Geothermal / Hive Room

It has been a while......

Yes, I have been working on the house this whole time. I looked at my last post... August 22ish, 2012, which is 2.5 years ago!

You know what happened? That week I met the love of my life. Solo activities such as blogging fell to the wayside. She and I got married in September 2014, and she now puts just as much time into this house as I do these days! (Gay marriage is now legal in where we live, hooray!)

So from now on the projects documented most likely had (quite a bit of) help from my wife. Like this one...

Project: Geothermal Room

Approximate start & completion date: 5/26/2014

We wanted to liven up the basement room that the geothermal heat pump lives in. It doesn't have much of a purpose besides tool storage, but we have to walk through it to get to other rooms. Might as well make it look nice.

Again, not afraid of the dark colors. Natural woods, chocolate brown, bamboo green, chalkboard paint.

You can see the mess in the basement- we are still working on many projects!

Reclaimed wood door from The Rebuilding Center.

Always going to Home Depot...

Light switch gets an upgrade

The corner, it all comes together

The shelves are cut from timber from our own backyard. Yes, we chainsawed them. We use a Timberjig to cut the boards.

All bark, no bite.

This is now one of my favorite rooms. We love honeycomb patterns.

Upstairs Hallway

I decided on an eggplant hue for the hallway and left the trim and built-ins white. The art on the walls is honestly just so I don't have to store it anywhere. We will put real thought into what to hang and where later on.

Small built-in. For a telephone?

Larger built-in. What to do with these??

Installing Geothermal Heat/cooling

I have been busy working on the house and am backed up on updates. I just had geothermal heat and air conditioning installed in our home. This involved tearing out the old oil burning furnace and digging up the back yard to lay down pipes that carry water to and from the geothermal unit. I am using the company Geonomic Development to have this done. Below are some photos.

You can see the pipes in his hand coming out from the ground.

More pipes...

Some photos of the unit:

These units are made in the US and distributed right here in Portland.

Here you can see the duct work that was done. We had to add ducts and vents to all the basement rooms.

You can see the footprint of the old giant furnace, which was placed in the middle of the room, inefficiently using space.

Geonomic Development has been really great to work with. We highly recommend contacting them for Geothermal services in Oregon.

We are now generating air conditioning with our backyard! In the Winter, we will be generating heat! I really couldn't explain how it works... I think there is a tiny wizard that lives in the unit who makes it happen. Magic.

*UPDATE 4/10/15: I learned how this happens - it is a heat pump system that brings in air from underground, which is a stable temp year round and heats or cools it to your desired temp. So if it's HOT out and you want AC, bring in the 55* air right out of the ground, instead of cooling down the 95* air from outside. No cooling needed. In the winter, bring in 55* air and heat it to 67* (or whatever) with electricity, rather than trying to heat the outside air (20*-40*) to 67*. Saves money and energy! We have experienced low bills since it was installed 2.5 years ago!

Bathroom (Main Floor)

Shower knob was missing

Unfortunately we don't really have true "before" photos from when we got the house. The bathroom was dirty and full of weird stuff. It had tacky wallpaper boarders around the top of the walls. After we removed all that, here is our progress...

Water in hot water tank was rusty

Jacob (my brother) is painting the bathroom bright red

Jacob looks pleased with the color

Shower Curtain

Door

Wall

Living Room

Just so you know, I have become the queen of craigslist deals and negotiations. :)

We started adding the furniture and the room magically begins to transform.

We got a sweet lamp to go along with the mid-century aesthetic.

Got an awesome rug. You can also see the record player in the background. Ahh... it is all coming together...

Green Tea On The Walls

I am not afraid of dark, cozy living rooms. Especially ones with a fireplace, comfy wing back chairs and hardwood floors. Add an old record player scratching away at an Echo and the Bunnymen album heard somewhere in the background, a delicious novel and a hot cup of tea... THAT is the kind of living room I envision. Hmm.. well, we are getting there.....

Updates:

• Stove circuit is fixed and stove now works!
• Fridge is still acting up... called an appliance doctor, making a house call on Tuesday to get this sorted out.
• Front room (pictured) is now all painted, ceiling, walls, and trim! Time to bring in that record player....

Kitchen First

After a brief period of feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to start, I finally came to my senses and tackled the kitchen first. Now I am close to having it done. It actually looks safe enough to cook food in there! Unfortunately I discovered the range circuit breaker is broken, so I'll have replace that. Then when I plugged in the fridge (after letting it "settle" of course) it started shutting off (some auto-protection from overheating?). I don't know what the problem is. Tomorrow I will investigate it further.

Too bad I didn't grab any "before" photos. I am planning to remodel the kitchen in maybe a year... right now there is too much to do so I just need to get things clean and working.