Hello again, and it's getting longer between posts.
I have been working too much, and I'm not getting my projects done around here fast enough, but I have some serious time off coming up soon, so I've been ordering goodies, so hopefully I'm close to some real progress, which if I get the gumption, I might even take some more recent pictures and post them.
Anyway, we are fabulously impressed with our summer electric bills, so I thought I would make a little chart here with cost and kilowatt hours. Please note that we keep the house at 76 degrees F during the summer, and at that temp the humidity usually worked out to about 40%, which is dramatically less than outside.
For those of you that have to turn your A/C down to 60 degrees at night, your results may differ...
Month kWH Dollars
Jan 2566 $204.71
Feb 1661 $135.38
Mar 1704 $138.68
Apr 1304 $ 110.74
May 1877 $ 170.70
Jun 1452 $133.90
Jul 2077 $188.02
Aug 2809 $251.41
Sep 1824 $163.18
Now that we are into November, things are pretty much just the lighting load and very little A/C, but the house still shows some interesting behavior. For example, it was relatively cold outside last night, mid 50's, and we had the windows open last night until I got cold at about 2 AM, so I closed them. Woke up this morning and the A/C was actually running to cool things off for a minute. I guess what that shows is a great big thermal lag from the air heated in the attic yesterday, and long term effect of the walls still being warmer than you would think from the summer.
Hope all is well!
Sitemeter
01 November 2011
17 August 2011
July Electric Bill
All,
Just got my July electric bill, and as promised I will post that result...
$188.02
2077 KWH
29 day period on the meter, ending 5 Aug 2011
Our daily high temperatures were pretty all much in the 104 to 106 range for this entire period, and the nightime lows were almost always around 78 degrees. Not a drop of rain in this period, and almost always full sun with no clouds. (yes, 105 degrees with sun is worse than 105 degrees under clouds). I would also say our average dewpoint was a tad higher than Texas norm and I'm guessing around 70 degrees.
If you read my blog for the last 18 months, I once said our climate is "profuse"... I think the above paragraph pretty much sums that word up...
But, as unhappy as I am with our climate, the house sure is performing well...
OH, one more note. Since this meter was read, a few days ago, we miraculously got about 1/2 inch of rain, which was a single thunderstorm just over our neighborhood. Might just save our trees. Anyway, my neighbor's geo loops are running very hot, about 115 degrees returning from the ground. We have been discussing what options they have, and his geo contractor is in the loop, it will be interesting to find out what they come up with...
OK, off to bed...
Just got my July electric bill, and as promised I will post that result...
$188.02
2077 KWH
29 day period on the meter, ending 5 Aug 2011
Our daily high temperatures were pretty all much in the 104 to 106 range for this entire period, and the nightime lows were almost always around 78 degrees. Not a drop of rain in this period, and almost always full sun with no clouds. (yes, 105 degrees with sun is worse than 105 degrees under clouds). I would also say our average dewpoint was a tad higher than Texas norm and I'm guessing around 70 degrees.
If you read my blog for the last 18 months, I once said our climate is "profuse"... I think the above paragraph pretty much sums that word up...
But, as unhappy as I am with our climate, the house sure is performing well...
OH, one more note. Since this meter was read, a few days ago, we miraculously got about 1/2 inch of rain, which was a single thunderstorm just over our neighborhood. Might just save our trees. Anyway, my neighbor's geo loops are running very hot, about 115 degrees returning from the ground. We have been discussing what options they have, and his geo contractor is in the loop, it will be interesting to find out what they come up with...
OK, off to bed...
13 August 2011
Lego Design... Please vote
All,
My son has been crazy about his Lego's lately, and having a really great time designing his own when he can... So just from parts, he designed this set Pharaohs Quest Jackal Escape.
We tried to contact Lego with this design directly, but that ends up being pretty non productive because they design them in Denmark. He was hoping they could put his design into a set and then people could buy them in stores.
