This year, we decided to try something different for leaf removal and bought a John Deere Power Flow bagger for our lawn mower.  They come in 7 and 14 bushel models and we decided on the larger of the two.  So far, it’s done a good job of picking up the leaves and grass clippings and we’re pretty happy with the purchase.

New Power Flow Bagger

The power flow piece is a fan powered by the mower deck and helps to blow the clippings into the three mesh bags.  To empty the bags, the hopper is hinged and the bags slide out.  There’s even a gauge to show when bagger is getting full.

Power Flow

Open Hopper and Mesh Bags

Air Flow Indicator

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.

After being in our house for about 2 years and having basically no furniture in our living room during that time, we finally decided it was time to start furniture shopping.

Our living room is pretty large (about 30′ long x 16′ wide), but really long and narrow with lots of doorways that make furniture placement a challenge, so I started by putting together a floorplan for the room to have a better idea of the size and scale of furniture that would work in the space.  Here’s the plan I came up with:

Floor Plan for Living Room

We’ll have a small, apartment-size sofa (about 78″ in length) and a pair of chairs in front of the fireplace with a coffee table in the middle and a sofa table behind the couch for lamps and a little additional storage.  Since the room is so narrow and there are doors on either side of the fireplace that require us to leave a couple of paths through the room, we had to pick some smaller pieces for this conversation area.  On the right side of the diagram (the front of the house), we’ll have a chair and ottoman in front of the built in display cabinets to add some additional seating and we’re planning to move the piano to this half of the room as well where it will fit better along the wall common with the family room.  On the left side of the diagram (back of the house), we’re thinking of having a standard height table large enough for playing board games or reading a newspaper, with a couple of upholstered chairs that will be easy to reposition around the table.  We’re also thinking of having some taller bookshelves / display cabinets to help balance out the built ins on the other side of the room.

We already had the piano, but all of the other pieces in the floor plan are things we needed to shop for, so we started looking around at the local furniture stores a month or so ago and we finally decided on some upholstered furniture that we thought would be the right size/scale for the room.  Here are some pictures of the pieces we bought:

New Furniture for Living Room

The new apartment-size sofa (upper left) will be covered in a brown linen fabric that’s a little darker in person than it looks in the picture.  The matching chairs (upper right) will be covered in a coordinating textured fabric that’s a blend of tan and ivory.  We also purchased a dark brown leather chair and ottoman that will go in front of the display cases and some coordinating pillows in the fabric on the lower left.

Everything we bought is pretty neutral, but I think it will look nice in our living room once it finally comes in.  We were really hopeful that we would have the furniture before Christmas, maybe even in time to have a Christmas party now that we’ll have places for people to sit, but it sounds like it will be a good 60-90 days before we should expect to receive the new furniture, so we might be lucky to have it by Christmas.  We’re still working to pick out some coordinating tables and a couple more chairs.  Hopefully we can get those on order soon as well!