never used the coax on the deck and don’t think we’ll ever really have a need for it, so we unhooked it in the basement, tied some string to it, and pulled it through to the junction box under the deck.  We then tied (and taped) the string onto a 4-conductor speaker wire and an ethernet cable and pulled them back through to the basement.  We were worried the conduit wouldn’t be big enough or we would have problems with the cables getting all tangled with the electrical wire, but it fished a lot easier than we expected.

The service entrance to the house. Contains electrical wires, speaker wires, and an ethernet cable.

Once we got the wires fished to the junction box, we then installed a separate run of plastic conduit under the deck that takes the speaker wire and ethernet cable almost all the way to the far side of the deck where we’d be most likely to mount jacks and controls for the speakers.

Water-proof junction box under the deck. Electrical wires continue straight, into the 1/2“ conduit; speaker wire & ethernet cable go left into the 3/4” conduit.

Our plan right now is to hook up an outdoor volume control to the 4-conductor speaker wire and mount it on one of the deck posts.  Then, we’ll use 2-conductor speaker wire to wire the volume control to speakers mounted just under the deck on either end of it.  Inside the house, we’ll run the speaker wire to the other side of the basement where we’ll set up an old stereo that powers the speakers.  The original plan for the ethernet cable was to provide a reliable internet connection to the deck so we could connect to our MythTV backend for projecting TV/movies on the side of the house, but we’re reading now that it can also be used for more advanced audio controls (that enable source selection, skipping tracks, etc.) in conjunction with a multi-room receiver like what would be used for whole-house audio systems.  We aren’t sure yet how far we want to take this project, but setting up a whole-house system is something that we think would be pretty cool.  I guess we’ll have to do more research to see what meets our needs the best.  For now, though, we have the wiring in place to hopefully support whatever we decide to do.

With the weather getting warmer this week, we decided it was a good time to start the repairs on our deck so it would be fixed by the time we got ready to dig out all of our patio furniture and start using it again.  Our deck is built around a tree that we love because of all the shade it provides, but the problem is that the tree has grown so much since the deck was built that it started pushing up on the deck, creating a “bump” around the tree.  The deck still felt pretty solid from the top, but when we crawled under it, we could see that the tree roots had started pushing up on the deck frame so much that the joists had buckled and started to twist.

The "Hump" In the Deck

Tree Roots Pushing Up on the Deck

To make more room for the tree roots, we decided to cut out the old joists and cross beams that were resting on the tree roots and replace them with new framing that gives the tree more room to breathe.  Because the deck is so close to the ground around the tree, we had to start by pulling up the deck boards around the tree to expose the old framing.  This turned out to be a bigger job than we expected since the boards were about 16′ in length.  After prying a couple of those up, we decided a more efficient approach would be to cut the boards in half, making sure to stagger the seams, and remove smaller sections instead.

With all of the decking around the tree removed, we then installed a new joist on either side of it, with notches in the appropriate places to leave plenty of clearance around the roots.  Since we’d had to notch the 2″ x 8″ joists for the roots, we reinforced each of them with a 2″ x 4″ attached with carriage bolts for a little extra strength.  With the new joists in place, we then cut out the existing framing and let the deck relax so that there wasn’t a “hump” around the tree any more.  We wound up having to notch a few more of the existing joists than we expected due to more tree roots, but once we cleared all of the places where the tree roots were supporting the deck frame, it pretty much flattened itself out within about a half hour so that we could complete the framing around the tree and add some cross beams to support the existing joists we’d had to cut out.

Removing the Old Joists

The New Framing Around the Tree

The new framing leaves at least 3″ between the top of the tree roots and the bottom of the joists and about 9″ around the base of the tree, so we’re hoping to not have to revisit this project again in the near future.

Now, we’re starting to work on replacing the deck boards we had to take up to install the new framing for the deck.  We’ve been able to replace most of the boards we removed, but a few of them were damaged, so we’re piecing the deck back together as best as we can.  We’ll wind up needing to buy a few replacement boards, though, and we’re finding it impossible to find a lumber yard that carries redwood decking.  Looks like we’ll probably have to use cedar for the last few boards we’re missing instead and then try to stain the whole thing to match after the fact.

With the “hump” around the tree fixed and a fresh coat of paint & stain, it’ll be like a brand new deck by the time we’re done!

A few weeks ago, we started giving our main floor powder room a face lift by removing the old ivy-patterned wallpaper.  Although it’s taken a lot longer than we expected, we’re finally getting close to calling it finished.  I’d still like to replace the faucet with something a little less gold, but, so far, we think it’s a pretty good transformation considering we’ve only spent about $175 on paint, light fixtures, and accessories.  Here are some “before and after” pictures:

Before

After

We had a couple of strong storms last summer that caused a good portion of the hillside by our house to wash into the ravine.  Throughout the summer, we had several landscape and excavating companies come out to look at it and provide estimates for fixing the problem, but it was either too big or too small of a job for most of them, so we never did anything about it.