So, without further delay... Pharaohs Quest Jackal Escape... From scratch...
Please let us know your comments. He is 7, so keep that in mind...
My son has been crazy about his Lego's lately, and having a really great time designing his own when he can... So just from parts, he designed this set Pharaohs Quest Jackal Escape.
We tried to contact Lego with this design directly, but that ends up being pretty non productive because they design them in Denmark. He was hoping they could put his design into a set and then people could buy them in stores.
So, without further delay... Pharaohs Quest Jackal Escape... From scratch...
Please let us know your comments. He is 7, so keep that in mind...
12 August 2011
Another Summer Update
Gosh, it's been so long since I did this I almost couldn't remember how to sign into this thing.
Thought I would throw out some more information on utility bills, etc.
First of all, to say it's been hot is one thing, we are almost 700 degree cooling days ahead of schedule for the summer and year. One degree day is when the temperature is different from the normal thermostat set point for the whole day. So if you average out those 700 degree days, that's something like 6 degrees hotter per day for the ENTIRE last 3 months. One week we had 106 high for an entire week.
That's not the worst news, though, it has not rained in that time either. We have had a few sprinkles, and even a rain shower back in May, but just enough to get the ground wet. The hazards are tremendous, but the fire hazard alone is dangerous. Also worried about the trees lack of water. Somehow, the weeds grow anyway despite the dirt being so dry.
Just this week, I broke down and started just putting a hose on some of the trees and dripping water to them for a few hours each. Most of you would question why I didn't do this earlier, but the reason is that our trees are really picky about everything. Just stare at them wrong and they will die. The water here has a lot of sodium in it, and it gets plugged into the clay soils and the trees don't like it. Our last neighborhood was pretty crowded with houses, and everybody installed lots of grass, which required water, and the trees all died. The trees in question are Post Oak trees.
OK, for our June electric bill................ drum roll.................. $133.90
I was shocked, in a good way. For the several months up to this the HVAC didn't run much, and our bills were in this range. June was hot, though, and the unit ran a LOT more.
Some of you will want to qualify that with kWh, so here is that info...
1452 KWH used, at some mysterious ever changing rate somewhere around 9.22 cents. The reason I say that is because the rates changed to summer rates some time in June, and now our rates are getting hit again for some building project somewhere.
I don't have the July bill yet, but will any day now.
OH, this is interesting. My loop temps have been steadily climbing. I bought some electronic thermometers and hooked them up to all kinds of things. My original ground temps were running about 72 degrees, but they are up to high 80's and low 90's now. A lot higher than I thought they would be, but again, we are tremendously ahead of schedule for heat, and the ground can only dissipate that heat so fast. The loop temps will climb during the day about 5 degrees, but tend to cool off at night again, indicating that the heat is dissipating out from the loop field, or underground water is sufficient to carry that heat away. So, I called my HVAC guy and had a discussion about maximum loop temps, and the implications... Obviously, lower loop temps in summer and higher in winter is better. Surprisingly, 130 degrees is the highest that will work with the unit, and he was surprised I was still under 100 degrees compared to his other clients.
Also did some research with my friend Google, and discovered some technical papers on that issue. From those, they were claiming about $1/degree/ton/month higher bill for temperature rise. So if I am say 5 degrees ahead of schedule, for a 1 month period and running 3 tons, that's about 15 dollars more. I was questioning one of our big decisions for install, which was to use another loop for a total of 6 loops, but we decided against it, thinking we had plenty of capacity. I'm not entirely sure now, but wish I would have stuck another in the ground when it was easy. BUT, so far everything is working great, and you can be sure that I will reap rewards from that heat this winter, and get some of that extra expense back, so on paper it would be hard to justify another loop in my case, even though it would have made me feel better.
