Draker's House - Build thread edition

[DRIVEN]

Tax dollars at work. Maybe just tap into the line and get free sprinkler feed for your own yard? They're trying to water it anyway.

[510freak]

^This. hard at work

[draker]

Just waiting for the leaves to finish falling out of this tree... then I am going to prune the shit out of it. It shades the house nicely in the summer so I can't go to crazy.

Starting to think about removing the raised flower bed that wraps around the back of the yard shown here. It just breaks the hard up and service no purpose. But I have to do something with all that dirt... not looking forward to that.

[draker]

I'm starting to put together another another list for next year:

- Extend fence to the front of the house and build a gate
- Remove the flower beds in back yard
- Continue painting brown trim gloss white
- Install new white interior doors
- New floors upstairs


I need find someone to rework the vanities in our bathrooms. The cabinets are in good shape, but I need new drawers and faces installed. I don't know if getting them rebuilt would be cheaper than buying new ones though. But I do know new ones are spendy! Plus, they are a non-standard size... of course. So new ones would probably have to be custom anyway. wtf.

I'd like to finish the floors in the bathrooms.. but I really need to address the vanities first since they have a footprint in the bathroom.

[draker]

Going to start replacing the exterior lighting. Bought this LED porch light and installed it. Pretty bright!

[draker]

Well.. the blower motor in my HVAC air handler died today. I pulled it out and disassembled, but there is nothing I can do to fix it. I just have to buy a new motor.

The motor is 38 years old.. so I guess it had a good life. I have a pellet stove for heat that I use about 95% of the time anyway. I use the HVAC to warm the house up in the morning and then the pellet stove keeps it warm. Anyway.. it has to be fixed. Need it for AC in the summer.

[DRIVEN]

What are your thoughts non pellet stoves? I'm considering one for my Idaho build but have never lived with one before. I grew up with a wood stove. How do they compare?

[draker]

Well, I've had one for the last 20+ years. They are so simple. A ton of pellets (50 bags) is about $220 and on cold day (below freezing) I'll run about 1 bag per 24 hours. It keeps up. Of course, it's an uneven heat since it just has one blower. So air circulation helps a lot. Sometime I'll turn on the HVAC blower and let it circulate air throughout the house. (2 story).

It's easy to maintain, clean.. it runs on a thermostat and starts and shuts off by itself. Burns very clean. No visible smoke from the chimney. You don't have to store or chop wood. If I had to say, a wood stove probably puts out more heat. But it also has a much bigger fire. Also, depends on the size of the house and the BTU of the pellet stove.

I removed the wood stove in the house and installed this pellet stove.

[draker]

[draker]

Bought a new blower motor.



Got it installed. Went in pretty easy and the HVAC is working good again.

[draker]

Cleared a bit more room in the garage.





Added a TV to the garage.

[Taterhead]

That's coming together. I envy your workspace in the last pic.

I took one of those blower fans like you posted above and made a kickass 2 speed shop fan with it. Complete with 2 outlets wired to the front for power tools.

[draker]

That's coming together. I envy your workspace in the last pic.

I took one of those blower fans like you posted above and made a kickass 2 speed shop fan with it. Complete with 2 outlets wired to the front for power tools.

Thanks! Still a lot of clutter.

If I could find another one of these fans I would totally use it for a paint booth/shop fan. The thing puts out so much air!

[Taterhead]

That they do. I had to cut up an old box fan to use the grate covers to keep my son from sticking his fingers in it.

[draker]

I got the itch... had to scratch. Uploading pics now.

[draker]

Photobucket is awful. .. damn. so bad.

