Ductwork Saga

When it first started to get cold this winter, I noticed that one of our heaters didn't seem to be working properly. The master bedroom would never get very warm. Air was barely coming out of the vents. Since the heater was under warranty, I had a company out to look at it, but they said it was working fine. They couldn't figure out why it wasn't coming out of the vents. I began to suspect that the ducts might be leaking in the attic.




There was already a small water-damaged spot on our ceiling in the master bedroom, so I cut a small hole there. When I turned the heater on, air came out of the hole I had just cut a lot harder than the vents. I climbed up there and figured out that our ducts were completely disconnected! I couldn't see down into where the disconnect was, so I stuck my camera over the edge, facing straight down, and this is what I saw (below.) All winter, all of our heat was blowing out of that duct and heating our attic!!

I couldn't reach that duct to pull it back up, so I found an old hook in the garage and taped it to a long metal cord. I used that to hook the duct and pull it back up. I drilled a couple holes in the duct and screwed it into the framework of the attic so it wouldn't get disconnected again, and then I used some metal tape (you're not supposed to use duct tape on ducts!) to seal it to the other duct. The only money I spent on this repair was buying the metal tape, and the AC/Heater company wanted to charge us over $2,000!

Next step was repairing the hole in our ceiling, which I had never done before. But it wasn't too difficult. I bought a small square of drywall, cut the hole even bigger so my square would fit, screwed drywall screws into the joists to hold it up.

























Then my father-in-law got in town, and he helped me apply the drywall mud, and drywall tape, sand it down, and then apply texture from a texture can.



















Below is the finished product. It doesn't look that great at the moment, but once we paint it you won't even be able to tell it was there.

Couch

Found a great deal on Craigslist- couch is approx 11ft wide!

Square Foot Garden

Haddie enjoyed helping me

I finished building the garden and transplanting all of the seedlings over. Our strawberry plant now has about 10 tiny strawberries growing on it. One of our pepper plants and one of our tomato plants broke and died when we had 40 mph wind gusts. Luckily I had an extra, smaller seedling growing for both of them. So I replanted them but they are going to be a little behind.

I built a fence around the garden to keep out deer, javelina, rabbits, and mice - hopefully. I thought for a long time about how to make a gate. I didn't want to spend very much money because in the next year or two I want to make a more sturdy, permanent fence. I ended up using a variation of what a lot of the local ranchers use - called a "drop-down" gate. Two of the poles are fastened together by loops of wire at the top and bottom.

Garage Demolition

Our house has a garage, but there is a wall where the garage door is supposed to be. Our next major project is to tear out the wall, and get a garage door and opener installed. Yesterday I started the demolition from the inside. Next week, I'm going to rent a grinder to cut a hole through the stucco on the outside of the house.

This is our most exciting project yet because we've been dying to park our cars in a garage again. We've been looking forward to doing this for a long time, but there's just been so many other things we've had to get done first.

Kitchen Lighting

My father-in-law and I installed some recessed lighting in the kitchen. Now we have one less set of loose wire hanging from the ceiling. There are still two more sets of loose wire to deal with in the living room though. 

Mr. Beer

 Hillary got me a Mr. Beer home brewing kit for my birthday. My first batch is a blonde ale which should be ready about 4 weeks from now.

Washing Machine Again

 More washing machine problems. It would fill with water and drain normally, but it would not spin at all. I did some research and found out that it could be a faulty lid switch. This is the switch that tells the washing machine that the door is closed and it is safe to spin. Our lid switch was broken, so the washing machine always thought the door was open. At first I bypassed the lid switch by cutting and joining some wires together - but that would only work for 3 loads. Apparently it has a built in protection against bypassing the lid switch, which is there for safety reasons. Every 3 loads I had to disconnect those wires again and then reconnect them, which would give us another 3 loads. Finally I ordered the part pictured from Amazon for $17.51. I installed it and our washing machine now works perfectly again. Poor Hillary had to do laundry at the rent house a few times while I was trying to get this thing fixed.