Fence update and Light up!

Over the weekend Mike and his dad worked on adding an overhead light to Katherine's room. We took the one that was up in our old house so it was nice to get it back up. We only had a small table lamp and at night her room was like a cave. His dad crawled up into the attic and after some measurement issues they got the box right in the middle. The trick was drilling down through the top plate of the wall so they could wire it to the switch. We have a few more holes to patch and paint now but now her room is really bright!

Mike and I have both been working long days with a lot of obligations lately so we've been getting home late. We noticed the other day that our fence had been fixed, but we haven't been home when its light out yet to snap a picture. Because today was Halloween I got home early and was able to get a picture.

We wanted the fence to be have a bit more of an arch to it but it looks good. And the top has been flattened so that it meets our other fence a little more cleanly.

We've got shutters! And a split.

We ordered nice plantation shutters months ago but they have to be custom made for your windows so they were just finished up. Bob came by yesterday to watch the installers and the new windows look great. (ignore the fact that the pictures were taken in the dark)

We got three windows. The living room (left), dining room (right) and our room (below). We have the option of adding more at the great discount within a certain time period so we may be adding more in the next few months.

While Bob was watching the installers he helped out with a few little things. Mike had installed new stop valves under the sinks he had replaced (our bathroom and Katherine's) and he had bought two more. Bob added similar stop valves to the two upstairs toilets. The stop valves are meant to easily turn off water to the sinks or toilets in case you need to do work on them.


Mike had added a few support brackets to the porch outside so that it was more secure a few weeks ago. He finished adding the rest of them last weekend and wanted to add them to the two support beams in the garage that support our bedroom. One of the beams had a piece of plywood over it that Mike pulled off across the top so he could add the bracket. When he pulled the plywood off he discovered that there was a large split in the beam on the south side. The split seems to be at least a half inch wide and runs the length of the beam. Bob took the rest of the beam so he could get a good look. We're going to have to call a contractor to jack up the roof and replace it. At left is the split visible above the plywood on the beam. 

Things we forgot we did!

We apparently accomplished so much since our last blog post we forgot that we had done more.

Last night Mike got the cable upstairs fixed last night and has plans to play with the excess wire tonight.

Our sink upstairs is fixed ... again. After a long battle with some small o-rings Mike got it working. But it still leaked. So Mike pulled the sink apart and we were sinkless for a little while. Yesterday he was able to mess with it and was able to replace the whole thing with a new one, that doesn't leak.

And our heater works! About three weeks ago we woke up on a chilly morning to discover that our heater doesn't work. We called our home warranty and got an appointment with the company they contract with. They could only come out a week after our original call and of course, we were at work so Anne had to go by to open up the house for them. Somehow the technician that showed up thought we needed our air conditioner looked at and that's what he evaluated. He said our air conditioner was "brand new" when its really 10 years old. Once we realized it didn't work we called the company back and tried to set another appointment, a week later. This time, Mike was there and made sure the technician that showed up was actually looking at the heater. He did and lo and behold he needs a part he didn't have. In the meantime we had to buy a space heater for the baby's room and brought down the flannel comforter for our room.

The technician was supposed to go to the warehouse the next day to get the part, then call Mike to set the appointment. I got a call that day from the company and when I answered they said they called me because Mike had hung up on them. I said, "Yep, probably because he's probably pissed." My guess was right, they had called to tell him that they couldn't get the part until the following week. I told them we'd had to get a heater for the baby, and it would have been three weeks without a heater by the time they got the next appointment. They were very apologetic but it wasn't going to get it done any faster.

When they did come the next week, the same technician that Mike had met came back and got it fixed. Mike still called and complained to the company though, after each disappointment. When he looked them up on Yelp it turns out the heating company had 1.5/5 stars. Boy, I wonder why.

Media closet & a real fence!

Its been a while, we've been busy. Fall has hit me hard with the new school year and Mike's been picking up overtime which means our projects are going slowly. Very slowly.

Our last major accomplishment was getting the TV on the wall. There was still a cable issue and we had two wires running across the room for a long time. In preparation for the finished product, Mike sheet rocked the media closet, fitted it with a three-gang and two-gang outlet box. The boys finally got it hooked up right, without cables and we could walk across our floor in the dark without fear! Of cables at least, toys and blocks are still a hazard. For a little while we still had the power cord down to the outlet below it until Mike rewired the box behind it.

