As of last weekend, we have Christmas lights! It didn’t turn out very well, but here’s a photo. I guess I’m going to have to spend some time working with the settings on my camera to get the right exposure for a night time photo like this …

We had a hard time deciding on a “lighting scheme”, but finally settled on following the roof line by the kitchen (on the left), around the portico, and on the sun porch (on the right). There’s a bit to the right of the portico where there isn’t a roof line and we just anchored the lights into the siding. It looks kind of weird in the daytime, but it’s pretty at night. We also bought some 18″ rope light snowflakes for the dormers on the 3rd floor. They were really impressive in the store, but it’s a little hard to tell what they are from the street …

To hang the lights, we used two kinds of anchors. The one on the right in the photo is what we used everywhere where there were gutters. They clip onto the gutters or can slide under the shingles. The only place where we had trouble was above the kitchen where we have gutter caps (which do a great job of keeping both leaves and Christmas lights out). We made them work, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens when there’s a strong wind. :) The anchor on the left is what we used to attach the lights directly to the siding. It’s actually two pieces: a tab that gets nailed or screwed to the siding and the part that holds the light bulb, which pivots. Both of these clip directly to the bulb, so they can hold all of them perfectly straight and in the same direction.

The lights are on a timer that’s got a photo sensor built in. They come on at dusk and are set to stay on for 4 hours. No comments yet on how well it works since we’ve only had the lights up for a couple days, but here’s a photo of the one we bought. It’s got all kinds of settings … so hopefully we can find some combination that works out well for us.

I’m excited that we got a start on our Christmas decorating, but we both commented on how much work it was to put up just 4 strands of lights. I can’t imagine how many hours some families must spend!

As if our as-of-yet unresolved problems with the upstairs furnace aren’t enough, Wednesday afternoon, we came home and smelled the aroma of natural gas in our basement. A quick test with some dish soap on a few of the joints on the gas pipe revealed that there was a leak in the elbow of the pipe that goes up to the dryer on the second floor and the furnace in the attic. Not knowing how big of a problem it really was, we called the gas company (who had previously fixed a leak for me several years ago in an apartment). They promptly came to our house, but said that we’d need to call a plumber because the pipe was just too inaccessible. In the mean time, they disconnected the run going upstairs and capped the pipe. Thus, the night before a long holiday weekend, we were left with no heat upstairs.

We dinked around with placing a service request through our AHS home warranty for a couple of days before we realized it would be the first part of next week that they’d be able to get anyone out. (I’m not entirely sure how it works, but they claim that fits into their promise to respond to all requests within 4 business hours and service them within 48 hours.) So, after spending a couple of nights freezing under a pile of blankets, we decided to ditch the home warranty and just call a plumber out of the yellow pages.

Enter the plumber that makes us swear we’ll never have his company back to do any work for us. He showed up yesterday (on overtime, of course) and spent a good hour and a half banging around on the pipes in the basement, cursing the position of the elbow that was leaking, before he came upstairs to tell me everything was reconnected and he was getting ready to test for leaks. While he ran out to his van to grab a bottle of dish soap, I noticed the overpowering smell of gas coming up the stairwell into our kitchen. It didn’t take more than 15 minutes before it had infiltrated most of the rooms in our house. When I asked him about it, he told me it was nothing to be concerned about … he just hadn’t shut off the gas service to the house before uncapping the main pipe to reattach the run to the upstairs. The pipe had been open for about 30 seconds, but he had his “hand over it for at least half that time”. The reason he didn’t turn the gas off before doing this: he didn’t want to have to relight pilot lights. Not sure what he thought such a dramatic drop in gas pressure would result in … the pilot light for the water heater was out when he left anyway.

In an attempt to make the situation better, he told us it was nothing to be concerned about – the smell is something they add to natural gas since it’s odorless otherwise. (Because that makes a difference when the gas has penetrated your entire house.) He also stressed that it just smelled so strongly because we have incredible gas pressure – somewhere around 5 lbs, he thought – guess it was a good thing he covered the pipe with his hand, huh? And, of course, it wasn’t as bad as it smelled … how’s that possible?

Good news is that we have heat throughout the house again, the house didn’t explode due to the plumber’s antics, 24 hours later, we figured out what was going on with the pilot light on the water heater (and it’s now re-lit) … and we won’t ever be calling that company again to do any plumbing work for us. Incidently, it sounds like the gas leak that started the whole thing had probably been there since the pipe was installed in the mid 1980s … ug.

When moving into a different home, there’s always a new set of noises to get used to. The first couple of nights we stayed in this house, I don’t think we would have slept at all had we not been so exhausted from moving. Since then, though, we’ve gotten more accustomed to the sounds that go with our century old home, we’ve learned to sleep through trains, and started to get a feel for what’s the wind rather than would-be-burglars. Having said that, last night was full of things that go “bump” in the night.

It started about an hour after we went to bed with some critter trying to find shelter between the window air conditioner and its cover. It sounded something like a bird, but we never did see it. We pounded on the wall and got out flash lights trying to figure out what was making such a ruckus, but we never caught a glimpse of it. After we finally got back to sleep following the bird-in-the-air-conditioner incident, we woke up again to some scurrying, flapping, and squeaking noises in the attic over our bed. We weren’t brave enough to open the attic access panel in the middle of the night to see what type of creature it might be, but we’re suspicious of bats. Ug. And then at about 4:00 this morning an animal of some type was making a horrible screeching noise right outside our bedroom window. Scary … until we realized it was outside. I’m pretty convinced, though, that the woodland creatures have decided it’s time to gang up on us.

