Studio711.com – Ben Martens

I’ve always dreamed of having my own Christmas light display. It would cost too much to do the whole house with LED lights right now, but I got a small start by wrapping the little tree in the front yard. With LED lights, you can chose from the very cool (as in cool on the temperature scale for color) white lights or the “warm white” lights that more closely match incandescent. Both have their advantages but I went with the warm white lights to more closely match my existing yard lighting and other displays on the street. My hope is that I can continue to find white LED lights that match this color every year and slowly build out the rest of the exterior lighting. Our house is really set up well for a magnificent display. If I had easy access to a 30 foot lift, we could decorate the huge cedar (am I right Tim?) tree on the corner of our house!

So here’s a photo of what we have now. I’m almost embarrassed to show it. In 20 years I can look back and laugh at how we got started!

Sometimes not paying attention to the news catches me by surprise. For example, a trip to Home Depot to buy a replacement 100w incandescent bulb left me confused. They didn’t have any 100w bulbs!

I mentioned it at dinner to Don and he said we had President Bush to thank for that one. Sure enough, in 2007, President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act. 100W bulbs are gone this year, 75W disappear next year, and 60W and 40W bulbs are gone in 2014.

I’ve mostly converted to CCFL bulbs (good LED bulbs are still too expensive) but there are a couple places where I really want incandescent bulbs even though they are inefficient. Specifically,I want instant bright light in the garage and the motion sensor switch installed out there causes CCFL bulbs to flicker.

Luckily you can still find the 100W bulbs on Amazon so I bought a 24 pack. That seemed like a good idea until they arrived at my house in a poorly packaged box containing a million light bulb pieces. Amazon has a good return policy though so I sent it back and found 100w bulbs at Fred Meyer.

The bottom line is don’t miss out on buying these if you need them in your house!

I’m at a weird point in our home ownership: my todo list is getting short! When we moved in, it seemed like no matter how hard I worked, I kept finding more and more things that need to be done. Here’s a list of the bigger projects that have been completed since we bought the house last October:

• Paint 50% of the interior
• Carpet including sealer on floorboards (contracted)
• Pressure Regulator Valve (contracted)
• Remove all garage shelves. Build new shelves and workbench.
• Replace water heater with tankless water heater (contracted)
• Replace furnace and add air conditioning (contracted)
• Shelf liner in every cabinet
• Theater room: projector shelf, painted room, add dimmer light switch for accent lighting, run speaker and video cables in the walls, mount screen
• Add laundry room shelves
• New exterior light timer
• Vinyl floor for master bathroom
• Install new motion sensor light in back yard
• Replace all tank parks and lines in all three toilets
• Remove root growing under driveway
• Tie tall pine trees together in back yard so they survive heavy snow
• Replace motion light on side of house
• Fix low voltage yard lighting
• Reinforce fence along west side of house
• Change angle valves and add arrestors to all water connections
• Replace all window screens
• Add underground drain for sump pump and down spout
• Add soffit vents for attic insulation (contracted)
• Replace all outlets and switches

There’s lots more but those are the bigger projects. Whew! It makes me tired just thinking about it all. We still have things that we want to do but I feel like we’ve moved off of required list into the wish list. Now it’s more of a decision of whether or not it’s worth the investment.

Tyla has been very good about letting me fill up the garage with tools. I didn’t need much in the condo and now I’m finally getting to the point where I can start and finish a job with the tools I already have. Some have been duds and some have been great choices. Here are my top recommendations:

• DeWalt DCK280C2 Li-Ion Compact Drill and Impact Driver Combo Kit – This set uses the new DeWalt battery technology so if you have older stuff you might want to consider something else. This was my first DeWalt cordless product so I went with the new stuff. These drills are incredible! The compact drill is light enough to use around the house but powerful enough for big jobs, and if you’ve never used an impact driver, you owe it to yourself to try one out. It’s like magic! The batteries on these things last forever. I couldn’t be happier.
• Sony ICFCDK50 Under Cabinet Kitchen CD Clock Radio – This might be a confusing entry, but I was looking for a good radio out in the garage. This one is perfect because I can mount it on the bottom of a shelf and not take up any space! It has an aux-in jack for an MP3 player and is plenty loud enough for when I’m working in the garage or out in the driveway.
• Toro 2-Cycle 25.4 cc Curved Shaft Gas Trimmer – I don’t have a very big yard, but I really didn’t want to go with an electric trimmer. This one wouldn’t be a good choice for someone doing really heavy work, but it’s good for this place. I was a bit skeptical of the attachments, but those have turned out to be a real bonus. The shaft disconnects and you can put on other heads. I have the edger and a simple blower (good for cleaning up grass but I have a more powerful one for lots of leaves.) You can get refurbished attachments for $30-40 which is way cheaper than buying individual items and maintaining even more gas engines!
• Craftsman Ratchet Set – I don’t know exactly which set I have, but Mom and Dad got one for me as a birthday gift a few years back. It’s incredibly handy, comes with a nice case, and has never left me wanting for any type of socket!
• Big Jake Premium Leather Gloves – I have huge hands. None of the gloves at Home Depot fit me. Logan showed me these and even gave me a couple pair of them. These things will last forever! I keep one pair in the car and the other on my workbench.

