How do gardeners make it through New England winters?
By dreaming of spring, of course. I’m up to my arse in seed and plant catalogs…
And that’s not even all of them. I’ll have to get back to you about what looks interesting. Of note so far: pink blueberries. It’s a crazy world.
On Friday I showed you the downstairs plan we worked out with Emily, our architect. Speaking of which, we met with her and the engineer today to make sure everything’s hunky-dory before we go to the city for the permit. Getting closer. While we wait for final engineering drawings, let’s discuss the rough upstairs plan that Emily drew up. K?
Stage Two: Main Living/Kitchen Area
The upstairs remodel will have to wait for warmer weather — which is fine since we’ll be plenty busy with the downstairs. Upstairs is more involved than the downstairs as this is where the main living area and kitchen are located. Feel free to take the visual tour of what we want to do (I posted that back when we thought upstairs was going to be Stage One).
The upstairs currently looks like this (click to biggify)…
With the changes we want to make, it will look more like this…
Not easy to spot the differences but here they are:
Just like downstairs, we’re knocking out a few load-bearing walls and putting in beams in order to open up the space. We’ll gain some breathing space in the kitchen by putting in a cooking island/breakfast bar that juts into the living area, plus we’ll go vertical with storage and add a large cooling tower/skylight over the whole space. Facing out to the backyard, we’re knocking out the giant closet and putting in glass sliders and little sitting area with a fireplace insert. The main living area will be flanked by floor-to-ceiling built-ins with built-in seating. The dining area next to the tiny kitchen will get a built-in sideboard/serving shelf as part of its floor-to-ceiling built-ins. We’ll replace current sliders and windows, put in a new floor and ceiling, and improve lighting and heating.
Basically, nothing goes untouched. So do you think we can get it all done in 2011? Let the wagering begin.
It’s Friday! Last week that meant The Six Million Dollar Man. Digging further back into my closet of obsessive collecting of 1970s TV show board games, this week I offer you Space 1999. Why? Because I can.
Object: Be the first commander to land all your eagles on your target planet.
I go on and on about how this remodel is really going to happen and yet it looks like nothing actually does. But behind the scenes, things are happening. Our supastar architect, Emily Wetherbee, has met with us several times to get the Stage One plans finalized. Shall we take a look?
Stage One: Downstairs Entertainment/Guest Area
We always thought the upstairs would be Stage One. But because we’re planning structural changes, we want to begin at the bottom and work our way up. Plus timing is everything, right? It’s winter and the work we want to do upstairs in the main living area and kitchen involves skylights and tearing out walls. Who wants a blizzard in their livingroom? Not us. It just makes more sense to begin downstairs — it’s all interior work down there.
The downstairs currently looks like this (click to biggify)…
With the changes we’re about to undertake, it will look more like this…
So what are the differences — other than furniture being drawn in?
Essentially we’re knocking out some space-interrupting, load-bearing walls and replacing them with two headers that will make the downstairs less chopped up. We’ll move the water heaters out to gain a new access corridor and built-ins, tear out the tiny efficiency kitchen we’re currently relying on and replace it with an office area, gain a few feet of bathroom space, add storage space plus a cushy Murphy bed for guest visits. Oh, and a wet bar, since we already have the plumbing. There will be lots of other details, like new windows, new floor and ceiling, eliminating window and door trim, new lighting, etc. etc.
Because we’re dealing with load-bearing walls, Emily also had to take into account future plans for the upstairs. Interrelated pieces that have to go to both the engineer and the city in order to get a building permit. I’ll show you on Monday. Thanks, Emily, for starting off our New Year right!
Still digging out from the blizzard that blew in while were were sleeping…
Snowflakes on the lens. My big fat glove in the photo. Nice.
My first order of business this morning was going out to knock the snow off my heavily coated trees. It doesn’t look like much in the photos but some of the branches on my conifers and Japanese maples were in danger of snapping off…
My 2 1/2′ bamboo is up to its ears in snowdrift…
The stone lantern looks very snowcapped Mt. Fuji…
And the icy butterfly chairs remind me that spring is far, far away…
67 days and counting.
Who’s up for off-topic? You, I hope. My Facebook friends know me for nonstop yammering and an addiction to coffee. For some reason, my posts concerning cold-brew coffee have generated a surprising number of comments, so I thought I’d bring up the subject here.
On my recent holiday trek to the local mall of shame, I stopped by Williams-Sonoma and spied something new…
That’s the Toddy Cold Brew System we’ve been using for a few years now. Back in ’07, I had to hunt ours down online.
