Four Things

One of the blogs I read regularly does posts every now and then that he calls "Five Things."  Here's my version:

The House is Finished

It sneaked up on us, but recently it seems like we've completed all the major work we anticipated doing when we first bought the house.  We did one big renovation when we first bought the house.  After that we did a deck out in front of the house.  Last year we finished the basement and refreshed the guest bathroom.  When we did that last set of work we left a kind of an ugly spot around the laundry hookups in the refreshed bath, leaving it kind of unfinished.  Just recently we had someone come in and finish off that room.  When that happened we looked around and thought: we're done.  There's still a list:  I still want solar and a backup generator and we want a deck and some landscaping in the back and a set of partitions in the attic; but all of that feels like "extra."  The initial scope of work is complete.  Maybe it is time to look for a new house.

I Appear to be Riding a Bike

One of my Quarenpurchases was an eBike.  My docs have all been grousing with me for a very long time that I needed to get more exercise.  I added that to the thought that when we start up again at work I won't want to be riding the bus and started looking around for a bike.  With all the hills around the neighborhood an eBike seemed like a good idea and Facebook must have known that because I was absolutely being bombarded with eBike ads.  I found one that wasn't too expensive (and then wound up getting a discount because of one of the browser plug ins I run) and the sitting-too-long-at-my-desk-purchasing bug got to me and I bought one.  It sat in a box for almost a month after I got it, but last week I put it together and finally got on it and rode around some.  I hadn't ridden a bike really in over... I think the last time would have been senior year of college, so hadn't been on a bike in decades.  I'm hoping to be up to five miles a day within a week.  It isn't much, but it is more exercise than I've been getting; even if I let the bike do some of the work on the hills.

School Decisions

The Pittsburgh Public Schools have asked us to choose between 2 days/week in person - 2 days asynchronous distance learning 1st grade or 5 days/week synchronous distance learning for this coming school year.  They haven't told us the hours/day or either approach.  I think we're going to opt for the 5 days/week at home.  It feels likely that even if they start out with some in person that they are likely to revert to 100% distance learning anyway, so why not plan for that to begin with.  Really though I don't feel like they've given us enough particulars to be able to make an informed decision.  I can't fault them too much though since I think the reason they haven't told us is that they don't know yet.  There's going to be a lot of figuring it out as we go along for everyone this fall.  That's going to be stressful for us all and we're going to have to be able to run with it.  As it turns out there was a board meeting today and someone suggested starting out with 9 weeks of 100% distance for everyone in order for them to better get their ducks in a row.  Stay tuned.

Fall Classes

Speaking of fall school, I am still scheduled to be teaching at CMU this fall.  I typically have three classes in the fall semester and I am still slated to be starting that in a few weeks.  I will be teaching PTM Professional Practice, Technical Direction 1, and Technical Direction 3.  I'll also be advising on thesis projects and doing the normal amount of academic advising.  We've cancelled all fall production so there won't be the normal amount of production advising involved, but, we're still planning to do shows in the spring and that would typically involve work for my folks in the fall.  It is still unclear what portion of that work is still going to happen.  Based on the last item, if you are curious, PTM Professional Practice is going to be 100% remote.  It is like half guests and from a social distancing perspective in person classes just seem irresponsible.  TD1 and TD3 are planned to go forward as hybrid classes, with myself and some (currently unknown) number of students in the room - although they are planning to put me in much larger rooms to allow for proper distancing.  I am kinda waiting for the "never mind we're 100% online" email, but it feels like they really don't want that to be the case.  Watch this space.

That's Your Pitch?

This isn't really a problem for you, but our refrigerator has it in for us.  Years ago it decided that it just wasn't going to make ice anymore.  We had it fixed once and then the same thing happened again and as if it was a stubborn teenager Mrs. TANBI and I decided that ice wasn't the hill we wanted to go to war over.  Recently it has decided it isn't going to close.  I mean, it is closed, but it is going to insist it isn't closed.  This would be swell except that it has an alert to tell you if it isn't closed and it is a persistent alert.  It doesn't stop, and it can't be turned off (plus it goes from intermittent to constant).  So far we've been able to get it to believe it was closed, but it feels like it is just a matter of time.

So, at some point not too far in the future either we're going to have to put some resources into this fridge or get a new one.

In that frame I have been interested to note that the company that sold us this fridge is having a 4th of July sale with refrigerators up to 40% off.  This company is the vendor that sold us all the major appliances in our kitchen from our original reno long, long ago.  We didn't spend as much as some of their customers must, but we did buy a fridge and an oven and a range and a hood and a dishwasher.  I kinda like these folks and they are a local business and all things being equal I would probably go back to them.

The other day I sent them an email through their website asking which of the refrigerators on the website that would fit in the space occupied by our previous purchase from them would be part of this sale.  Here's the answer I got:

But really, what I hear in my head when I read that is: "You know, we really don't care if we make this sale."

