it's a wonderful house

goin all hildi on this house

yep, this is the weekend during which i wear black and channel hildi santo-tomas. i won't be wearing kitten heels for the occasion, though i do love my kitten heels. i'm just not made of the same matter as she is.

instead, we spend much of the day tomorrow shuffling between our house and hundreds of other houses in the neighborhood: it is the regent square civic association yard sale! every year, the saturday after mother's day, we find treasures large and small and end the day exhausted and smug. what better way is there to be? :)

and thanks to jack, don, tom, and whatever other plasterers have traipsed through our house, we now have rooms in which to put them! actually, it isn't all jack and the plasterers--they're just putting the gorgeous finishing touches on. first came destruction--starting months ago, crews of men came through every day, tearing out walls, sistering joists, framing studs and walls that had been torn out (including a load-bearing one--fun!), insulating, adding air conditioning, rewiring, plumbing, and probably other things that i'm not even remembering. but the past few weeks have been all about the pretty. plasterers came in and sanded down the texture (ugly, uneven, bleh) and made the walls and ceilings smooth, white, and soothing.

one room, the front entry, is ready for priming and painting. so today i bought two gallons of untinted primer for that room, a gallon of ceiling paint, and a gallon of paint for the walls. all of this is from freshaire choice, a no-voc (not even after the pigment is added) paint easily available from home depot. primer was about $25 per gallon, and the paints were in the neighborhood of $35 per gallon.

i also bought primer (though we have to take it back to get it tinted, because i forgot to request it and the woman helping me didn't think to offer it) and paints for the bedroom, which is our highest-priority room to finish. all the colors are inspired by fallingwater colors (really, by pittsburgh paint's collection of fallingwater colors). i wish i could post images of the colors from freshaire's web site, but it stupidly scripty and i can't even get a screen shot. grr! but you can see them here if you want. the ceilings in both rooms (all, maybe) are going to be a pale blue called nightfall (from the earth collection). the walls in the entry room will be canyon pebble (also from the earth collection), a cool beige. not my normal color, but i think that it will showcase andrew's framed photos beautifully, as well as setting off the white-with-crimson wedding certificate that will hang in there. best of all, i'm planning to put a slate-tile floor in there, and the walls should pick that up, too. the blue ceiling will provide cool contrast.

the walls of the bedroom will be a deep chocolaty brown called wildwood trail (from, you guessed it, the earth collection), which will be gorgeous contrasting with the pale blue on the ceiling. as an accent, i'm hoping to be brave enough to paint a way-oversized flower (think blown-up photo silhouette, not realistic or cartooned) in a lovely red called rhythm of red (from the botanical collection). i haven't quite figured out where or how to do this--i wanted to put it on the bed wall originally, but i also need an accent for the wall that you see when you're coming up the stairs. i'm still planning that.

and next weekend is memorial day, which means that we should be able to find a decent deal on a mattress (we already have a bed). yay!

the other rooms should be ready for painting by sunday as well, but i thought i'd start with two rooms to make sure that we love this paint. and, well, because i couldn't stomach paying that much all at once at home depot. :)

in landscaping news, i have a brown thumb and can never grow anything. this year, i used a white flower farm gift certificate from jen to buy four little plants. i planted them in the fall, and a couple of them were actually growing! i know! but then kimicata brothers, our lawn-mowing and sort of landscaping company, came and MOWED OVER THEM. i am so pissed! this is not the first time--it happened with a hydrangea a few years ago, too--but this time i put big rings of mulch around them. i thought surely they'd know to avoid that. duh!

last, i think that smartboy wants the contractors to finish more of the second-floor bathroom than i'd realized--we meet with the foreman (karl) and the general (sal) monday morning to go over the plan. they've framed and roughed in everything, but i think that he wants to have them do more, such as putting in the shower pan. not sure what else. we already had the electrician put in the light fixtures (except for sconces, which i haven't chosen yet) and exhaust fan. it'll be swell when it's finished.

so that's our weekend. i promise not to put any hay on the walls.

the it house

no, not like the it girl. like the inconvenient truth house.

beyond making the house--whether it ends up being our current house or another house that we remodel--one we love and the project one we enjoy, i have two other goals for the house: making it as accessible as possible and making it (and the remodeling process) as green as possible. as happens so frequently when i have a project in my head (and i'm sure this is common), i found myself thinking about ways that this related to the movie we saw yesterday. when the credits rolled, interspersed with ways we could help (beautifully done, by the way), i couldn't wait to get home to check out the web site to find out more. i was happy to find that the site is fabulously unpreachy and informative--what a perfect combination for motivating and helping people :) so i've been making notes about how to incorporate some of these things into the remodel, as well as other aspects of our lives, toward that second goal of greenness.

