The exhaust fans in both bathrooms (aka “fart fans”) suck really bad — they’re original to the house: 1976.  The front/guest one works ok, but it’s not very strong, and we get lots of cold air in the winter, hot air in the summer in there.  The one in the master bath – well, sometimes it sounds like you should be taking cover when you turn it on.

Here’s what they look like right now:

fugly, huh?

So we priced new fans, and the ones we like (decent quality) are gonna set us back around $200 (for 2).  But while we were there I realized we should probably check to see how they’re actually vented through the attic before buying any.

We came back home and I did some Googling, and learned that it’s pretty important the fans are correctly vented outside – whether through the roof, through a side wall, or through a soffit vent.  So I trekked up into the attic (I just love being up high where one wrong step and you can come crashing through the ceiling, and where you can’t help but get itchy with all the insulation) and discovered why we’re getting all the cold/hot air in the bathrooms:

INCORRECTLY vented exhaust fan

See, this is bad – very bad.  The exhaust fans aren’t there just to whisk away the farts, they’re also supposed to get rid of all that humidity when you take a hot shower.  Unfortunately it seems all that moist air has been spit out in our attic for the last 32 years.  That’s not good!!

As I mentioned, crawling around in the attic is not one of my favorite activities…  And neither one of us are comfortable cutting a hole in the roof to vent the things.  We might be able to somehow rig it up to a soffit vent, but we wanted somebody with half a clue to look at it before we did anything…  (the guest bath is on the side of the house, so with the slant of the roof you have to crawl on your belly to get over there anyway – NOT something I want to be doing!!!)

A friend of ours does some construction/house flipping, and was supposed to come take a look at it for us…  But that was 2 weeks ago and we haven’t seen or heard from him.

By chance do any of my blog readers have a suggestion on this?  :)  We’re having house guests after Christmas, and I’d really like to get them working before then…..

Oh yeah, I should mention that I took apart the one in the guest bath (and am not sure where the parts have landed to put it back together again), so this is what that one looks like:

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So the fence-staining project we started in July was finally completed early November.  4 months…  Dang, that’s pathetic!  What took so long?  Well we started out spraying the stain – that way we would have finished it in no time.  But it was splattering as much (expensive!) stain on the ground as it was on the fence…  So we did most of it BY HAND with a brush.  YEAH.  Talk about a PITA…  We also replaced a several boards that were warped or rotten or whatever.

Here’s a good link for “before” pics.  (also see the link above)  Here are the afters:

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I started a new job last month, and am absolutely loving it.  I no longer have to deal with coworkers I can’t stand– everybody (ok, NEARLY everybody) at the new job is laid back and fun to be around.  :)  Every day there’s something new, and I’m constantly on the go.  Never a dull moment!  I knew I hated working at the old place, but didn’t realize just how much it was affecting my whole life until I got out of there.  Work was like a black cloud over EVERYTHING, dragging me down.  I’m actually HAPPY again–without medication!  :)

The fence staining has stalled…  It’s too damn hot to be out there any longer than you have to be.

Keith’s youngest sister, Kelli, had her baby around 2pm on Wednesday.  Pics of Ryli here.

I’ve joined the “fit club” at work.  We started a contest on Tuesday to see who can lose the most weight (%) over the next 8 weeks.  I weighed in Tuesday, went to the gym, and ate healthy that day..  Did well on Wednesday.  Then it all went to shit Thursday.  ;-)  So I’ve got some making up to do – probably gonna try to hit the gym tomorrow.

I dropped my cell phone this week and broke the display…  About half my screen is unreadable.  Makes it pretty difficult to send/receive text messages!  Given that, and the fact that I’m going to need the capability of sending/receiving emails from my phone for work pretty soon, I’m shopping for a new phone.  The nice ones are expensive!

We still haven’t gotten the garage door fixed.  My first paycheck with the new job was only for one day, so I’m currently living on my savings account; so we’re holding off ’till after next payday…

Did you see the post about watering your foundation?  Well our back door off the sun room had gotten to the point that we could hardly close it, never mind latching the door.  We didn’t get a soaker hose for back there, but instead I just watered the heck out of it with a regular sprinkler (that section of the yard doesn’t have a working sprinkler system), and now we’re able to close the door again.

I’m pretty sure there was other stuff I wanted to mention, but that’s all I’ve got for now.  :)  Hopefully the next post will be more interesting…

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Today we started staining the fence.  We decided we’re not going to break our necks trying to get it done; we’ll do some here and there as shade permits.  ;-)  (seriously, it’s effin hot out there!!)