I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of...

"I pulled your prior receipt and here's a link to a list of the units that will fit your space.  This is the one I would recommend, this one is the one that has the highest customer rating, and here's the one that is the best deal.  We also have this one which is a floor model and this one which has been discontinued - those are both really good deals.  Also, it occurs to me that I should ask if you are having difficulty with your current fridge.  I can set you up with a rep from our service department.  Let me know."

But alas not.  Well, maybe we should go to Lowe's after all.  They did just authorize a whole bunch of very impressive socially motivated business loans.

Have you seen Boiler Room?  Whole thing made me think of this:

Gate Upgrade

One of the things you have to do when you have kids is danger proof your home as best you can.  We have a staircase in the center of our home that isn't the most baby friendly piece of architecture, so it needs a gate to keep the kid from making an ascent.

Most of the gates you can get now are based on an expansion concept.  The gate presses out against each end to provide resistance to pushing the gate out of the way.  This is great for a door opening or someplace along a hallway (we have a couple other gates installed in those situations) but are not so great for a staircase where one or the other end of the gate is relying on a freestanding newel post.  In that situation pushing out on the support just pushes the structure outward.  You probably can rig the thing with enough oomph to hold in place, but the fact of the matter is in doing so you are slowly but surely damaging the stair railing.

So for that scenario you need to find some other kind of gate.  In the Gib5on iteration of this solution I managed to find a kind of accordion type gate and MacGyver a mount for it.  You can kind of see what is going on here:

In order to mount this I cut two pieces of 1x2 and drilled them the long way to accept zipties (you can barely see one of those pretty much at the end of his nose).  The 1x2 was soft mounted to the structure so as not to damage it and then the included mounting hardware was hardmounted to the 1x2.

This worked reasonably enough and so now in the Sabian iteration of the project I went looking for the gate and the stupid hardware I'd made last time.  Search as I might I couldn't find it.  I eventually came to the conclusion that it must have been in the garage last spring when we had a little bit of a sewer backup and consequently must have gotten some ick on it - and therefore went into the dumpster.  So much for that.

We needed a replacement.  I went to the home center looking for the identical gate so as to repeat the earlier installation.  If you know anything about home centers you will not be surprised to know that I was unsuccessful.  They didn't have this gate (I bet I could have found one at Target or something.  It is a fairly common piece of gear).

They did have this:

This, lo and behold, is a gate designed exactly for the installation circumstances I was just explaining - bearing on the newel post of a staircase.  They have designed and manufactured the adapter hardware I had bush-fixed myself in the earlier round.  Instead of drilled out 1x2 there is a steel adapter piece that mounts to the newel post with adhesive and straps.  The straps are somewhat more formidable than the zipties I had used, and the fastener actually includes a ratchet mechanism; making it simpler to tension the belt (which was an annoying part of using zipties).

Here's the installation in place here:

The straps are also preferable over zipties because the buckle has a release capability, so when you install them backward such that the extra is in front you can take them off without damaging them and turn it around so the installation is cleaner.

I went back and forth over the adhesive.  It probably isn't necessary for proper function but I put it in anyway.  I'm hoping at the end I can get it removed without damaging the finish on the newel.  We'll see - in like three years.

The gate is oak.  The architecture is maple.  You can't have everything I guess.  It doesn't look too out of place, and even wrong it is way more spiffy than the raw pine of the Gib5on installation.

We'll see how it holds up.

Things That Go Bump In the Night

Have you noticed how much quieter it is at night lately?  I guess it is mostly about traffic, and it is possible that a bunch of the apartments around us are empty.  One of the results of the new normal is that it does seem to be a whole lot quieter at night.  During the day there are still buses and cars and lawn mowers and leaf blowers.  I am sure there's less of all of that but it is enough that the burble of city life still sounds like the burble of city life.  At night though it is definitely, noticeably quieter.

It is possible that I am hearing things differently than other people.  I've for quite some time been what I am learning to call "hyper vigilant" to sounds around me.  I remember long ago commenting to other people about the songs that played on the Muzac in the background at work only to get the response "wait, there's music playing?"

Generally this kind of elevated awareness is not a good thing.  There's a level of anxiety, or at least of irritation that's there pretty much all the time.  Has that sound always been there?  What is that beeping?  Did you hear something?

In the last year I have been served well by this thing at least twice.  I picked up on a clang my car was making that turned out to be a result of the rear spring breaking loose from the axle.  If I hadn't heard it eventually the rear wheels would have fallen off the car while it was moving.  That would have been no fun.  Recently I was folding laundry in the guest room when I heard what I thought was water dripping.  It turned out our brand spanking new shower had a leak in it we hadn't previously noticed and at that moment gallon after gallon of water was flowing through the gap.  If I hadn't heard that we would have lost the dining room ceiling and potentially part of the also brand spanking new basement renovation.  That also would have been no fun.

