Picking a Wireless Thermostat

 My wife had an unfortunate mishap with our upstairs thermostat the other day which left it inoperable. Normally I would put this on my to-do list (have you tried todoist ? it really helps me!) and get to it eventually, but we are heading into summer and it will be needed soon.

So I started to research what to replace it with. And actually, since we have separate upstairs and downstairs thermostat, I would be buying two (to keep them the same - I don't want to learn two systems!). My first inclination was to buy the one with the easiest interface. I am always frustrated with the confusing controls, so I'll pay extra for one that is easy to use. Also, I'm a big fan of thermostats that can turn on the a/c or the heater WITHOUT flipping a switch. I mean, the thermostat should know if it's too hot or too cold, right?

But not far into my research, I stumbled across wireless thermostats on smarthomes.com. I was instantly intrigued....for a few reasons. This post is a summary of the types of wireless thermostats that are on the market right now, and why you may want to choose one type over the other. Read on...

Is your thermostat located in a bad spot? Is your house too cold because your thermostat is located in the sun, or too hot because your thermostat is located in a cold draft? We have that problem with our upstairs. We have an open floor plan and the coolness from the downstairs wafts upward and keeps the upstairs thermstat thinking it is cool upstairs, while actually the bedrooms are baking in the sun. Not a good thing. Well, a company called Venstar offers a solution. Replace the thermostat with a receiver that takes signals from a portable thermostat. Place the portable thermostat on a table in the room you will be in and like magic that room will become the measure of comfort! We'll place the portable thermostat in our bedroom to ensure we stay comfortable all night long. We now have the Venstar on order and should receive it next week. All I'll have to do is replace the broken thermostat with the receiver and place the new portable thermostat on our nightstand.

This is the only thermostat I could find on the market like this, but I did find other wireless thermostats for other uses. You may want to consider them for your situation.

  Honeywell offers a wireless thermostat also. It is designed for use in homes that currently do not have central air, but the owner wants to add it. The Honeywell unit allows a/c to be added without running wires in the wall to the appropriate location for a thermostat. Install a receiver on a wall close to the a/c unit and run a short wire from the receiver to the a/c unit. Then, mount the thermostat in a good location in the house. The thermostat will communicate wirelessly to the receiver. Optionally, a remote control thermostat can be added to this setup. This is a great solution for homes that are not pre-wired for air conditioning, and no doubt helps Honeywell sell more air conditioning units!

 A third type of wireless thermostats on the market right now, and the most common type, are called IP wireless thermostats. These thermostats are wired to the a/c unit just like a typical thermostat, but they can be set and monitored from your computer. The communication between your computer and the thermostat is wireless IP, thus the name.

We went with the Venstar (see the first photo) since it solves our upstairs temperature problem, while the IP wireless thermostats would not. I might have considered the Honeywell solution had the installation guide been clear about how to place the receiver where a thermostat used to be, but the installation guide only talked about wiring the receiver directly to an a/c unit - I didn't want to go there at all.

But what I really wanted - and would have bought - is something I could not find anywhere: basically a combination of the three solutions. I would like the freedom to place my thermostat anywhere, the ability to have my receiver use existing wiring in my house, and the ability to monitor and set my remote thermostat from my computer or actually anywhere on the internet. I would have paid good money for something that did all of that. So here is the opportunity, you entrepeneurs. You build it, I'll buy it.

Old Man Winter

Well we are finally at the point where we can start focusing on furnishing the house - we've pretty much wrapped up the remodel. My project last weekend was to strengthen the niche wall in our stairway so it could hold our new "Old Man Winter" wall sculpture. At 30 inches wide and 40 pounds, he is one heavy dude and I didn't want to worry about him falling on our head every time we came down the stairs.

Actually, I have no idea if the artist intended this to be the face of Old Man Winter or not - I just know that is what it looks like to me. And his piercing eyes now stare right at you when you're about halfway down the upper flight of stairs.

