Happy Easter!

Still not dead yet. I am coming out of hibernation, though. So there should be more building, and more posting, soon.

Drainage

Hello, Gentle Reader! We had record rainfall last Monday, and some water made it into the basement, and so once again my thoughts turn to drainage.

Those of you who have been reading for a while will remember the lakes on the south side of the house, and since installation of the gutters last summer, those lakes are gone. The only problem being that they all go through downspouts on the north side of the house, and those downspouts - while they certainly do a better job than no gutters at all on the south - require proper drainage.

Which I knew.

But the drought last year meant that everything downstairs got bone-dry, and things were doing rather well - until roughly 1.5 Great Lakes fell on us in two hours last week. A quarter-inch of water along the north wall of the basement and a pervasive musty smell throughout are hard to ignore.

So that's one of my top tasks for the coming weeks. AskTheBuilder has a good rundown of what I'm going to do. I'll update this post with a sketch later.

Hibernation

So the sun keeps poking out, and the crocuses are thinking quite seriously about popping up, and slowly my metabolism revs back up to something approaching human. I have done work on The House recently, really I have - but I'm incapable of normal levels of prolixity when it gets so dark. I pine for the Caribee, I guess.

When we lived down there, I'd stick my head in the ice machine to feel less homesick. Now, I buy full-spectrum light bulbs and search the real estate ads for foreclosures. Puerto Ricans are optimists when it comes to real estate, though. Prices are never going to fall to the precipitous depths of the Rust Belt.

I haven't even posted my glazing article! Rest assured, Gentle Reader, you're not forgotten. The glazing, and the Purple Room, and soon it will be warm enough for me to resume outdoor maintenance - glazing and caulking and mortar.

Oh, my.

YOUR SILVER - USE AND ENJOY IT!

Found in a mouse nest under the kitchen sink in the carriage house:

YOUR SILVER - USE AND ENJOY IT!

Silver is a wonderful possession - one of the loveliest things of life. With proper care, it grows more beautiful year by year! So USE your silver. Clean it regularly with Wright's for a Buller finish - the soft, lustrous patina that is a mark of gracious living.

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Not the House again

This time of year, I always think about Puerto Rico - I'm just not sure why, unless it's, you know, the sixty degrees difference in temperature.

This is a foreclosed house available right now in a neighborhood I know in Ponce. Seven bedrooms (yes, seven!) and it needs "cariño", which I'm good at. Of course, foreclosures in PR aren't cheap like they are up here, but this house is still a steal at $110K. It's tempting. Real tempting.

Back here at The House, I've got the furnace in the big house running and am still here. We keep the carriage house at toasty Puerto Rican temperatures - and I'm still finding and correcting the occasional hole over there - but I'm keeping the big house a lot colder than that, probably something around 60 through most of the house. It's still expensive; missing ductwork in the basement means that not a lot of heat is getting upstairs.

I've got to brick up one basement window, repair around two others, and the ex-window under the porch I'm just going to make an insulated access panel for, because, hey, maybe I'll need to get under the porch one day. Who knows? I'd hate to have bricked it up if that were to happen.

Anyway - happy new year! Either the paying work will taper off and I'll get back to building and posting, or it won't and I'll buy the house pictured above. I'll keep you posted.

Interior insulated shutters

From SFgate (the paper in San Francisco), of all places, we have an interesting 2008 article about interior insulated shutters. See, windows that are 4'x8' and consist of a single pane of glass have an R value of roughly negative a million, meaning that they actively suck heat energy into the icy blackness of space.

Seriously - if they're puttied and caulked, they're not really that bad. But insulated shutters keep light in at night, too, and the benefit is that they don't affect the outside appearance of the windows, which is really an important issue if you have traditional windows. For me, anyway.

There's a whole long list of energy conservation measures here, including many ways to improve the insulation values of windows. Most of them are lower in priority for me than sealing up the myriad holes in the basement (including several windows that are inexpertly boarded up), but the shutter thing is really intriguing. I have two big pieces of Styrofoam left over from the carriage house family room floor that are serving as insulation right now in my office, but it's not a particularly permanent solution.

What I want to do in the parlor

Built-in bookcases, how-to courtesy of the ever-bountiful Popular Mechanics. Wouldn't something like this look really good? The only problem there is the 12-foot ceilings. If I take the shelving all the way up, I can't get to most of it, but if I don't, what do I do at the top?

There's also an excellent how-to for a standalone bookcase. Also, not a propos of bookcases but still useful, pro tips on crown molding. Thus concludes my Popular Mechanics link dump.