the homies
Apartment Therapy has recently opened up the nomination process for this year’s homie awards. Click on over and vote for your favorite design blogs in five different categories (oh, and if you’re interested, chezerbey is in the home design category). There are so many great design blogs out there and this is a unique venue for discovering new ones to add to your list. Most of my favorites are listed in the blogroll sidebar to the right. Nominations are due by tomorrow and winners will be announced on January 7th.
year in review
While 2009 is not quite over, I think it’s safe to say that this year’s house projects certainly are. To recap, the year started out by tying up loose ends in the basement. As part of the structural revamping we did in 2008, we needed to complete the seismic retrofit which entailed anchoring the framing to the concrete foundation, insulating, and installing sheathing. We then moved on to a massive purging and organizing effort and discovered that our new crawl space-turned-short basement provided more than enough room for most of our storage needs. In March, we dove straight into the exterior restoration/reconstruction project and didn’t come up for air until October. In November we finished an art project for the bedroom and by December we could barely muster the energy to hang some garland.
Although we are enjoying this little break, we are also gearing up for 2010 with our eyes set on one thing: the kitchen! The plan right now is to spend January and February finishing up some small projects (the front porch/mudroom and a bathroom art project) in addition to finalizing the details of the kitchen. Because this project will probably disrupt our daily lives more than anything we’ve done so far (as in, we will be without a kitchen, living room or dining room for at least a couple months) we’re committed to doing as much research and planning as possible before we pick up a sledge-hammer. To save up a bit more money and avoid bare studs during the cold months, we’re hoping to delay the start of demo until April. But…knowing us, we probably won’t be able to wait that long.
Happy Holidays!
gallons and kilowatts
During the last couple of years we have taken several measures to reduce our monthly water and energy usage, and today we went through our old bills and tallied the average gallons per day and kWh’s per day to see just how much of an impact those measures have had.
Ok, I also geeked out on some bar charts.
In terms of water use, the best thing we did was replace the old toilet that came with the house. Even though we weren’t slated to redo our bathroom for a while, in 2007 we swapped the old water hog for a low flow, dual flush Toto toilet. This cut our water usage by over 50 gallons per day! Interestingly enough, the rest of the chart remains pretty stable, even with the addition of our low flow shower head and bathroom sink aerator in the fall of 2008. (The spikes in the summer time account for garden and tree watering and the dip in August/September 2008 was likely due to the fact that we were in the middle of the bathroom remodel which inherently deterred water use.) We added a dishwasher when we moved in, but chose an Energy Star Bosch model that prioritizes water conservation (and many studies show that efficient dishwashers use less overall water than hand washing).
The energy chart is a bit more telling. Because we heated the home the first couple of winters with electric space heaters (the house came with an ancient oil-based furnace that we didn’t dare turn on), there was a huge draw for those months. The sad thing is that we only used the space heaters when we were home on weeknights and weekends…the numbers would have been quite a bit higher if we had left them on during the day. [Also, we don’t have A/C, so our energy use drops dramatically during the summer months (plus there’s more sunlight so less artificial light is needed). ] In September 2008, we finally got a new high efficiency gas furnace and gas tankless hot water heater and our average kWh’s per day plummeted! Granted, we now have natural gas to add to the mix, but it is a less expensive energy source (even in the Pacific Northwest where much of our electricity comes from hydro) and with a new furnace and programmable thermostat we can closely control the temperature so we’re comfortable but not wasteful. We’re also no longer keeping a big tank of water heated which cuts down our load even further. On a smaller scale, before we moved in we replaced the fridge (from an unidentifiable era) with a super efficient Danish model from Summit. We’ve also installed a timer on our front porch light and CFL bulbs in most of the other rooms, but have yet to find a good, dimmable CFL. Anyone have any favorites?
While we’re happy that we’ve been able to make these reductions, there’s still room for improvement. For both water and energy use, the biggest remaining offender is our washer and dryer.
It appears that the washing machine is from 1999…no idea on the dryer. While we would love to trade these in for a high efficiency front loading washer and natural gas dryer, we have a kitchen to plan for. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that they make it for a few more years or until we’re able to finish out the basement.
Our long term ideas are to add PV panels to our south-facing roof to reduce our electricity load. To eventually wean ourselves off natural gas, we could install an air-source heat pump and convert the gas furnace to back up heat. In the meantime, we’ll continue to improve our envelope by adding more insulation to the walls and attic!
chezerbey on re-nest!
Last week, chezerbey was featured on Re-Nest, Apartment Therapy’s green-themed website. See the post here and thanks again to the folks at Re-Nest for the shout out!
a subtle nod towards christmas
Although this will be our fourth Christmas at chezerbey, this is the first year that we have attempted outdoor decorations. With a newly finished exterior, we couldn’t wait to toss the pumpkins into the compost bin and start thinking about the next holiday. So on Sunday, we went to pick out a tree and came back with a 10′ strand of garland, some mistletoe and a 5′ frasier fir.
We’re still toying with whether or not we want to put up lights. We don’t have any exterior outlets so adding another project to our list might just nix the idea.
Of course, the garland would probably go well with a lush, landscaped front yard. Maybe next year.
Someone was less than thrilled about this particular photo-op.
I think the only reason he stayed still for so long was that he was too scared to move.
And you can’t go wrong with a little sprig of well placed mistletoe…
