What have I been up to?

12th November 2005

posted in General |

First, we had new window wells installed for the basement. I have before and after shots I’ll post.

We watch, to the detriment of my lazy weekends, a lot of Home and Garden TV. And on this channel is a neat show called ‘I want that.’ We’ve seen some neat things on there, I must admit that my favorite has been the faucet and sink that’s been treated to be temperature sensitive; so the hot water shows up as turning the enamel from black to red, and the cold from black to blue. But the one that really started us going was the episode about the sunhouses.

If you’ve been to our basement, you know that we have morning glory runners that have been growing through the wooden sills around our basement window wells. And they leak pretty badly. John’s Waterproofing of Silverton came out and jackhammered away our old concrete window wells, filled with gravel, dirt and growing plants, and put in these new somewhat airtight covered plastic ones. The change in lighting is drastic enough to be considering window coverings in the basement.

All fires up from our success with those, we tackled our upstairs windows. For the last ten years, our windows have been moldy, mildewy, wet, drafty, and even in the winter, frosty. They were aluminum-framed single paned windows. We had eight out of eleven windows replaced, and the difference in draftiness was astounding. We’ve been keeping the thermostat at 69 for a while, but now it just feels cool and not chilly and drafty. And as an added bonus the street sound is a lot less too. Our new windows are vinyl-framed double lined windows with a liner and with argon gas between the panes. They’re warrenteed for the life of the home. They’re awesome. Northwest First Choice put them in, and if you need windows, give them a call and say I sent you (they’ll give us a finder’s fee.)

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 12th, 2005 at 12:45 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1 On November 13th, 2005, Christian said:

Is it a sign of maturity that stuff like this excites us? Nate & I were at Best Buy the other day, ecstatically ooh-ing and aah-ing at all they shiny new refrigerators and other kitchen appliances. When we realized we were going cuckoo for kitchen appliances, we laughed. Then we bee-lined for the electronics area and drooled over all the computer hardware. Oi!

2 On January 29th, 2007, Frenzied Daddy » Local News Recap said:

[...] I’ve had it with John’s Waterproofing. I’ll pay this invoice from them, but no more. Here’s the story. You may remember that we had sunhouses installed by them. When our home was erected in 1942, they poured the basement window wells as part of the basement. The construction crew had to remove those- so they jackhammered them out. Now we have a horizontal crack running between two window wells, and through the rotten wood around one of the craptacular basement windows. I called them to have them come out and see it, they acknowledged that it was a problem. I spoke with Larry and then with John, the owner; Larry wanted his general manager to see it (Robin) but Robin was apparently too busy for me. Honestly, I think this was a misleading tactic; it established a plausible deniability on the part of the next person to come out. And I had to call twice to get someone to come out. When the owner (John) came out, he acknowledged that this crack “was a problem” and sketched out the details, and said they’d send someone out to seal it. He asked about the rotten wood around the window (letting in a lot of water in this weather) and I told him that I was just concerned about the crack. He also “strongly encouraged” us to get a de-humidifier. He was a likeable guy. His minion came out, dug down in the dirt and patched the outside, then came inside and patched it too. He recommended some caulk for the remaining crack bits (which I thought was part of the job). And then we got an invoice for $200. I called them and spoke to John, and his stance was “oh no, the horizontal crack wasn’t the jackhammerring.” So in my book, not only did they break my house, they denied responsibility after the fact; when I was left to believe from Larry’s attitude (”That’s not right. I need my general manager to see this.” ) that they agreed with me on the cause of this crack, and they surprised me with a bill ( especially during the Christmas season, where I have better uses for $200 ). [...]