We discovered this beauty while out exploring a few Saturdays ago. The store, Column One, had several pieces we really liked so we thought about it overnight, went back the next day, and bought every piece we liked! We found great locations in our home for all of them, but Old Man Winter is so heavy that a simple wall hook would not work. So I tore out the sheet rock and installed a heavy duty bolt. I can tell you for sure that the wall art will break before the wall hook does now.

After checking with the financial arm of our household (wifey), I now know I must wait until next month to have our sheetrock guy, Dave Borders, come and patch the sheetrock for me. For now, I'll have to be happy seeing Old Man Winter peering down on us from atop his pink insulation background.

Our House, Part 5: Master Bath

 Another room that we extensively remodeled was the master bathroom. Standing in the master bedroom, here is what you see. The floor originally had carpet - we took that out and put in tile. The counter was contractor-grade white tile - we replaced it with absolute black granite, undermounted sinks and new faucets. The light fixtures are new as is the paint which is many shades darker than the original color.

 This is another view while standing in the master bedroom. At the very end is the walk-in closet. To the left is a tub and a shower. To give us more floor space, we removed the step for the tub. We never use the tub anyway and would rather be able to easily sit on the edge.

 We are really happy with the way the shower turned out. We went with the frameless style, I think they also call it Euro style. For a reason that escapes me, we went with the thinner of the two glass thicknesses. I think if I were to do it over again, I would go with the thicker glass. The thinner glass has been okay, but we have to be careful not to lean too hard on it and if we really tried we could actually break it.

 We ran the tile all the way up to the ceiling to avoid getting moisture on the sheetrock - it doesn't cost that much extra to do this and is well worth the money. The contractor wanted to know if we wanted to raise the showerhead (he says it is quite a common change now) or even change it to ceiling mounted, but we declined. My wife has a hard enough time reaching the showerhead at this height.

 We placed accent tiles around the edge of the tub - I think they were called cigarellos or something like that - which added to the look but caused us a problem where it wraps around into the shower. Everyone recommended that we notch the tile so that the shower glass could run smoothly down to the floor, so that is what we did. I had originally wanted to notch the glass and not the tile, but apparently it is never done that way.

 My wife chose the accent in the shower itself and it came out looking quite nice. It alternates between aqua glass rectangles and some sort of metal diamond and looks much better than even this photo shows.

 And finally, the master closet. All we did in here was to replace the carpet and paint. Note her shoe collection...I am going to build/buy a rack to make them easier to access here soon because I am afraid the shoes on the bottom of the stack are not getting worn much. And I must tell you - I enjoy seeing her wear those shoes as much as she enjoys wearing them!

 My side of the closet. Kind of boring. Shirts are sorted by color and sleeve length (short sleeve, long sleeve).

 What did it look like before, you may ask? Here is the shower before we started. Contractor grade everything. Note how high the shower tile goes.

 Here is what the tub looked like. That is the step that we removed. It looks like we were in the process of deciding what tile to put in when this photo was taken - see all the sample tiles?

 And finally, the original bathroom cabinet. We refinished the wood, removed the countertop, and replaced the carpet with tile.

Here is what you have to look forward to if you choose to remodel. It looks innocuous in the photo, but I can tell you it is a royal pain to come home in business clothes to find who knows what in your house, including clouds of dust and debris between you and your closet. Now that it is all done, I am glad we ripped everything out at once. It took us about 7 months but we now have the home we wanted.

Bosch Ovens Take Silver

For whatever reason, I have ended up on the mailing list of an appliance design magazine at work. I often think magazine companies do this sort of thing on purpose to boost their circulation numbers, but this one still caught me by surprise.

As I did a quick thumb-through of the magazine on it's way to the circular file, I happened to notice that the oven we purchased this year had taken silver in the 21st annual Excellence In Design (EID) awards. Interesting! Others are appreciating it as much as we do.

Reading the text, it sounds like it won for two reasons, one which we had noted during the purchase, the other we hadn't paid much attention to. We knew it had the European Convention capability, and that did factor into our decision. But the two-hour self-cleaning feature had apparently went right by us at the time.