He had to spend a long time with Steve trying to get his infrared system to work. Mike wanted all of our equipment (cable box, DVD player, receiver, etc) in the closet under the stairs near the bar area. In order for them to receive signal from the remote, they had to add an infrared receiver under the TV that was wired through the wall (luckily extra CAT6 had been laid in when the rest of the wires were run) to the closet and sent out of an infrared transmitter in the closet that sends the signal to the devices. Once that was hooked up, Mike could sit on the couch and control the channel of the cable box, the volume of the TV, the volume of the receiver controlling the speakers, the DVD player, etc. If you come over, he'll show you - he can also control it on his phone. There's an app for that.

After everything was wired correctly, Mike built shelves for all the components. He still wants to have it taped up when our painter comes but it works for now. He didn't want me to include a picture of it because its not "done," but its such progress! Our cable upstairs has gone back to looking like it needs rabbit ears though so somewhere along the way we goofed. Mike was able to fix the occasional digital hiccups downstairs by removing a power cable splitter and replacing it with an un-powered one. Go figure.

We also got the green house window replaced.  We had gotten an estimate on replacing the pane that had a broken seal from one company  and wanted one for replacing the window itself with a flat one from another but the company didn't want to replace it because of the vinyl siding. When we replace the vinyl siding and windows in another ten years (and go into debt probably) we'll have that window changed out. Now we can actually see into the backyard which is helpful with the baby.

And today we got our fence finished! We had the single wrought iron gate on the south replaced with a straight redwood one (right). On the north side, we replaced the double wrought iron fence with a double redwood one and built a fence along the slope up to our neighbors fence (left). We had asked for an arch along the top so we have to email him back and check on that. But for now, Beau can go into the backyard, unsupervised! He can't see into the front yard to bark at cats in the neighborhood and we're hoping he can't jump  a six foot fence on an incline. Time will tell on that one I guess.

 

Shower & Shed

Last weekend Mike and I finally got an outdoor shed. We had found the one we wanted on sale at OSH over the summer but had to take a rain check. Weeks and weeks later after calling them we finally caught someone who said "We have one, come quick." When Mike got there he ended up getting an additional discount since they didn't call him which was nice. We had had the same brand before so we were able to get it up fairly quickly. Its a smaller one than before since we have such a big garage. It only has to fit the lawn and gardening supplies, not the camping supplies, irrigation fixing supplies, camping gear, spare tire for offroading, etc. It looks pretty good and means our lawn mower can finally leave the patio. Of course the baby thought it was a playhouse so we'll have to get a lock.

After that Mike worked on the media closet door. You'll remember we tried to paint the initial door to save money. It ended up not coming out well and when Mike looked up the price of replacement doors he decided it wasn't worth trying. So he ordered a replacement bi-folding, pre-painted door that arrived pretty quick. The door molding though, needed an updated from the 70s wood trim. With a new miter box (our old one is missing pieces, presumed to be in a box somewhere) Mike hand cut and pieced all the door trim for the media closet so it matched all the other doors in the house. He has to paint them still but at least their up. We still have the door off though because the boys are still working on the media set-up.

With the start of the school year and a bunch of overtime we haven't been able to do as much to the house as we would like. But, it still requires our attention from time to time. The shower in our bathroom for instance, made a protest on the morning of Back To School night. I tried to turn the water off, and it decided to stay on. I tried to crank the handle over farther, which diminished it a little bit, but it decided to stay on. And when I say "on" I don't mean a trickle. It was flowing about half strength which was not something you could leave going all day. So I called Mike and he said, "Yeah it does that now," and suggested really trying to crank it over like I was going to break it. I could push the handle a little bit farther but it would never fully shut off and when I released the handle it went back to half flow. So at 6am I had to go outside, towel on my head and in a robe, to turn off the water to the house. Fun times. Mike's dad came by during the day and fixed it. Apparently a screw and washer had come loose.

We're hoping to take another crack at the media stuff this weekend....

Rear Speakers & Holes

Last week we got the TV, front speakers and center channel in. Last night Steve and Tim came back to put in the rear speakers, run wires for outside speakers and add an outlet and media box behind the TV. Which means more holes.

At one point, Mike Steve and Tim were all working on different holes in our walls and ceiling. Tim had to drill holes from the media closet under the stairs into the beams in the ceiling of the family room. Mike had to keep an eye on him since they didn't want to turn the electricity off and there were live wires along the beam. Steve ran cable from the media closet through the holes in the beam into the ceiling of the family room. He had to cut a hole in the ceiling in order to drill small holes in more beams so that he can get the wires between the beams that would hold the two rear speakers.

While Steve was cutting and placing the rear speakers Mike and Tim were working on the outlet behind the TV. There was a plug right below the TV and a cable that ran across the carpet for cable for the last week. The plan was to drop the wires hanging from the whole in our ceiling above our TV into a media plate behind the TV. Mike wanted a real clean look with no wires or devices near the TV.

