Hood Hook Up

The completed project. We're liking the effect of the lowered hood

Long on our list of things to do to complete the house is hooking up our kitchen vent hood. I've dragged my feet on doing this for a couple of reasons: First, I always picture the vent duct as a big hole in our house where all sorts of energy loss will occur. Secondly, not having the hood hooked up has not seemed to cause much trouble in terms of either air quality or residual cooking build-up.

The opening through the wall

I mentioned this during a presentation I recently made to the Super Insulation class at Yestermorrow Design/Build School.  It was suggested by John, one of the instructors, that I really should complete this project because it has notable effects on home air quality. Just because I'm not aware of it doesn't mean its not there.

This shows the hood before I lowered it. The duct connections are partially in place

The hood with the ducting complete and the hood lowered

Feeling nudged in a way I needed to be, I spent the next day completing the hook up. This was straightforward since I'd installed the main parts during the construction of the house. The remaining work was completing the duct connection from the wall to the hood itself. Taking this on became an opportunity to lower the hood about ten inches to better capture the cooking smoke, steam, and particulate. When we first were putting the kitchen together I was concerned that the hood would look awkward suspended down in front of the window, so I hung it at the level of the top casing and it has sat there since, acting primarily as a light source for cooking.

The duct vent on the outside of the house. Its neatly tucked away, so you really need to look for it to see it. 

Time will tell if its going to create residue on the outside of the house

To our satisfaction, lowering the hood has had the nice effect of making things cozier in the cooking area. It creates a lowered ceiling and doesn't detract from the overall feel or the view out the window.

The hood is still a little higher than it should be, so I will work on it some more sometime soon, but for the moment I am glad to have the whole thing operating. We've been using it whenever we cook and I find myself suddenly sensitive to the potential harm of particulates in the air.

Incidentally, the hood came equipped with incandescent bulbs and this has always bugged me. I've wondered if I could replace the bulbs with fluorescents but never got around to checking. To my satisfaction I found it was super easy. I was a little uncertain because the bulbs have candelabra screw bases and I'd never had reason to see if they make fluorescents with them. They do, so it's no big deal. The switch is made.

The hood light with new fluorescent on the left and the stock lamp on the right 

Nance and I also discussed creating a housing to enclose the duct work, so we may make that happen too. I don't mind the metal tube look, but I think I'd enjoy a wooden enclosure as well.

Solstice etc..

The house about 10 minutes after noon on the summer solstice

It has been a year since I first noticed how the roof shadow at the summer solstice lines up ever so neatly just after noon to reveal only the sun part of the sunburst on the south face of the house. This little event is a delight for me and today I was out there again taking pictures to document the moment.

Insulator lamps hanging from track over the dining room table

I recently made a couple more of the hanging insulator lamps. You may remember the one I made that hangs over our tub. My idea for the lights over the kitchen table was to have a series of lamps that will all hang at different heights and are made from insulators of different shapes. I'm pretty happy with the effect. The lights are dimmable, so the light can be quite intimate and candle-like.

The new motion detector light switch for the mudroom/pantry closet

This image shows the detection range of the switch (in blue). At some point it might make sense to move it so it is pointing towards the door so it registers movement right away, rather then after you start to move into the room

In other news, I replaced the conventional light switch in our kitchen/mudroom closet with a motion detector switch so we don't have to manually turn on the light every time we go into the closet. My previous plan was to install a push-button switch that would have been activated by the door itself, but that would have required a bunch of wall and trim deconstruction. The motion-activated switch was an easy and quick solution and it works really well. If you open the door and don't step in, nothing happens, but as soon as you move into the room the light comes on.

A tale of two bulbs

A standard "Edison-base" lamp mount on the left and a "pin-base" lamp holder on the right.

Today we had our final visit from Efficiency Vermont which is the organization that encourages, measures, and rewards efforts towards energy efficiency in Vermont businesses and homes. Although we were attentive to meeting the required standards put forth to qualify for Energy Star rating and meet the requirements for the various incentives, I must admit I didn't actually hone in on what we needed to do to meet these points until fairly late in the game, basically confident in the knowledge that the standards to which we were building would far and away exceed their minimums.

Lighting was the one area that I struggled a bit with. In order to meet the standards set for our home we needed to have a minimum of 10 pin-based light fixtures in main living areas. "Pin-based" means what it implies, and ensures that the only lights that will work in it are florescent bulbs, guaranteeing reduced electrical consumption because you can't just throw in an incandescent bulb if you feel like it.

Early on Nancy and I went to a couple of lighting stores with "pin-based" fixtures in mind to look at the selection and were quite underwhelmed. I would say that maybe 1 or 2 percent of the available fixtures were of this type, usually housed in some neglected back alcove. As long time readers will recall, soon after this experience I became fixated on building my own light fixtures and discovered that I could build almost any light fixture with a pin-base, and so many of the lamps throughout the house now feature this type of lamp base.

