I Smell Gas!!!

There is nothing that sends me into a frenzy than a home emergency.  Yesterday I was down in our basement in the only room that has a dirt floor.  I store items on a shelf in that room and I was reaching for my crockpot when I smelled it --- natural gas or at least I thought that's what it was.  My DH didn't smell it and thought the room smelled more like a musty basement but I wasn't so sure.  So it nagged on me for the better part of the day and finally I decided to call the utility company and within 30 minutes a utility worker was in my basement with some kind of instrument that "smelled" for any leaking natural gas. 

And guess what -- we had a natural gas leak in the gas pipe that supplies the kitchen stove.  The worker shut off the gas to the stove and before he even left the house I called a plumbing and heating business and set up an appointment for one of their employees to come by this morning to fix it.

It was an easy fix - replace the pipe and refit it.  As the worker explained to me the turning on of a gas stove automatically releases pressure in the gas pipe and alternately when not in use, a normal amount of pressure builds.  Over time it may result in some minor leaks. 

What did I learn?  Even if you are the only one that smells a possible natural gas leak, call it in.  Next, learn where the natural gas, and for that matter the electric and water shut offs are to the house so that you can shut things off in case of an emergency.  In case of a natural gas leak, don't turn on any light switches or anything electrical and it is best to leave the house and call from your cell phone outside or go to a neighbor's house. 

Planning Day

Back last fall I decided that I really needed to sit down once a quarter and plan out home projects and "me" projects.  "Me" projects would be sewing, crafting and such.  I should have had a planning day back in April, but never did get around to it.  Now it is the end of July and I am finding our household becoming disorganized.  Time for a planning day. 

Yesterday I was going to sit down in the afternoon and get out a big calendar and start working on a plan, but the dust bunnies were making so much noise I found it hard to sit and make a strategy for the rest of the summer.  A nice vacuuming, washing of the throw rugs and tidying up the kitchen made me feel better, but then it was time for dinner.  So planning went out the door yesterday.

This summer the weather here in Iowa has been typical Iowa.  If you don't like it, wait and it will change.  We have experienced a lot of rain and a lot of heat.  When the heat index is at 100 degrees I don't feel like I want to go outside and paint the house.  You can't paint the exterior of a house when it is raining all the time either.  So, painting the house is being moved to early fall. 

Today and tomorrow I am spending time at the diningroom table planning out all of my projects over the next year.  My youngest son graduates from high school next year and I have a lot of home projects that I want completed by then.  The bulk of those projects are being done by me.  I purchased a large desk calendar (17 x 20 inches) that I plan to write on in pencil and plan out monthly projects over the next year.  This will be posted on the side of the fridge.  The frugal side of me stood at Wal-mart and contemplated if this 18 month calendar was worth $4.00.  I liked the size and since I can't print anything that big, I bought it. 

In March I made a list of all of the home projects I wanted to accomplish.  Albeit, a lot of these will be done over the next 10 years.  I made a list of interior and exterior jobs and then I broke them down into categories of hiring out (such as a new roof) and DIY ones.  Then I marked off the DIY projects that I wanted to accomplish by the summer of 2011.  I looked that list over one more time and made a note of those that were the basic projects that had to be done by next summer. 

There are a lot of DIY projects and some of those types of projects I have never done before which means I need to allot some research time.  Research time is beneficial for many reasons such as:  it lets you know if you really can do the project or if you really need to hire it out; budget for the supplies you will need to plan to purchase and you get your questions answered before you take a sledge hammer to a project.

None of this planning will be written in stone.  Stuff happens and things get delayed, but having a plan and seeing the big picture helps me stay on track and get more things done as opposed to not having any plan at all.  Also putting things on paper helps to relieve the frustration of trying to remember everything that needs to be done. For example, many times I have thought that when I have a free hour I should work on something but by the time I get supplies together and such, the time is gone.  Having a list of projects that have a time frame on them such as 1/2 day project, 1 hour project and such will help me be able to work on those projects when I have the extra time. 