After it was all hooked up and Steve was checking connections they encountered some problem. He tried a couple of different things and I think it was decided that one cable was 1.5 feet longer than the other. He has a nifty device that plugs in to a wire and tells you how long it is. Apparently with HDMI, a slightly different length can cause big problems. Our current plan is to trade in our DVR for an HD one and buy a different plug-in plate for behind the TV. Mike said he got the right one and its not broken it just doesn't work. I don't quite know how that happens. Until then, we add to our "to be patched, mudded and painted" list for our painter.

And we have a TV

Its been a long process but we have officially come into modern times with a flat screen TV. We had a hand-me-down 32" tube TV (thanks Keith) from college on a nearly decade old hand-me-down Ikea entertainment center (thanks Kristen and George). Its been a long standing agreement in our house that if the Sharks made it to the Stanley Cup, we would buy a flat screen. Well, we bought a bigger house before that happened so it was time to upgrade.

Tim and Steve had worked on rewiring the house for phone, internet and cable over the summer. The wiring was done after the house was built and not done well. We have a hole in every closet from cable lines that has to get patched; especially now that the baby has figured out her fingers fit in them. We have been staring at a 4"x12" hole in our wall above the TV for weeks waiting for the speakers, wall plates, TV, etc. to come in. There were several hold ups to the process, like Mike actually deciding what he wanted to order, adding an electrical outlet to the media closet, etc. The TV was delivered last week and then the speakers came. The TV box was huge so it was a good thing one of the garage bays was empty.

We had to clear out the living room of toys which made the baby's room look really full. Maybe she has too many ..... never! The boys were really good about asking us where we wanted the TV centered, the height, etc. But I was surprised when they started tracing out the templates for the front speakers because they were huge! I actually thought it was the template for the sub woofer when I first saw it. Each front speaker is mounted in the ceiling and is 16" square. The speakers are angled down even though it has a speaker cover that is flush with the ceiling.

 They had quite the set up in our living room. Steve brought his own blanket to control dust from the drywall cutting and they were able to use their ladder as scaffolding. Although several times he seemed very precariously perched while holding a saws-all. There is a stud right down the middle of the wall that the TV is now mounted to. But the center channel, needing to go in the center, created a problem. Steve had to notch out part of that stud to fit the center channel in. Mike had purposely bought a very thin center channel and assures me that its still structurally sound.

When the boys had rewired the house they had to get a bundle of wires to come down through the attic into the green room's closet, along the floor under the carpet, under the door channel and into a hole they made in the floor a few inches into the room. That was out of necessity to get around beams, floor joists and what not. It ended up being perfect placement though for wiring the ceiling speakers. You know its going to be a good install when you here, "Right on the money! Oh my gosh this is going to be so easy. This is great, no time at all, " etc. Which is good since they had to spend so long on the rewiring.

At  some point they decided they still need to observe the opening day of football season and plugged our old TV into the wall in the bar area. And there was a short delay when Tim got hit by the ricocheting saw, I'm still not sure how that happened. Mike had to go get a mount and ended up getting one from his parents because they had a spare. Of course the baby fell asleep on him while he was out and the three of us back home decided we were hungry so we also asked him to pick us up pizza. Pretty quick though, the TV was going up and getting plugged in.

So now we have two ceiling mounted front speakers, one center channel and a 60" plasma. All day they were asking me what I thought and I kept saying, "Its huge!" I thought it was too big and that Mike overbought. But once it was all up and we sat on the couch, I had to admit it was a good size for the space. The couches are 15" away from the wall so it does have to be big.

There is still a hole above the TV because we were waiting on a wall plate to be delivered. The wall plate is a two-gang that has power on one side and HDMI on the other. All of those wires that are hanging will be fed down into the wall and attach to that wall plate. We also still have a cable, actually two, running across our family room floor because the wall plate isn't in. Once the wall is set-up, everything will be connected to the other side of the wires in the media closet. Then I won't have to worry about tripping over wires in the dark.

Once it was all up we sat around to watch football and check out the TV. Of course, our TV has an app. All three of the boys downloaded it and were taking turns changing the volume, menu, channel, etc. When we put the two rear speakers in (which are thankfully smaller) we will probably also put two speakers in the back patio. We'll already have holes in the ceiling so why not? Once we do that we will be able to control inside speakers and TV (Zone 1) separate from outside speakers (Zone 2). Apparently we'll also be able to plug in an iPod and browse the whole music collection from the phone (or whatever) that has the app for running the system. And Mike thought the thermostat app was cool....

The boys plan to come back on Friday since we got the rest of the parts this week. Its been a long process and its still not done, but at least now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel in super crisp HD.