Additionally, we purchased some LED recessed down-lights for the living room and a series of mini-florescent bulb-fixture combinations that are mounted in the track over our counters in the kitchen.

In advance of the visit from Efficiency Vermont I knew we were in pretty good shape, but I was a little uncertain if groups of lights would count as "a light" or as individual units, so I made sure we had the required minimum, even by conservative measures.

In the end we passed the needed minimums just fine. The irony is that we would be using mostly florescents even if we weren't incentivized to do so and the light bulbs that fit pin-based lamps are actually more expensive than the Edison-based florescents that you frequently see for sale.

The expectation is that in a few years the pin-based requirement will be outdated because you will not be able to buy incandescents any longer, so there will be no need to require a special mounting base. I suspect that as the pin-based bulbs die out I will rebuild the fixtures so that we only need to have one type of bulb on hand.

You might be interested to know that we expect to receive somewhere in the neighborhood of $3000 in various incentives, rebates, and rewards for meeting the required guidelines. We will also be given what is known as a HERS rating, which stands for Home Energy Rating System and is a standardized number that allows comparison with other buildings and buildings in other regions. More about this later.

Knocker

Our friend (and frequent blog commenter) Wendy sent us this great door knocker a few months ago. It took us a while to get the time to install it, but here it is. As beekeepers it's perfect. We are also seeing the bees out with the recent spring days, so the timing seems right. It's also just kinda fun and not too serious. Thanks Wendy!

I've been at work tidying up lingering items such as the rest of the track lighting in the kitchen, repairing a leaky water line to the garden stand pipe, building an integrated shelf and grow-light unit for a spring seedlings in the big living room window.

Lights

This morning the appraiser came to give the house it's final look-over. His goal is to come up with an assessed value of the completed house; the bank needs this information as part of the process of converting the construction loan to a mortgage. In anticipation of this I scurried yesterday to get a bunch of lights into place because they were the most obvious unfinished element of the house. This included installing the flush-mounted LED can lights over the living room, an old chandelier over the stairway (salvaged from Brian and Dana's house), a nice brass lamp over our bed, some light sconces in both bathrooms, and some track lights in the kitchen.

As always there is more to do, but this was enough to get us through the walk through this morning.

Today was a milestone of sorts because, provided there are no surprises with the appraisal and loan conversion, we are "done" in the eyes of the bank. Hooray! Of course we are not really done, but I suppose we could be if we decided that we were sick of the whole thing.

Loose ends

The toilet paper holder in the upstairs bathroom. The top part is a shelf and the bottom holds about 6 rolls of tp down in the wall cavity

When we installed the sink the spacing of the lights overhead was off (originally based on the assumption of a longer sink) so I had to re-locate the wiring and then patch up the wall

The appraiser for the bank is coming on Thursday and I am tying up the various loose ends that would make the house appear unfinished, such as the t.p. cubbies in the bathroom, the shelf over the closet on the first floor--things that aren't that big to do, but are nonetheless incomplete. The last thing is lights and I put in a big order for lighting parts last week. I'm hoping they'll get here in time that I'll have the lights looking done, even if they're not quite. There are also multiple touch-up spots where we've cut into the sheetrock or done something that now requires a touch up.

Provided I get the stuff I need, I'll be whipping together a bunch of lights before Thursday AM.

Lights and a Cape Cod Sink

New-old sink in the first floor bath

Another view

Building a lamp fixture

A light hanging over the dining room table from track. We have a vision of a series of small lights hanging here at different heights

Disassembled exterior fixture about to be painted black. This was mounted on the the old garage and will now serve as the fixture that lights the walk route into the house

I've been working on installing track where we'll have track lighting in the kitchen and dining area. This required a little sheetrock work again; cutting strategic points to wire or re-wire to make what we need to have happen. In the case of the kitchen track lighting we decided to make the track tw0-circuit so that we could have some or all of the lights on depending on which circuit they are fixed in. This allows, say, the light over the sink to be on it's own circuit and switch from the rest of the lights that light the counters. I'm always a little hesitant to cut into the sheetrock, but usually it goes pretty smoothly and I'm mudding it back up in short order.

I've built up a couple of lamps and they look just fine. One is hanging over the kitchen table, the other is over the kitchen sink. More to come.

Remember that big old sink we had in the downstairs bathroom? Well, it has moved down closer to it's final home in the basement. In it's place we've finally installed the sink that Nancy's parents Lee and Lou brought to us last fall. It's a great old marble sink that used to be in the bathroom at their house on the Cape. Its kinda battered and stained, but it's got a good measure of beausage (pronounced like "sausage", as in beauty-through-useage) and looks quite handsome in out bathroom. We're planning on replacing the faucet controls because they are kinda beat up and sorta unattractive. Eventually we'll build a cabinet that the will replace the brackets that the marble sits on right now.