• replace our incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, saving 300 pounds of co2 annually. totally doable. i'm sure costco sells these, and they'll easily store in the basement.
• move the thermostat down two degrees in winter and up two degrees in summer, saving 2,000 pounds of c02 annually. we currently try to keep our heat down low in winter, and actually had to turn it on longer than we'd wanted when the tenants complained this year. no tenants will mean we'll be in control of that. and a central system will hopefully be easier to control. we try to be sparing with the two room air-conditioning units, too. and i anticipate using open windows much more often on the upper floors; i hesitate to use them now because we're on a vulnerable first floor. :-\
• clean or replace filters on our furnace and air conditioner, saving 350 pounds of co2 annually. we totally need to do this now. here's an article on cleaning or replacing a furnace filter.
• install a programmable thermostat. we could do this now, but with my weird work schedule (working at home many days, but not the same days every week), i'm not sure this is right for us. will have to investigate the options. here's an article about how to do it.
• choose energy-efficient appliances. fortunately, our washer , dryer , and dishwasher are all energy-star compliant and were the most energy- and water-efficient models available on the market at the time that we bought them. we plan to replace the range and refrigerator when remodeling the kitchen. the refrigerator i was planning for doesn't say anything about being energy star compliant on its web page :( which would really suck, because i really like it. the range doesn't either, but from what i can tell at the energy star web site, they don't make specs for them. i guess because you only turn the burner on when you cook and off when you're done? i dunno. that seems kind of elementary.
  interestingly, energy star also says that whatever kind of fridge you have, you can reduce energy usage if it's away from a heat source, such as an oven, dishwasher, or direct sunlight. good to know when laying out the new kitchen.
• wrap our water heater in an insulation blanket, saving 1,000 pounds of co2 annually. here's an article about how to do it.
• set the water-heater thermostat no higher than 120 degrees fahrenheit, saving 550 pounds  of c02 annually. here's an article about doing this.
• install low-flow shower heads in our new showers, saving 350 pounds of c02 annually. i'm sure this is doable, though i'm having trouble finding any on home depot's craptastic web site (who doesn't let you open things in a new window or go back a page??), lowe's only slightly better one, or even moen's or kohler's pretty but not particularly useful ones.
• wash our clothes in cold or warm water, saving 500 pounds of c02 annually. we already wash everything in cold water, with very rare exceptions.
• use a clothesline instead of a dryer whenever possible, saving 700 pounds of c02 annually for just six months of air drying. sorry, but i'm just not that trusting. i air-dry select items on racks in the house, and maybe when we have more room, it'll be feasible to try it, but i suspect the dogs would be the culprits then. we have an energy-efficient dryer, and i'm afraid that's as much as i can offer there :(
• turn off electronic devices we're not using, saving thousands of pounds of co2 annually. we do turn these off when we're not using them, though we are definitely guilty of using many of these more than the average bear.
• unplug electronics from the wall when we're not using them. we do this with some things, like our blender, toaster oven, and hair dryers, but rarely with anything else. we'll have to learn some new habits here.
• only run our dishwasher when there's a full load and use the energy-saving setting, saving 100 pounds of co2 annually. we're pretty good about loading it up; i'll have to look at the settings. i think we usually just use the normal or regular setting, unless there's a sticky one, when we engage the pot-scrubbing setting.
• properly insulate our walls and ceilings, saving 2,000 pounds of c02 annually. this is definitely in the plans. here's an article about how to do it.
• caulk and weather-strip, saving 1,700 pounds of c02 annually. here's a pdf article about how to do this.
• recycle half the waste we generate, saving 2,400 pounds of c02 annually. we already do this, between municipal pickup of glass, plastic, and metal, and dropping off magazines and cardboard at construction junction. (god, i love that place!)
• buy recycled-paper products. we use seventh generation toilet paper. we tried their paper towels, but they were so abysmally unabsorbent that we ended up using more of them to accomplish the task that they defeated the purpose. so we returned to my beloved bounty. their tissues are inoffensive except in the worst of cold season. as for other paper products, i mostly just try to print less. i've bought recycled before; i could try to buy it more. consciously.
• plant a tree. i planted two last year. one survived; one didn't. i'm no arborist, sadly.
• get a home energy audit. this would probably be a great idea before embarking on the new insulation business! here is a directory of certified energy raters.
• switch to green power. in pennsylvania, we have a lot of wind energy sources, as well as a little biogas and solar. i am all over this! :) here is where you can find out whether you can get it.
• buy locally grown and produced foods. we get 100 percent of our produce 50 percent of the year from kretschmann farm. i didn't even know that helped the co2 problem.
• buy fresh foods instead of frozen. i buy a little frozen food, but much less than fresh. i'll try to do better now that i know it uses 10 times the energy to produce.
• seek out and support local farmers' markets. since that would add another driving trip or two (one to the market then another to get the rest of the ingredients to go with whatever i found there) to my week, i'm not sure i want to add this to my every-week to-dos. but certainly if i can combine a trip to the home depot that's next to the east liberty farmers' market, i'll absolutely try it. i love farmers' markets, and we're going to be spending plenty of time at home-improvement stores.
• buy organic foods as much as possible. i totally do this. :)
• avoid heavily packaged products. this is something of which i should become more aware. i don't really pay much attention when i'm buying things, and it hasn't really influenced my purchasing decisions, though i totally notice it when i'm opening things and throwing all that crap away. makes me nuts.
• eat less meat. i don't eat a lot of meat when i go out, but at home i eat more than i used to. i could get better at this.
• walk, bike, carpool, or take mass transit wherever possible. smartboy buses, bikes, or walks to work nearly every day. i telecommute every day that i'm able, which ranges from two to four days in an average week. when i do go in, i try to restrict driving to one day per week, when i run all of my car-requiring errands on my route home, mapped out as efficiently as i can. i take the bus the other days, and if the weather's nice, i'll walk part of the way home. the only times i've ended up driving more than one day per week is if i've missed the bus or the bus just never comes (oh, wonderful reliable patransit) and i have a meeting to get to, and the weather is just too miserable to keep waiting for another 20 minutes at the stop.
• start a carpool with our coworkers or classmates. since i go into the office so irregularly, and when i do, it's just for a few hours at a time, this isn't practical for me. and smartboy already doesn't drive. sorry :(
• keep our cars tuned up. we both do this.
• check our tires weekly to make sure they're properly inflated. yeah, i've never done it that regularly. i guess i could do it at every fillup (which isn't even every month, but it's probably the equivalent of every week for someone who drives every day). go figure.
• choose a more fuel-efficient vehicle. we chose the most fuel-efficient car in the size we needed :-\ we tried to find a way to work a hybrid into our lives, but we just couldn't. but we plan to make our second car, in a few years, be a hybrid compact. this time around, we just really needed the storage of the small suv. we try to make up for it by driving as little as possible! :)
• try car sharing. i would love to try something like this when it comes to pittsburgh. brilliant idea!
• try telecommuting. i do--and have been for many years! i love it! i heartily recommend it to anyone who can do it.
• fly less. we only fly transcontinentally and internationally, pretty much. still undecided about whether to fly when i visit jen in minneapolis. if i do, i think i'll offset the flight.