So here’s part of what we did today.  The goal is to do two coats on the whole fence…  We got about halfway done with the exterior of the fence today (not in one continuous sweep).  If Keith’s not too hung over tomorrow, we may try to knock some more out before it gets too hot again.

Oh yeah, before pics here.

From the front of the house. Please ignore the fact that I haven’t mowed in 3 weeks…

Looking down the side of the fence. See that little patch down towards the other end that’s stained? That’s where we tested it out a couple weeks ago. This pic was taken about halfway through this morning…

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Before pics here.

This has nothing to do with mulch, but a week or two ago I also installed a new light on our front porch. This one has a sensor so it automagically comes on at night and goes off in the morning. (I always forgot to turn the old one off in the morning — and it’s SOOOO dark out there at night without it on)

Pic of the old one here.

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This is how the fence looked before using the pressure sprayer on it – all grey and yucky

Here I am spraying part of the fence down… I must have just started here b/c I’m not disgustingly filthy yet.

Here you can see where we quit Saturday night…

Here’s a section of washed fence, ready for weatherproofing

I’ll post more pics as we continue the project… I’m scared to guess how long it will take to stain all of it.

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I will add that we took some before and in-progress pictures as we were power washing the fence…  We’re not quite halfway done (so much for a 4 hour rental – we’re going for 24 hours now).  We (stupidly) thought we could power wash all 200 linear feet (approx 2,400 square feet) of fence tonight and start applying the weatherproofing tomorrow.  At this rate we’ll be lucky to finish just washing it.

I’ll post pics when we’re done.  :)

(we also bought a soaker hose for the front flower bed, and mulch)

(we also returned a crappy shredder to costco, bought a new one at Fry’s, and already have to return it b/c it doesn’t work)

(we also returned a bunch of crap to Lowe’s, and bought more crap)

(and we also returned crap to Target)

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• July 7, 2008 -- DIY: Pics – Cleaning the Fence
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The flower beds have been bothering me. I’ve gone back looking for good pictures to serve as “before” images (since I failed to take any), but none really do justice to the dramatic change.

Anyway, here are three flower beds we’ve redone over the last couple weeks. (by the way, you can click on the pics below for the full size versions)

First, the front of the house. This picture was taken just before we bought the house, so October-ish last year.

I know it’s hard to see, but there’s not much but bushes, dusty miller, and that purple crap that’s so hard to kill off to the right side of the porch. Well since October, the dusty miller got completely out of control and was at least 2 feet tall. Keith got fed up with it and ripped it all out whenever Mom & Dad were here visiting (maybe 3 weeks ago) — so we’ve had EMPTY (besides shrubs & weeds) flower beds in the front.

We ended up pulling a couple shrubs; planted 3 hydrangias (did you know you can change their color? right now we’ve got 2 blue and 1 pink, but we’ll be watering with some stuff that will change them to all blue over the next couple weeks), a bunch of caladiums, yellow merigolds, and some snap dragons off to the right of the porch.

Here’s what it looks like now:


Next up – the flower bed between the front gate and the sun room. It used to have a big rosemary bush, dusty miller, and some other junk (forget what it was called), but everything but the rosemary got pulled when Keith was pulling stuff. Here’s a pic taken just before we bought the house:

And another “before” pic:

So I left the rosemary, and put in a tomato plant (“Celebrity” hybrid variety – not too big, not too small) and some basil. Once upon a time I read that growing tomatoes close to herbs makes them more tasty, so that’s why I stuck it between the basil & rosemary.

Here’s what it looks like now:

And last, but certainly not least, the flower bed on the west side of the sun room. THIS one was a freakin’ beast. It was OVERGROWN with… stuff. lol I don’t think any of us really cares much what it was, but it took me about 3 hours a couple weeks ago to pull it all up. Well, most of it. Here are a couple before pics (again, taken last year):


I left a couple things (more rosemary, some unidentified plant, and another one I salvaged from the front flower bed). Then we filled in with zinnias, more yellow marigolds, and a couple Egyptian star flowers. Here are the after pics:


Whew. I’m exhausted. Time for a cold one…

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So back when we painted the living room (wow, January!) we started taping the bedroom wall too, but got burned out (painting sucks!) and just now got back around to it this weekend.

So here are the before pics:

And here are the during & after pics:

(note in the picture above, you can see the half-ass primer job we did. See how some of it is grey, and some is an off-white? The oyster was left over from an early attempt in the living room, so we used that to “kind of” prime the wall.)

Although Keith is always the one painting in the pictures, I would like to point out that I paint too. He only likes to do the roller, so I end up doing the edges and touch-up. And I grab the camera. ;-)

By the way, don’t you just love the bed? Our “garage sale bedroom suite” where absolutely nothing matches is THE BOMB, let me tell you…

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