New House Bog: Episode LXVII - Drain The Rain

Once again Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and this year we are preparing to host a Thanksgiving feast at our New House.  Today I gave the linoleum flooring its somewhat annual sweeping and mopping, and I got to break in our brand new mop bucket (the previous mop bucket had become cracked and unusable due to sitting outside on the back porch for several months).  The new mop bucket performed flawlessly.  To make the day complete, Daisy and Satchmo got their claws trimmed.  Neither one was too keen on the idea, but they were handsomely compensated for their trouble.  

Drain The Rain

A section of our New House's rain gutter had disattached itself from the rest of our New House and fallen to the ground below.  Upon close investigation we discovered that this particular section of rain gutter seemed to have been attached to our New House rather less securely than was the rest of the rain gutter system.  It was a pretty straightforward job to reattach this section of rain gutter to our New House.

This is the fallen section of rain gutter, looking somewhat like an oarfish that has washed up on the beach.  This particular section was attached to the right side of the garage roof.

 This is the rain gutter reattached to our New House, as seen from above.  We used the two-ladder system for this project.

This is the same section of rain gutter as seen from below.

We completed this job just days before the first rain of the season came to our area.  So far the reattached section is working well.

Bonus Rainbow Photo

This is a photo of a rainbow I saw across from our New House after a recent rain.

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are

    bIsh

New House Blog: Episode LXVI - Lighting The Way

Lately we've been feeling the need for new and more light at our New House.  Our New House came with light, and lights, but we felt we could make improve some of the light.

Lighting Part I

The fireplace room needed improved light during the day.  With the window open the gentle breezes regularly and reliably would cause the open curtains to close, thus blocking the light.  The easiest solution was to install some curtain holdbacks to prevent the wind from blowing the curtains closed.  We selected basic black curtain holdbacks to match our basic black curtain rod.  See the before and after below.

 This is the old curtain configuration.

 This is a close-up of a basic black curtain holdback.  Notice the jaunty angle at which it is mounted.

This is the new curtain configuration.  Since adding the holdbacks we have not had any wind-caused curtain closeage.







Lighting Part II

Another area of lighting that needed improvement was the front porch light.  It provided light, and it had a handy dusk-to-dawn sensor for automatic turning on and off, but it was kind of plain (and to some kind of ugly), and it didn't really match our new house numbers.  The local Home Depot had a lot of motion-sensing porch lights, but only a paltry selection of porch lights with a dusk-to-dawn sensor.  Fortunately, Amazon.com carries a lot more than books these days, and we found a porch light we both like and we ordered it.  It arrived in the box in the picture below.

What's with all of those bricks?  Hmmm.....

The model number is highly visible, just in case you want to use this same porch light on your own house.

 This is what the entryway looked like with the old porch light.  It was functional, but pretty bland (ugly).

In this close-up you can see that it really doesn't match the new house numbers.

 After making sure the appropriate breaker was turned off we dismounted the old porch light from the wall.  Note that there is no ground wire extending from the jbox.  The ground wire is inside the box, but it was not connected to the old porch light.

 This is the mount for the new porch light, with all 3 wires extended and awaiting splicing.

The new porch light connected and mounted.

 Here you can see the overall effect, and how the porch light really accentuates and matches the new house numbers.

And finally, the new porch light illuminated.  How did we trick the sensor into turning the light on during the daytime?  We have our little secrets.  In this photo you can also see the curtains being held back by the new black curtain holdbacks.


Lighting Part III

Taking pictures of a little tuxedo cat in the back yard at night requires light - in this case a camera's flash.  I took Satchmo out into our back yard the other night while I was transporting fresh material to the 'Mposter.  He was very excited to be allowed outside, even though he had to be on his leash.

Satchmo in the tall dried grass in our back yard.

 Satchmo approaching the large catnip bush in our food garden.










Lighting Part IIII

Finally, we close out this Episode by telling you about the new trellis we installed for our raspberry bushes.  They are growing rather quickly, and they have already outgrown the basic bamboo frames we installed when we planted them.  For review, this Episode shows the raspberries, and bamboo frames, newly-planted.

We originally thought we would need two trellises - one for each raspberry, but when we brought them home we realized that it made more sense to combine them into one larger supertrellis.

This is the combined supertrellis installed.

What does this supertrellis have to do with lighting?  Admittedly the connection is thin, but it is there.  This supertrellis might interfere with a portion of the sunlight that flows into Becky's office.


A day without light is like a day without
    bIsh