To Say Nothing of the Kitchen Sink

Nothing too exciting to write about. Yesterday I finished hooking up the vent for the range hood. This afternoon I spent cleaning up the dining room so I can move forward with that. It's been full of cardboard, boxes, pieces of styrofoam, etc. from the kitchen work. Everything (including the kitchen sink) had packaging. Some a little, some a lot, but it all added up to a substantial amount of cardboard. K had cut a bunch of it up before to go in the recycling bin, but there was still a fair amount left. Some of it I'd used to protect the plywood underlayment while installing the cabinets, and some had been re-used for various tasks before that, but most of it was just waiting to be recycled. I even have a potential lead on recycling most of the styrofoam. Each of the cabinets had styrofoam on the corners, and numerous other things had pieces here and there, so it added up to a fair amount. The catch is that they're waiting on some new equipment, and so can't accept donations right now. But better than into a landfill.

This Old Recyclable House

There's a great article over at the NY Times on deconstruction of houses to reuse as many of the building materials as possible, and recycle most of the rest. It takes a lot longer than just knocking a building down with a bulldozer, but in the end keeps a lot of stuff out of landfills:

The Stanford archaeologist William Rathje, who spent decades excavating landfills, has estimated that construction and demolition debris, together with paper, account for "well over half" of what America throws out. He called it one of a few "big-ticket items" in the waste stream actually worthy of the debates we have over merely "symbolic targets" like disposable diapers.

Rebuilding a house is usually better than tearing it down, but even remodeling generates a lot of waste:

Remodeling actually ends up generating more than one and a half times the amount of debris every year that demolishing homes does.

And in some cases, like the houses in the article, looters have damaged some parts of abandoned houses, and it's a better use of the materials to help someone else fix the house they're still living in.

Interestingly, as people are rediscovering with food, it pays to stay as local as possible:

Moreover, a study Guy wrote with two environmental engineers uncovered an empirical argument for keeping those materials local: on average, shipping them more than 20 miles away for resale can cancel out any energy conserved by reclaiming them.

I've tried to reuse and recycle as much as I can from our addition and remodel (the interior doors are from re-use sources, for example), but there's not much you can do with rotted, termite-filled wood that has paint or creosote on it like I got from the old front porch.

Locally, we've got a lot of choices for reusing materials. There's Urban Ore, Ohmega Salvage, and my favorites, the Habitat ReStore and The ReUse People store. I've donated stuff to and bought stuff from both. The ReUse People specialize in deconstruction of buildings as described in the article, and the Habitat ReStore helps support Habitat for Humanity's mission of elimination substandard housing.

And there's always freecycle.org. Besides acquiring or getting rid of random stuff that the above aren't interested in, occasionally various construction and remodeling materials are offered up. I've received a couple of sheets of drywall for the cost of driving a couple of miles to pick them up, and given people bits and pieces they could use. It's a win-win...what's not to like?

Reused Materials

Now that the tile is all done, yesterday I installed the last bit of baseboard in the bathroom, and installed and primed some cleats to hold up the little shelves in the wall next to the shower. I'm using a couple of nice bits of beech that I had left over from building the kitty walkway and ladder to the loft, and I'll stain them cherry to match the vanity.

I also took some of the salvaged redwood decking from the walkway by the side of the house, and built a a little outdoor table to go in the sitting area near the Mediocre Wall. Not bad for a couple hours work, and a fine use of wood that was too short and too weathered to use for repairing the rest of the deck. In any event, it'll probably outlast the wall, and provides a fine place to set a beer while watching the sunset after a hard day's work. Also note the lovely handmade coasters made of reused materials :-)

We've been trying to reuse as much as we can during the remodel. The obvious (but difficult) thing was the 1x12 siding. We managed to reclaim enough of it that I haven't had to mill any new siding, but we'll see if that holds for the last bit of wall when the old front door goes away. The bedroom and bathroom doors are from the East Bay Habitat ReStore and the nearby ReUse People store. You can't reuse structural lumber, and there's limited gains to reusing uninsulated older windows, but fortunately the East Bay has a lot of options for reused building materials.

