Please feel free to leave comments or questions regarding these pictures on our blog. All pictures were taken with a Canon A530 and cropped, if needed, using The GIMP 2.2 running under CentOS Linux 5.0. Uncropped images are available.


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Running Cat6 network through the house
I decided to run Cat-6 (gigabit) network cable to mainly the upstairs bedrooms but also a couple places on the main floor of our house.  Our floor plan features a utility core that runs stright up through the center of the house and includes both the furnace vent as well as some wiring and other vents.  I added a PVC conduit that runs from the basement to the attic.  The network cables run from an unmanaged switch in the basement up through the conduit and then spread through the attic to the locations of the drops.  We decided aginst running either additional phone or cable TV lines at this time since we didn't really need them but I left pull lines at each "box" in case we change our minds.

Insulate and drywall the garage
Our garage was originally only partially finished with drywall and that part was only "fire taped."  We added R-13 insullation to the walls and ceiling and then drywall.  The walls weren't too bad to do but the ceiling was another matter.  The trusses used for the third car part of the garage didn't line up with the floor of the upstairs bedroom above the other two stallis of the garage.  Because of this, we decided to leave the trusses exposed but getting the drywall between the trusses was not easy.  The final result looks great.

Repair flagstone patio where original slumped
We had a flagstone patio built in our back yard soon after moving in.  Between settling and expansive soil, the patio moved two to four inches with respect to the house leaving an ugly gap along the house and a large crack in the patio.  This project is still in progress at this time (November 2007).  The pictures show breaking up the old flagstone, putting pressure treated lumber along the house that will serve as a mating surface between the house and the rebuilt patio and breaking up the old mortar to use as fill for under the new patio.  Once the appropriate level has been achieved in the area to be replaced, I will put the flagstone back but will just fill between the flagstone with "unwashed gravel".  This will facilitate any required future repairs.

Tile the wear path from the garage to the kitchen
One of the first areas of carpeting that needed to be replaced was the carpet between the garage and the kitchen since this path invariably had the worst wear.  Rather than just replace the carpet, we installed tile.  The pictures show the process of installing the backerboard and placing the tiles.  We extended the tile pattern into the downstairs bathroom.

Fix short due to staple
Ever since moving in we have had some problems with snow blowing into the attic during certain severe winter storms.  The snow getting in was due to a bad combination of wind direction and the plan of our house that causes the snow to swirl up above our front door which just happen to be where one of the attic vents is located.  One of our neighbors eventually clued us in that this was happenning and we have been trying various solutions to try to prevent snow from blowing into the attic.

Before the most recent attempt at fixing that problem came the back-to-back blizzards of Christmas 2006.  The difference was that this time the snow in the attic managed to settle above one of the master bedroom walls.  Normally this wouldn't have been a major issue and the worst thing would have been a need to repaint any of the ceiling that became discolored due to the melting snow.  Unfortunately, under the snow was one of the electric wires for the bedroom and a staple at construction time had pierced the wire insulation.  Luckily, the short didn't start a fire but we had a devil of a time figuring out what had happenned.  The pictures show what we found once we openned the wall and the replacement wiring.
© Copyright 2007, David G. Miller
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