Our primary source of heat in the house is a wood stove. It works well, and the cost of firewood is pretty reasonable (about $300 per cord split and delivered.) The old insulation and windows in the house make it slightly challenging to keep warm, though, and last winter it took almost three full cords of wood to heat the…
Our house was originally built with one chimney (the white chimney in the center of the roof), and a second chimney and fireplace in the living room was added later. The original chimney hasn’t been used for many years and is in disrepair: Strangely, this chimney comes down from the roof and ends up in the downstairs bathroom: The hole…
Yes, you read that right. Welcome to Hillsboro. We had an old septic tank on the property that wasn’t connected to anything useful. Whoever installed it did a pretty bad job (the inflow pipe wasn’t actually connected to anything coming out of the house), and my guess is the tank was abandoned right after installation because it didn’t work, but…
When we bought the house our propane tank in the back yard was sitting on four rocks instead of a more traditional concrete slab. The rocks had settled over the years so weren’t level anymore (assuming they were ever level), so we decided to remedy the situation by pouring a small concrete slab for the tank to sit on and…
After removing the drop-ceiling from the living room we found a large crack that ran the entire length of the living room ceiling. This was originally caused by a roof leak where the porch met the house, but the leak had been fixed before we bought the house. The crack was pretty ugly, not to mention that it let a fair…
The living room closet we have in this house is small and not terribly useful. It seems like it was really more of an effort to hide the stairs and the vent pipe for the wall heater than an actual storage space. The closet has about 5 feet of heater vent pipe running through it, and the pipe gets pretty…
When digging out some of the plumbing pipes on the side of the house leftover from removing the laundry room, I came across the rusty edge of some kind of metal plate. The plate was about 3/4″ thick, 5″ wide, and of unknown length. It was buried about 2 feet deep, and ran towards the fence between my neighbor’s house and…
After removing the laundry/utility room and sealing the wall, I had to move and reinstall the water heater. My original plan was to leave the water heater outside for the winter and build an insulated “shed” around it, but finally decided it would be easier to just flip the water heater to the other side of the wall into the kitchen….
After removing the cinder block laundry room, the now-outside wall had some plumbing and electrical that needed to be removed before winter. The plumbing included hot and cold water supplies for the small sink and washer, and the drains for the same. The electrical was for the clothes dryer and the 3 or 4 other outlets that used to supply the…
One of our favorite things about this town and this area is the wildlife: there are lots of animals around, sometimes closer than expected. At night the sound of coyotes is common, deer are often seen walking down the side streets, and cows frequently hang out on the side of the road just thinking their cow thoughts. Here are a…