What’s your favorite tool? I’m always looking for something new!

The area on the northeast part of our lot towards the cul-de-sac has always been mushy and swampy. One day I was out there when the sump pump turned on and I saw it shooting out a LOT of water right down the hill into that area. After chatting with Tim, we decided to see if we could improve the situation.

We met at Home Depot one Saturday morning at 6am (he had to drop Chelsea off for a half-marathon) and were done with the project by 9:30! We trenched 30 feet out to the street, connected the top end to the sump pump and a downspout, and installed a popup drain right by the curb. When the pipe fills with water, the drain pops up and water flows out to the curb.

It was super helpful having Tim there. He taught me a couple great little tricks:

• If you don’t want to reseed the area, cut rectangles of grass on three sides and then fold it back.
• Lay down some plastic and throw the dirt on that. It makes for super easy cleanup.

I might need to dig up the popup drain at the end and redo that some day. It has a small hole at the bottom that let’s excess water drain out. But since we just set it right on the dirt, the wet dirt filters up through that hole and plugs it up so now I have a layer of dirt at the bottom of the pipe. I imagine that over time it will start to plug up the pipe. At that point I’ll dig up the end of the pipe, dig a small hole right underneath that point and fill it with some gravel. There’s no rush though. That can wait.

We’ve had pretty consistent rain since this project so the swamp has never had a chance to fully dry out. At that point we’ll know how much this drain helps. I suspect it will still be wet down there since this area used to be a pond and we’re at the bottom of a hill, but hopefully it helps. When we redo the whole yard in a year or two, I’m tempted to tie all my downspouts into drains like this and also run a big French drain along the west side of my lot to stop water from flowing down the hill.

When we bought this house, the inspector found a few outlets that didn’t work and quite a few that didn’t hold a plug very tightly. Since I had to replace quite a few, I decided to just replace them all. We chose to go with the Decora style outlets and switches. Those are the rectangular ones. I went for the tamper resistant outlets meaning that it’s difficult to shock yourself by sticking something in. Replacing the existing outlets and switches is a pretty simple process (once I picked up a device that helps me figure out which circuit I should shut off), but it’s time consuming.

Most of this is pretty boring, but it’s fun to look through the Leviton product catalog and see all of the interesting stuff that they offer. Here are some off the non-standard things that I’ve installed:

• Digital timer switch that calculates sunrise and sunset. Read more in a previous post.
• Bathroom fan timers. These come in 5-10-20-30 minute and 10-20-30-60 minute versions. I used the shorter ones for the bathrooms that just have toilets and the longer ones for the bathrooms with showers.
• Remote control dimmer switch. I have one of these in the theater room and one in the bedroom.
• Nightlight outlet. This light isn’t very bright but it’s just enough to light up a dark area at night. It has a light sensor so it turns off during the day.
• USB outlets. I put two of these in the bedroom for charging our phones and Kindles. There are a few different models around but these are UL approved.
• Surge protector outlet. I haven’t installed one of these yet but I’m tempted to. It saves you from having a bulky surge protector lying on the floor for one or two devices. I’m holding off because I’m thinking about installing a whole house surge protector instead.

The other day I was standing in a bar with my boss and we were going back and forth rattling off different fun things we had seen in the Leviton catalog. That’s when I knew that unequivocally, I was an adult. A geek, but an adult.

At our last homeowner’s association, a Woodinville police offer was a guest speaker. She talked about the types of calls that came from our area (there aren’t many), and the size of the Woodinville police force (only 1 or 2 officers on patrol at any given time.) At the end of the talk, she offered to come by our houses and talk about security. Most people seemed to ignore this line, but I got her card and a few days later, we set up a meeting.

When she got to the door, she said, “I’ve been in this house before.” “I hope it was for something good!” “Oh yes, the original owners were the neighborhood watch captains.” Phew!

She walked around inside and outside and gave me some tips. Overall she said we were doing really well. Obviously I’m not going into detail about what she suggested we improve, but here are some general things she talked about that she sees:

• Don’t put big bushes in front of your windows. This gives burglers a place to hide while they peek in. Keep them trimmed down below the bottom of the windows and the bottom of the bush should be 1-2 feet off the ground.
• Make sure all your windows are locked or have dowels in the track to avoid them being forced open.
• Where can someone hide outside your front door? You want to be safe if you step outside at night.
• Which entries are the least visible from the street and your neighbor’s houses? Those are the most enticing.
• What electronics can you see if you look in from the windows?
• What kinds of friends do your kids have? Kids talk and if you have cool stuff in your house and an easy way to break in, word is going to get around.