It was a New York Times article that hipped me to the bitter-free joys of cold-brew and the Toddy, although you can use a plain ol’ jar if you want. Apparently the cold-brew method results in a coffee with 67% less acid than the standard hot-brew method — you actually can taste the difference. And you don’t have to plug anything in!
Official instructions are here but I’m going to show you how easy it is to use a Toddy.
THE TODDY SETUP
A plastic brewing container…
A glass pitcher with a rubber lid…
Two reusable filters (you only need one to brew, the other is a bonus)…
And a rubber stopper…
WHAT YOU BRING TO THE PARTY
A pound of your favorite coarse-ground coffee (the coarser the grind the better, in my opinion)…
A big pitcher of water…
And a chopstick…
David, my kickass brewer, says it helps. Explanation coming up.
NOW THE EASY-PEASY INSTRUCTIONS
See the hole in the bottom of the brewing container?
Plug it…
Press the filter into the bottom of the inside of the container…
Pour in 2 C of water…
Then add 1/2 the bag of coffee and don’t stir the grounds…
Pour in 5 C of water on top of that and then wait 5 mins while the grounds begin to soak it up…
Add the remaining 1/2 bag of coffee and again, don’t stir the grounds…
As you can see, the coffee will mound up — you’ll need to level it out. This is where the chopstick comes in handy…
Top it off with 2 C of water…
Then leave it for at least 12 hours. The longer you ignore it, the stronger the brew. It’s a good idea to check the topmost coffee grounds an hour or two later — if they’re not wet, press them down with the chopstick.
When time’s up, position the container over the pitcher…
Quickly pull the plug and set the coffee freeeeeeeeeeeee!
When the container is fully drained, your caffeinated bliss is ready to enjoy.
Stash it in the fridge and, depending on how much coffee you drink, you’re set for days and days and days. A pitcher typically lasts me for a full week of daily coffees.
This is concentrated coffee, so you’ll have to play with how much water (if any) is the right amount to add to a cup of concentrate. By the time I add ice and soy milk, I only need to cut mine a tiny bit with water. If I add a ton of ice on a hot day, I don’t even bother to add water cuz the ice melts fast.
OMG, completion of bunk bed is finally underway!
It only took 10 months to get back to it but now it’s actually happening! I guess last year’s February post turned out to be a cliffhanger. But lookie…
I like how the wood treads echo the wood on the bunk above. Good work, David!
(Shoulda straightened that poster before I took the picture, eh? Oh well.)
Maybe in another 10 months we’ll get around to finishing the ceiling, floor and trim. *sigh*
In my very first post last February, I showed how our entire household is a maze of boxes and piles awaiting an actual remodel. There are things in those boxes I haven’t seen in three years, including my inexplicable collection of ’70s TV show boardgames — still haven’t decided if I’m keeping those, although I guess they make sense in a ’70s house.
This week I pulled them out to appreciate their cheesey goodness and will now share one with you every Friday until I run out. Ready? Let’s start with The Six Million Dollar Man…
Object: Each player controls a bionic man — but only one is the real Six Million Dollar Man. The first player to complete his four assignments wins the game, proving he’s the Six Million Dollar Man.
Hot. I say that man is undervalued.
What’s a really awesome thing to do on New Years Eve? Have a blower door test done, of course. A who, you say? And “Blower? I hardly know ’er!”
So a blower door test is basically an innuendo-loaded way to find out how airtight your home is. It’s the only way to measure air infiltration into your house. You get a certified, professional energy auditor to conduct one. For a minimal investment, you could potentially save thousands in energy costs. I’ll let David tell you more…
* * * * *
An energy audit is a survey of existing conditions in the home — a walk-around to locate and identify specific problem areas and a plan of action that takes into account the homeowner’s budget and energy savings goal. Some elements of the plan of action will be based on past experience and not on actual quantified testing. For example, big air leaks are easy to locate, but air can take a circuitous route which makes blocking leaks difficult. Lots of small leaks can add up quickly and small leaks are VERY hard to locate and rectify.
That’s where the blower door test comes in. It makes small leaks big and big leaks huge, thereby making them much easier to locate and fix. The extent of the renovations we plan for our house include all the things that a regular energy survey would recommend: energy-efficient doors and windows, additional insulation, etc,. so an audit would be a waste of time and money for us at this stage. Instead, we wanted to quantify how well our house performs before, during and after all our renovations. To help us, we turned to Matt Banoub, owner of Aten Energy Conservation.