For the record, I would love to hear ideas as to how to get those loop temps down anyway. Short of adding an in line cooling tower, the only thing I can think of is to put a soaker hose over the trenches that hold the feed lines to the loops, since they are most likely dried out from our lack of rain. I'm even letting the kids take long showers to help dissipate heat out of the desuperheater, which does seem to help. But the solar brings the temps back up in the solar and main tanks in a half day easy and I am back to hot tanks. I wouldn't complain if it was winter, for sure.
Now for those of you that may get carried away with all the technical advantages of GEO or high SEER units, please remember that the vast majority of our savings come from...
1. Insulation (ICF exterior walls and open cell foam insulation with a "sealed" attic design)
2. House placement (shading of windows)
3. Windows Low E 3 in our case, without a metal frame (vinyl, wood, or fiberglass)
4. Tile roof
5. Solar hot water (not a huge one but it helps)
6. Lighting control system that minimizes light use when possible.
7. Reasonable thermostat set points... In our case 76 to 78 degrees depending on zone.
8. Humidity control though proper sizing of HVAC system and minimizing air leaks and lots of thermal mass
I am blabbering again....
Hope this finds all well...
Thought I would throw out some more information on utility bills, etc.
First of all, to say it's been hot is one thing, we are almost 700 degree cooling days ahead of schedule for the summer and year. One degree day is when the temperature is different from the normal thermostat set point for the whole day. So if you average out those 700 degree days, that's something like 6 degrees hotter per day for the ENTIRE last 3 months. One week we had 106 high for an entire week.
That's not the worst news, though, it has not rained in that time either. We have had a few sprinkles, and even a rain shower back in May, but just enough to get the ground wet. The hazards are tremendous, but the fire hazard alone is dangerous. Also worried about the trees lack of water. Somehow, the weeds grow anyway despite the dirt being so dry.
Just this week, I broke down and started just putting a hose on some of the trees and dripping water to them for a few hours each. Most of you would question why I didn't do this earlier, but the reason is that our trees are really picky about everything. Just stare at them wrong and they will die. The water here has a lot of sodium in it, and it gets plugged into the clay soils and the trees don't like it. Our last neighborhood was pretty crowded with houses, and everybody installed lots of grass, which required water, and the trees all died. The trees in question are Post Oak trees.
OK, for our June electric bill................ drum roll.................. $133.90
I was shocked, in a good way. For the several months up to this the HVAC didn't run much, and our bills were in this range. June was hot, though, and the unit ran a LOT more.
Some of you will want to qualify that with kWh, so here is that info...
1452 KWH used, at some mysterious ever changing rate somewhere around 9.22 cents. The reason I say that is because the rates changed to summer rates some time in June, and now our rates are getting hit again for some building project somewhere.
I don't have the July bill yet, but will any day now.
OH, this is interesting. My loop temps have been steadily climbing. I bought some electronic thermometers and hooked them up to all kinds of things. My original ground temps were running about 72 degrees, but they are up to high 80's and low 90's now. A lot higher than I thought they would be, but again, we are tremendously ahead of schedule for heat, and the ground can only dissipate that heat so fast. The loop temps will climb during the day about 5 degrees, but tend to cool off at night again, indicating that the heat is dissipating out from the loop field, or underground water is sufficient to carry that heat away. So, I called my HVAC guy and had a discussion about maximum loop temps, and the implications... Obviously, lower loop temps in summer and higher in winter is better. Surprisingly, 130 degrees is the highest that will work with the unit, and he was surprised I was still under 100 degrees compared to his other clients.
Also did some research with my friend Google, and discovered some technical papers on that issue. From those, they were claiming about $1/degree/ton/month higher bill for temperature rise. So if I am say 5 degrees ahead of schedule, for a 1 month period and running 3 tons, that's about 15 dollars more. I was questioning one of our big decisions for install, which was to use another loop for a total of 6 loops, but we decided against it, thinking we had plenty of capacity. I'm not entirely sure now, but wish I would have stuck another in the ground when it was easy. BUT, so far everything is working great, and you can be sure that I will reap rewards from that heat this winter, and get some of that extra expense back, so on paper it would be hard to justify another loop in my case, even though it would have made me feel better.