So there is an upside.  It is also worth noting I guess that this sort of observation is a significant part of my job as a technical director.  Often you hear a problem before you will see one.  Finding problems early keeps small problems from becoming big problems.  "Should that sound like that?" is an important tool in my TD and TD teacher toolbox.

But there is also a tremendous downside.  Knocking and creaking keep me awake.  Any little sound in the car makes me wonder what is wrong with the car.  But mostly it is about pretty much always being on the balls of my feet mentally.  Always waiting for the next indicator and wondering where it will go from there.  Somehow it would be nice to be aware but not concerned.  The two seem to go together for me.  Truth be told it isn't so much limited to hearing, but that's probably another post for another day.

Owning a home brings you a symphony of hard to decipher sounds.  There's the house settling.  There's plumbing and HVAC sounds.  Right now there are sounds of guests living in the house that aren't normally there.  There are alerts from appliances (all of which for some reason have to have sounds that are the same or very close to others such that one can't tell specifically what it is just by listening).  There's the BOSS level sound: dead smoke detector battery - simple in an apartment with one smoke detector, a totally different experience in a house with multiple units on multiple floors.  Also, the pattern of beeps on a smoke detector matters.  For a while one of ours was making three short beeps.  Replacing the battery didn't help.  Did you know that CO/Smoke detectors expire?

Don't get me wrong, I like having a house and I recognize the house did not have a sound designer.  But if it had, that designer did not factor my quality of life into their decisions.

Working From Home

We're into the third week of doing classes at a distance using Zoom.

As an unintended consequence of the venue change we have had to put our foot down on the gas on a basement renovation that has been meandering along for over a year now.

At the end of last winter, knowing that Sabian was on the way we had to shuffle some of the real estate in the house.  A new kid meant converting an existing office/tv room into a new bedroom.  The only space to create a new office space was the basement which at that point was unfinished.  So last year we hired a bunch of people and started a renovation of the basement.  We added drainage, put up walls and painted, redid all the HVAC and got a new waterheater.  Like most renovations it took a little longer than expected but eventually we had a pretty decent space.

We salvaged the custom desk and base cabinets we had from the existing office for the new space.  But that isn't nearly enough storage, and the upper cabinets won't work in the new space because the ceiling height is somewhat lower.  Enter the folks at Ikea and Target and a bounty of flat pack storage furniture.  We're really a little hazy on what we want the space to be and Mrs. T has been working at this desk for a while now without finishing it out.  That's mostly been enabled by my not using it much at all - so she had lots of space.

The switch to home working has made it impossible for me to eschew the new office space any longer and that meant cohabitating with the Mrs. and that meant that the finishing out of the space had to move forward.  So I got to work on the upper cabinets.  We'd selected some modular shelves from Target.  They aren't intended for horizontal mounting on the wall but theatre people are accustomed to using things in a manner in which they aren't intended.

We wound up with a little bit of an ugly spot in the corner.  With one unit starting in the corner the other unit would have blocked out the access to the end cubbie.  There also was a space between the two units because we didn't size the room based on the size of the available cabinets.  As a wrok around we bought an extra small unit which i cannibalized to create an extension to one unit to fill up the space.  This was extra fun as I was able to use not only my table saw, but also a hole saw kit and my pocket screw kit.  I only regret I wasn't able to work in the purchase of a new tool in order to finish things off.

Next up I'll have to do under cabinet lighting - also salvaged from upstairs.  In order to do that I have to track down a jumper cable for lighting units we bought almost a decade ago.  Fingers crossed.  More pictures to come.

Plugging Away

Got moving on the attic project a little today.  The weather was good and it just seemed like too good a chance to miss.  Pretty much all along I've thought the most difficult part of the job was going to be moving materials.  There's a flight and a half of stairs from the garage to the front door.  There's two flights of stairs from the first floor to the second.  After that there's another flight and a half's worth of attic ladder.

That's a lot of up.

To ease into it I started with insulation.  The moving equivalent would be boxes of pillows - leave the books for later.  Even with very little weight, eight times up and down like 40 steps I did start to feel it.

The first step in the actual work was to install the insulation on the existing wall.

It doesn't look like much but it's a start.  I have to take a half a second out to give a plug for the plastic encapsulated JM ComfortTherm insulation.  I'd been dreading the insulation part of this job (if you're keeping track that's the second dread) and this stuff is awesome.  Through all the work you basically don't ever touch the batting and the cover serves as a vapor barrier so you can skip that step.  Also, the casing has flanges on the side that ride over the studs for staples.  It was a little more expensive but for me it was 100% worth it.

Since the ball was rolling and the weather was odd (mid 50's the first week of January) I decided to move to another step.  I could have moved 2x4's up to the attic or I could go buy drywall.  I opted for drywall.