With the ground frozen over the winter, there wasn’t much movement in the hillside, but things started to thaw out last week, followed by about four straight days of rain.  All of the runoff from the driveway started flowing over the hillside again and it washed out a little more.  With more rain in the forecast for this weekend and the edge of the ravine only about 10 feet from the driveway, we decided we needed to do something about the runoff in an attempt to prevent the any more of the hillside from washing into the ravine.

So, we spent about $150 at Lowes on drains and corrugated pipe to capture the water as it runs off the driveway and have it flowthrough the pipe to the bottom of the ravine.  We put in two drains: a long rectangluar one that we installed parallel to the driveway, which we think will catch most of the runoff, and a second 12″ square drain with a clean-out that we installed in the low spot between the driveway and the edge of the ravine.  Our plan is to have the square drain catch any overflow from the rectangular drain and it will also catch the water from the nearby hydrant so we can start using it again without fear of the water causing problems with the hillside.  The two drains are connected with a short stretch of corrugated pipe.  We then trenched from the square drain to the edge of the ravine, making sure to maintain a downward slope so the water would flow out of the drains and down the hill.  The remaining length of the 100 feet of corrugated pipe runs down the hill to the bottom of the ravine.

Overall, the project took about a half a day of work and was muddy, but pretty easy to install.  Probably the most challenging part was working with the rectangular drain kit we purchased.  It was a modular kit that we thought would be easy to assemble and install, but we had problems getting the knock outs to actually knock out and there was nothing to lock the end cap for the drain in place.  We probably wouldn’t make the choice to use that kit if we were to do it again.

Once the dirt settles around the pipe and drains and the ground dries out some, we’re planning to install some landscape fabric over the area we dug up and cover the whole thing in gravel to help prevent the water from washing any dirt into the drains and down the hill.  Then we’ll probably get some loads of broken up concrete and soil to try to build the hillside back up, start working on getting some ground cover or something to grow on it, and maybe install a short section of fence at the top of the hill since the drop off is so steep.  Although the project is far from complete, we’re hoping the work we did this week to install the drains will go a long way toward preventing the washout from getting any worse.

I’ve been pretty delinquent in posting over the last few weeks, but here are the “before” and “after” pictures of the new kitchen sink Chad got me for Christmas!

The "Before" Picture

The "After" Picture

We finally got around to installing the new sink about a month ago and it took the better part of a day, but it was well worth the work (and the wait).  I love how shiny and fresh the new sink looks in comparison to the old one, which was so marred up it never looked quite clean.

Removing the Old Sink

The installation process was pretty easy.  We started by disconnecting all of the drain and supply lines for the sink andremoving the garbage disposal from under the sink.  We then used a razor blade and putty knife to break the seal under the rim of the sink.  It took some prying, but we were eventually able to break it free from the counter and lift it out of the opening.  We then cleaned all around the opening (it was pretty nasty looking with all of the old rusty caulk still there from the old sink) and did a test fit with the new stainless steel sink.  After making a trip to Lowe’s to pick up replacement drain pieces, supply lines, a faucet, and drain trim kits, we decided it would be easiest to

Cleaning Off the Old Caulk

start by installing the drain trim kits and the faucet on the sink before installing the sink in the counter.  Once the drains and faucet were installed, we then attached the clips to the bottom of the sink, placed a bead of silicone around the opening, and dropped the sink in place.  From below the sink, we then tightened the clips to hold the sink tight against the counter top.  We had some trouble with this since the opening in our counter top wasn’t quite centered over the base cabinet, so we weren’t able to get to any of the clips on the left side of the sink to tighten them, but it turned

Installing the Drain Kits

out that the clips on the other three sides were enough to hold it in place, so that wasn’t a problem.  With the sink in place, we then reconnected the drains and supply lines and reinstalled the garbage disposal.  After checking for leaks, the installation was complete.

When we were installing the sink, we decided it was just as easy to install a new faucet as the old one, so we decided to go with something new to match the sink a little better.  We got a Moen “Quinn” style (model 87845CSL) faucet in a stainless steel finish.  I love how tall it is because it makes the sink feel so much larger and makes washing big pots and pans a lot easier, but it does lead to a lot more splashing and water on the counter top.  The only problem we’ve had with it so far was right after we installed it.  The faucet made a noise a lot like water hammer when we turned it on.  Reducing the water pressure at the shut off valve for the sink made the problem less noticable and, since then, it seems to have gone away almost completely and we’ve been able to increase the water pressure again without any problems.  We’re not sure what caused it … just glad that it doesn’t seem to be a problem any more.