Jeff's LiveJournal

Here's a nifty raised planter that I finished last week using some of the left-over wood from the old greenhouse at cowhouse 1. I think it came out pretty nicely, and it was a good opportunity to try making the various lap joints for the joinery. The wood could probably use some water-repelling stain to protect it from the weather though.

 
(Click to embiggen)

My parents both retired a few months ago in December and have recently put their house up for sale, so that they can retire to Arizona. A few of my Austin friends (decibel45, dopplertx, snaxxx) got to see it in person when we went to New Zealand last year.

Part of the reason that my parents don't feel that the real estate market slump in California will have too much of an impact on their sale is the relatively unique nature of their house. It is a Japanese-inspired haiku house, which is a modern-day interpretation of a Japanese country house. It is supported entirely by long wooden poles that extend deep into the ground, and is made almost entirely out of redwood trees. My parents liked the design so much that they hired an architect to build it for them in 1981 on a carefully selected hillside in Pasadena, California. It would be impossible to build a house like it today in California due to recent construction regulations to reduce fire risk, plus the difficulty/expense of obtaining that much old-growth redwood.

Their realtors set up a little website with its own domain [1893kaweah.com] to host a description and some photos of it. My mom sent me some good details about the media coverage and open house interest:

"Our home was featured in the local Pasadena magazine as well as in the LA Times. The first open house had a lot of neighborhood people ... We had a couple serious parties. Our realtors (2 partners) were very surprised at the numbers showing up. The 1st [open house] had 175 coming through; our 2nd has about 100. It must have been a huge traffic jam since we got a phone call 1½ hr into the open house and the realtor sounded overwhelmed at the tremendous # of people going through the house!"

The house keeps itself very cool in the summer because of louvered windows that can open up along the entire bottom floor, and skylights and roof vents that open up on the second floor. All the hot air escapes at top vents and draws in cool air through the lower windows.

You can also see their house on Google Maps StreetView, though it appears that Google has mixed up some of the images if you move too far along the street. The realtor also has a bunch of photos on their website. I also have some of my own photos in my personal gallery. It's a little sad to think that the house I grew up in will soon belong to someone else though.

On Friday night, I went and had dinner at Uncle Billy's BBQ and then went to see the band She Craves at Emo's Lounge. Then on Saturday we went to the McKinney Falls State Park and we did the 3 mile paved hike around the park. Next time I go I'll definitely want to try the other 3 mile unpaved hike they have. reanimated wrote a little more about it here and here.

On Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, I did a bit of electrical work on my car by installing an integrated XM Radio receiver into my Jeep. This was basically added on a hidden XM Receiver electrical box under the driver's seat with cabling that snakes up under the carpeting and into the back of my Pioneer stereo head unit. Even better is that it seems because the XM receiver I bought was factory refurbished, it is still activated and receiving radio content for free. Apparently the XM activation/deactivation signals are only transmitted occasionally for each Radio ID, so I may continue to get free service for a few weeks.

Sunday evening, snaxxx started moving some of her things into the Cowhouse, beginning mostly with her books. She'll be moving the bulk of her things next weekend.

Unfortunately, it seems that the commotion of going in and out of her car might have attracted some criminals, because in between car loads some vandal snuck into her car and my Jeep and looked for things to steal. The burglar must have been scared off as Snax was coming back her car, because my Jeep passenger door was left open with my car insurance paperwork scattered around. The only thing taken from my Jeep was less than a dollar in spare change in the cupholder (apparently ignoring my obsolete Garmin StreetPilot GPS). They similarly took a few dollars in cash and a digital camera from Snax's car, but seemingly not much else (also apparently ignoring her iPhone and iPod). The Austin Police were dispatched out and they took a crime report from us and managed to lift a few good fingerprints from Snax's car, so maybe something good will happen.

Maybe I'll try to get some infrared video cameras installed outside around the house. I had been playing with an open source Linux-based video surveillance package called ZoneMinder a year or so ago, but never really extended it to any permanently mounted cameras.

So a few interesting things happened during the last few weeks...
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So I've officially had the house for a little more than 2 months now, and have spent most of those weekends doing little home improvement projects or buying odds-n-ends for the house. None of these projects have really been too horrible, and I actually enjoy getting to use tools now and then. Fortunately, decibel and I collectively own quite a good diversity of tools so finding the right one is rarely a problem. Some of the notable projects that I've done since my last post include (click here to see pictures of them all):

• install satellite dish and pull its 4 coaxial wires through the attic space and into the media room.
• install a garage door opener.
• remove two bird nests from two different vents and install wire mesh to prevent future nesting.
• re-grade a small area of the front-yard to assist drainage. raise a sprinkler-head to the new level.
• seed some bare parts of the front lawn and where I dug for the re-grading.
• pull lots of weeds, and spread lots of cedar mulch around to discourage future weed growth.
• install a rubberized divider around one of the planters in the front yard.
• mount some wall hooks in the garage for organizing electrical extension cords.
• install a shelf in the laundry room.
• fix a squeaky hardwood floor upstairs, by hammering some finishing nails at careful angles.
• hang some towel rods in the master bathroom
• fix the dishwasher drainage hose, and replace the cabinet shelf under the kitchen sink (be sure to read decibel's summarization, if you missed it the first time.)

