Last weekend, the former owner of our house stopped by to let us know about a burglar alarm we had installed in the house. We were completely unaware of it, and he let us in on a few other tips as long as he was here.

One of the tips was that the plywood beneath our shed was for covering the shrubs in the front of the house to protect them from snow falling off of the roof. This morning, it began snowing pretty heavy with no quick end in sight. After I got done running, I did a quick shovel of the driveway and got the plywood out. Thankfully, I was still wearing my stabilicers, since carrying the plywood up the small hill covered in snow was a little tricky even with spikes coming out the bottom of my feet.

The plywood was actually hinged together from two sheets and in various sizes, so that it was easy to create a tent of sorts over each shrub and bush. A fairly efficient design, and with different sizes it was easy to figure out which bush to put each one over. A couple of them I think have grown a bit wild since I didn’t trim them at all this year, so next year I will have to try taking better care of them.

I have a few lawn care items that I want to address in the spring, so that will just have to go on the list.

I wrote about how to install a soffit extender in your attic, but I did not include a picture. One of our visitors, Fred, left the following comment:

Can you describe (or do you have a photo) of soffit extenders? A quick web search doesn’t show up much - maybe they’re known by another term?

The soffit extenders that I bought are the Raft-R-Mate Attic Rafter Vents, which are thin pieces of pink foam with a ridge down the center. It is basically a flat, U-shaped piece that sits up against your roof on the open end and against the insulation on the closed end. This insures that the air from your soffit vents can get past the insulation into your attic.

It is not very convenient for me to get up into my attic right now to snap a photo, so I included the one from their website. Click on the picture to go visit the official page. Let me know if you have any more questions!

Not homeowner news, but a service that I use is Performancing Metrics. They recently came out with an ad network to go along with the metrics package and their firefox plugin, and were getting bogged down with the cost of running the web tracking tool. Read the rest of this entry »

The true meaning of Christmas is always much more evident on trash day than on Christmas day.

This morning I put out twice as much trash as I usually do, and I normally only put trash out every other week. It is amazing how much more trash gets generated.

I do have to admit, however, that a part of that trash is related to our house getting broken into and having to replace a door. But that only accounts for about half of one of the bags.

Any day that you learn something is a good day. Today, we learned quite a few things about our house that we were previously unaware. Thankfully, we learned them because the previous owner stopped by to say hi rather than through too many things breaking.

The gentleman that we bought the house from got a Christmas letter from our neighbor which mentioned our break-in. He stopped by mostly to let us know that there is in fact a burglar alarm installed in our house. That was a nice thing to learn. He showed us where the controls are and how to operate it.

He also let us know a few tricks like where the water shut off is to the valve in the back (I had already found that) and that there was not one in the front because the shaft was long enough that you could just drain the water with it turned off and be all set. That had been driving me nuts because I could not find a shut off valve inside the house, and had given up.

Shortly after returning my neighbor’s plywood, which he lent us to cover the hole in the back of our house, I discovered that there was some plywood beneath our shed. The gentleman who sold us the house let me know that that is to cover the bushes and small trees in the front of the house from snow falling off of the roof. That’s a good tidbit to learn before we start getting significant snowfall.

It was very sweet of him to stop by and let us know about the burglar alarm and such. He misses his house; he built it with his own hands and lived here for 40 years. Him and his wife are too old to maintain a house themselves, though; she can barely move, and he is at the point where he can not mow the lawn any more.

I gave him one of our wedding beers as a Christmas gift. Merry Christmas.

After our house was burglarized, we had basically written off our tree. The only time that my wife would have had to decorate it was on Friday evening, and since the tree was coated in glass there was no safe way that we were going to be able to bring it upstairs and decorate it. We had decided to leave it outside so that we would at least have the semblance of some sort of holiday spirit; maybe the cars driving by would have reflected off the bits of glass.

Yesterday, while cleaning up the glass from the basement, I decided that I could not stand to see my wife look so dissappointed. I spent about 3 hours on the tree with the safety goggles, some good gloves, a respirator and a shop vacuum. I started at the top and worked my way down, sucking down any leaves, bird feathers, and bits of glass that I could find. When I got to the bottom, I cleaned up what had been knocked to the floor. Then I worked my way back up. I probably traversed the tree at least 8 or 9 times. I doubt that I managed to find all of the glass in the tree, but I cleaned it up enough that I only saw one piece of glass in the last 2 or 3 times up and down the tree. At that point, I thought that the tree would be safe enough to bring upstairs and decorate.

We were a couple of days late, but we were able to use our christmas tree. I saved Christmas! My wife is very happy with me now.

Yesterday, my house was broken into. The thieves broke my glass door in the basement and stole my piggy bank. This left a lot of broken glass littering my basement and whereever it happened to be tracked through the house by people walking through it.

To clean the glass up, I used a combination of a plastic cup, a dust bin, a piece of wood (that used to wedge the sliding glass door shut but does not prevent people from coming through the door) and a bunch of paper bags. I double bagged the paper bags and filled them about a quarter to a third of the way before moving onto the next one. I also used a broom a few times, but for the most part it was easier scooping with the cup and the dust bin.

After almost hitting my head on the remaining glass in the door, I decided to get the rest of it out of the frame, which left a bit more to clean up. At least I didn’t have to worry about where I stood anymore.

Once I got the majority of the glass picked up, I got out the shop-vac. My boss let me borrow the shop-vac from work, and it made picking up much easier. It worked out quite well for getting things out of the corners and for the little bits strewn about everywhere. I still need to go outside and get the piles that are outside the door, but at least the vast majority of what was inside is picked up. We will be able to get in there and safely measure the door frame now to determine what we have available for a door replacement.

What do you do when your house gets broken into? What steps should you take? How do you make sure that it does not happen again?

My house got broken into this afternoon. They stole my piggy bank. Eight and a half months into home ownership, and I have to replace a door. The worst part is that they covered my Christmas tree in glass; since the door was made of safety glass, it shattered and left a fine coat of sharpness over a vast majority of my basement. We had the Christmas tree right in front of the door to acclimate it and planned on bringing it upstairs tonight to decorate it. Now, it would be too dangerous. I will probably put it out in front of the house for a couple weeks.

My wife and I got home at about the same time tonight. We immiediately noticed the change on the kitchen floor and part of my fire engine piggy bank just inside the door. We assumed that the cat had been having a whole lot of fun. After she had been fed and went downstairs, though, we heard her crunching through something. It turned out to be all of the glass from our sliding glass door. We took a quick look around and called the police.
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At the end of August, I told my Geico that I had gotten married and my insurance premium dropped by over $100. I had planned on combining our policies shortly thereafter.

Well, over 3 months is shortly thereafter, I suppose. We never wound up combining them and then getting a refund on the unused policy. Instead, we just combined the policies once the original one that we were cancelling came due. All in all, we will be saving about $360 or so per year. Next year I plan on shopping around to see if I can get a better rate, and bring that number down even more.

I woke up this morning and saw my mail box in my neighbor’s driveway. Looking up and down the street, and you would not think that there was anything wrong.

My neighbor’s mail box is on a post next to my mail box, which stands directly in front of a telephone pole. The pole is driven into the ground in the side of a ditch. I guess that just makes them that much more of a target.
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