I'd been dreading moving the drywall (#3).  Partly it was because I wasn't sure how it would fit on my roof rack.  I'd danced around the job for a week trying to decide if I was going to buy a new roof rack for drywall.  Obviously I opted for a DIY solution over purchasing what I found would have been about a $300 commercial rack (although I think it might still fit inside the number the contractor quoted me).

Somewhere along the way I'd forgotten how heavy this stuff was.  I really should have brought a helper to the home center.  I think I'd talked myself into thinking it wouldn't be difficult because I'd found 1/4" drywall as opposed to 1/2".  Unfortunately the 1/4" was a dollar more per sheet than 3/8" and even after I'd talked myself into the cost I determined that the stuff was so brittle that I'd never get it moved.

So 7 @ 4x8 3/8" dual drywall sheets - 90# per pack.  I loaded it onto a dolly myself as packs.  When I got to the car I split them into individual sheets.  When I got to the very last sheet a Home Depot guy showed up to help - thanks.

Unloading at home was easier than loading at the store.  I have not one clue as to how I am going to get these things up all those stairs.  Certainly have to do some pre-cutting (I don't think a 4x8 will pass the attic access anyway).

Wish me luck.

And Another Project

Keeping a list?  You can add "build room in the attic."

We bought a new furnace a little while back.  When we did the buy the march of progress took us from a 75% efficient unit to a 90+% efficient unit.  That was swell.  But there's a wrinkle.  The new, more efficient units have a water line and a drain.  In many installations this wouldn't matter even a little bit, but in this particular case it does because the furnace is in the attic.  The attic of our house is insulated on the floor such that air can come in through the eaves to cool the roof in the summer.  This arrangement means the roofing lasts longer, but the attic is vulnerable to freezing in the winter.

Most of the time one wouldn't care if the attic froze as long as the house underneath it remains toasty warm.  That was true of our house right up until we installed a furnace in the attic that had a water line.  FWIW we complicated it a little too by adding a humidifier - I mean as long as water was going to be a problem we might as well go all in, right?

So I have to build a room in the attic.

My thought was to get a guy.  The job is mostly within my skillset, but I figured it would be nice to have someone else to blame when something comes out less than.  I had a number in my head - well a couple numbers: what I thought the materials cost would be, what I thought the bid would be, what I wanted to pay, and what I thought I'd get away with.  When the bid came in it was about 100% over the number I thought the initial bid would be.

So I have to build a room in the attic.

A couple of days ago I made a start...

When I started the job I started a spreadsheet.  Gonna be interesting to see where I come in against the number I got from the contractor.  On the first day I learned something new about my car: the roof rack on my car (having traded my truck in after the boy was born) will hold 16 2x4's on a single layer.

The loading thing has been bugging me for a while.  Somewhere along the way I am going to have to bring in some sheet-rock and the roof rack really won't accommodate it.  Suddenly I'm cruising the internet looking for rack bars that are sized to accommodate sheet goods.  Kind of a bummer.  Most of the time when I do a home project I manage to find a way to buy a new tool along the way.  This job felt right for a cordless mitre saw, but now it looks like I might have to do a roof rack.

Or I guess I could just rent a truck for the day.

Watch this space for project updates.

Boom! It's a Deck

Like a watched pot it seems like all the guys needed to motivate them to finish our deck was for me to stop posting about it on the blog.  Poof:

It was raining this afternoon or I would have taken more photos.  I haven't done a final walk around either, but seeing as how at the end of the day yesterday I had MANY craftsmanship complaints today I appear to be much more satisfied.

So it is huge, and it is high up in front - almost like having a balcony.  It really changes the look of the house from the street.  I think it changes it for the better; a real estate agent might use the word "specific."

We're going to have to rethink the lighting on the front of the house now.  The prior owners left us with this industrial security lamp that lights up the porch, the driveway, and some of the street with a distinct orange/yellow glow.  So that's gotta go.  We're also going to be in the market for some deck furniture I think, although I am having trouble wrapping my head around leaving things out in the front of the house.

I'll have to get over that probably.

Deck Day Two

Another bizarre geometry from the panorama photo.  Check out what it does to the car driving by:

Good progress today.  Looks like the thing is mostly framed in.  They found the ugly spot they made with the change they inadvertently made yesterday.  I think one of the carps came up with a reasonable solution.  The solution will mean a change to the railings that I think they aren't anticipating, so again it will be wait and see.

I think I found another ugly spot today.  We were talking about the joint between the fascia and the ground.  I think we came to an ok conclusion there, but when I looked at it again tonight I discovered that the front carrying beam and the fascia are going to do something weird.  I think the beam will have to carry out past the end of the front fascia in order to pick up the end joist.  It'll happen on both ends.  Not sure I like it, not sure there's anything to be done really (also, a little bit I think both of the side fascias are a little odd).

