The FeDibblety family

I have been doing some more home improvement lately — mostly installing new doors (more on that soon). Watching Spencer makes progress quite slow, so I frequently will only get a nail or two in at a time, while Spencer is playing with his car or something. Because of this, I have been keeping the small step ladder in the kitchen or front room much of the last week. While Dave and Ellen were visiting, Spencer decided that he liked the vantage point of the top of the ladder. In the last week, he has now learned how to climb up and down the ladder. I caught him doing this on video a couple days ago. He celebrates his ascent by doing some of his other favorite things: blowing, shaking his head, and clicking. We still haven’t figured out what shaking his head is supposed to mean, if anything. We have decided that it does not mean “no”.

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Yesterday we got our new fireplace insert installed. I have been wanting a fireplace insert ever since we bought our current house. I really enjoyed heating with wood in Indiana, and I really wanted a wood fireplace in the house we bought in Colorado, which we did get. However, we never actually had a fire in it, because I know that traditional fireplaces actually make your furnace work more. That is because most of the hot air from the fire goes right up the chimney, along with a bunch of other warm air from the room. An insert is basically a wood stove that is designed to fit in an existing fireplace.

Several weeks ago I got a flyer that said Inglenook Energy was having a sale on stoves and inserts, and that there is a new 30% tax credit for installing an energy efficient wood stove. Inglenook is in Conifer, which is up in the mountains southwest of Golden, so we thought it would be a nice drive if nothing else. We found the salespeople there to be very informative and helpful, and not pushy. They even had some baby toys for Spencer to play with, and gave us coffee while we pondered whether we could really afford an insert. After much deliberating, we decided on the Jøtul 550 Rockland. We also considered a Quadrafire, but the Jøtuls are cast-iron instead of steel, and they have a very good reputation. They are also visually more attractive than the Quadrafire, and weren’t that much more expensive.

We considered installing the insert ourselves, but given that it weighs 550 pounds, and that it also requires installing a stainless steel chimney liner and knocking out the existing flu (damper), we decided to go ahead and hire it out. Inglenook gave me numbers of four installers, and also contacted them. Two of the four contacted me, so I got quotes from both of them. Matt at Chimney Doctors was very thorough and knowledgeable. He explained the whole process of what he would do, including installing additional insulation around the stainless steel liner, which provides extra safety, as well as increased draft and reduced soot. I liked him very much, so we decided to go with them.

Along with buying the insert, I also needed to buy some firewood. I had a hard time finding websites advertising firewood. I ended up going with Ken Fischer, who advertised mixed hardwood as well as other soft woods. Most people in Colorado burn Pine or Fir. Ken delivered a full cord of mixed hardwood for $260. Most of the other places were charging about $230 for pine, so I thought it would be good to get the hardwood. He arrived yesterday morning a bit before the scheduled 10 a.m. appointment, and did a nice job unloading the wood onto the driveway. He even showed me all the different kinds of wood he was selling me, including silver maple, ash, oak, black walnut, birch, locust, and cottonwood. He gets his wood from the Denver area when people get trees removed.

The Chimney Doctors arrived around 11 a.m. with the fireplace insert and finished around 3 p.m. They did a really great job. They cleaned the chimney and fireplace first very well, and put down drop-cloths everywhere so they didn’t get anything dirty. Spencer was sleeping when they arrived, and continued to sleep through the vacuuming and the saws-all to get out the old damper. When they started using the sledgehammer to remove more of the masonry around the old damper, he finally woke up. He was then absolutely fascinated to watch them work.

It was fairly nice weather yesterday, so Spencer helped me stack a bunch of the firewood in the afternoon. Then I set out to make the first fire. As I had heard, it was a bit tricky to get it going since the firebox seals so well. It took me a couple tries, but I did get it going. Eventually I left the door open a bit until it caught really well. That seemed to work well and did not let smoke in the room. The Fedibbletys enjoyed hanging out in the living room last night in a balmy 68°F room. I don’t think the living room has been that warm since about October. Generally the living room had been about 2-3°F cooler than the rest of the house, partly because of the tall ceiling, but also because of the drafty chimney. When burning, the fireplace insert does a great job of heating the entire first floor. When we went to bed, we discovered that our bedroom was only 63°F, which is a great sleeping temperature with our warm down comforter, and there is not much need to heat the upstairs during the day, since we are mostly downstairs. Since Spencer doesn’t have a down comforter, I bought a space heater for his room a couple weeks ago, which is helping him sleep through the night, even when he kicks his covers off. I also measured the temperature in the living room this morning with no fire going, and it is now only about 0.5-1°F cooler in the living room than in the kitchen, so we are saving energy even with no fire going.

Needless to say, I am very happy with our new fireplace insert.

