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All posts for the month May, 2011

Goodbye Avacado Green, Hello Chocolate Brown

Posted by James on May 31, 2011
Posted in: New Home. 4 Comments

With a 3 day holiday weekend, and no rain in the forcast…we set out to continue the new trim color to the front of our house…I was still touching up when the sun set last night …..and this morning I can see a few spots I have to hit again……but overall it looks amazing and we are both pretty excited. While I was focusing on the trim, Jamie gave the front door a few coats of “Pumpkin” and we both knew instantly that it was a “No-Go”……kinda looked like neon gunshot-safety orange. The second color is called “Mandrin”, and although still bright…we both love it. It is set off by the brown very nicely.

 

The posts still need to be covered in cedar, and then stained the same color as the fence….Did I mention that we finally picked a stain color for the fence? Well we did…..a brown that is pretty similar to our house trim, maybe a little redder…”Russet”…I know, I know, all our colors have food names. It was supposed to be semi-transperent…….but it really isn’t. Jamie sprayed/brushed the front of the fence…and we may pay someone to do the rest. Apparently our year old cedar is very dry and sucked up stain pretty quickly.

 

 

Doesn’t it look great??!! Our carpenter wanted $1600 to paint the eaves and garage, of course he would have been done in a weekend……but it has only cost about $200 in paint and supplies for us to do it ourselves….and we will be done before the real heat of the summer.

Now, I just need to attach cedar to the ceiling of the patio and too surround the columns, and I have designed some modern looking shutters that will mimic the look of the fence……and finish painting the trim on the last quarter of the house too……I’ll post some new pics as soon as I reattach the lights under the eaves….I sprayed them rather than brush…so they won’t be stuck together when we have to change bulbs. I know, pretty clever……

Electrical Problems

Posted by James on May 6, 2011
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

I started this blog to not only document the progress of personalizing our house, but to record the ups and downs of home ownership.

That being said,  Wednesday morning I started the day by microwaving leftover bacon cheese fries (I know , the breakfast of champions) and the power in the front half of the house suddenly clicked off. Now this is a common event during the month of December when the some-odd-thousand exterior holiday lights put some strain on the rest of the electric flow in the house. So I skipped over to the breaker box in the garage ready to simply flip the breaker back to its normal “working’ position. But there was no tripped breaker, in fact, everything looked as normal as a 40 year old breaker box could…….it was when Jamie popped the cover off the electrical panel …. that we saw it  …..

 

See that second wire there?  The one that connects the outside power to our house……..that’s a load wire, and,well, it’s not supposed to be melted, bubbled, charred and overall pretty freaking scary looking…like it is. There is even a frightening  little pile of ash underneath. This is Not something a homeowner wants to ever see.

The whole box smelled like I imagine brimstone smells.

When we had the initial inspection of the house, we were told that we would  need to update the breaker box. The estimates we had were all in the $1200-$1500 range.  We knew it would be replaced, just when we were ready to do it. Not now, not today.  We pulled out our checkbooks ready to cough it over…….”Yes now, Yes today” we were both thinking.  After a visit from Joel with Big D Electric, he replaced the load wires and installed a new main breaker in just a couple hours…..the best part is that our home warranty covered the expense, we just paid $60 for the visit. Not nearly the huge expense we were both dreading.

Here’s another shot of the breaker box with the charred input at the top …..

 

We still need to replace the entire box, but it can wait a little while longer.  And now I can eat my leftover cheese fries hot.

I hope to post some pictures of the new paint on the outside , but every time I start painting, it rains.  So far, about 1/3 of the trim is chocolate. With all the traveling the 2 of us are doing in the next 2 weeks, it doesn’t look like we will be adding much more anytime soon.  This is still much cheaper than paying someone to paint for us …….but not really a speedy process.