Most of last night’s issues seem to be temporary in nature, with the exception of the bats in the attic. So now, we’re trying to figure out what to do with bats. The option of trying to get up in the attic with a butterfly net to go after them doesn’t sound so appealing. We’re thinking there’s got to be an easier way, but when I looked at the super market tonight, I couldn’t find any “pest control” items for bats. Has anyone had any luck with anything other than a broom or a net? I’d really love to get them out and not have to be woken up by this again!

The furnace repair guy came today to take a look at our upstairs furnace, which has recently decided to only work for a couple of hours at a time before giving a “pressure switch error” and shutting off. I guess it’s a little too early to tell if the problem is completely resolved or not, but so far, so good.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that the issue appears to have been caused by leaves in the intake. Since our furnace (a Trane XR90) is only about three years old, we were relieved to hear that it wasn’t a mechanical difficulty, but it’s still a little embarrassing to have to call a repair person to come clean some leaves out! I asked him if there was any regular maintenance we should be doing to prevent this or if there was some kind of a screen or filter we should install, but he said no. Probably just securing his future income. :) I just wish we’d watched what he did a little closer so we could avoid the house call the next time. I guess we’ll at least know what to look for should it happen again.

This week was the first real cold snap of the year and our furnace has sadly decided it’s all too much to handle. The most frustrating part is that it’s an intermittent problem. We woke up one morning earlier this week to find that our bedroom was pretty chilly. When Chad went upstairs to investigate, he took the front panel off of the furnace and found that it was blinking “Pressure Switch Error”. (We still aren’t sure exactly what that means.) We thought we were going to have to call someone then, but when he put the panel back on, it started working again. So, we left for work, thinking that maybe it was just a fluke. But, by the time we got back home, it was broken again with the same error code flashing. This time, we just turned it off at the thermostat and placed a service request with the AHS home warranty that we got when we purchased the house (and thought we’d never use). Since then, the error code cleared itself, so we turned the furnace back on, it ran for a day or so, quit working again this morning, and now it’s functioning fine again.

The repair person is scheduled to come tomorrow afternoon to take a look at it. I just hope they’re able to figure out what’s been causing the problems since it seems to be so hit and miss. From what I’ve read online, it sounds like this is just the general error code that you’ll get for any of a variety of problems … I just hope we don’t have to spend the rest of the winter trying to trouble shoot it. At least we have another furnace that heats the main floor so we don’t have to worry about pipes freezing or anything … even though it does get a little brisk upstairs!

Between the last house we lived in and this house, we’ve had our share of wallpaper removal experiences and it’s become pretty obvious that no two wallpapers in no two rooms are the same. Our attempts to remove wallpaper in our bathroom at the old house took weeks experimenting with just about every wallpaper removal technique we could find and we still wound up spending most of our time scraping wallpaper fragments off of the dry wall with a razor blade and had some fairly significant damage to the wall board. Needless to say, it wasn’t a positive experience.

Last week, though, we had some great luck getting the wallpaper border off of our bedroom walls. Even though our success is probably due more to the prep work completed before the wallpaper was hung, we thought we’d share our method for removal in case it helps anyone else. As a reference, the border we were removing was strippable wallpaper that was hung on a painted plastered wall.

Supplies:

• Tiling sponge (the kind with a scrubbing surface on one side)
• Painters tool or putty knife
• Spray Bottle
• Vinegar
• Paper Towels
• Water

	Step 1: Remove the top (vinyl-like) layer of the wallpaper. This leaves behind a second tissue-paper-like layer on the wall.
	Step 2: Fill the spray bottle with a vinegar and water solution. I didn’t measure the mix that we used, but I would guess it was about 1 part vinegar to 3 parts water. Spray the tissue paper layer left on the wall with the vinegar and water solution. Make sure that it is wet enough to completely soak through the tissue paper in all places. Use the paper towels to wipe up whatever runs down the wall.
	Step 3: Give the vinegar & water solution a few minutes to soak into the paper on the wall. Then use the putty knife (or painters tool) to scrape it off the wall. If there are any stubborn sections, try spraying them again with the water & vinegar mixture to help loosen the glue.
	Step 4: With all of the tissue paper layer scraped off of the wall, spray it down one more time with the vinegar and water solution and scrub any remaining glue off using the large tiling sponge. We found that the kind with a coarser scrubbing side worked really well to remove any small remnants of paper or glue left on the wall after the scraping was complete.

When it was all said and done, we had a few spots where a little of the paint had come off with the wallpaper, but it was nothing major. With another coat or two of paint, you won’t even be able to tell there was ever a border there!

Wallpaper – when is it ever a good idea? It doesn’t matter what the pattern is – it’s going to go out of style and, even when in style, it’s such a matter of personal taste. What I dislike about it most is that removal is no small task. Best case, it’s hours of tedious mind-numbing work. Worst case, it’s hours of tedious mind-numbing work followed by the dilemma of what to do with permanently scarred walls. I just hate it. And yet, we just purchased a house with several rooms of floor to ceiling wallpaper that coordinates beautifully, but still wouldn’t be my pick.

So, last week, we decided to start wallpaper removal efforts with the floral border in the master bedroom and bathroom. The plan is to start in a less visible area so we can figure out how difficult it’s going to be to remove wall paper from a plastered wall before we tackle the much more public areas on the main floor. Besides this, the wallpaper in the master bedroom was probably the most dated in the house … the perfect place to start.

Here are some before and after photos:

Before:

After:

Fortunately for us, the wallpaper in the bedroom turned out to be strippable (infinitely easier to remove than the alternative) and the wall surface underneath was not horribly damaged, so we think we’ll be able to get away with just a coat of paint. I hope the same is true for the floor-to-ceiling wallpaper in the dining room and sunroom! Now we just need to pick out a paint color … and maybe some new flooring … and a new bedspread …