The pool is indeed turning out to be a little more work that I originally anticipated, but fortunately decibel45 has quickly taken the role of water chemistry expert. The automated Polaris 360 pool cleaner that I bought has certainly already proved itself to be a great benefit. Without it, scrubbing the pool sides and removing all of the accumulated sand from the bottom using the manual suction hose was annoyingly time consuming.

Next on my list of home projects is to start:

• finish installing speakers in the upstairs loft
• finish off the ethernet by bringing the distribution hub into decibel's closet, instead of leaving it in the hot attic
• install outdoor speakers in preparation of some outdoor parties
• replace the outdoor light switches for the pool lighting, since the old boxes/faceplates are slightly dysfunctional.
• replace some broken floor tiles in decibel's upstairs bathroom.
• consider getting some additional attic insulation (radiant barriers) to reduce cooling costs in the summer. There is an Austin Energy rebate program to cover part of the costs.
• consider getting roof gutters installed and some rainwater collection barrels.
• decide what to do about replacing the kitchen countertops
• get some rocks/pebbles for the areas along the side of the house where grass refuses to grow. The rocks should help with the drainage/erosion, and also provide a nicer surface to walk on instead of swampy mud when it rains.

I also have some pictures from the first Nuclear Taco Night at the new house (last Wednesday).

Finally, I'm quite happy that my strawberry plants are doing so well already, despite the trauma of being dug out of the ground of the old house and transplanted into pots. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to transplant all of the plants (none of the pepper plants made it) that I had growing there, otherwise I would have even more. I've already snacked on a few of the ripest berries earlier this week.

So this weekend, nugget and ghewgill helped me wire my new house for ethernet. In total, six rooms were wired with Cat-5e cabling: downstairs office, upstairs master bedroom, upstairs entertainment room, and the three other upstairs bedrooms.

All of the rooms now connect into the attic, where I was originally planning on having an ethernet switch mounted, but it's been suggested that heat problems might affect the electronics. Most electronics usually say they have a maximum operating temperature of 115F-120F, so it's a valid concern. Fortunately the cables were all cut with plenty of extra length, so it should be possible to bring them all into one of the bedroom closets and put the switch there instead.



While we were busy wiring the house for ethernet, equiraptor kindly helped out by stripping off the aging window tinting that the previous owners had applied. A glass scraper that had a sharp razor blade worked pretty well to remove it. Although they had good intentions applying it, they used rolls of tinting that were too small and so many of the windows needed 4 separate pieces of tint applied (making the seams very visible). The tinting also had an unappealing purple color to it, though I'm not sure it originally had that color or not. I still have to use some Windex cleaner and the glass scraper to remove the rest of the left-over adhesive, but it's mostly done now.

Dry DSL has been ordered and should be installed before the end of the month ("dry" means that no analog POTS line will be installed; aka "dedicated" or "naked" DSL). If you know anyone who is a current customer of Cyberonic, let me know and I can use you as a referral.

Address changes for all of my accounts and bills are already in progress. You'll notice that the "whois bovine.net" has already been updated to my new address. The phone number in my "whois" is still the old cowhouse number, since I'm not planning on getting an analog phone line and I'm not sure I want to list my cellphone there yet.

The clothes washer and dryer were also delivered this weekend. I'll definitely have to read the thick manuals to figure out how to operate them. They're much more complicated than any other washer or dryer I've had to use before. Lots of neat-looking lights and buttons though. :)

I've also ordered both the upstairs and downstairs sofa sets and they'll both be delivered during the week. The downstairs sofa is a less expensive set, since I figured it would get more possible abuse by visiting guests.

The previous owners left a fair amount of trash around (empty cans, cardboard boxes, a deer skull, bent curtain rods, broken childrens toys, old oil containers, etc). I've already filled two trash cans with stuff, plus piles of weeds that I've pulled from the yard. They also had put lots of nails and thumbtacks on all of the interior walls, so started filling in the nail holes and minor dents with some pre-mixed drywall joint compound; I still need to sand down the patched area and maybe apply some touch-up paint.

Many of my things that I infrequently use and were already in boxes have already moved to the new house. moonwick is apparently planning the final "big move" to be Sat Feb 26, and he will be renting a large moving truck for all of us to share for the day.

So after many weeks of planning and paperwork, I finally closed on the new cowhouse yesterday and I now have the door keys in my possession!
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( So I'm getting close to finalizing my home purchase... )