At the end of last summer I noticed that our attic storage area would get really hot and muggy, more then it was outside. In looking around I found that there was not adequate ventilation between the storage area and the rest of the attic where there were more vents. The storage area did have 2 vents but they were at waist level. If you bent down to that level you could feel the difference in temperature as it was cooler. I concluded that an additional vent was in order and should be placed at the highest point to allow proper ventilation.

I bought the vent and sealant to install it several months back but was really hesitant about cutting a hole in my roof. I did some searching around and found a video on how to do it which made my feel more confident. Here is the video:

After seeing how easy it was for them to install I set out last week to install it myself.

The install ended up being a whole lot easier then I anticipated. What was interesting about doing the install was that I did it in the morning when it wasn’t that hot, but when I cut the hole in the roof I could feel air coming out. I guess even with minimum heat that area need more ventilation. I ended up using at least half of the tube of sealant to seal everything up as my main concern was that water would leak through the vent.

Later in the day I went into the attic storage area to see if there was any difference in the 100 degree heat. While it was not cool in there it was not any more warm then the lower section of the attic which was the goal. We now had proper airflow! That coupled with today’s rain test makes me feel really good about my roof cutting abilities.

Thanks This Old House!

Some Things Stand Out

The first thing I notice is that they are building a lot of houses. My neighborhood is still under construction as well but they are only working on around 4-6 houses at a time. On the first street of this new neighborhood I counted 12 houses under construction. The next block had 3 more and the block after that is has another 3. That is almost 20 houses being built at the same time inthis little subdivision. On top of the houses that are under construction there are several houses that were recently completed. This section of the neighborhood is only about 6 months old.

The second thing that I notice about these houses is that there are a lot of “Sold” signs in front of these houses. My count of houses with sold signs in front of them is 15. “For Sale” signs come in at 5. Houses that do not have any sign in front and are under construction are ~10.

This all struck me as being pretty weird because of everything you hear on the news of how bad the housing market is. Somehow, some way though, Round Rock Texas and DR Horton are beating the odds. There are a couple of reasons why they both are doing this I believe.

How They are Beating the Odds

One reason that homes are still selling here is that there was never a bubble here in Central Texas. In fact from what I can see prices have gone up in the last three years and are still going up. Three years ago we bought a DR Horton house in this same area for $160k. It was a 4 bedroom, 2 bath house at 2200sqft. Today for $160k all you can get is a 3bdrm, 2bth, 1400sqft house. So basically in three years the same amount of money gets you 800sqft less.

Another reason that I think this neighborhood is booming is financing. In talking with the sales guy for the neighborhood it seems that this area was deemed farmland in the last census and therefore still qualifies for USDA financing. USDA I believe gives you up to 100% financing with no PMI (I could be wrong on that). Couple that financing with the housing prices in the $150k-$200k range and you get people buying.

Conclusion

As bad as things are around the country in regard to the recession and the housing bubble, Central Texas still seems to be doing pretty good. The unemployment rate is still below the national average and as mentioned before home prices never spiked so they are not falling. It is nice to live in an area that has some stability to it in times like these.

Pictures of the New Neighborhood

As mentioned in my previous posts on window tint the results could be felt immediately. Today is our second day in a row of 90 degree plus weather. Yesterday I noticed that the air conditioned kicked on regularly to try and combat the heat. Even with it kicking on regularly it was still warm in that room. After I finished the tint today it is nice and cool upstairs and down.

With this room done that only leaves the bedroom downstairs and our master bedroom upstairs. Between those two rooms there are still 5 windows to tint. Together I estimate that it will be about $100 to do these rooms.

When it is all said and done I think I will have spent around $400 to tint all the windows in the house. I think I we will see a complete return on investment by the end of this summer which I think is awesome. It certainly is nice to run the air conditioner and not have it kick on all the time.

