Casa Hartman

Kitchen Archway

I’ve been thinking about installing an arch in the passage from the living room into the dining room/kitchen. There are just so many straight lines in this house, that I thought something a bit architectural would be nice. Rather than just dive into it, I figure it’d be a good idea to visualize the final result first.

I have the construction pretty well mapped out in my head, and I don’t think it’ll be very difficult. In fact, I don’t think it’d take David and I much more than a few hours to have the structure in place and ready for finishing.

Posted in Journal, Kitchen, Living Room | 3 Comments »

Thermostat & Picture Frames

I really wish someone would explain to me why HVAC installers would think it’s a good idea to put the thermostat right in the middle of a living room wall. There’s only two usable walls in my living room to begin with, and the one that faces the front door basically has a big wart right in the middle of it.

I’ve had pictures on that wall for a while, but there wasn’t much structure to the layout, so when I got some big prints made of a couple photos I took over Easter, I decided to finally get things right.

It took me about two hours. First I tried to do an unstructured layout, but it just looked bad. Then I finally decided to go with the symmetrical layout shown below.

The only problem was the damn thermostat. After a couple of nonstarters I ended up here. Rather than try to ignore the thermostat, I worked it in by making a fake one out of thick cardstock to ensure the layout was completely balanced (the thermostat on the left is the fake). It’s basically the same size and stands about 3/4 of an inch off the wall. The screen could be a little darker, but as doppelgangers go I think it looks pretty good. I still need to get some prints made for the 8×10 frames, and some 4×6s the quad frame in the center.

I’m pleased with the result, if not with the strafing of pin holes that now adorn the wall. I really need to get to work on the balcony addition so that I can finally patch and repaint the walls in the living room.

Posted in Living Room | 3 Comments »

Heat Pump Repair

So, the HVAC guy came out yesterday and quickly discovered the root of my problem. Seems there’s a sensor that controls a fan that’s supposed to do something about defrosting the heat pump during the winter time. Said sensor has decided to act a fool and is engaging every five or ten minutes and turning the fan off for ten minutes at a time.

All told, the repair is supposed to only cost about $250 or so, which, I guess, seems right. It’s about what I had in mind even before I knew there was a real problem so I’m not too heart broken about it.

I also talked to the guy about budgetary numbers for replacing the whole system, and as I suspected, he feels like the current system is slightly undersized for the application. Currently I have a 1.5-ton system and he thinks a 2-ton system should have been put in. This confirms what the house inspector said when I bought the house.

Off the top of his head, he said it’ll run about $5000. I haven’t had a chance yet to research that to see how realistic it is, but Dave (the recommender) said this guy came in $2000 less than the other quotes he got to replace his system (and he couldn’t be more impressed with how well it works). So, when it comes time to do the deed, I’ll definitely be giving Kenny a call for a formal quote.

Posted in Journal | No Comments »

On The Fritz

I have a sneaking suspicion that my heat pump needs some work. I’ve setup an appointment with a guy who came highly recommended to me by a coworker. I’ll be taking the afternoon off to see what’s up. Hopefully it just needs a little TLC, though, it won’t freak me out too entirely if it needs major work. If it’s going to cost more than $500 or $600 to fix, I think I’m going to see about replacing it. I’m not sure exactly how old it is, but it does a horrible job of cooling the upstairs.

Posted in Journal | No Comments »

More Concrete Countertops

Just like when I bought my first car, I saw Volkswagen Beetles everywhere. And now that I’ve pretty much decided on Concrete Counters in the kitchen (whenever I actually get around to it), I’ve been stumbling into information left and right.

This weekend I watched a PVR’d episode of Rock Solid. Dean & Derek built a bathroom vanity top from concrete with the help of Dan Gobillot. The finished product looked great, but nothing I’d be interested in having. As I checked the DIY Network website, I see they’ve done an episode for Kitchen Counters as well. Hopefully I can catch that one in reruns sometime.

I also saw a great writeup at Instructables.com on a concrete countertop project. Besides the content of the post itself, there are some great comments.

Posted in Ideas | 2 Comments »

Kitchen Rug

During my daily surf I stumbled onto a link for a website called Lastminute Auction. When I checked the site out, I found an auction listing for this rug.

I thought right away that it’d be perfect for the kitchen, so I entered a bid: ninety-nine cents. And I won. It arrived this afternoon from South Carolina. Total bill: $40.99.

As soon as I unwrapped the rug from the packaging, Glue plopped herself right in the center of it, stretched out, and claimed it as her own. The kittah is pleased, so it seems.

I have to find a grip pad for it… It slides all over the place right now.