But this isn't their first rodeo.  Maybe they'll surprise me.

Deck the Yard

Mrs. TANBI and I have decided that we're adding a deck to the front of our house.  Maybe it's not a deck, maybe it's a porch.  But it feels more like a deck.  When we started the project we thought it was going to happen mid-July but it turned out that it would have to be mid-August.  That was supposed to be late last week, but it turned out to be today.

So here's day one:

Footings and support beams.  That near beam is not bent like that - we're seeing a panorama artifact.  Mostly it looks like good work so far.  They guys do appear to have made a design change.  The top of the deck was supposed to be one step down from the stoop and they appear to have roughed it in flush.  Strangely that was a change we were planning to give them anyway, so no harm done.  There are two potential ugly spots that domino out from that change.  We'll have to see how it develops.

I thought about doing Baby TANBI's footprints in the footing as it set, but the concrete is buried in soil.  Oh well.

So now the next question is "Will they be back tomorrow?"  Makes me wonder about writing a "Contractor Customer Protection Agreement" for future projects.  Item #1:  If I'm not going to show I will call to let you know ahead of time.

Watch this space.

We Have a New Winner

Sometimes I have the thought that I should do an interactive assignment at Home Depot or Lowes.  The idea would be that students would get a list of items and the first student to come back with a cart containing everything on the list would win.  Clearly there would need to be some negotiating with the store manager, and all things being equal it would probably be kinder to them to do it when the store is closed.  I guess maybe the carts are superfluous - we could just use phone cameras.

The root of the thing comes from being a summer stock TD (or strangely a commercial shop project manager).  From time to time I would need something I would have to put my hands on or see before purchasing and that would mean that the intern (or the runner or the purchasing agent) really couldn't do it.  In those cases I didn't really want to spend swaths of my day wandering the aisles of home centers.  Knowing where things are is a necessary skill.

Over the years I've stumbled across some items that defy normal home center navigation.  There are some things that that could be in multiple places and some that just really don't belong anywhere.  My recollection is that the progenitor item in this category was dryer hose.  The first impulse is that it would be with HVAC things, but that would be wrong.  Then maybe with other pipe and tube... wrong.  Maybe it will be with the dryers... close, but no.  It is in the appliance section, but it pretty much has it's own little counter space on the fringe of the department.

I don't know how many items have held the title over the years, but the previous champ was a bathroom exhaust fan.  HVAC?  No.  Plumbing?  No.  With the Range Hoods?  No.  Showers & Tubs?  No.  Bathroom Fixtures?  Not really.  Again, this is an item that sort of has it's own little department at the back of the store, kinda near the end of the Bathroom Vanity aisle.  It's also a frequent aisle cap item which is not helpful at all because that doesn't get you the whole product range.

And yes, FWIW I have needed to purchase both Dryer Hose and Bathroom Exhaust Fans for theatre projects.

The new reigning champion?

Survey Marker Flags.

Outdoor Patio?  No.  Indoor Patio?  No.  Plumbing?  No.  Concrete accessories?  No.  Signage (like mailboxes, address signs and driveway markers)?  No.  Electrical accessories?  No.  Decking & Fence Posts?  No.  That stash of stuff at the Pro Desk?  No.  By the marking paint?  No.

So where are they?  I'll put it in the comments so you can keep guessing.  FWIW I needed like 10 and you have to buy like 50.  A can of field marking paint was $5 and these were $8.  Also for what it is worth when I did ask someone the guy said "wow, that's a tough one."  He took me to his first guess (well, second after I told him they weren't on the outdoor patio).  Standing right in front of them he didn't see them, but I finally managed to put my hands on it.

Maybe I should have just used the paint.  I found that right away.

Upgrades, and the Before and After Photo

We've been doing some incremental upgrades at the house, some decorating here, a new furniture piece there, couple of shelves someplace else...  As much as I am trying to keep a running record of projects for myself I just can't seem to remember to take the "before" picture.  Truth be told, the "after picture by itself just doesn't have the same impact.

Case in point: we're putting in a new deck/porch/we don't really know what to call it in front of the house.  As part of the prep for this project I took on the task of clearing away some bushes that have been there since we moved into the house.  A couple of weekends ago I hit the yard with a cordless reciprocating saw and two pairs of hand trimmers and presto chango:

Poof, where once there was an out of control bush now there is none.  Except, without the before you have no idea what I did.  Also, the bush went into no less than 10 yard refuse bags which looked REALLY formidable on the curb waiting for the trash guys - if only I had remembered to photograph them.

You'd think that walking around with a digital camera in my pocket would be enough to make me remember to take pictures.  But I guess I should have learned this lesson from my students total lack of posting on the tumblr: having access to a camera and subject matter doesn't create photos.

You have to remember to take the picture.