Anyway, winning a silver would not have influenced our decision one way or the other. But it is nice to note anyway. And for the record, Bosch dishwashers are excellent also....the one we bought is so quiet we don't even know it is running until it purges itself of water.

Our House, Part 1

As many of you know, we sold our 2200 sf home last year and bought another home nearby. This was not as smooth and operation as it sounds on the surface, as many of my friends and relatives well know. But we survived the year and ended up in a very delightful house that fits out lifestyle extremely well.

The new house is 2938 sf, 5 bedroom, 3 baths and is about 10 years old. The lot is somewhere around 8,000 square feet, though I don't know for sure. One of these days I'll go down to the county archive and find out, but it isn't high enough on my priority list right now.

The family that lived in the home before us had 7 children. They are well behaved and polite, but any time you have that many people in a house it will wear out faster. Therefore, we decided to completely redo the interior of the house. We ripped out the kitchen and bathrooms and refinished everything else. Now, 9 months later, it is pretty much done except for a few trim pieces such as baseboards and light fixtures.

As time goes on, I will post a few photos of the finished rooms. We have been getting many friends and relatives making reservations at the Bell Curve Hotel this summer, and we welcome that as we are anxious to show off what we've done and share some time with the people we care for. We are very happy with the way it turned out.

Once we recover financially from the remodel, we'll turn our attention to the back yard where we want to add a hot tub and perhaps a small pool. But that definitely won't happen anytime in 2008!

Our House, Part 2: Kitchen Remodel

 One of the first things we tackled when we moved into our house was the kitchen. The old kitchen was the standard contractor issue white tile, white grout, and white appliances. The sink, cooktop and oven were pretty well worn out GE units, while the dishwasher was a newer Bosch model. The dishwasher was noticeably quieter than most dishwashers.

The vent hood was also the standard basic contractor-issue white, and the cabinets were in decent shape. The finish has yellowed due to sunlight, and the finish was worn off the top edges of many of the lower drawers.

 The microwave and double oven worked well, but were showing signs of age and had many stains that we could not get out. We therefore decided to redo the entire kitchen. We hired a contractor named Ray to put in the tile and granite, and also hired cabinet refinishers. About two weeks before we were to leave for Hawaii, we had told Ray to finish the kitchen tile demo before we left as we had scheduled the cabinet refinishers to come in the week we were gone. He kept delaying the kitch demo date, and ended up not showing up the day before we left. Therefore, four of us (my wife, my son, my wife's son and myself) ended up working until about 2 AM with hammers and picks ripping out tile, chicken wire and float and tossing it out the kitchen window. Ray was fired shortly thereafter.

 The kitchen cabinets came out beautifully (we also had the wood floors refinished by a different contractor), and the tile and granite work is superb. The 'after' pictures are before the vent hood and microwave were installed, but the rest of the appliances are in. We went with a new Bosch dishwasher (it makes no noise at all unless it is purging old water!), and a Franke sink and faucet. They are all awesome.

 The granite we selected is called Blue Night and has small flecks of blue that glows when the light hits it just right. Very beautiful. You can catch just a glimpse of the new 6 burner gas Viking cooktop to the far left. At this point, the microwave had not been installed yet.

 We also went with a Bosch double-oven (electric) and it works like a champ. This is our first oven with digital controls, and we are still learning some of the nuances with these types of controls. For one thing, it appears that the oven put itself in pause mode when my wife opened the door for a peek. We did not discover this for another hour, unfortunately.

My wife had the idea to round the ends of the island: a simple idea that added a tremendous about of interest to the design. We are very happy with it, and John Hayes Tile & Stone did a fantastic job of making just the right curve. Perfection!
And there you have it, a quick tour of our kitchen. My job this coming weekend will be to put knobs on all the cabinets. Our last kitchen had knobless cabinets, and this eventually led to wear marks on all the wood. As much as we prefer the knobless look, we have bought 50 knobs (yes, there are 50 in this kitchen!) and hope to avoid the worn finish look this time around.