This weekend I will also be planning my day to day household chores.  I need to have a better schedule for getting things done.  My plan is to sit down every Sunday evening and look over what is scheduled for the upcoming week, make a menu for the week and look at what housekeeping chores need to be done each day to maintain our house.  Then I will review what house projects need to be scheduled in for the week.  My goal is that while I am working on painting the house, as an example, I want to make sure our household is running somewhat smoothly with meals being prepared, laundry being done and the house being relatively clean and organized.  Nothing is more frustrating to me than to be outside working and to come inside to a messy and disorganized house and nothing ready for supper.  It doesn't work for me.  It creates chaos and I don't like chaos. 

Except for a couple loads of laundry and a few meals to be prepared this weekend, I will being doing a lot of planning.  I have been looking forward to this all week as I know that in the end it will help alleviate my frustration and leave me with a plan for getting things done.

How did you spend your Weekend?

We spent ours cleaning up water from our basement.

These pictures were taken after the water stopped coming in the basement.  There was no time to take pictures when the water was pouring in.  Yep, we had a storm among storms on Saturday morning.  In 3 hours we received 4 1/4 inches rainfall.  At one point our street looked like a river flowing past us.  It was as some would say, surreal. 

On Thursday we received an inch of rain and on Friday we received an inch of rain.  The ground is totally saturated.

Every now and then we will get some water in our basement.  By every now and then that means when we forget to clean out the gutters and even then it is a trickle of water in two spots.  The water is easily cleaned up with a mop and then of course with a gutter cleaning.  There have been times when my husband has run outside in a rainstorm to climb up on porch railings to grab a handful of leaves out of the gutter that is blocking the downspout.  You hear a whoosh and see a bunch of those helicopter thingeys and leaves coming out of the downpout with a considerable amount of water.

We now have gutter covers on the majority of our gutters and it didn't matter on Saturday morning as the rain fell hard and fast.  I went down to the basement to check on things  Two years ago I spent a considerable amount of time repointing some of the bricks in the basement and putting caulk around the floor. We haven't had a trickle of water in the basement for years. In 2008 when Iowa received a lot of rain and with the floods that resulted we didn't get a drop in the basement. 

When I turned on the light I saw a trickle of water coming in.  Then I looked over in a different area and another trickle was coming in from the corner.  Within 30 minutes there was so much water coming in that even with a wet dry vac we could hardly keep up.  Thankfully we only have an area rug that we can quickly pick up off the ground.

It took 3 of us working in 2 inch deep water to try to keep up.  We had two people at a time using wet dry vacs, emptying the water into buckets as a third person took the buckets of water and poured them down the laundry tub to drain.  It took about 15 seconds to fill a 10 gallon wet dry vac.  At one point we found where there was a small hole in the mortar where the water was coming in like a spigot.  We positioned a pan over it and then poured that into a bucket and so on. 

We worked from 8:00 in the morning until 8:30 in the evening.  The water wasn't coming in near as fast and we finally gave up for the day. 

This morning we got up and the water was dried up with only two little puddles.  While we were sipping coffee and reading the paper we heard thunder and yes, it started to rain.  I went to the basement and a little trickle of water came in but it only took a towel to dry it up. 

When we got to church this morning our Associate Pastor told us that he had water in his finished basement and the sewer was backing up.  The pond near their yard was flooded and so was the street in front of their house.  Many families had water in their basement and for some it was a first time.

Tomorrow we are supposed to have rain and there is a chance of rain on Tuesday.  I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing animals walking 2 by 2 any day now. 

We have made a list of what we need to do.  This is going to be expensive but we need to have a custom made radius (curved) gutter to go around a curved portion of our roof.  That will help considerably to drain the water away from the house.  We need to put some different landscaping around the front of our house that will help with drainage issues.  I am going to research putting a sealant over the brick walls of the basement and I also need to go and look at all the bricks in the basement to see how the mortar is holding up. 