Or at least you have to remember that maybe you already took the picture several months ago...

Halloween.  You get the idea.

Even without the new addition I think pulling the bush is an improvement to the house.  I can finally see something out of the living room window.  Also, neither of the photos show it, but this space is pretty much the only level space in the whole front yard, nice to pick up some room for a couple of chairs should we want it.

So now that we have the way before and the before pictures I'll be sure to keep the site up to date on the project progress.  Actually, the whole thing was supposed to be done by now.  But we're having a fairly typical contractor experience... the start date got pushed back 30 days because... because contractors don't sell opening night tickets.

Our House

In the middle of our street.

We had some people over today for a post fourth of July fourth of July cookout (a friend on Facebook was very particular that just cooking on a grill was not in and of itself barbecue).  Over the course of the afternoon I wound up talking about some of the folks that helped out with our home renovation.  I don't think I've ever posted about them and so I figured I would take one of these posts and hit the highlights.

The GC on our job was Sparkle Construction.  Greg took on the job from another contractor that had done design drawings and bid the project.  Sparkle took the job fixed fee and pretty much managed to toe the line on that without many of the home show "oh by the way" moments.  They did demolition, framing, insulation, drywall, moulding, flooring and tile; as well as manage painting, plumbing, hvac, fireplace, and electric.  All in all we were very please with their work.

Greg also hooked us up with some other subs worth calling out.

Kellner Millwork did our staircase renovation.  I have to say that overall this was one of the most difficult parts of the project to realize.  Mostly it was about trying to do something really different and coming up against the residential building code.  In the end though we got a really special highlight to our first floor and we're really happy with it.

Another vendor that came through Greg was Rex Glass.  Rex did a KILLER shower panel for us.  We had very specific things we wanted to see in the bathroom we remodeled and Rex did a great job.

We also worked with a designer on our job.  We had looked for a consulting architect with no luck and went it alone with Greg helping on the contractor side and Maggie from mad Designs helping on the design side.  Maggie was great.  She didn't fight us on our particular aesthetic and really worked with Mrs. TANBI as a collaborator.  The results here were also great - the link above is actually our kitchen on her website.

Maggie also brought along a float of good vendors.

Top of that list was East Hills Cabinet.  We'd originally talked to East Hills about being GC of the whole job, but after seeing it they declined saying it was more than they typically did.  That, I think, was a good sign right off the bat.  East Hills did the cabinets in the kitchen and the vanity in the bathroom.  We've since had them out to do some office built ins too.  Good price.  Great work.

Maggie sent us to look at tile at The Tile Collection.  This place is ridiculous, just room after room after room of tile finishes.  Mrs. TANBI says "they have all the tile."  Ultimately we skimped on our kitchen backsplash (we got that at a store you may have heard of: The Home Depot).  There were some budget issues in this area and some lead time issues, but again, overall very happy.  Plus this is a neat place just to look around.

We also got Don's Appliances through Maggie - or maybe we found them on our own but she works with them all the time.  If we hadn't been fortunate we probably wouldn't have wound up using them, but when we went to see their stuff at the Pittsburgh Home Show we became enamored with a suite of appliances they'd brought to the show as display items and they cut us a good deal.

For what it's worth, we also found our original contractor (who lead us to Sparkle) at the home show.  If you're doing a renovation there's no better one stop shop.

Last on this hit parade is another mad Designs referral: Typhoon Lighting.  Most of the lighting in the renovation turned out to just be recessed cans.  Sparkle handled that scope of service.  But there were two more prominent fixtures: one for over the stairs and one for over the dining room table.  Mrs. TANBI and I did a lot of online shopping for what we eventually bought, but Typhoon handled the purchase for us and were great about helping us find what we wanted.

So that's the cast of our renovation.  I hope those folks are around should we choose to do more work in the future.

Home Repair and Improvement

Some lousy pictures to try to keep up the posting tempo.

Home entry area before:

That's a painting from my parent's house and a table from the old house.  It's never really been right, but the fit was ok and it did most of the job.

Home entry area after:

New items purchased through Amazon.  They came flat pack and I only screwed up one piece (you can't see the goof in the picture), suffice it to say that those post anchors don't want to be pulled, not even with a hammer.

We're going to have to figure out something for keys, and it would be nice to find someplace out of the way for the Old City painting.  Overall though I think this is a decent improvement.

Out With the Old

If I could just get the momentum up there certainly is a lot to put on the blog.  Like the other day a package arrived at our house with no packing slip.  It wasn't something we ordered, and we can't figure out where it came from.  It was however something we needed.

Odd?  We think so too.

The mailbox for our new house is actually toward the back of the house on the side.  To me this seems inconvenient, but the postman doesn't seem to care.  He comes up to one neighbor, then skirts around our house and through our backyard to the other neighbor.  I guess it makes sense to him.  The point is, that with no mailbox out front we also wound up having no house numbers.  During the construction we had deliveries coming to the house and we needed something, so I did this:

It's clear, high up and easy to see from the street.  For a very long time it sat right next to the building permit for the renovation.