Comments

Fantastic post. Anyone can buy either green power itself or "green tags" that pay for it in effect. See "Your Electric Choices" at www.green-e.org.

Regards,
Tom Gray
American Wind Energy Association
www.awea.org
www.ifnotwind.org

Posted by: Tom Gray | Sunday, 02 July 2006 at 01:03 PM

beyond making the house--whether it ends up being our current house or another house that we remodel--one we love and the project one we enjoy, i have two other goals for the house: making it as accessible as possible and making it (and the remodeling process) as green as possible. as happens so frequently when i have a project in my head (and i'm sure this is common), i found myself thinking about ways that this related to the movie we saw yesterday. when the credits rolled, interspersed with ways we could help (beautifully done, by the way), i couldn't wait to get home to check out the web site to find out more. i was happy to find that the site is fabulously unpreachy and informative--what a perfect combination for motivating and helping people :) so i've been making notes about how to incorporate some of these things into the remodel, as well as other aspects of our lives, toward that second goal of greenness.

• replace our incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, saving 300 pounds of co2 annually. totally doable. i'm sure costco sells these, and they'll easily store in the basement.
• move the thermostat down two degrees in winter and up two degrees in summer, saving 2,000 pounds of c02 annually. we currently try to keep our heat down low in winter, and actually had to turn it on longer than we'd wanted when the tenants complained this year. no tenants will mean we'll be in control of that. and a central system will hopefully be easier to control. we try to be sparing with the two room air-conditioning units, too. and i anticipate using open windows much more often on the upper floors; i hesitate to use them now because we're on a vulnerable first floor. :-\
• clean or replace filters on our furnace and air conditioner, saving 350 pounds of co2 annually. we totally need to do this now. here's an article on cleaning or replacing a furnace filter.
• install a programmable thermostat. we could do this now, but with my weird work schedule (working at home many days, but not the same days every week), i'm not sure this is right for us. will have to investigate the options. here's an article about how to do it.
• choose energy-efficient appliances. fortunately, our washer , dryer , and dishwasher are all energy-star compliant and were the most energy- and water-efficient models available on the market at the time that we bought them. we plan to replace the range and refrigerator when remodeling the kitchen. the refrigerator i was planning for doesn't say anything about being energy star compliant on its web page :( which would really suck, because i really like it. the range doesn't either, but from what i can tell at the energy star web site, they don't make specs for them. i guess because you only turn the burner on when you cook and off when you're done? i dunno. that seems kind of elementary.
  interestingly, energy star also says that whatever kind of fridge you have, you can reduce energy usage if it's away from a heat source, such as an oven, dishwasher, or direct sunlight. good to know when laying out the new kitchen.
• wrap our water heater in an insulation blanket, saving 1,000 pounds of co2 annually. here's an article about how to do it.
• set the water-heater thermostat no higher than 120 degrees fahrenheit, saving 550 pounds  of c02 annually. here's an article about doing this.
• install low-flow shower heads in our new showers, saving 350 pounds of c02 annually. i'm sure this is doable, though i'm having trouble finding any on home depot's craptastic web site (who doesn't let you open things in a new window or go back a page??), lowe's only slightly better one, or even moen's or kohler's pretty but not particularly useful ones.
• wash our clothes in cold or warm water, saving 500 pounds of c02 annually. we already wash everything in cold water, with very rare exceptions.
• use a clothesline instead of a dryer whenever possible, saving 700 pounds of c02 annually for just six months of air drying. sorry, but i'm just not that trusting. i air-dry select items on racks in the house, and maybe when we have more room, it'll be feasible to try it, but i suspect the dogs would be the culprits then. we have an energy-efficient dryer, and i'm afraid that's as much as i can offer there :(
• turn off electronic devices we're not using, saving thousands of pounds of co2 annually. we do turn these off when we're not using them, though we are definitely guilty of using many of these more than the average bear.
• unplug electronics from the wall when we're not using them. we do this with some things, like our blender, toaster oven, and hair dryers, but rarely with anything else. we'll have to learn some new habits here.
