Update

I'm not a great blogger. Especially lately. We haven't done too much keeping with the theme of this blog, nor have I bothered to blog on the topics I planned. But, I will give you some pictures of stuff we have done, and I promise there is at least one energy efficient project coming up!
Before:


After!



And this is the area we have designated for our garden. Its going to be huge. And ideally, we will have rain barrels to provide supplemental watering in the heat of the summer. However, if it is as dry as it was this summer, rain barrels won't even help. We have a hearing to go to next week to determine if we will be getting public water. Keep your fingers crossed for us. The public water here is terribly chlorinated, very acidic, and tastes horrible. If they bring public water here, we will be forced to hook up. We are really hoping they do not force us to abandon the well, even if we can just use it for gardening.

Thirteen non-green things we do

I don't claim to be the most environmentally friendly person out there. My goal is to be more so, but I'm not there yet. So, I give you 13 habits I should change.

1. I drink my soda from cans. And I drink lots of soda. Granted, I recycle the cans, but I really should cut down on the soda consumption for many reasons. One of which is the energy spent to make it. Another is the implicit support of evil corporations (i.e. Monsanto) who poison us with things like aspartame.

2. I am having trouble convincing Wirenut to focus on organic farming. He hates aphids and ants. And he likes to poison them. I found white pesticide residue on some basil plants. BASIL!!

3. I'm not so good about taking my own bags when I shop. I justify this by saying we use the plastic shopping bags for other things, like cat poop. I will turn down bags for small purchases, and I try to rebag purchases to minimize plastic bag use. But I still use them.

4. I HATE cleaning paint rollers. Therefor, I buy the contractor pack of rollers, de-lint them before painting, and throw them away when I am done. I freeze the rollers between uses of the same color (it allows me to reuse the roller without cleaning). But when I am done with a color, in the trash it goes.

5. I love my air conditioning. I grew up in the hot, humid southeast. Some might say I should be acclimated to heat and humidity. Instead, I acclimated to sweet, wonderful, cool, dry conditioned air. I mitigate this with a programmable thermostat.

6. Wirenut loves lighting. All sorts of lighting. Lots of lighting. I guess it come with the electrician license. He also dislikes the quality of the light from CLFs. The other problem is I like dimmers. I want every light on a dimmer. Hallways - dimmer. Bathroom - dimmer. Kitchen - dimmer. Everything - dimmer. CLFs are generally not compatible with dimmers ("they" are working on it). So, we have lots of incandescents.

7. I have not yet switching to low/no VOC paint and stain. Partially because its difficult to find in our new area, and partially because of cost.

8. Wirenut drives a full-size pickup truck. Granted, its a late-model Japanese truck, and he does kind of need it, being in the trades and all, and its the 6-cylinder, non-4WD option. But still, not that great on the gas consumption.

9. We don't really recycle paper. I have no justification for this. We do compost some paper. And when I clean out the magazines, those go in the recycle bins. But everyday mixed paper goes in the trash.

10. Speaking of paper, we use too many paper towels.

11. We buy veggies from the supermarket (in general) rather than farmer's markets or organic stores.

12. Tivo and the cable box are on 24/7.

13. We buy stuff made in china (although, its very hard not to these days :( )

13 1/2. We fly too much. Somewhat due to my job. Somewhat due to living 800+ miles from lots of family. And somewhat due to the travel bug and the fact we have already have seen the entire east coast.

In short - I'm better on the big stuff then I am the little stuff. And the little stuff adds up. This was kind of eyeopening.

Saved from the landfill!

Although we closed on the house over a week ago, we had a two week overlap with the apartment we have been renting. The apartment complex has been remodeling with turnover. Today, they were doing the kitchen across the hall from us. We noticed them piling the old cabinets on the ground in front of our place. As some of you know, Wirenut has a thing for organization, and we had been talking about picking up some used cabinets from a salvage store to put in the garage/workshop. So, we asked the contractors and sure enough, they were just going to throw away the old cabinets and were more than happy to let us take them. Score! Free cabinets for our garage AND we saved them from the landfill!

In other news, we have been working our tails off. The strangest part, Wirenut has unfinished our basement. It had to be done, as it was VERY old paneling and 30 year old musty carpet. Here are some pictures so far!

The house is ours now

At the auction Thursday night and again during the walk-through on Friday, I was overwhelmed. I kept noticing all these things I missed before. I looked around and thought "so much work!" After closing, when we went back to what we can officially call "our house," it all seemed reasonable and quite doable. Funny how attitude can change with ownership.

In the first 48 hours, we have spent about $300 at Lowes/Home Depot and have successfully pulled up carpet in the living and dining rooms and hallway upstairs and most of the carpet in the basement. I'd say we have about 80% of the tack strips and staples out upstairs.