So, it basically remained that way for the better part of a year.  We went to Lowes to look for options but didn't really like any so we didn't do anything.  Really the only people that didn't like it was the pizza delivery guys, and I think that's because we haven't settled on one place, so its always a new guy.  The Chinese food delivery folks have no problem finding us.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago and the mystery package.  No label, no delivery address label even; just a box sitting on the floor of our front stoop.  So we open it up and amazingly discover: house numbers.  Which leads me to this question:

Did you buy us house numbers?

The package sat in our foyer for a couple of weeks and then finally I folded and decided that since we had them, and since what we were using was a sheet of paper taped to a window, and (probably most importantly) since I already had a hammer drill and tapcons, that I would put them up.

So there they are.  We've been speculating where they came from.  I posted the question to my twitter and facebook to no avail.  Mrs. TANBI called her family and got no closer to knowing.  Could it be that area vendors got together and decided to solve the problem for us?  Maybe other folks on the street decided the office supply solution was just a little less than and pulling down property values.  Seeing as how the numbers came out a little off center vertically my pet theory is that someone at this address on another street ordered them and then though they weren't useable but didn't want them to go to waste.  A little bit I feel that way too, but this is still a much better placeholder than what we had.  So for the meantime, out with the old, and in with the new.

If you have any information to help clear up this mystery please shoot me a note.

Assessment

If you haven't heard, Allegheny County is going through a county wide real estate re-assessment.  A while back a few homeowners sued the state saying that their taxes we not representative and the judge on the case ruled that the whole county needed to be reevaluated.

Needless to say reassessing an entire county is a big job and errors have been fairly common.  I heard about one guy who owned a parking space in his apartment building that had previously been assessed at $500 having it reassessed at $40,000.  It seems likely that a computer model was used and nobody ever put eyes on the properties as they were evaluated.

Our house didn't see that kind of jump, but it was formidable.  The county says that even though the assessments are going up, people's taxes won't because the taxing bodies are not allowed to take advantage of a reassessment windfall.  So even though the property value is going up, taxes are supposed to remain the same because the taxing bodies will have to lower their rates.  That seems like it works fairly well if you are in the world of "average" but even if the millage goes down, people with sharp assessment increases will pay more.

So many people complained about their new number that the county set up an informal appeal process.  A formal appeal is a court proceeding and requires a filing fee, the informal hearings are free (although you have to take off work and then park downtown).

We spent nearly a month cogitating over what to do at our appeal.  We found the settlement from the home sale.  We came up with the appraisal we had to do at the sale.  We talked for a long time about how to characterize the work that we'd done on the house since we bought it; if it was a refresh or an update or a reno or a reno that didn't increase the square footage.  We looked at the comps the assessment specified and thought of all kinds of reasons that they weren't appropriate: traffic, streetlights, buses, rentals, steepness of grade...

The hearing went a little like this:

"So how much do you think your house is worth?"

"Well, we bought it for this much just over a year ago."

"Then that's what it's worth."

Maybe 5 minutes.  They scanned the settlement page and we were on our way.  Doesn't mean it'll come out that way, we'll have to wait and see.  What we did find out for sure is that I angst too much.

No Screwing Around

Today we got some no screwing around rain in Pittsburgh.

A little bit it feels like April this week.

Times like this I am glad my driveway slopes up to the house rather than down.

Expensive

Apple cables are expensive. We've been setting up our A/V here at the new Chez TANBI and the tablets are a new dimension. We have fairly new TVs in two rooms, one's that will take VGA directly or HDMI input, and another older TV that does S, Composite, or Component video. What with Netflix and HBOGO on the tablets it seemed like a good idea to get the cables needed to make things talk to each other.

We already had a VGA adaptor cable. We'd been using it on the bedroom tv in the old place. I wasn't 100% happy with that though, so for the new instance I got an HDMI adapter. Good thing I already had some HDMI cables around (and that I'd spent considerable time sorting cables over the weekend). Wouldn't want to have to buy a cable on top of the near $40 for the adapter. It's a nice compact thing though and does have a USB split off of it so that you can plug in the power while you're using it. That's something I was thinking would be a good idea with the VGA adapter I already had (which doesn't have that capability).

For the old set I got a composite cable/adapter. It was also on near $40. I'm telling myself that there's some electronics in the thing and not just pin switching. Otherwise the Apple folks have been taking lessons from the Monster Cable folk. This cable also has the power split, although if I leave it set up like I think I will I might wind up needing another wall wart for it.

