Christmas In December

21 December 2019

First things first, Amy chastised me for not providing a money shot of our new old door bell. My bad.

Over the course of the past few weeks we have been enjoying the holidays, going and coming. Here's the living room with a little bit of Christmas decoration.

We also took a trip out the mid-west for Amy to run a couple of half marathons, one in Kansas and one in Oklahoma. Here she is at the start line of the Big Chill half in Emporia KS.

As fate or luck would have it, the race in Kansas was in Emporia where The Cross house is located. We have been following Ross MacTaggart's blog for some time, Amy more so than I, about his journey restoring The Cross house. We signed up for a tour and spent a wonderful afternoon with Ross and his house. Thanks again Ross!

If you haven't come across Ross' blog, please check it out. The house is amazing. Ross' vision, work, and persistence are inspiring. It is jaw dropping to me that he took on a project of this scope all by himself.

Click on this link to see Ross' blog: https://restoringross.com/category/cross-house/

As another year comes to a close, most small business owners go through a little ritual of checking the bottom line of their P+L (profit and loss statement). Of course it's always nice when the number is positive and it's great when the number is large. But for tax reasons, it's good for the number to not be too large. You can make the number smaller by increasing your expenses. You stock up on supplies you know you'll need, replace that aging office computer, or buy new tools.

For my handyman business, I decided we could really use a thermal imaging camera. A Flir C2 to be exact. You can use it to locate water problems, electrical problems, plumbing problems, and, of particular interest, where drafts are coming in!

Since we are basically restoring the house from the bottom up and the inside out, only about a third of my air sealing plan has been implemented. The attic is sealed with the SilverGlo. The crawlspace is sealed with skirt wall panels, caulk, and spray foam. I had intended to do most of the air sealing for the walls and windows from the outside. In my mind, this would allow air to move throughout the inside of the house including inside of the stud and joist bays, preserving some of the 'breathing' that old houses need to do to dry out when they get wet or damp. But we won't get this done until we restore the outside of the house.

In order to try to make our house a little more comfortable in the mean time, we will use some removable caulk to remedy the worst spots, which we can find easily with the camera.

This image shows a draft leak at the ceiling in the kitchen. The darker the color, the colder the area is.

This image shows drafts around the bottom of the south kitchen door. 

This image shows a draft in a ceiling corner in the dining room.

I also built some shelves for the master bathroom. Still no shower though. Our next significant project.

Another major improvement in the convenience category is our hot water re-circulation system. This has reduced our wait times for hot water from about 3-4 minutes to 5-10 seconds at any fixture in the house. Currently we're running it about 16 hours per day as it is helping to heat the house a little bit. The white pipes from the right are dedicated return lines that we had installed when we did all the rough in plumbing.