For the record, I would love to hear ideas as to how to get those loop temps down anyway. Short of adding an in line cooling tower, the only thing I can think of is to put a soaker hose over the trenches that hold the feed lines to the loops, since they are most likely dried out from our lack of rain. I'm even letting the kids take long showers to help dissipate heat out of the desuperheater, which does seem to help. But the solar brings the temps back up in the solar and main tanks in a half day easy and I am back to hot tanks. I wouldn't complain if it was winter, for sure.
Now for those of you that may get carried away with all the technical advantages of GEO or high SEER units, please remember that the vast majority of our savings come from...
1. Insulation (ICF exterior walls and open cell foam insulation with a "sealed" attic design)
2. House placement (shading of windows)
3. Windows Low E 3 in our case, without a metal frame (vinyl, wood, or fiberglass)
4. Tile roof
5. Solar hot water (not a huge one but it helps)
6. Lighting control system that minimizes light use when possible.
7. Reasonable thermostat set points... In our case 76 to 78 degrees depending on zone.
8. Humidity control though proper sizing of HVAC system and minimizing air leaks and lots of thermal mass
I am blabbering again....
Hope this finds all well...
07 June 2011
Summer Update...
Hi all,
It's been a long time since I posted.
Since we moved in we have largely been trying to get our old house ready to sell and sold. Not sold yet, but the summer market here seems to be pretty healthy, so we are hopeful.
Anyway, when we moved in in January, it was really cold for here, in the teens for more than a week straight. Since we didn't have the solar hot water or the floor heat system hooked up yet, we just used the Ground Source as a forced air system to heat the house, which it was capable of handling with ease.
I spent a good amount of time programming the lighting control system, and even now I am still making tweaks, and need to do more programming on some rooms and outside lights. It is kind of tedious to do that, and best accomplished at night when you can see what you are doing with the lights. The lighting works exceptionally well, however, and even visitors catch onto it with very little or no instruction.
Nothing is realy complete yet, I've just been tremendously busy with work, and trying to catch up on everything else in life that was dropped for almost two years of construciton mania. But lately I have been getting more projects around here done...
We have the Solar hot water system up and running now, and it works great, making about 120 gallons of water per day heated to about 130F. That seems to be dropping our electric bills by about 30 dollars per month, which equates to about a 4 year payback.
As for the GSHP, it is great. Our electric bill in the month of April, paid in May, was only $110 dollars... That is for 5000 sq feet of house, heating, cooling, hot water, pumps, lights, septic, computers, tv, etc. We have only used about 5 gallon of propane since we moved in, for cooking, outdoor grilling, and running the direct vent fireplace a few times (which is awesome). Our high bill has been $220, which was January. I think some of that was construction and a lot of lights in that process. The house was also pretty cold soaked when we moved in, so it took some time to get things warmed up.
With summer now here, 102 degrees and humid yesterday, our A/C system runs more often, but usually only the back bedroom zone comes on, because that cool air returns down through the main hall and through the rest of the house. I've never seen it come on to stage 2, and usually runs about 5 minutes out of every 30 minutes or so. We have it set at 78 degrees now, and the humidity right now is sitting at 45%, about half of the equavalent dewpoint setting outside, so to say it is very comfortable. I made some adjustments to the way the "Intellizone" system functions, by making the bedrooms both priority zones, so the unit comes on immediately if those rooms call for temperature needs. The rest of the house is set to a low priority, but i've never seen any of those zones come on, and all zones right now are sitting at exactly 78 degrees.