Old Things Made New

We have a L-shaped sofa bed that I probably bought 20 years (it still has one of the more comfortable beds in a sofa bed that I've slept on). For some time now, the built-in recliner has had a mind of its own. You can be sitting there comfortably, and then *bang!* the footrest flies up. We'd (sort of) gotten used to it, but last week we had some of Katarina's visiting Swedish cousins over for dinner, and one of them got the randomly-firing-ejector-seat treatment. So yesterday I decided to see if there was anything I could do to fix it. After carefully pulling back the cloth (and layers of dust bunnies) from the bottom, I quickly determined that there was a broken spring. (I cleverly deduced this by having it fall out when I pulled back the cloth.) Fortunately the spring was broken near the end, so by bending it a little I was able to reattach it, et voilà! We can now safely sit in the recliner without fear of ejection. As an added bonus, the footrest now comes up at a more sane speed than it has for a while. Of course, the upholstery still needs cleaning again, but it's nice to be able to sit in peace.

On house-related matters, Katarina and I painted most of the exterior a while back. But there's been a section under the eaves on the back of the house, above the bedroom windows that is a pain in the patooky to reach because the base of the ladder has to sit on the side of the hill, and with the windows, there's not much room for the top of the ladder to scootch around as things shift. I considered getting a Little Giant or the like, but some of the positions on the other side of the house would challenge even that. And then there's the fact I've already got 3 ladders (an extension ladder, a longer and heavier extension ladder, and a medium step ladder) and didn't really want to get another one. So I looked around and ended up getting some ladder levelers, and in the way that well done online shopping sites can incite one to do, I got a stabilizer, too. Today I installed the levelers (it requires removing the existing feet and drilling some holes in the legs of the ladder) and tried it out, and between the two, it's like having a new ladder. It's never been this stable before except in those few places where the ground is perfectly level. Good stuff!

Synchronicity

This story begins in the late 1800s in northern Sweden. Katarina's great uncle Alfred was one of a family of 13, and local prospects were "not good". So he strapped on his skis and skied across the mountains to Norway. He sold his skis for one crown to use for boat fare to England. He eventually made his way to San Francisco, where he was a tailor. Apparently when the 1906 earthquake hit, he grabbed his two most valuable possessions: his shoes and his violin.

Some years later, when Katarina's dad was a young man and had finished his studies at the Technical University in Stockholm, he came to the U.S. to visit his Uncle Alfred. He loved the Bay Area, and attended UC Berkeley to get his MBA. It was during this time he met and married Katarina's mom. They eventually moved to Sweden (where Katarina was born), and after living in Belgium and then Iran, they eventually returned to the Bay Area.

Somewhere along the line, the dining room table (shown above perched on top of the VW) went from Uncle Al to Katarina's parents. They had it for many years, and when they moved to a smaller place at retirement, some of their furniture was offered to Katarina and her siblings. We had no room for the table at the time, so Katarina's brother and sister-in-law took it. They recently got a new hand-me-down table, and at long last, the table came to us.

It didn't come without a struggle, though. None of my neighbors have a pickup, but the VW and I are no strangers to hauling large, strange loads. Katarina and I decided the logistics of loading the table onto the VW would be simpler than finding a vehicle to borrow. With a couple of 2x4s to support the middle, and some cardboard for padding, we set off for Berkeley to pick it up. With some assistance we got it on the VW. While I tied it on, Katarina and Azar loaded up the chairs and table leaves, and we set off for home.

I'd tied it quite securely, but we took surface streets just in case. Along the way, we were delayed by an odd sight: a double-bottom dump truck attempting to back up several blocks. If you've ever tried backing up with a trailer, you know how challenging that can be; this was times 2 and this guy was no expert. We pulled off to the side and got past it, and eventually made our way home.

Then came the challenge of getting the table from the carport down to the house. Katarina and I tried, but realized our first approach wouldn't work. It was too heavy to easily get around the bend in the steps. I had apheresis at the Red Cross in the afternoon, so we left the table in the carport.