I’ve made it a point to get to know as many of my neighbors as possible so hopefully they’ll notice if anything odd is going on. While there’s not any special history of burglaries in this area, there’s no reason not to take some simple precautions. A lot of this is common sense, but the trick is to make your house harder to break into than your neighbors’.

At some point we are planning to put in a proper irrigation system, but I think the backyard remodel is a couple years out. Since I’ve been spending so much time learning about caring for a yard, I don’t want to let it die off during the summer months when we don’t get any rain. But I also don’t want to have to move sprinklers around the yard by hand and have hoses laying in the grass. By pulling up an aerial view of my property from King County, I realized that with three sprinklers, I could cover most of the front and side yard.

I picked up three Melnor spike sprinklers, a 100 foot 8 ply 3/4” hose, and some female and male hose repair ends. (On a side note, I’ve been so impressed with that brand of hose that I have picked up two more of them.) I took the brand new 100 foot hose and cut it into three sections to run from the spigot too the sprinkler and then on to each other sprinkler. The hose repair kit gave me new ends for the hose and that all works very well without leaks. Tim had given me a hose timer so once I get into regular watering mode, that will come in handy.

This setup fulfills my requirements of not having to move sprinklers around and I can leave it set up semi-permanently. The downside is that since each sprinkler is covering a different span, the yard isn’t watered evenly. Also, when we had a plumber add a pressure regulator valve to help with the water hammer in the house, he turned down our water pressure to 40psi. Now that I’ve installed arrestors on every termination point in the house, I was able to crank that up to 50psi. 40 wasn’t enough to power all three sprinklers but 50 is just enough.

I also added some Y valves to the middle sprinkler which allows me to selectively shut off sprinklers down the line. This will come in handy when I need to water that big first section a little longer, and it was also helpful for tweaking the water flow to each sprinkler.

It takes me about 75 minutes to put down 1/2” of water in the big section on the east of the house. (An easy way to measure it is to set a used tuna can out in the yard while you run the sprinklers.) Once we get into summer I’ll set it so that it puts down 1/2” twice a week. For now we’re getting a few tenths a week spread out over many days. I’ll supplement the rain with a deep watering every once in a while.

Hopefully this work will leave us with the nicest yard on the block!

When I moved out on my own, my parents got me a 9V cordless Makita drill. It served me well through a ton of projects, but after 10 years, the batteries are worn out. It was either buy some new batteries or upgrade. After looking at the prices, I went with the latter and decided to keep the old drill around for smaller projects around the house.

I’ve loved using Tim’s 18V DeWalt drills. He works them much harder than I will and they’ve held up well, so that, combined with some online reviews, convinced me to stick with that brand.

DeWalt recently made a huge switch and broke backwards compatibility with their batteries. With over 60 million batteries on the market, that was a pretty big decision. I decided to buy into their new battery technology. It’s denoted on the market right now as 20v. Technically it’s actually still 18v but people were getting confused so it’s a marketing gimmick. The new batteries are lithium-ion and have a much different form factor that allows for smaller handles.

I ended up with the DCK280C2 combo kit which includes a compact drill, impact driver, two batteries, charger and a hard side case. Tim’s XRP batteries will last longer than mine, but I have the option of getting some “MAX Li-Ion 3.0Ah” batteries if I want. I’m very happy with the 1.5Ah batteries that were included though. On the recent deck project, I put in 250 screws with the impact driver before the first battery gave out. Each screw was going through 5/4” cedar into pressure treated support joists. Not bad! Each drill has built in lights that stay on 20 seconds after you’ve let off the trigger and that comes in pretty handy in dark spots. The lights on the impact driver work a little better because they have three lights around the chuck instead of a single light under the chuck.

Maybe impact drivers are old news, but I’ve only started using them in the last year or so. If you’ve never tried one, give it a shot next time you’re at Home Depot and you see the little demo setup. They are incredible. You’ll twist your mind trying to figure out how you can drive a screw all the way through a stud without exerting any pressure on the drill. It’s like a knife through butter!

They say when you buy a house, the three most important things are location, location and location. I have about a five minute drive to Home Depot so I’d say our location is pretty great! The people there are starting to recognize me, and well they should. Here’s a breakdown of my transactions at Home Depot since we moved got the house at the beginning of October.

• 72 total transactions consisting of 62 purchases and 10 returns. That’s one purchase every 3.5 days.
• I end up returning 7.5% (by dollar value) of the things I purchase
• There are only five weeks that I didn’t go to Home Depot. One of them was the cruise.
• The most purchases I’ve ever had in one week is six, and that has happened three times.
• The most purchases I’ve made in one day is three.
• Sunday is the most popular day for me to make a purchase, followed in order by Monday, Saturday, and Thursday.
• Home Depot stock has gone up 50% since we purchased our home and has risen to a 10 year high.