One more piece of the puzzle in place.

This weeks' work

One lamp refinished, one waiting for some work

Nancy getting ready to apply the oil finish to the cabinet doors and drawer fronts

The step that Adam built down to the guest room on the second floor

Adam putting in the plugs on the stair tread screw holes

We rounded off this week with more along the same lines as recent work. Adam got the majority of the stairs in and all the screw holes plugged (there are two stairs left to go that require some special shaping before installing, so that'll happen next week). Nancy began work on finishing the cabinets, which is a multi-stage process over many days (we are copying our friend Kate's recipe for cabinet finish which starts with an oil finish and the multiple coats of polyurethane). I did a small rewiring project to make a the switches in the guest room make a little more ergonomic sence, and Felton was here to wire up our stove/oven in the kitchen.

I spent this evening cleaning the oxidization and accumulated stuff off of one of a pair of lights that we plan to mount outside the west end garden doorway. I just happened to come across these lights a couple of months ago in a free pile outside someone's place on the chance we might want to use them. They strike me as a little formal, but they are nice lights so we are going to put them up and see what we think.

Light Fixtures

My first pass at making a light. If you click on the photo a time or two it'll embiggen enough for you to see the twisted wire, which I'm particularly fond of

Various lighting parts

The plywood parts for our cabinetry all cut up and ready for assembly

Yesterday I received a bunch of lighting and electrical parts in the mail. I plan to start experimenting with various light fixture ideas and I'm really excited about it. The materials themselves are beautiful -- lots of brass, copper, porcelain, nickle plate, clear and colored glass, and vintage fabric covered double twist wire. Great stuff.

In order to qualify for certain Efficiency Vermont rebates you need to have a minimum of 10 pin-based fixtures hard-wired into your house, so we need to determine which will be pin based and which will not. Happily, I can build most lights as pin-based sockets, but some will not work because of size constraints.

Today I experimented with one of the insulators. The first task was to drill a hole through the top of the 3/8" thick glass. This took a while but was no problem, although I was a little paranoid about the glass powder produced. Seems like a potential hazard. Maybe having a vacuum on hand and running it often? Maybe make a vacuum-table work surface? In any event, once I had the hole drilled it was quick work to wire in the little light base, mount it in the light and wire a plug to the other end. I pretty much thought of everything I might need except --you guessed it-- a light bulb. I was able to find one that sorta fit from our old chandelier just to get a feel for it, but it takes away from the effect, so it'll be nice to get a more appropriately fitting bulb. Other then that, it was a piece of cake. I'm pretty excited to make more.

I spent most of the day cutting up the plywood for our cabinetry. Unless I made any mistakes in my plan, I should have everything I need to build the cabinet boxes with what I cut today. After this it's back to hard wood for the frame, doors, and drawers.

I'll be taking a working vacation next week because I'm teaching a class at Yestermorrow called "Less is More". The class is a design course centered on small homes and living spaces. So, my work on the house will be minimal-to-none, but Joe and Felton will still be here making progress.

The Clawfoot Tub

The claw foot tub post-scraping, pre-primer

Semi-cryptic info cast into the bottom

Electrical insulators waiting to be turned into lamps. I am super excited about this little project

The cabinet bases

This afternoon I scraped the loose paint off of the claw foot tub we'll soon be installing in our upstairs bathroom. Until today I don't think I ever looked at what the works cast into the bottom of the tub. Here's what it says:

Richmond
5 -26
6 6 38
D-5

My guess is: The maker is Richmond, the size is 5' x 26" (this is pretty clear because those are in fact the overall dimensions), it was made on June 6th, 1938, and maybe D-5 is the lot, batch or style number? If my assumptions are correct, I'd be just so happy to know that this tub was made in 1938. I would never have guessed, but then again these things really don't age, do they? In addition to the above info, there is a number by each foot attachment point specifying the correct foot placement, 1 through 4. After scraping off the old paint, I gave the tub a coat of primer. After another coat we'll then give it it's groovy orange finish coat.

I acquired this tub from a former colleague in Boston who, if I remember correctly, got it from somewhere in New York, but I'm not sure about that. Either way, I love that this antique will continue to live on in our new house.

Speaking of antiques, I received a large handful of vintage electrical insulators in the mail that I purchased cheap on eBay. A couple were broken when they arrived, but for the price I'm not sweating it. Mostly I just wanted to get some of these in hand to start experimenting making lights. Joe also brought a nice one from his place for us. I'm excited to start playing with these things.

Joe is nearly done with the window project and will soon start on installing the interior doors. It really feels like things are moving along.

Meanwhile, I have the kitchen cabinet bases built. I still need to fix them to the floor, but that'll be easy and then I'll start on the cabinet boxes.