Of course if we have another storm like we had on Saturday it is possible that no matter what improvements we make we may still get some water in the basement.  My goal is for a trickle of water or none at all. 

I am thankful that: 1.  We were home when this happened.;  2.  There were 3 of us to work on getting the water cleaned up; 3.  The water was clean rain water; 4.  That my husband went out and purchased a second wet dry vac and it was the last large one available; 5.  My basement floor is so clean and I was able to pick things up quickly so nothing was destroyed; 6.  I was finally able to make myself take some garbage bags and clean out the junk that I had been meaning to get to; and that 7.  Compared to what happened in Arkansas with the flooding we are blessed beyond all measure.

Or yeah and 8.  We had some water "bonding" time with our teenage son.

Air Conditioning Season is Here

It's air conditioning season here in Iowa and that is one area I will not be cheap.  I am so sorry but when it is 90 degrees and there is a lot of humidity, I want to be comfortable and cool. One other thing I won't be frugal on is "Skinny Cow" ice cream sandwiches.  They are well worth the expense.  I never  see a coupon for those but I buy them anyway. 

 We do a couple of things in our morning routine to guarantee that our air conditioners do not have to work too hard.  Since the front of our house faces east, I always pull the drapes to block the sunlight.  The same goes in the back corner bedroom that faces west.  When the sun reaches high in the sky that back bedroom can start to get really warm.  I invested in some heavy, insulated drapes to keep the room cool/warm depending on the season. 

The main floor of our home is heated by a boiler so we have window air conditioners to cool the downstairs.  The upstairs was a former attic and it has a separate force air furnace with a central air unit to keep it cool. 

There are many days when I have the drapes pulled downstairs that I do not even need to run the cool setting on the air conditioners.  Yes, it is dark, but as long as I am comfortable I can deal with a little darkness.  Actually housewives have been doing this for years to keep their homes comfortable in the summer.  My grandmother always pulled the drapes to keep the sun out and she placed a few fans in strategic locations to keep the air moving in the house.

As to the upstairs, I apply the same principle of closing blinds to keep the hot sun out.   Also on the days when it is unbearable I run the central air at the start of the day and keep the setting at 80 degrees.  Our airconditioner/furnace repairman has always told us to keep the thermostat set at a constant temperature and don't move it around a lot.  He also recommends not waiting so long to turn on the air conditioning so that the air conditioner unit has to work non stop for an hour trying to get the upstairs cooled down. 

One other thing we have done to help with keeping our home cool is to plant some trees.  Three years ago for Father's Day I purchased two trees for my husband and we planted them on either side of our house.  They have grown a lot and are already giving us quite a bit of shade.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, we live in a very old house.  Our plans are to someday side it and put in new windows.  At that time we will also add insulation.  I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't much insulation in some of the walls of the house.  Even so, our heating/cooling bills are not too bad and I truly believe it is because we are vigilant about keeping the thermostat set at a constant temp, having it set at a lower setting in the winter and a higher setting in the summer and we are keeping the drapes closed on those summer hot days and open for the sun to help warm the house in the winter.

One other thing we do is to have our heating/cooling systems serviced.  On Wednesday of this week we had our central air conditioner checked.  We will have to replace it either this year or next year.  I asked for an estimate of the cost and someone will be here next week to go through the house and give us an estimate for not only a new force air furnace and air conditioner unit for the upstairs but also for a new boiler to heat the downstairs.  We are also going to get an estimate to run a separate air conditioner system to cool the downstairs so that when we do side the house (several years down the road) we won't have to install window air conditioners.

I love to dream.  Many evenings we sit on our back deck and talk about what we would like to do to the house if we had the money.  It's always fun and actually some of those dreams have come true.  My DH will tell me something like "actually I think in a few years we will be able to afford to do that."  I never dreamed we would be able to live on his income alone and continue to renovate and update our home. 

