The Masters House

Today we got some much needed rain here in the Austin area. In the last few weeks the weather has been in the high 90’s if not the low 100’s. I was not only thankful that the rain cooled the area off but also because I got to see if my installation of an attic vent went correctly. It did as there were no leaks .

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!

I took the time this morning to tint two more windows and a door this morning. The project took about 1 1/2 hours and used an entire roll of 3″ x 15″ tint which cost around $35. The location of this morning’s project was the upstairs family room which is center and to the rear of the house which faces east.

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.

A couple of weeks ago my wife asked if I could build some shelves in the closet that is under our stairs. The closet is pretty big (as most stair closets are) but was impossible to get into because it was filled with toys and other items scattered on its floor. In fact I think that I can term that closet “The kids closet” because it has mostly their stuff such as toys, jackets, back packs for school, and shoes. It is not like they don’t have walk-in closets in their rooms but for whatever reason they decided to take this closet over as well.

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.

This past weekend my wife and I went to Fredericksburg Texas to hang out and while we were there we attended the Renewable Energy Roundup & Green Living Fair. This was the first “Green” fair I had ever been to and thought that it was pretty cool. There where a lot of exhibitors and clubs there promoting their green technologies.

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.

It has been two years since I wrote my post "The Low-Down on Water Seal for Your Fence" and since then I have become a little wiser. My first bit of wisdom comes in the saying "If a guy offers to stain your fence for about the same amount of money it was going to cost you in materials, let the guy make a buck". I was fortunate this time around that the guy who stained the deck of our new house offered to do our fence as side work for $300. Three 5 gallon buckets of Thompson Water Seal Stain would cost about the same so I took him up on his offer.

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.

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Now that we are starting to wind down from moving ourselves and moving my brother-in-law into his house (yeah! I have my office back) we are beginning to look at the projects that we want to do around the house. We have talked about a lot of these projects here and there but now we are reaching the point that we have to define them a little more and prioritize them.

Here is a quick list of the projects that we are looking at in their respective categories in their preliminary order:

Outdoor Projects

• Retaining wall in the back yard
• Brink planters in the front flowerbeds and trees
• Side yard fences separating side yards from the back yard
• Trees in the backyard
• Outdoor staircase from the second story deck to the first floor
• Outdoor shed for the garden equipment

Indoor Projects

• Window Tint on the remain windows
• Paint the formal dining room, downstairs bathroom, and my office
• Install the new curved shower rod in the downstairs bathroom
• Install the plastic pads on dining room chairs and table

Garage Projects

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Everyone is going green these days. When I first moved into our new house the first thing I did was to replace all of the incandescent light bulbs in our house with fluorescent light bulbs. In my other house I was able to cut my electric bill in the summer by $100 (see my post Reducing Electricity Bill with LED Lights).

Anyway, our new house has a whole lot more windows especially in the front of the house. These windows get direct sunlight in the afternoon which is usually the hottest part of the day. Both of air conditioning units would pretty much be constantly on just to maintain the temperature in the house. My youngest son and daughter’s windows also faced the front of the house and their rooms would get pretty hot in the afternoon as well.

To date I have installed the tint on all of the front facing windows except the window in my office. Even as I was putting the tint up I could feel the temperate change even though the windows were not in the direct sunlight at the time. Due to the tint being metal based it actually reflects heat in general and not just heat that comes from direct sunlight.

The implications of this are far reaching since your windows are the cause of most of your heat and cooling that escape from your house. I am speculating that the tint will also to help keep heat in the house during the winter as well which will have additional energy savings.

My estimate is that my $150 investment in tinting my front windows could pay for itself within the next 3-4 months in reducing my electricity bill. My bill for the last month was $309 so we will see what happens as the temperature goes up over the next few months. If my bill doesn’t go up I will be happy but I am fully expecting it to go down. According to Gila (the brand of tint I bought) my estimates may be a little high but we will see. You can check out their savings page here – Gila Window Tint.

I’ll keep you posted with my savings.

Brighten up your room by using window treatments of various designs and styles.

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