[DRIVEN]

I use a really old laptop (just won't die) that has trouble keeping up with some sites due to, I'm assuming, the associated ads. Photobucket is the absolute worst of the bunch. Navigating and using the site itself isn't horrible -- maintaining my Fonzie while my computer locks up is. CPU usage instantly pegs at 100% and memory usage usually gets close to it too. Firefox gets intermittently unresponsive and my cooling fan sounds like its gonna come apart. I only open it to upload a couple pics at a time, close it, write my post, open it again, copy the links, and close it as fast as I can. it's ridiculous. One of these days Photobucket is gonna cause an electro-aneurysm. My newer shop laptop handles it much better but there is a noticeable slowdown if I use PB on it too.

[wayno]

Photobucket is awful. .. damn. so bad.

Are you using a desk top computer or a hand held of some type?
I use a desk top computer, when Photolame changed a few years ago now I quit using it for the most part, it got harder and harder to use, I talked about it with Jacob at the Beaverton get together(Red Robins as I recall), and he suggested I use Picasa, I had already tried other photo hosting sites and was not happy with any of them, actually I didn't like any of them at all as I was used to posting multiple photos at a time, and Photolame was the only site I was able to do that from at the time.
Anyway as sad as it is, Photolame is actually the easiest to use here at NWD, at least it is for me, just click on the chain link icon and copy the IMG code.

But I hardly ever go the anymore, I guess it's my way of saying they ruined a great site, so I do not use it much anymore, but I didn't close it as I already had to many published photos there, so I just leave it open and go there every once in a while to keep it active like I did today.
I now use Picasa, it takes a couple steps to attach a photo to my replies here, I have to use the IMG box above this reply field to paste the code, but there is no advertising at Picasa so far, what is sad is that Picasa works great at Ratsun, right click on the image, "copy image" and paste it in the reply, it's that easy, but I have not uploaded anything there in a long time, it's likely been a couple years now.
Another thing I noticed when I logged onto Photolame today, they have more trackers than any other site I go to, there are 21 tracking cookies being blocked on Photolame, I thought Nico was bad, but Photolame kicks Nicos ass when it comes to trackers, I block all trackers with Ghostery, at least it says it is blocking them, I use Google Chrome right now, they are terrible about tracking their users, one of these days I will quit using Google Chrome also, I have no blocked trackers here at NWD.

[draker]

Photobucket is awful. .. damn. so bad.

Are you using a desk top computer or a hand held of some type?
I use a desk top computer, when Photolame changed a few years ago now I quit using it for the most part, it got harder and harder to use, I talked about it with Jacob at the Beaverton get together(Red Robins as I recall), and he suggested I use Picasa, I had already tried other photo hosting sites and was not happy with any of them, actually I didn't like any of them at all as I was used to posting multiple photos at a time, and Photolame was the only site I was able to do that from at the time.
Anyway as sad as it is, Photolame is actually the easiest to use here at NWD, at least it is for me, just click on the chain link icon and copy the IMG code.

But I hardly ever go the anymore, I guess it's my way of saying they ruined a great site, so I do not use it much anymore, but I didn't close it as I already had to many published photos there, so I just leave it open and go there every once in a while to keep it active like I did today.
I now use Picasa, it takes a couple steps to attach a photo to my replies here, I have to use the IMG box above this reply field to paste the code, but there is no advertising at Picasa so far, what is sad is that Picasa works great at Ratsun, right click on the image, "copy image" and paste it in the reply, it's that easy, but I have not uploaded anything there in a long time, it's likely been a couple years now.
Another thing I noticed when I logged onto Photolame today, they have more trackers than any other site I go to, there are 21 tracking cookies being blocked on Photolame, I thought Nico was bad, but Photolame kicks Nicos ass when it comes to trackers, I block all trackers with Ghostery, at least it says it is blocking them, I use Google Chrome right now, they are terrible about tracking their users, one of these days I will quit using Google Chrome also, I have no blocked trackers here at NWD.

It's just my phone can't upload pictures to it.. and when it does.. it uploads the same picture 30 times. Then trying to navigate the site on my desktop.. it's so slow.

[draker]

I try to delete the duplicate images..... and that takes FOR EV-ERRR