New Growth on the a Live Oak Tree

Well we have been at the new house going on a year now and it is now officially spring so I started to put out the feelers to plant some trees in the backyard. As mentioned before we have a second story deck and thus have a pretty nifty view (/sarcasm) of two of our neighbors backyards. I am sure they would like the privacy and I really wanted to give it to them.

I started my tree search first on Craigslist and then went to Home Depot. On Craigslist the prices for a 30 gallon Live Oak ranged from $30 (I know, I thought it was an error too) to $100. I emailed the poster that advertised the $30/30 gallon trees and went to look at Home Depot. Home Depot had their 30 gallon Live Oaks for $125 so I knew that the $30 poster had to have made a mistake.

I got home and checked my email and the $30 poster had replied that he had trees available still and provided his phone number. I called him to confirm the price and indeed the 30 gallon trees were $30. He said that the only thing about them is that they were not quite 2 inches in diameter but more like 1 3/4 inches (I guess a 30 gallon tree is usually 2 inches in diameter as standard). I was blown away! With this pricing I could get a whole bunch of trees.

I asked the guy if he happened to deliver and he said yes along with adding that they would install them as well. All told I ordered 4 Live Oaks, 2 Red Oaks, and a Magnolia tree, delivered and installed for $385.

I asked the guy how come he was practically giving the trees away he stated that he grew them locally and that he would do that ever once in a while to drum up business. Well he definitely got business from me!

The trees were actually installed about 4 weeks ago and they are all doing great with all of the trees producing new growth. I am really pleased with the install and the quality of the trees.

Below are pictures of the trees from a week or two ago.

Contractors can apply for corporate accounts but it does not look like you need one in order to make a purchase from this store (I was able to add items with my cart with my personal account). This might come in handy with anyone doing a large scale project that needs to trim som costs off of it.

Over the weekend we had the first real cold front come in from the north and since currently we do not have a house to our north we felt the brunt of the front’s cold wind. I remember thinking that it would be nice if the people building next door would build the other two story house that our builder offers so that it could shield us from those cold north winds. I stopped by the sales office on Sunday and they told me that indeed they are building that two story house. Wishes do come true.

Now all we need is a neighbor in the lot that is south of us and our section of our block will be completed. There is still both sides of the street around the corner from us that has about 20 lots that hopefully by the end of next year will be finished up. It looks like DR. Horton is still selling anywhere from 2-4 houses a month in our neighbor hood so I would think that is a pretty good estimate. We will see.

The first part of the video shows how to reset a hinge by filling the screw holes and re-drilling and remounting the hinge. I had seen this done before so this was not new news to me. The second part of the video (about 3 minutes in) was a little more interesting. In that part he bends the section of the hinge that the pin goes through in order to reduce the gab in a pair of double doors.

The second tip is so simple but I had never thought of doing that before. My youngest son’s door sometimes swells so I think I can use the second method to give it a little more breathing room. I will need to try that out this weekend.

Here is the link to the video – How to Fine Tune Door Hinges

Anyway, to try to return some sanity to my wife I set out a couple of weeks ago and bought the wood and had it cut to build the shelves. I finally got the chance to build them this past weekend. It was a pretty easy project.

Getting Started

The basic idea of the shelves was to allow her to use some plastic tubs that we had left over from my son’s baseball team to organize the various toys and other items. I figured that the 3 middle shelves would be 10 inches high and the top and bottom ones would be about 12 inches. The shelves would also need to be 16 inches deep.

I went to Home Depot and picked up a piece of 5/8″ MDF for around $20. I had the guy cut it into 16 inch sections which gave me 6 pieces that we 16″ x 48″. This gave me enough for 4 shelves, a side support for the shelves, and one piece left over for other projects. I also bought 2 pieces of 1″ x 2″ x 8′ pine strips to mount to the wall for the shelves to sit on. The whole cost of the materials was around $30.

Routing and Painting

At home I rounded the front edges of the pieces with my router and then painted them on both sides. I also painted the pine strips as well so I would only need to do minor touchup paint in the closet (if any). Painting the materials in the garage was much easier to do then trying to paint in the closet and greatly reduced the “new paint smell” that would be locked inside. The paint also dries a whole lot quicker in the garage as well.