Matt showed up last week and lugged his big red blower door test apparatus up the stairs…
Before he started, I double checked all the doors and windows around the house to make sure everything was closed up tight. (Why wouldn’t it be? It was 20° outside!) Matt set up in our open back doorway…
After sizing the setup, he made a few tweaks to make sure everything would fit…
The result was a nice, tight seal on the door frame…
Then he inserted a very special fan into position…
The fan controller takes air pressure readings from three sensors, comparing the one outside the house to the one inside the house, and uses a sensor inside the fan itself to measure the volume of air passing through the blower door…
It also controls fan speed in order to achieve the desired pressure differential between the inside and the outside…
Once the sensors had stabilized, Matt started up the fan which sucked air out of the house until the pressure inside was 50 pascals lower then the pressure outside the house…
The pressure differential meant air was now trying very hard to get into the house any way it could. At that point he measured how much air was blowing out. As you can see, we were blowing 2,560 cubic feet per minute (CFM) out the door at 50 pascals. That number doesn’t mean anything until you take into account the volume of the house. I figure our house has a volume of 15,320 cubic feet. That means at 2,560 CFM/50 we have 10 air changes every hour (expressed as 10 ACH/50). That puts us between moderate and leaky which isn’t bad in a country of mostly poorly performing homes.
Matt says we can seal all the way down to 1,814 CFM/50, which would be 7 ACH/50. That sounds like a lot but remember that’s with the house pressurized. Actual air changes per hour right now are probably about 1 — we’d like to get that down to . 35. Air change is important in a house for the health and safety of the occupants. As you know, we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, plus any appliances (stove, water heater, furnace, wood stove, etc.) that burn fuel (gas, oil, wood) are also using up oxygen and emitting carbon dioxide. That makes it essential to replace used up oxygen and vent carbon dioxide. Luckily, our house has all electric appliances, including baseboard heat and water heaters, so we don’t need to take them into account.
Excess moisture in the air can be another problem. It comes from our breath and sweat, cooking, bathing, clothes dryer, etc. If we were to get our house to the point where it has fewer than .25 ACH, we would need mechanical ventilation. If that becomes necessary, we’ll definitely get one with a heat exchanger that’s about 80% efficient at transferring energy from the hot air to the cold air in whichever direction makes sense (ie, in the summer we want it to keep heat out and in the winter keep heat in).
So what did we learn? That our 1970s house is pretty well sealed. We’ve arranged for Matt to come back to measure the difference our updates make as we remodel both the interior and envelope of the house.
Want to know more?
Ways to save on your energy costs:
I seldom go shopping these days, much preferring to order from the comfort of Chez Mess when possible. On Christmas Eve, however, I had to dash into the mall, that temple of mass consumption and hideous carpeting. Last-minute stocking stuffers, ya know.
Snagged some cute vintagey card games for the kid at Restoration Hardware…
classic card games | restorationhardware.com
And then I spotted something interesting over in the corner…
An obvious tribute to Knoll’s MR Chaise Lounge, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1927…
mr chaise lounge by mies van der rohe for knoll | dwr.com
Far from cheap but much more affordable than the original. Have you seen how much the Knoll goes for? A little history on the original, still in production, here.
Then a few feet away from the chaise, I spotted this…
Basically a distressed leather homage to the iconic Egg Chair designed by Arne Jacobsen for Fritz Hansen…
egg chair by arne jacobsen for fritz hansen | dwr.com
Gorgeous since 1958 and still going strong. If you’ve ever longed for an Egg of your own, you’re probably well aware of what it costs brand-new. If you don’t require the original, I suppose Restoration’s version isn’t too shabby. The leather gives it a men’s club/smoking lounge kind of a look. Cuba meets Denmark?
Not the sort of thing I expect to see at Restoration Hardware, although they have added a little midcentury modern into their mostly traditional mix in the last few years. Their Modern Collection of bath hardware is about as minimal as they get. Anyway, just thought I’d share.
Still undecided about reproduction/reinterpretation vs original. I mean, I don’t like to think of myself as a total snob, insisting on an original no matter the price. Label hounds can be so irritating. On the other hand, is it asking too much for brands to come up with their own designs rather than profiting from someone else’s design? Granted, finding a way to make expensive things for less is the way of the world — it’s what makes sites like whiteonwhite so wildly popular. And I suppose Restoration Hardware’s whole schtick is “restoring” classic style to home goods. I dunno. What do you think?