As of last night, my ground source loop return temperatures were 85 degrees, higher than I would like, but this morning those temps were down to 80 degrees after very little use through the night. The desuperheater is adding about 3 degrees per cycle to the 50 gallon storage tank it feeds, and last night those temps were up to 110F without much hot water use throughout the day. If we all have showers in the moring, that tank will drop to about 75 degrees, and then heat back up through the day. The solar tank will easily get to 130 or 140, and the feed coming off the roof will get as high as 160 degrees, with the highest tank temp i've seen around 140. I had to install a differential controller to the solar/final storage tank to command the mix pump for that operation, but it was only $80 dollars for that and it works very well.
Tons of other stuff to talk about, but I know most of you logged on for pictures. We still have boxes everywhere, because we are trying not to put stuff away that would be better thrown away...otherwise it gets stored forever and you don't even need it.
I'll try to get some pictures on here when I can, but this venue is pretty public and now we have moved in we don't really want pictures of our interior out there for just anybody to look at.
I'll try to find a few that will work, though and post them back here soon... Also some summer electric bills too...
Thanks and till then...
It's been a long time since I posted.
Since we moved in we have largely been trying to get our old house ready to sell and sold. Not sold yet, but the summer market here seems to be pretty healthy, so we are hopeful.
Anyway, when we moved in in January, it was really cold for here, in the teens for more than a week straight. Since we didn't have the solar hot water or the floor heat system hooked up yet, we just used the Ground Source as a forced air system to heat the house, which it was capable of handling with ease.
I spent a good amount of time programming the lighting control system, and even now I am still making tweaks, and need to do more programming on some rooms and outside lights. It is kind of tedious to do that, and best accomplished at night when you can see what you are doing with the lights. The lighting works exceptionally well, however, and even visitors catch onto it with very little or no instruction.
Nothing is realy complete yet, I've just been tremendously busy with work, and trying to catch up on everything else in life that was dropped for almost two years of construciton mania. But lately I have been getting more projects around here done...
We have the Solar hot water system up and running now, and it works great, making about 120 gallons of water per day heated to about 130F. That seems to be dropping our electric bills by about 30 dollars per month, which equates to about a 4 year payback.
As for the GSHP, it is great. Our electric bill in the month of April, paid in May, was only $110 dollars... That is for 5000 sq feet of house, heating, cooling, hot water, pumps, lights, septic, computers, tv, etc. We have only used about 5 gallon of propane since we moved in, for cooking, outdoor grilling, and running the direct vent fireplace a few times (which is awesome). Our high bill has been $220, which was January. I think some of that was construction and a lot of lights in that process. The house was also pretty cold soaked when we moved in, so it took some time to get things warmed up.
With summer now here, 102 degrees and humid yesterday, our A/C system runs more often, but usually only the back bedroom zone comes on, because that cool air returns down through the main hall and through the rest of the house. I've never seen it come on to stage 2, and usually runs about 5 minutes out of every 30 minutes or so. We have it set at 78 degrees now, and the humidity right now is sitting at 45%, about half of the equavalent dewpoint setting outside, so to say it is very comfortable. I made some adjustments to the way the "Intellizone" system functions, by making the bedrooms both priority zones, so the unit comes on immediately if those rooms call for temperature needs. The rest of the house is set to a low priority, but i've never seen any of those zones come on, and all zones right now are sitting at exactly 78 degrees.
As of last night, my ground source loop return temperatures were 85 degrees, higher than I would like, but this morning those temps were down to 80 degrees after very little use through the night. The desuperheater is adding about 3 degrees per cycle to the 50 gallon storage tank it feeds, and last night those temps were up to 110F without much hot water use throughout the day. If we all have showers in the moring, that tank will drop to about 75 degrees, and then heat back up through the day. The solar tank will easily get to 130 or 140, and the feed coming off the roof will get as high as 160 degrees, with the highest tank temp i've seen around 140. I had to install a differential controller to the solar/final storage tank to command the mix pump for that operation, but it was only $80 dollars for that and it works very well.