While the paint was drying I was finding and marking studs in the closet and my wife asked if it was to late to build some additional shelves all the way in the back right. I informed her that 5 minutes later and it would have been since the shelves that I was working on would have partially blocked that section. She kissed me and asked for 2 more shelves 2 feet deep in the back corner. I ran to Home Depot to get some wood.

Another Trip to the Store

This time around I got 3/4″ MDF since the span and depth of the shelves were greater. I had the MDF cut at 38 1/4″ and then had that halved (or so I thought) at 2 feet. After loading the cut pieces into the cart I noticed that one was wider then the other and went to the tool section to grab a tape measure. One piece was 24″ and the other was 25″. I measured the uncut piece and found out that the 3/4″ MDF is actually 49″ wide as opposed to 48″ – weird. I grabbed another couple pine strips and added them to my cart. Finally tally for this Home Depot trip – $35.

Once home I routed the edges of the MDF and my wife’s dad threw a coat of paint on the new pieces. While he painted I was back in the closet finding studs and mounting pieces of pine for the larger shelves.

Both sets of shelves went in without a hitch. It is funny that when you do work like this you discover how square some of your walls AREN’T. With the 16″ deep shelves on the left side there is almost a 1/4″ gap in the front compared to no gap in the back. Oh well, such is life. It’s a closet anyways, if someone complains about it I will just lock them in the closet until they rethink their commentary.

Conclusion

It was a cool weekend project that has brought some peace to our humble home. Total cost of the 6 shelves was right about $50 (I have 2/3 of the 3/4 MDF left) and took about 3-4 hours. The longest part was the painting but it would have been much longer if we would have tried to paint after they were in the closet.

My wife now wants some shoe racks for the kids shoes with the leftover wood. On to the next project…

Photos

Here are some additional photos of the finished project.

While there I priced out solar attic fans and the cheapest one I could find was around $250. The $250 kit came with the fan, solar panel, and everything that you needed in order to install it. The thing that I liked about this kit was that it did not utilize a battery, it just worked directly off the energy that it was collecting from the sun. The thing that I didn’t like about it was the price.

For a house my size it is recommended that I have 2 fans in order to be effective and that would come out to around $500. It would take 3 or more years to recoup the cost savings the fans would provide. That doesn’t really make it worth it. Due to this price point I am now investigating on how to make my own.

At first I though that I would need to get some sort of motor and build or buy my own fan blades. I wasn’t sure were I would get these but while working in the garage this past weekend I came up with an idea. It was a little warm so I went over to my $10 Walmart box fan to turn it on and the light bulb went on. If some how I could get a solar panel hooked up to this guy I very well could have a pretty cheap DIY solar attic fan.

To power the fan I am looking into solar panels that are currently available at Harbor Freight. They have some low-cost panels that might do the job.

I know that it is going to take some work to get the right motor and solar panels lined up so that I actually can make the motor spin but the weather is starting to get cooler so I have the winter to experiment with it.

Granted, he only stained the fence while I would have stained and protected it with Thompson’s. It was worth it to me though because I got see how he did it and that will save me time and money down the road.

The first and most significant difference between how he stained the fence and I how I did it were the tools that he used. I had used that goofy pesticide sprayer and he used an electric airless sprayer with a really long hose that connected to the 5 gallon jugs. I checked and one of these airless sprayers rents for $60 for 4 hours from Home Depot. It is well worth the money if you ask me.

The yard is quite a bit larger then the yard we had at the house that I stained the fence at but this guy finished in half of the time plus he did two coats! Granted he is a professional but having the right tools is guaranteed to get you done quicker with a better looking finish. The finish at our new house far better looking and even then the hack job I did at the other house.

My advise – Pony up and rent the airless sprayer. No matter how hard you think it is with the sprayer I guarantee it is twice as hard without it.

Happy sealing!

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