The next day, I had the idea to take the table apart into two halves. Since it came most of the way apart for leaves, it was the fairly simple matter of removing half a dozen screws, et voilà! While I was working on that, one of my neighbors came home. I hadn't seen her in a while, so we chatted for a bit. While we were talking, a pickup drove up, and the guy asked me if I wanted to hire him to trim the monster tree (shown above, behind the VW). It's really supposed to be a bush, and I told him I wanted it hacked back like my neighbors had been, to a more manageable size. He gave me an estimate, I told him sure, and he attacked it with a frenzy.

When Katarina came home from work, she gaped in awe at the trimmed tree, and then we easily moved the table down, squeezed it through the front door, and put it in the living room. Reassembling the halves was a bit more of a challenge, but I eventually got it back together. We still don't really have room for it since the dining room and kitchen aren't done yet, but the timing and price were right. And it's a great table that's been in Katarina's family for quite a few years.

After moving the table down, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to a woman I didn't recognize, but she didn't look like she was selling anything. Turns out she's one of our neighbors up the street that we've never met, and she'd come over to thank us for trimming the bush and ask hopefully if we were going to trim the last bit (Note: I'm still waiting for Ray to return and finish. Hmm...)

And that's the story of how an 1800s ski trip led to our new dining room table, a half-trimmed tree and a 'new' neighbor.

Update: Ray came and finished up this afternoon. It ended up costing more than I thought, in part because there was another tree buried inside the monster bush, and in part because Ray played a little loose with the numbers. But not enough to argue about, and it's done!

...and not a drop to drink

California is facing another drought. It's not that surprising given that California is basically semiarid (the north coast gets more, and other areas get less) and has a large population and lots of agriculture. One bad precip year isn't generally a problem, but this is our second. Rainfall is only part of the equation, as we mostly rely on the melting snowpack to carry us through the summer and fall. We had a relatively warm, dry spring, so the snowpack is 1/3 below normal. So the various water districts are asking for voluntary cutbacks, and some (like our very own EBMUD) are considering mandatory rationing.

There's a nice write up over at TreeHugger with the unappetizing title, "How To Green Your Water" (better than some other colors, but...) We're already doing a lot of things on the lists (not eating meat is big), but that's not to say we couldn't do more. So I'm thinking again about some of the same water-saving ideas I was a while ago, namely a hot water recirc pump, and rain barrels or maybe even a cistern.

One big thing almost all of you can do is give up bottled water. Not only does it take a lot of water to make a plastic bottle, it takes a lot of energy and petroleum products to make it, transport it, and then (at best) recycle the bottle. Chances are you've already got better water coming out of the tap that costs a lot less. A reusable water bottle (avoiding hard plastic bottles with BPA, of course) is a much better idea in the long run. At Google, every Noogler (new Googler) gets a spiffy Google-labeled water bottle. Besides plug-in hybrids that employees can borrow and investing in alternative energy, it sounds like Google is moving towards banning bottled water on their campuses.

Even if you live somewhere that's not facing another drought, consider this: 3/4ths of our lovely home planet is covered in water. However, only 2.5% of that is fresh water, and most of that is in the glaciers and polar ice caps. Even if you disagree about the origins of global warming or even that there is such a thing, you can't argue with the fact that glaciers are melting at record rates and the polar ice caps are shrinking. That means we need to use what fresh water we've got wisely, and work towards affordable desalination systems. Those of course take energy to run, and that's in short supply, too.

Got Junk? Not any more!

We've had junk in the carport for a long time. And outside my office window. And even some by the basement door left from replacing the corroded plumbing. Then there's the stump that Edis and I dug out ages ago. Katarina has been very patient with living in a construction zone, but the piles of junk were starting to get to both of us. To top it off, the pile in the carport meant we couldn't get to the shed where our bikes are stored. Warm weather and $4 a gallon gas has us thinking about riding again.