And no worries, folks. The old appliances were not put into the landfill. Every one found a new home in a new kitchen - I used Craigslist to find them each a new station in life.

Our House, Part 3: The Back Yard

 One year ago today, we moved into our new house. Well, new to us: it was over 10 years old at the time. Some may wonder whether that was a wise time to buy, with prices being near an all-time high. In the year since we moved, our old home has fallen in value as much as, if not more than, the new home so all we really did was move our mortgage from one abode to another. The portion of the equity that has vanished would have went away whether we had stayed or moved. And I can tell you for sure, we are much, much happier at this new place.

 As we've been outlining in previous posts, we immediately started a remodel to fit our tastes. One area that we have not touched at all (yet) is the back yard. It works well the way it is for now, and we were using the back patio as a staging area for new interior fixtures until February of this year.

 The worn patio furniture and Weber grill are holdovers from the previous house - we need to get better furniture some day. But for now, we have higher priorities. The back yard is not as shallow as it appears in this picture: the patio itself is 16 feet from the back of the house to the edge, and it is 20 feet from the edge of the grass to the back fence. A perfect size, really. Any bigger than that and landscapers charge a fortune, any smaller and I would feel boxed in. We have about 10 feet from the edge of the house to the fence on each side of the house. A little more would be nice, but nothing's perfect.

We haven't touched this area since we moved in.  It is overrun by blackberries and mint.

 If we zoom in above the fence, you can see there is a bare hill just one lot over. That is owned by the water district and, as near as I can tell, it is solid granite. For this reason, they ran the water pipeline over the top of the hill - you can see it if you look closely. We like the bare hill there - it gives us more privacy and more of an open feel.

 Directly behind us and down a 20 foot slope is another home, but it actually adds to the privacy, too. The windows you see peeking over the fence are actually in the upper bedrooms of the home, and they are narrow view windows above the normal windows. In other words, someone would have to get on a pretty tall ladder in order to look out those windows. If anybody is ever nosy enough to do that, they deserve what they see. :-P

 The only change we have made to the back yard is the removal of a wobbly wooden swing set from the dirt area towards the back of this photo. We are eventually going to use that area for a small pool, maybe extending out to the edge of the patio, but that will have to wait at least a year. There is a nice HOA-sponsored pool just 5 doors down anyway. For now, we'll use that.

 Lastly, we are pretty happy with the existing flowers. Normally, my style when planting is to have a massive area of one color, then a massive area of another, etc. But whomever planted this used little sprinkles of color everywhere.

 I think little sprinkles of color is more of a feminine way to plant, but it looks very good in the yard and kind of breaks us out of the normal, standard, masses of color style that our yards typically have. It is a nice change.

To break us out even more from the normal style pattern I have, we are likely to hire a landscape designer to handle the pool and spa when we get to that point. It would be nice to see someone else's spin on a construction project that we complete for a change. I guess I'm getting a little bored with my own style taste.

Our House, Part 4: Entry and Stairs

 It's been awhile since we've continued the tour of our house after the remodel. First, I would like to point out that the furnishings are leftovers from our previous house and need very badly to be replaced...that will come in a few months. And actually, the dining room table & chairs were given to us: they are coming in handy but are definitely not our style. This first picture is of the living room / dining room, with the entry way at the far left. All that we have done to this area so far is carpet and paint.

 Here is a better view of the entryway. We put in new tile here. The niche to the left is a nice touch, so have filled it with sailboats from our last house. We're not sure if the sailboats will stay there, but until we find something better, that is their home. During the kitchen remodel, the fridge sat in the middle of the living room - hooked up and running - for about 2 months. It was fun on Halloween because a few of the Trick or Treaters noticed: "TRICK OR TREAT - uh, why do you have a fridge in your living room?". The rest of them wanted to know why I had horns growing out of my head (they looked mighty good, I might add).

 One of the few purchases we have made since moving in is this vase. While visiting the Temecula Wineries, this caught our eye so be brought it home. It catches the light very well at this location.

Of course, Cory was following me around wondering why I was snapping pictures of everything.