And lest I forget, Felton has been here most afternoons lately steadily hooking up all the wiring. He methodically worked through the outlets first and is now most of the way through the switches. I know when I was putting in the wires there were times when I wondered if it all was going to make sense when push came to shove and things got hooked up. So far so good. It's going to be really cool to flick a switch sometime in the near future and presto, a light will come on.

Right, one more thing about the tub. Way back two winters ago I went down to the little storage shed that the tub was in and tried as best I could (without actually pulling the tub out and assembling it) to figure out it's standing height so that I could plan the height of the sill in the bathroom to match. Today, with the tub on sawhorses, I attached one of the feet and checked it against the finished window sill. Sill height: 21". Tub height: 21". Yes.

Light and Stone

Frosted blue Mason Jar light. We envisioned this as a possibility for the garden end/west wall door way exterior lights

The stools and table caught our attention in addition to all the amazing lamps

We were inspired to maybe do a series of insulator lamps that would hang over the dining room table at varying heights

Today was an adventure in the world of stone and illumination.

First off we went wandered around the sales yard of a stone retailer envisioning possibilities that would serve as a hearth under the woodstove and firewood storage. It was a lot of work trying to balance the variables of color, texture, and size. In the end we selected two 30" x 30" stones that seem good but we're pretty sure the bluestone color is not quite what we want. Luckily they are returnable. We narrowed down the options, which is a start.

With stone pieces in the car I asked Nance is we "had the marital strength to go to a lighting store" knowing we'd be faced with another big round of decisions that could prove to be stressful. We decided our marriage could handle it and headed north up route 7 to a general service lighting store which we found a bit overwhelming but informative for dipping our toes into the choices we need to make.

Having not made any firm commitments at the first store we headed up to Conant Metal and Light in Burlington, where we immediately felt inspired and at home. After a few hours of imagining possibilities we left feeling like we could envision the road forward, if not the light at the end of the tunnel. I also left feeling confident that I could make a bunch of our light fixtures and plan to start ordering parts to start piecing together ideas.

Which kind of fool are we?

A farmhouse style sink with various faucet options

Shower head and controls

A couple of toilets--traditional styling? dual flush?

What's known as a Schoolhouse style antique lamp

Some used doors. In a few instances we found them being sold in a collection of matching sets

We have been focusing on a few other aspects of the project over the last handful of days.

We have spent considerable time sorting out the options for kitchen appliances, the kitchen sink, plumbing fixtures for the kitchen and bathrooms, as well as doors and lighting. It's takes a certain kind of perseverance in the face of so many choices and little basis to work from other then intuition. We've made tons of headway and have the lion's share of the decisions made. This has included hours on the internet sorting through descriptions and makers trying to make sure we're comparing apples to apples, and then lots of time in the car driving from retailer to retailer to get the sales pitch and see for ourselves what seems like the right choice.

So far we've actually purchased a dishwasher and laundry washing machine. We feel like we made good choices in both cases.

For a long time we've been hoping that we'd be able to use old doors throughout the interior but upon looking at the options we are sort of leaning towards new. There are lots of doors out there, but in almost every case there is the factor of refinishing, concern about structural tightness, and feeling confident about the style that has kept us from certainty when sorting through racks of old doors.

Lighting was really fun to look at, especially the offerings at Conant Metal & Light in Burlington. They make beautiful lighting that they sell along with tastefully selected choices from other makers. This stop got my creative juices going and I left feeling inspired to make some of our lighting. I'm looking forward to digging into this...

An aspect of this whole effort that's had us kind of uncertain is this: We started our shopping day off at a plumbing supply house that has a showroom for the public but only sells through contractors. We spent considerable time looking at options and in the end made choices we felt good about. I would typify their selection as mid-to-high quality. Nice stuff with a range of choices. Nothing cheesy.

Our quandary came at the end of the day when we stopped by Home Depot to "just look" after having looked at lots of other generally higher quality retailers throughout the day. When we started looking around we were just confused. How can a faucet be $600 at one outlet, and $150 here at Home Depot? Is the qualitative difference that great? What gives? I've been joking that we started feeling like we didn't know which kind of fool were are: A) buying into the price-equals-quality-and-we're-worth-it foolishness, or the B) huh-that-looks-pretty-good-and-its-way-cheaper-and-can't-be-that-bad kind of foolishness. A fool either way? Who knows.

Its hard to say what the answer is, but I find it helpful to think of the qualitative differences about something with which I AM familiar, like bikes, and that helps me remember that similar looking objects can have significant qualitative and functional differences. So, having consulted with others whose opinion we trust and having thought on it a bit, we are erring towards quality where and when we can, at least with high-use and high-contact items like the faucets. I said to Nance tonight that I'd rather have a decent stove then a premium toilet.

Somethings got to give sometime, somewhere.

Onwards....