Sorry that the blog has been a bit non-existent recently. Between doing a job hunt for me and all of the projects that we are working on here we haven’t been spending much leisure time blogging. We will post some pictures of the work that we have been doing recently in the next couple of days. Jessie is getting to be a master as doing tile with hand made tiles and I’ve been getting my carpentry on.
--Tom
My uncle’s 220 year old farmhouse burned to the ground yesterday in Greenfield, New Hampshire. No one was hurt, but they lost everything, including 2 housecats and 8 sheep (in an attached barn).
The house is obscured by the tent, but this is from Conrad & Ellen’s wedding in 2002. My parents served as their wedding party.
Here’s the house reduced to rubble. My cousin sent the following message on how you can help. Thanks in advance to anyone who can find a way to share. --Jessie
Hello to all,
You are being contacted because you are family or friends of the family. You might have already heard, but my parents house just got destroyed in a fire. My parents and our dog flash are okay, but all possessions were destroyed, leaving my parents quite devastated.
As you know, Ellen and Conrad are, two very hard working people who have never asked for anything and lost everything when their home burned to the ground yesterday. They would not ask for help even now so I am asking for them. To help with immediate needs before insurance comes through, you can make a donation via the paypal link Dave set up (see below) or you if you have items/services to offer, you can find their address as well. If you would like ideas, please contact me or my brothers.
On behalf of my family, thank you for your love and support.
Paypal:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=69M3BJVN6GRSY
Send me an e-mail jessiesteiger AT gmail.com if you would like their mailing address to send goods.
We have officially left Arizona. We had a great stay and accomplished a lot. Lets just run down the list of projects from our hold over in Arizona.
Not too shabby for a couple of months, and we had a great time hanging out with the family. Here’s a picture of the walkway that we bricked in.
The square blocks are actually the concrete counter tops samples that we repurposed as pavers
Oh, I forgot – we also caused some serious red-neck style death to plastic army men. Ohhh yeah… that's right.
The old 3/4 plywood from our pour tables put to good use…
Thats right… we kept shooting into the darkness… love halogen work lights
We are settled back in Northern California and work has started on projects to get the house here done for final inspection. We’ll post some of those projects as they move forward.
One quick note to all our friends in DC, I hope it stops dumping snow on you guys, but Jessie and I are a little sad that we missed the monster winter.
--Tom
Since we’ve been mooching off of Tom’s parents for nearly 2 months, we decided we should do a little sumpthin-sumpthin to repay them.
The existing stove vent.
So, we tore out a non-functioning gas stove in the family room and installed a solar tube. What is a solar tube, you ask? For the environmentally uneducated, let me esplain.
Demo of an asphalt roof is the opposite of fun. Having bits of asphalt explode into your eyes is the (opposite of fun)^2.
Basically, you punch a hole in your roof, punch a hole in your ceiling, run a reflective metal pipe between the holes and you have yourself a solar tube. They bring in lovely amounts of natural light and can be installed in a day.
Here, the new flashing is installed. The roof area to be patched is huge because the flashing piece for the stove was enormous.
We bought our sweet daylighting system from Solatube – pretty much because they were the first company to show up on a Google search and they have a distributor in Tucson. The 10” model we purchased was $325 ($350 w/ tax). Did you just make a scrunchy face and think, “that’s kinda pricey” ??? Well, in the spirit of every infomercial ever made -- BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE…
Sorting through parts on the roof. I’m starting to notice that I generally looked confused in photos these days.
If you act in 2010, you federal government will give you a tax credit of 30% of the cost of the materials. That’s nearly $100 off! AND, your state government might have credits as well!! AZ will give you another incredible 25% off the INSTALLED cost.
Tube installed and roof patched. The plastic dome has a little reflector inside that points south to bring in the most light possible. We are “cautiously optimistic” that our roof patch won’t leak – much.
The company we bought the tube from would have charged $500 to install it for us. With tax credits, the final bill would have been $275. Plus, I just found the same model online for $279, so I guess we could have saved another $50 by comparative shopping.
Interior shot before the Solatube was installed.
Interior shot with the Solatube installed – this was taken at 10am, so the ambient light hasn’t even peaked yet.
And I say unto you, let there be light.
We’re very happy with how this product performs and the relative ease of installation. I’m not sure the photos really demonstrate how well it lights up a previously dark corner in the room. When we have a house again, we plan to install several of these – kitchen, bathrooms, & dark hallways will be the likely candidates.
Let us know if you have any questions.
-Jessie