 Here is what really ties the house all together, both functionally and visually: the staircase. It is really sort of a double-staircase with two sets of stairs leading to the landing in the middle, and one set of stairs going from there up to the second floor (more on that later). The room visible upstairs is our guest bedroom. The transom window is a rather unique feature that lets light flow through the interior of the house.

 Standing on the stair landing, we can see the architect has given us some nice platforms for sculpture. The face is new from Home Depot Expo, the other pieces have followed us from the last house.

 Looking up the rest of the stairs we can see the entrance to the master bedroom. Another transom window is located there. We're split on whether it is a good thing: My wife hates it, I rather like it.

 Looking back down at the living room. We have recently switched back from real to artificial Christmas trees, and purchased one from a friend at work (Thanks Micki!) that is 10 feet tall....it looked great in the middle of the living room...and thanks to Lucy it was decorated fabulously.

Looking just to the left of the master bedroom doors we see two more art niches. It is going to take a pair of very large paintings to fill them. We've been looking, but haven't found anything even close to doing the job.

 From the top looking back down, you can see the double-stair feature I was talking about. One can turn right and head down the stairs to the living room, or turn left and head down the stairs to the kitchen. It seems rather silly at first, but is quite handy once you get used to it.

Turning the camera left, you can see the hallway leading to the guest bedroom (straight ahead) before wrapping to the right and going on to David & Lucy's bathroom, bedroom, and "living room" (basically a bedroom used as their living area).

So there you have it - another installment of the tour of our home. Next, I'll show you the master bath. It may be a long post because I have a lot of before and after shots.

Contractor Hall Of Fame

As most of you know, we have been doing some serious, serious remodeling in our home. While it has been a lot of fun, it has been very stressful too. We've run across many great contractors, and a few clunkers. This post is to let you know who the best contractors around are - they deserve your business!! You can click on their business cards to the right to see larger versions (with readable phone numbers!). In alphabetical order:

A Mirror Decor They made a bathroom mirror for us at a reasonable cost and delivered it on time. They are very pleasant to work with.

Barton Custom Paint They painted our entire interior - top to bottom - in three days. Very professional, very pleasant, and again very reasonable on price. High recommended.

Chad of All Trades As the name implies, they did a little bit of everything for us: lots of plumbing, appliance installation (dishwasher, oven, cooktop, hood), appliance moving (fridge and washer/dryer), and some texture work also. They are there when you need them.

Hayes Custom Tile John Hayes and company did some fabulous granite countertops for us, as well as first rate tile work on the floors and kitchen backsplash. He offers up excellent ideas to enhance the look you're going for.

Import Stone This is where we bought our granite slabs - they have a huge selection of slabs on site and are very easy to work with. We couldn't be happier with our granite!

Linden Painting and Refinishing We used Dave Linden's company to refinish our kitchen and bathroom cabinets. This man knows his wood and takes extreme pride in his work. He personally applies the finishes to ensure top quality! If you're cabinet wood is fine but you just need a new finish, Dave is your man.

Pacific Coast Hardwood Floors We had existing layered wood floors in our family room and kitchen - they just needed to be refinished. Mike Hernandez from Pacific Coast came over and gave us the low down on what was and wasn't possible, and proceeded to refinish our floors in the most magnificent way! Highly recommended.

These people who work with wood -

they are very detail oriented.

Victor Villa We had Victor come in to estimate some baseboard work for us, and ended up having him do tile shower floor work also (our original tile installer - not anyone listed in this post - had messed up the shower floor badly). Victor explained in detail what was wrong and what could be done short of ripping the whole thing out, and we are extremely happy with the results. Go, Victor!

And finally. there is a gentleman who we have worked with for years to patch up dry wall issues we encounter who does a fabulous job - his name is David Borders and his cell phone is 760-415-4791. He does small jobs (from small hole repairs to retexture of a wall to re-drywalling a room) but will be able to recommend excellent companies if you need an entire home drywalled.

All of these people cover north San Diego county and I would recommend them without pause. They are not the cheapest, but as the saying goes you get what you pay for.