• only run our dishwasher when there's a full load and use the energy-saving setting, saving 100 pounds of co2 annually. we're pretty good about loading it up; i'll have to look at the settings. i think we usually just use the normal or regular setting, unless there's a sticky one, when we engage the pot-scrubbing setting.
• properly insulate our walls and ceilings, saving 2,000 pounds of c02 annually. this is definitely in the plans. here's an article about how to do it.
• caulk and weather-strip, saving 1,700 pounds of c02 annually. here's a pdf article about how to do this.
• recycle half the waste we generate, saving 2,400 pounds of c02 annually. we already do this, between municipal pickup of glass, plastic, and metal, and dropping off magazines and cardboard at construction junction. (god, i love that place!)
• buy recycled-paper products. we use seventh generation toilet paper. we tried their paper towels, but they were so abysmally unabsorbent that we ended up using more of them to accomplish the task that they defeated the purpose. so we returned to my beloved bounty. their tissues are inoffensive except in the worst of cold season. as for other paper products, i mostly just try to print less. i've bought recycled before; i could try to buy it more. consciously.
• plant a tree. i planted two last year. one survived; one didn't. i'm no arborist, sadly.
• get a home energy audit. this would probably be a great idea before embarking on the new insulation business! here is a directory of certified energy raters.
• switch to green power. in pennsylvania, we have a lot of wind energy sources, as well as a little biogas and solar. i am all over this! :) here is where you can find out whether you can get it.
• buy locally grown and produced foods. we get 100 percent of our produce 50 percent of the year from kretschmann farm. i didn't even know that helped the co2 problem.
• buy fresh foods instead of frozen. i buy a little frozen food, but much less than fresh. i'll try to do better now that i know it uses 10 times the energy to produce.
• seek out and support local farmers' markets. since that would add another driving trip or two (one to the market then another to get the rest of the ingredients to go with whatever i found there) to my week, i'm not sure i want to add this to my every-week to-dos. but certainly if i can combine a trip to the home depot that's next to the east liberty farmers' market, i'll absolutely try it. i love farmers' markets, and we're going to be spending plenty of time at home-improvement stores.
• buy organic foods as much as possible. i totally do this. :)
• avoid heavily packaged products. this is something of which i should become more aware. i don't really pay much attention when i'm buying things, and it hasn't really influenced my purchasing decisions, though i totally notice it when i'm opening things and throwing all that crap away. makes me nuts.
• eat less meat. i don't eat a lot of meat when i go out, but at home i eat more than i used to. i could get better at this.
• walk, bike, carpool, or take mass transit wherever possible. smartboy buses, bikes, or walks to work nearly every day. i telecommute every day that i'm able, which ranges from two to four days in an average week. when i do go in, i try to restrict driving to one day per week, when i run all of my car-requiring errands on my route home, mapped out as efficiently as i can. i take the bus the other days, and if the weather's nice, i'll walk part of the way home. the only times i've ended up driving more than one day per week is if i've missed the bus or the bus just never comes (oh, wonderful reliable patransit) and i have a meeting to get to, and the weather is just too miserable to keep waiting for another 20 minutes at the stop.
• start a carpool with our coworkers or classmates. since i go into the office so irregularly, and when i do, it's just for a few hours at a time, this isn't practical for me. and smartboy already doesn't drive. sorry :(
• keep our cars tuned up. we both do this.
• check our tires weekly to make sure they're properly inflated. yeah, i've never done it that regularly. i guess i could do it at every fillup (which isn't even every month, but it's probably the equivalent of every week for someone who drives every day). go figure.
• choose a more fuel-efficient vehicle. we chose the most fuel-efficient car in the size we needed :-\ we tried to find a way to work a hybrid into our lives, but we just couldn't. but we plan to make our second car, in a few years, be a hybrid compact. this time around, we just really needed the storage of the small suv. we try to make up for it by driving as little as possible! :)
• try car sharing. i would love to try something like this when it comes to pittsburgh. brilliant idea!
• try telecommuting. i do--and have been for many years! i love it! i heartily recommend it to anyone who can do it.
• fly less. we only fly transcontinentally and internationally, pretty much. still undecided about whether to fly when i visit jen in minneapolis. if i do, i think i'll offset the flight.