Given my upcoming Habitat trip to Biloxi and ongoing recovery from tendinitis, bronchitis, and rhinitis (allergies), Katarina suggested hiring someone to haul the junk away. The cheapest option would be renting a truck, hauling the junk myself, and driving it to the transfer station and unloading, but by far the most work. I did some checking, and for the same price as a 14-yard dumpster (the smallest they said I could put construction debris in) from Waste Management where I hauled everything up to it, I could get a 3-yard truck from 1-800-got-junk? where they did all the work. A no-brainer decision...assuming I had 3 cubic yards or less of stuff. I knew I had about that much in the carport, but there was also the old drywall outside my office and the stump. I decided to go for it, and see how much was left afterwards.

The service from 1-800-got-junk? was great. Easy to book on their website and choose a 2-hour window on the day of my choice, and they said they'd call about 30 minutes before arriving. Given how well various utilities and delivery services do with time windows, I had low, nay, rock-bottom expectations on the timing. I was shocked to have the phone ring exactly 30 minutes before the expected window, saying they'd be there in 25-30 minutes. Which they were. Listening, SBC/AT&T?

Per their website, I just pointed at what I wanted hauled away, and they did the work. Well, except for the stump. I suspected it might be too heavy for them to move up to the carport (that's why it'd been sitting there), and it was. So my work consisted of taking an ax and a construction bar to it to break it up into manageable pieces. It'd been sitting there long enough (12+ years in the ground, 2+ years on the front path) that I could break it into 4 easier pieces.

Not the cheapest option, but great service, and they recycle what can be recycled (generally up to 60% of what they haul; probably less than that of our load because I'd already recycled most of what could be). I highly recommend them if you can't haul stuff yourself.

Found Treasures

We're planning to use the same tile for the shower as we used on the floor in the new bathroom. It's a nice soft green (Katarina loves green), and is the same design (sort of a random wash of bits of darker stuff) as the sand colored tile we used in the shower surround in the old bathroom back when I redid that. That had a similar orangish version, matching bullnose tiles, 3x3 grid tiles (that I cut into 3x1), and a nice complementary set of accent tiles with different designs. The green version had the bullnose and the grid, but no accent tiles, and no similar color that went well with it. Despite the shower being unique (custom size, shelf because of the foundation, etc.), I was worried it would be a bit boring with just some bits of 3x1 at the edge of the shelf, but I went ahead and bought the tile for both the floor and the shower.

While I was waiting for the tile to be brought out of the warehouse, I looked around at what there was to see in the driveway between the tile showroom and the warehouse next door. Various warning signs, tile saw for customers to use for a few cuts, etc. Then I spotted something I'd seen before -- the tile scrap bin. Basically bits of cut and broken tile that aren't salable any more. I looked in it, and found 95% of a sheet of 1x1 glass tiles, in a nice mix of blues and greens. It was missing a few squares, and a few were chipped, but it was otherwise a lovely little bit of tiles, so I snagged it and put it in the car.

Today I figured out the layout for the shower tile, cleaned up some stuff, and started tiling. I think these little guys are going to make perfect accent tiles, and the fact they were free-99 and headed for the dumpster is all the better.

I didn't get that much tile put up, but got a good start and more than that cut for some of the odd-sized bits at the ends. Alas, tomorrow will be a busy day so no more tiling until Monday. First service at church to train the second service person on the differences; second service will be a joint service with the Baptists that share our sanctuary; the evening will mean a return trip for an organizational meeting for this year's Mexico mission trip. Easter is earlier this year, so spring break for the schools is, so the Mexico trip is, too.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Redux

Part of why moving my office out of the dining room took so long was that there was so much stuff. I took some time to sort through it, and shredded a lot of old documents for recycling and threw away some useless crud. But the best way I've found to get rid of stuff I don't use is Freecycle. It's kind of like a local eBay, but free. You post what you've got, and other people claim it. Or you ask for stuff you need, and people may have it. It's a great way to keep stuff out of the landfill while simultaneously preventing more stuff from being made to replace it. There are now happy new owners of computer speakers, unused printer cartridges from Camron-Stanford House for a printer they no longer have, and some other bits and pieces are awaiting pickup. And I now have a futon for visitors to sit on, and which can serve as a guest bed.

Not surprisingly, I first read about Freecycle over on Treehugger, which is a great site for keeping up with what's new in the world of green and greenish things.