Here's the kicker though. Both arrangements work swell. I even managed to get one of the sets to resize the thing to the screen in a way I hadn't been able to before (in the original setup the picture was sort of narrow and off center and I could never find the right control). The rub? HBOGO disables the external viewing option. So if you want to watch that library you have to do it on the screen on the tablet.

I think this is a little odd as you can use an external monitor for a laptop when doing HBOGO from the web. Its just the apps on the mobile device that has the restriction. We surmise it's because they don't want you taking your 3G mobile device to someone else's home, where there is no HBO, and watching their content on a real screen.

But then there is 3G internet for laptops too, so that's not a great reason.

So a little bit this renders the cable on the old TV moot because we had the capability to stream Netflix through the Wii already. The interface is a little better on the tablet, so we get that, and there's anything else we might want to get on a big screen: photo slideshows and the like.

But no HBOGO.

Makes an already expensive cable seem even more expensive.

Work Continues Apace

For those of you keeping track work on our new house is supposed to be complete this Saturday. It won't be, and really I haven't thought it would be for a while. It looks like it's going to be at least another week after that, and for a couple of items maybe even a little longer.

These may be the last pics I post for a while as the work is really winding up and things are almost finished. So much so that for people that see the blog that would see the house it might lose some of the "wow" factor - and for other people it will just look like something that isn't quite finished. So here's what happened just the other day.

The countertops for the kitchen were delivered.


This was a step involving much consternation as their truck and its boom wouldn't fit in our driveway with the dumpster there. This was a sub of a sub and the foreman wasn't on site when they arrived and phone calls and texts flew and then I had to go and be the TD. TD is the right metaphor as well because their guys got all crew-like and threatened to leave and then refused to do the job saying they'd get fired if that's what it took and then in the end did it anyway and got it done. Here's the very start of the install.


In the other room the floor is starting to go down, or the finished floor. We'd previously repaired floor joists, reattached a layer of planked underlayment, installed a new layer of plywood underlayment, treated the seams in that layer and then used some kind of mortar or flooring compound to level everything out, then applied a layer of felt underlayment, and now finally the floor: bamboo.


From the size of the room I figured two guys a day - day and a half to put down the whole thing. We're on day three and they are about half done. Residential floors are not the same as a show deck it would seem.

The much discussed stair guys have finally arrived and started their fit up.


I have to to tell you I have no idea what this is going to look like anymore, but I think it will be nice. Plus it will be nice to stop using the ladder to get to the second floor.

Last for this recap, the tile for the upstairs shower arrived.


Tiny pebbles. Hopefully a little foot massage every time we're in the shower.

Cross you fingers, the first wave of movers comes this weekend.

Some Thing I Have Learned About Stairs

I spent my day getting sucked into stair world. You know, we're doing this house and in the house there's this staircase, or at least there was a staircase until we took it out. Anyway today I learned a bunch about staircases.

Mostly I learned that sometimes the building code is not your friend.

See, it turns out in the code that a residential staircase with walls has to be 36" between the walls. If you're doing a staircase without walls then it has to be 36" between the handrails. Do you see what happened there? It means that a floating staircase has to be inherently wider than a staircase between walls. Wider by the width of the railings and the finger space behind the railings if there's an obstruction.

So, if you remove a staircase that had walls and try to replace it with a floating staircase and the whole thing has to fit in the space that has always been there... it won't.

And that's what we're doing.

Our stairs have no first floor walls, but pass through a gap in the ceiling that is a fixed size (the size of the old staircase). Also apparently they built the original staircase at precisely the smallest size it could be by code. The result being the new stairs don't really fit and one of the railings will really be place unoptimally.

Partway through this discovery I tried to apply some problem solving skills. We need 3-1/2". It's much like a TD scenery project so I figure I can find that much space. The plans looked like this going across:

1-1/2" space
1-1/2" rail
36" clear tread
1-1/2" rail
1-1/2" space
1-1/2" rail
36" clear tread
1-1/2" rail

So I puzzle over it an suggest:

1-1/4" space
1" rail
36" clear tread
1" rail
1" rail
36" clear tread
1" rail

Ding the math, that saves 3-3/4" and solves the problem, or at lest it would if the 36" wide step was the whole of the code. But it's not. The railing can't be 1" it has to be at least 1-1/2" and the spacing can't be 1-1/4" it has to be 1-1/2" (really, 1/4" matters to somebody) and you have to have the space between the rails EVEN IF THEY ARE AT DIFFERENT ELEVATIONS.

I swear it's enough to drive a body to vote republican.

So, the new steps, while cool, will not be exactly what we were looking for (or placed where we were looking for). But they will be up to code and pass an inspection. I guess that's better than doing what we want and then having to rebuild them to code.

Plus, there's an epilog. I went back and looked at the photos from the home inspection to see what was there before the demo. That staircase didn't fit under the hole either. Guess I wasn't (guess nobody wasn't) paying close enough attention.

I'll have to remember that for the next house.