Tons of other stuff to talk about, but I know most of you logged on for pictures. We still have boxes everywhere, because we are trying not to put stuff away that would be better thrown away...otherwise it gets stored forever and you don't even need it.
I'll try to get some pictures on here when I can, but this venue is pretty public and now we have moved in we don't really want pictures of our interior out there for just anybody to look at.
I'll try to find a few that will work, though and post them back here soon... Also some summer electric bills too...
Thanks and till then...
05 January 2011
Some Final Pictures...
I would be silly to say we are really complete... But, we are complete enough to obtain an appraisal, and that is what we need to obtain permanent financing. Everything works...heat, water, electric, lights, etc.... So, we can move in... What's the catch...
We are waiting now for all the ducks to get in line, planets to align again, so we can finish the loan and then close.
I think it was the 22nd of Dec when we had close to 30 people working on things all at the same time, things were flying... concrete coming, corbels going up on the soffits, people cleaning, touch up paint, cleanup on electrical stuff, etc.
The next day, wasn't quite as busy, but all the sudden I looked around and I was the only one left...
It was weird....
So anyway, I will post a bunch of pictures. We are getting ready to probably lose our internet for a few days, as it is getting moved first, so I figured I would take the opportunity...
Oh, to say we have not been busy... ha... Right after we get done, a virus takes out my computer...completely. We do a quick trip to San Antonio to see the river walk lights at Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas, then I am back to work 6 days straight, and wife and the kids take a flight north to see family...
I have also done some trouble shooting on the Centralite system, which was ignoring 1/3 of the house inputs... That required some thinking and a part, but it is now fixed...
OK, here we go... What starts with shovels and dirt ends with shovels and dirt. The concrete crew we hired for the driveway and sidewalks (flat work) was wonderful. Could not have had a better experience. I chose this time to buy materials and pay labor, which means more coordination but less expense on my part. The little excavator died the first second of three pour days. This is the concrete truck dragging him out. Thanks to my dad for trouble shooting the diesel fuel system over the cell phone and we eventually got that running again... When I googled the owners manual for a John Deer ZTS 27 excavator on my iPhone the Hispanic crew looked at me like I was crazy... You already knew.
They did a exposed aggregate look... Pea gravel basically in the concrete and then they wash the surface to expose the rock. When the concrete truck couldn't reach something, they formed a human chain and pulled the concrete by hand with a metal concrete rake. Some of it they put in wheelbarrows... It's hard work.
Mailbox is a massive foundation. Took almost a yard of concrete for this hole they made, but I guess it'll never go anywhere.
Looking up the driveway.... NO NAILS EVER AGAIN!!!
Re bar on 12 inch centers, 4 1/2 inches of 3500 psi concrete. Lots of expansion joints, and immaculate prep. I was really happy with this crew.
Ah, the center island finally relieved of it's burden of debris and exposed and clean for the first time... Love the red and black...
Better Picture here of that.
Looking back the other way. Kitchen is pretty massive, but we have every single cabinet pretty much spoken for.
This is probably the same picture, but I'm too lazy to take it out.
We have tested all the cooking equipment. Warmed up my burrito one day on the cook top griddle, wife made soup on the cook top and microwave, and the kids wanted hot dogs, so we cooked them on the grill outside...
I probably went a little wild with the concrete on the front, but we ended up bringing the sidewalk up with NO steps anywhere. Something we will all appreciate. Kids have already logged several miles on scooters and bikes as they can ride all around without problems.
Corbels... they are like jewelry to this style house. You got to have them... They make the house look even more massive and substantial. There were something like 70 of them. I could go into business just cutting them on a bandsaw...
Yes, I know there are still stickers on the windows... but they need washed off before we peel off the protective plastic on the glass.
Walking from the street, you have to go onto the driveway, but then you can take this shortcut to the front door. If you go right here at the "node" you will go to the parking pullout, and then to the garage. It all flows very nice, and the concrete guys were very helpful laying things out well.