The basement is interesting. Its a small-ish rec-room and a decent sized bedroom. All done in 70s dark paneling. The carpet down there is so old the closet was built ON TOP OF the carpet. I was thinking about doing stained & polished concrete as the flooring down there; however, we had a rude surprise under the ancient carpet. 12x12 vinyl tiles circa 1968. My alarm bells are going off that its probably asbestos based tile. The good news is that it does not appear friable. But, I'm thinking taking it out and polishing the concrete would not be the most environmentally friendly process. I believe out best bet is encapsulation, just not sure how. I;m thinking 1x3 sleepers and then subflooring to allow for moisture ventilation. I'm not yet sure what to put on top of the subfloor.

And speaking of flooring, I want real, honest to gosh, linoleum for the kitchen. Its harder to find than one would think. Armstrong makes a real linoleum, but the one I have read most about is Marmoleum. Marmoleum is not available in this county, while the Armstrong website tells me I can get it from Home Depot. Wanna have some fun? Go ask the folks working in your local Depot flooring department for linoleum. Just try it. When they take you to vinyl, insist you want real linoleum. Explain that its a renewable material made from linseed oil. If your Depot is anything like the two I went to, they look at you like you grew a second head.

We're buying a house today

In about another 3 hours, we will own a house again. Then we get started with our massive plans.

We went by last night for the seller's auction, hoping to pick up some good, used yard stuff. We didn't get too much, but we did get to see the inside of the house for the first time in a month. Its a bit overwhelming seeing it now. And since it was on the market, the dog has peed on the carpet several times. Make us wonder how many pee spots had been steam cleaned out while it was on the market. This is a bit annoying since our master plan included reusing the carpet that is over the hardwoods. Now seeing it in this new light, we are thinking that might not be the best plan. We have cats and they won't be happy with other animal pee smells all over their carpet. This could lead them to try to mark it themselves (not that they have ever peed on carpet before). And its just gross. So yeah, now we have to add in new flooring for the basement into our budget.

Well anyway, the good news is we will own a house. And we will spend the long Memorial Day weekend ripping up carpet, seeding the dirt field that needs to be a lawn (must be grass due to septic), and formalizing the rest of our master plan.

Future topic list

The closing on our house was delayed a few weeks for installation of a new septic system. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Its good because we know we will have a new septic system designed to newer codes and taking advantage of knowledge learned over the past 40 years. Its bad because the previous system has been slowly failing over the past 5 or so years. A failing system is very bad for the environment. So it has likely been polluting for years, and this makes me sad. But the good news is that it was caught and will be fixed. And we won't be paying for it!

So in the mean time, I'll give you a list of topics I am researching:
1) Bat Houses
2) Rain Barrels
3) Wooden Hot Tubs
4) Composite decking matieral
5) Bay Wise Landscaping
6) Pet waste disposal

Architectural Salvage in Baltimore

Today we spent the bulk of the day checking out a couple of architectural salvage stores in Baltimore.

First, we went to Second Chance Architectural Salvage. This place is GREAT! It was five warehouses of salvaged materials and antiques. Additionally, they funtion as an outlet from the semi-custom cabinetry company Yorktowne out of Red Lion, PA. You have to hunt and peck, but that is half the fun. After today's preliminary look, we will be going back to look for bathroom cabinetry, and possibly new doors for our ugly kitchen. They had hundreds of unstained cabinet doors (buy one get on free on Tuesdays). It will take several hours, but I think we can find enough to update our dated light oak cabinets with arches panels. I'm thinking a light cherry stain and painting the existing boxes and trim black.

Warehouse 3 was Wirenut's favorite, as it had mostly new materials, factory seconds, and slightly damaged new stuff. I preferred to wander through the historic materials in warehouses 1 and 2, plus all the furniture in 4 & 5. We have discovered that we are polar opposites when it comes to the value of antiques. Oh, and if you are in the market for a set of old theater chandeliers and have a spare $20,000, this is the place to go!

After Second Chance, we headed over to The Loading Dock. This store was much smaller and was mostly not-so-great stuff. Wirenut commented, "if I pulled this crap out of a house I was working on, it would go straight to the dumpster." This lead to a discussion of saving stuff from landfills, but, frankly, he was right. Beat up pressboard/melamine cabinets and rotten lumber made up the bulk of their inventory. The tile wasn't too bad (and much better priced than Second Chance), but overall we decided it wasn't worth the drive and the membership fees.

We also stopped off in Little Italy for some lunch at Della Notte. In my question to find the best gnocchi, I rate theirs at a 5. Kind of disappointing since it was expensive and highly rated. Donald Trump even ate there! My favorite gnocchi is still at a tiny place by the side of I95 in Lorton called Gennaros. If you are ever driving on I95 in Northern Virginia, I highly recommend getting off at exit 163, turning right (both north and southbound exits), and look for the little restraunt in the Comfort Inn parking lot and across Silverbrook Rd from the gas station.