Tag: homeownership

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The Ultimate Hobby

A house!

After my recent accomplishment of finally installing bathroom ductwork into proper external vents, I started to reminisce. We will soon hit our 10-year mark in this house, Easement Acres. What began as an American dream turned into a parenthood want: a place for the kid to grow up. And the romanticized homestead activities of decorating and gardening. I wanted a home. I moved a lot myself as a kid, with the longest stint in a Lubbock property – more of a prison, really, with a tiny backyard and a lack of permission to ever venture beyond the privacy fence unescorted. All it needed was some concertina wire to complete the feeling.

But now, with the decade landmark in sight, this will be the longest I have ever lived in one domicile. So I wanted to look back on what I’ve written about in my time here. Or more specifically, what I’ve written about regarding the house itself.

Here’s a chronological list:

2017

  • Wifi and Ethernet
  • WFH in my basement setup
  • Splitting trees removed by BP
  • Sump pump drainage
  • Gardening and more trees removed
  • Rain barrel
  • Rain barrel #2
  • Deck staining
  • Lamppost
  • Hostile neighbors
  • Hanging pictures
  • Basement growing
  • Electrical outlet install
  • Putting wire on the fence
  • New TV stand
  • Live Christmas tree

2018

  • Live Christmas tree cleanup
  • Ring doorbell camera install
  • Gas leak
  • New trees planted
  • Ozone-ing the carpet
  • Revised basement workstation
  • Workout equipment acquired
  • Hallway carpet replaced with laminate
  • War on dandelions
  • Property survey
  • First reel mower
  • Exploding electrical outlet
  • Storm door install
  • Grandfather clock acquired
  • Basement aquarium acquired
  • Front porch light install
  • Dining room carpet replaced with laminate
  • Fence repair after ice storm
  • Ethernet patch panel install

2019

  • Air purifier acquired
  • Revised basement workstation again
  • Wired basement desk with ethernet
  • Backyard Ring camera install
  • Sump pump drainage upgraded with brick
  • Lounge carpet replaced with laminate
  • Foyer tiled
  • Copper cock added to roof
  • Rain barrel #3
  • Sliding backdoor shattered

2020

  • Sliding backdoor replaced
  • Second reel mower
  • Barn star acquired
  • Wine cellar acquired
  • Bedroom carpet replaced with laminate
  • Garage workshop pegboard acquired
  • Dead spruce trees removed
  • Retrofitted attic fan install
  • Neighbor’s plywood palace and city complaint

2021

  • Wood burner install
  • Front door lock replaced
  • Decorative external shutters replaced
  • Security film installed on garage window
  • Brick garden edging install
  • Garden trellis installed to block view of problem neighbor
  • Additional garage organization
  • Built the garage door open sensor/indicator
  • Roomba vacuum acquired

2022

  • Bathroom fan replacement
  • Bathroom fan remodel (For some reason, I didn’t post once on this project. I must have been trying to wipe it from my memory).
  • Broken chest freezer turned into a root cellar
  • Clematis planted on garden trellis
  • Easement Acres name formalized

2023

  • Garden Ring camera install
  • Deck string lights upgraded
  • Built deck gate
  • Built backyard trellis

2024

  • Removed unnecessary bathroom light fixture
  • New couch acquired
  • New HVAC
  • Mosquito wars
  • Easement Acres signage
  • Hurricane damage
  • Bench vise acquired

2025

  • Bathroom grips install
  • New oven acquired
  • More trees planted
  • Zombie door
  • Ox yoke hung
  • New roof
  • Built firewood holder

2026

  • Attic bathroom ventilation ductwork install

Conclusion

A lot of work has been done here on Easement Acres! It’s definitely more than my parents had ever done to their home. I think the difference lies with the generation gap. My home was never a given. There was a lot of doubt we’d ever get to have one at all! So every day is a new opportunity to, again, partake in the ultimate hobby! It’s not simply a place to live.

I wonder what the next 10 years will bring.

–Simon

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Idiot Homeowners Pt. 3

A weeknight wound down. I was drifting into pleasant unconsciousness, in an uncharacteristic moment of mental serenity. The mind was not stressing over the next day’s hellscape, nor the kid’s academic performance, nor whatever unfortunate event would drain my finances next before I had sufficient time to replenish them. Liz sensed this, and mentioned, in such a casual tone, that oh yeah! – something’s leaking in the basement.

To date, here’s what’s leaked in the basement:

  • The aquarium, x3: powerhead wiggled off its mount and sprayed water out of the tank; gasket on the filter cracked; gasket on the CO2 diffuser wore out.
  • Crappy former homeowner repair on the kitchen sink drain.
  • Wash machine drain backing up.
  • I overflowed the coffee pot.