It looks pretty good in there… though anything that covers the ugly linoleum tiles is an improvement.

Posted in Journal | 2 Comments »

Solder Man

When Mike, David, and I built the front deck, we covered over the spigot that was on the front of the house. My intent all along had been to just cut it off underneath the house in the crawlspace, put a couple of elbows at the cut, and send the waterline out the side of the house and put on a new spigot there.

And then I got to Lowe’s and figured out it was going to cost me about $150 to do it myself (once I bought all the supplies, and the $30 masonry bit to drill through the cinderblock foundation. I scrapped the idea right away and settled on option number 2: do some repair work to take out the leaky joint that supplies the spigot on the rear of the house.

It’s a really odd setup. The main water line comes into the crawlspace (really, it’s a walkspace… you can stand up unimpeded under my house) and then turns a 90 degree angle up to the main shutoff valve, then to the joists where it supplies the rest of the house. Off this main water line there’s a reducing tee to a second shutoff valve that controls the water to the spigot on the rear. The joint on the downstream side of the valve leaked pretty bad, so that spigot was rendered unusable.

So, once I decided I was going to relocate the front spigot, I went back out and bought $30 worth of stuff to do the repairs on the back spigot.

It’s been a long time since I’ve soldered copper fittings, but I figured it was just a matter of getting my touch back. In the end, I had to solder nine separate connections. The don’t look entirely pretty, but none of them leak, and I now have a spigot that actually works, so I guess that’s all that matters.

Posted in Outdoors | No Comments »

Trim The Trees

I’ve had few limbs that were coming precariously close to touching the house so I finally went out and bought a tree pruning pole last weekend. I spent a couple hours cutting limbs and left the cleanup for this weekend.

Yesterday I borrowed David’s chainsaw in order to make the cleanup a bit easier. I made a good dent in the work this morning and took a load of limbs to the dump. I have some more to do, probably another two truck loads.

The work is particularly hard because the trees in question are around the side of the house where the back deck comes around the house. There’s no yard to speak of, and what is there is on such a slant that it makes working over there incredibly difficult. Mostly it consists of dragging the limbs up and into the front yard so that they can be cut up and put in the truck. I need to find a piece of rope and hook of some sort to make retrieving the limbs a little easier.

I’ll make another effort tomorrow, but I’m not expecting to finish. I’ll have time next weekend before I leave for Vegas on Tuesday considering I’m taking off Monday just because.

Oh… and the Jehovah’s witnesses decided to stop by while I was outside this morning. I really, really don’t understand these people. I can’t believe there success rate is high enough to justify what they do.

Posted in Journal | No Comments »

Holding Pattern

I haven’t fallen off the face of the planet, I’ve just been in a holding pattern as far as house projects go. With my upcoming Vegas trip in March, I’m trying not to spend too much money until I get back home and have an idea of what the damage is.

But just because I haven’t been doing doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about future projects.

I really think the next big project is going to be the balcony over the fireplace. That’ll be the last major project before I gut the kitchen in a couple years. Once the balcony is done, I can move on to getting my library set up, as well as some display shelving I want to install high up on the interior gable wall.

I also need to come up with the final design for the desktop that I planned for the nook in my office. I’m still using the table that’s served as my desk for the last eight years. It’s very functional, and incredibly sturdy, but it’s not very appealing, especially with all the changes that have taken place in the office. I saw this ultra-modern desk on the TechEBlog site the other day and it got me thinking about incorporating some of the details into my project. I really dig the compartments for storing things.

So, things will likely continue to be quiet over here until April. In the meantime, I’m posting a bit more regularly over at BHN. Stop by and say hi.

Posted in Journal | 2 Comments »

Forking the Blog

I’ve noticed that more than a few of my posts lately haven’t really been explicitly about my house (you know, the paper mache stuff, the Truck how to, etc). So, I’ve decided to move those posts to BruceHartman.net where I plan to be posting a bit more regularly.

It’s likely that the posting frequency here will slow down a bit, especially if I keep slacking on putting the ideas into action that I wrote about previously. But even those aren’t really houseblog posts, so I’m not sure how welcome they are at Houseblogs.net (if the mods happen to see this, I’d appreciate you weighing in).

So, to the regulars who like seeing the non-house stuff, be sure to add http://www.brucehartman.net (rss feed here) back to your regular surfing. I’ve added the feed from that site to the sidebar so you can keep an eye on what’s happening from here as well.

All the art stuff I’ve been doing will be featured at BHN along with a consolidation of my portfolio material from BruceHartmanDesign.com.

Posted in Journal | 2 Comments »