No, not the kind you grow vegetables in. Not, not a super-duper LEED certified, energy efficient house (though we have made our house much more energy efficient). I am talking about a house which is the color green. More specifically, the trim is now consistently dark green (reaction is the name of the paint color). This has been a long process, and is actually still not totally complete. We started putting in new windows last spring, and put green trim around them. We knew that we wanted to get new gutters and fascia this summer, since the previous tenants had let the gutters get so clogged that the fascia was rotting. We got a couple quotes on gutters, and decided on Gutter Topper, which had a booth at the Arvada Gold Rush festival in June. They actually specialize in this gutter topper thing, which prevents leaves from getting in your gutters to begin with. It is actually more expensive than the gutters themselves though, so we did not get that. I’m young and have plenty of energy to clean the gutters a couple times per year.

We signed a contract with Graham Lutz (the salesman) of Gutter Topper in early July, and they said it would be 3-5 weeks, since they were pretty backed up. They didn’t end up starting for nearly 7 weeks, and then it took them over 2 weeks to complete the job. There were all sorts of excuses like dental emergencies, and hornet stings, as well as simple unpreparedness, and short working days. The first day that Greg (the installer) showed up, I actually got a call from Matt Roberts (the installation manager), saying that Greg wasn’t able to get the outside power outlet on our house to work. I was quite surprised, since I was at home with Spencer that day. It turns out he was at my next door neighbor’s house. Had their outdoor power outlet worked, he probably would have started ripping off their gutters. I am not sure what would have happened in that case. At any rate, I went out and talked to Greg, and we went over the project. He had all the new fascia board (I requested cedar instead of pine) with him, and asked me if I wanted the rough side or the smooth side facing out. I said the smooth side, since it would be easier to paint. He said: “Oh, I was wondering if you were going to paint it. Why don’t I let you paint it before I put it up?” This was a good idea, since it is a lot easier to paint the boards on solid ground, as opposed to on a ladder. However, he could have this great idea a month earlier. It actually stated in the contract that the owner would paint the fascia. So suddenly I had a new project to do. Fortunately I had some paint left over from the window trim, so I was able to start painting that day. It took me several days to paint all of the boards though, since I didn’t have enough room on my saw horses to paint all of them at once. This didn’t turn out to be much of a problem, since Greg worked so slowly and little.

The next hurdle was the soffit. We had already discussed the fact that some of the soffit needed to be replaced, and it was in the contract, but Greg did not have any material to replace it with him. So that delayed things even more, and ended up in more painting for me unexpectedly. In addition, some of the fascia boards had some fairly obvious imperfections. One of them had several gouges near one edge of the board. It turned out that Greg put this board right in the front of the house. Had he flipped the board upside down, the imperfections would have been covered. Or if he had put this piece somewhere where gutter would cover it, it would have been covered. Or he could have put it in the back of the house or on the side, and I probably would not have cared, but I thought it looked bad, so I had him replace it, which meant he put up a new board which I did not have time to paint first.

To top things off, on one Friday Matt Roberts (the installer manager) called me to ask if I could give them partial payment, so that Greg could have some money for the weekend. I said no, since the contract said 30% up front, and the remainder when the job was done. By this point I was not very confident that he would come back to finish if I only owed them a bit more. Had they been more on top of things, the job should have taken 2 days – 3 at most. Greg did come back on Tuesday, the day after labor day, and finished the job, and in the end, did a fairly decent job. It has rained since then, and the gutters and downspouts work well, and the fascia is hung fairly well. One thing he did not do with the fascia that he probably should have is overlap the seams of the boards. Overall, I would give them a C-. I would not recommend Gutter Topper of Colorado (or L & R enterprises, their new name).

Back to the green house. Dave and Ellen came to visit us last weekend, and while they were here, we got a bunch of work done, including painting the remaining fascia boards, and painting over the nails on the fascia that was painted. We also hung back up the old shutters in the front after painting them. Dave almost fell off his ladder while helping me do this, and dropped one shutter. It cracked, but we were able to put it back together with a little silicone caulk, and you can’t tell at all from street level that it is cracked. We were just glad that the shutter broke, and not Dave. Ellen did a bunch of work inside the house, including putting up more baseboard, and re-weatherstripping the front door. And of course we had plenty of time to play with Spencer too. Now we just need to paint the front door green to match the trim, and to replace the two windows in the front of the house.

We got a huge hail storm last night. Just as we were getting ready to go to bed, the wind picked up, and then suddenly it sounded like a bunch of drummers all playing on our roof. There was some hail almost as big as golf balls. Our tomatoes took a beating, but hopefully they will come back. They were all taller than the stakes. Now they are all bent over. I am hoping that re-tying them should help them back into health. They still have fruit on them, so that is a good sign.

Spencer has started to get interested in toys in the last couple weeks, especially one that make some rattling and crumpling noises. Here is a little video of him playing with two of his favorite toys.

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