Each of these resulted in varying degrees of water damage. Ergo, to determine the level of severity and therefore the immediacy of action required, I asked some pointed questions, such as: “Where?” and “What?”. To which I received vague and somewhat unconcerned answers.

All right then, everyone out of bed! Trifle not with leaks.

Of course, nothing at that moment was leaking, so I performed a cursory inspection of the usual suspects. The aquarium was being good, and I’m happy to say that my kitchen sink plumbing repair was still in working order. So, I started turning on faucets.

Eventually, a small drip appeared in the laundry room. Following the path of gravity, which is generally straightforward, I was led here:

This was the copper drain line from the kitchen sink. At least it was unpressurized gray-water. But why would it start leaking now? The answer, as you might guess, was once again attributed to some dumbass thing a prior homeowner must have done.

This cross-beam joist support had apparently become detached, and someone partially hammered in extra nails to keep it from falling – not that it was doing anything at that point anyway. If there’s no lateral pressure from the joists, then it serves no function and should have just been pulled down when it separated. Instead, a barbarian with a hammer decided upon a more violent approach. Which led to…

…a punctured pipe.

I’m guessing that the only reason we’re seeing the leak now is that the nails had previously corroded to form a seal, but have now eventually corroded to the point where that seal is broken. I think I’ll pull the nails out and attach a rubber seal with a hose clamp, since there’s really no way to access the pipe for soldering without total disassembly. Then maybe someone else will complain about my own haphazard repair, but that will be minor in comparison to this boneheaded lack of attention to detail.

And maybe, this type of matter might be brought to my attention during waking hours in the future. Hmmmm……?

–Simon

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Idiot Homeowners Pt. 2

One Friday evening I was pacing around the house, trying to think of something to do. It’s rare I feel boredom, as my expanse of hobbies and family obligations keep my working memory filled with tasks that I spend a lot of time triaging while staring out the window. And it was in this rare moment of boredom that I went against my better judgment and dared to offer a dissenting opinion on a benign topic of conversation I was at that moment casually having via text message with my sister.

Single people have a lot of time on their hands, and how they choose to fill it can be downright confusing to the married and parenting counterparts. They seem to all feel the need to subtly justify their life choices by offering commentary on their busy schedules and how important they are in their professional lives, and always without any prompt to do so. I assume that it’s just an insecurity, combined with the lack of a close personal relationship with someone comfortable enough to tell them to shut up.

These people also feel the need to bait you into an argument. Under the pretext of academic discussion. So that they can use their vast amounts of free time to fight their insecurity by trying to demonstrate a moral or intellectual superiority.

I somehow managed take the bait on this occurrence because I didn’t think there was an argument, because I wasn’t disagreeing necessarily. The discussion was on whether the novel Dune was a ecology story. This was rationale, apparently, by our father to get my sister to read the book (they’re both ecologists). I was amused by this, and pointed out that there would be a large amount of bias behind this categorization because of our father’s background. I posited that sure, that’s one of the themes, but one of the lesser ones compared to the larger story, whose themes included psychology, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and metaphysics. It was not the correct answer to end the conversation.

(Amusing aside: the Dune story came up at work and someone mentioned their take, that it was “a deep look into human psychology, culture, behaviors, politics, relations, etc.” Interesting. I guess that makes two of us that are wrong.)

Fortunately, my out arrived in the form of a ceiling light in the remodeled bathroom that had dislodged from its mount and was holding position only by the attached Romex. Having been pulled abruptly back to the land of the sane, I realized the absurdity of having a literary discussion about a novel with someone who hadn’t read the novel, and I stopped responding. There were more pressing matters now at hand. I’m sure she went on to torment other people via text, so I don’t feel bad. She’ll be fine.

Now back to the project.

In a continuation of the previous Idiot Homeowner’s work, the light had dislodged because the mounting bracket was installed to a junction box that wasn’t actually attached to anything. I hadn’t noticed previously because I used the existing bracket, which had just enough tension on it to give the illusion of proper mounting. But time, and me trying to open the fixture later to change the lightbulb, overcame the drywall. And so, left with the dilemma of not being able to remove the mounting screws from the light because they were inside the fixture that wouldn’t open, I took a Dremmel with a cutting wheel and ground through the screws. The wire had been spliced into the main lightswitch, so there never was a way to control it separately. And with the main lights being more than sufficient to illuminate the bathroom, we decided to decommission the run, rather than install a new light. I properly cut, capped, and boxed the wire terminals, and Liz patched the hole.

The wires, naturally, also lacked a proper ground. It’s probably best that this wire run not be used anyway. One more fix for the books.

–Simon