As you walk down and the trees thin, you start seeing the entrance and courtyard.
We could have put the sidewalk closer to the house, but why?
Standing in that same spot, panning back to the right to get the garage into the camera.
Looking down into the driveway from the "node". Why are we calling it that? Long story. I'll spare you, but I have a friend who just got his PhD with extensive commercial background in landscape architecture. He was very insightful.
More kitchen... The pendant light had a broken glass shade, and it's already been replaced from the factory.
Looking the other direction into the family room. Fireplace with iron doors, and the entertainment center. The fireplace even has a light inside it which is very cool. Oh, the night we made hot dogs we ran the fireplace for a while. It was pretty cold outside, but the fireplace just about cooked us out of there in short order. It even has a fan inside that recirculates air around the firebox.
These lights are very cool, glass and iron look.
Main hallway, fully lit. These were our version of Christmas lights this year.
Standing in the dining room looking over into the living room.
Now in the living room, looking straight at the front entrance door and dining room.
Not the best picture, but this is a combo pic of the recessed area for the master bed and a built in at the back corner of the house.
Turning 90 degrees left yields this shot of the bedroom entrance. Will have a TV over a credenza or dresser between the lights. Oh, and that's the master bedroom cat-hole low and to the right of the door.
Just one example of lighting setup. This is the Master bedroom door entrance. Still working on programming things, and learning the software, but all these buttons control various lights and fans, and can also put the room into certain lighting "scenes". Top left button sets everything up as you walk in so you don't have to make multiple presses. Bottom left is always the "room off" button for every room, and completely shuts it down.
Waterfurnace geothermal unit is working well. Note it's 73 degrees with a set point of 66 degrees, for the first few weeks after they actually turned things on, the unit only came on once or twice at these settings. It's been colder now longer, so the house has cooled off finally to 66 degrees. I can bring up the temp in a matter of minutes, but the unit hardly ever comes on. We are elated with the comfort of the house, but it's very hard to explain the feeling.
Looking into the master foyer from the master bedroom. Double alder arch top doors with the sand cast bronze hardware from Emtek. Feels good...
Master bathroom, with the snail shower in the corner. I haven't put the mirrors up yet because the walls are full of electrical and plumbing, and with the ICF there is no studs to hang things on... So... liquid nail to the rescue. But I have to still figure out a way to hold the mirrors up there while the liquid nail dries, and they are heavy. Oh, the makeup mirror... Yes, it's my vanity, but everybody got a makeup mirror. The girls all wanted one so they could put on makeup. The boys are just so good looking we gotta look at ourselves a lot ;-)
The study... Wood floor is in, but I think in this pic they still had a few pieces of quarter round to tend to... The computer cable is a bastardized version of what will be the interface from the office computer to the lighting and automation control stuff in the attic. I can hook in here with my laptop now and continue to program buttons in my "spare" time.
Other end of the office. Picture a 55 inch LED TV with some nice speakers in there. I can surf the internet and watch tv and movies. I'll never leave.
this turned out very well. We haven't started a real fire in the fireplace, but I have some firewood just for that purpose.
Out back looking at the east side of the rear.
Looking west now towards the breakfast area tucked under the rear porch.
I think I will seal the exterior columns. I think it's better to guard against various things...
Exterior porch and the wood ceiling... Fans and lights make it very nice out there at night. those are actually halogen landscaping spots I modified into fixtures. They have a ball joint on them and you can rotate them all around... They work great.
My poor man's outdoor kitchen. Still haven't picked out a granite for this yet, and it will also get a stainless sink and faucet.
Well, that's it. I'll try to check back later in case anybody posts any comments or questions. I'm sure the blog entries will slow to a crawl. I may be busier than ever for a while, but what changes now is the timeline. I get to pick how fast I want something done, and I can therefore be as picky as I want...
Hope all is well with you and yours...
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