the best-laid plans?

have been investigating like mad today. i love a new project :)

so far, i've learned that the only real provider of actual green energy in pennsylvania is in the Other Part of the state (you know--the city of brotherly green energy and apparently everything else progressive). i did contact a local energy consultancy, which is a certified energy star rater as well as someone i think can help us with finding renewable sources, though at this point it looks like solar panels may be the best we'll be able to do for direct energy. we can, however, offset our impact; these are are green-e certified (thanks, tom!), and if you go here you can find a list of all of the certificate providers nationwide (green-e or otherwise certified or not).

i'm also learning a lot from this book.so much about things we should be looking for when we're looking at a house--even our own. one of them is a chart suggesting the best sequence for undertaking renovations and the seasons in which to do them. how handy!

looks like our best move, according to these authors, is to start the structural work (which obviously has to happen first) in the spring: foundation, then sills, then roof, then chimney. i don't know that we need any of that kind of work done, actually, but i'm sure we'll find out when we bring the structural engineer out to start planning this summer. i feel good about starting the planning now; it'll give us several months to get financially ready for all of this and to give our tenants notice.

then once all the foundation work is done, during the summer (read: while the weather is warm enough to leave the exterior exposed, if necessary, we do any sheathing, windows, doors, interior gutting, and rewiring work that's needed.

after the summer work is done, then we do any replumbing, insulation, and heating system work in the fall. (read: no central air till summer '08? boo.)

after all of that is done, we can start work on interior changes, interior walls, cabinets, fixtures, and floor refinishing.

finally, once all of that is complete, we can start scheduling grading, seeing, siding, outbuildings, porches, painting, and anything else on the list.

this is very cool information to have--i'd already started a task list in microsoft project (if you know me, you're filing that under d for "duh"), but now i can start assigning predecessors and quarters of years to them, thereby sort of setting my expectations a little bit. (read: stop dreaming about having my dream kitchen in place any time soon.)