I know we don't have a lot of money right now to put into the house, but we will be in a better financial position in a couple years.  It would be costly to replace everything at once but knowledge is power.  Knowing what something will cost helps with planning out when to replace something.  We can do the central air conditioner this year, perhaps next year we can afford a newer furnace.  One thing I keep in mind when we discuss spending money on our house, is that we have every  intention to live in this house well into our retirement years.

How does this affect our household budget?  I keep on buying the "Skinny Cow" ice cream sandwiches ($3.99 for a package of six - oh and they are oh soo good and only 160 calories) and I try not to overspend in other areas of our budget so we can continue to plug away and pay off bills and put money in savings.

Overwhelmed

When I was working full time, on some afternoons when my desk was loaded down with work, I would daydream about what it would be like to be home full time.  Of course the operative word here is "dream."  It was a dream to believe that the house would always be clutter free and clean, the cookie jar would be full, laundry would always be kept up, the yard would look immaculate from the time I would be able to spend weeding and planting and oh yeah, all the household projects would be caught up including the painting of the entire house inside and outside. 

Today I sit at my diningroom table and I am laughing at my naiveté.  I am able to keep up on some household chores but the one that I thought would be the most evident would be a clutter free and always clean home.  It would work if no one lived in the house, but since we do I have come to compromise.  Perhaps it is because many people believe that when you are home full time that your house should always be in order.  Yeah right. 

My house looks much better since I have been home, not perfect but better, and I can keep up on most projects but I am struggling with the seasonal work that needs to be done.  So it is time for a couple of afternoons of planning.  There is something about taking a calendar and marking down the projects that need to be done and setting time aside to get them done. 

Sometimes part of being overwhelmed is just poor planning.  Everything always looks better on paper and on a calendar.  There is just something about taking the time to face what has to be done and making the time to get it done.  Many of the projects are ones that my DH needs to do such as making pickets to replace some rotted pickets on our fence.  There are many that I can do and I just need to sit down and plan.

Life is balancing many different things - home, family, friends, church and so on.  I try to find a balance when I work on projects.  If I am facing something that I have to get done, but don't necessarily like to do such as painting the exterior of the house, I try to balance it off with something I like to do.  I may spend a couple days painting and then have a full day to sew which is something I love to do.

My motivation is that I want our home to look nice from the inside and the outside.  So for a few afternoons I will be calendaring projects feeling better knowing that I have a plan to get things done.  Some will be pushed off to next year as there are only so many hours in the days and so many days in the spring and summer to work on outside projects. 

I'm feeling less overwhelmed already.

A Little Bit of This and That

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous here in south central Iowa.  It has been in the upper 70's and low 80's, the sun is shining and the trees are budding and the grass is green.  My day lilies are coming up and so are the peonies.  Tonight we are expecting severe storms.  This means the possibility of tornadoes and strong winds, but for now I am enjoying the beautiful spring day.

Today I headed to Hy-Vee grocery store to pick up some ziplock storage bags.  They are on sale for only 99 cents a box and I had several coupons for 40 cents and 50 cents off.  I bought 6 boxes for a total of $3.14.  When I got to the checkout I received a coupon for $4.00 off my next shopping trip to Hy-Vee courtesy of Ziplock.  Nothing makes my day like getting a great deal especially when the deal is free. 

My DH's birthday is Monday the 19th and I have saved up $100 towards the purchase of a Kindle for him.  He has $140 saved for this purchase.  He has no idea that I have been taking my coupon savings for the past few weeks and saving it for him.  There is nothing that brings more happiness to me than to surprise a family member with a gift that they have wanted. 

This weekend I will be tuckpointing bricks around the outside foundation of our house.  I have done this before on the inside walls of the basement and used a mortar that was premixed and in a tube that you just squirted in between the bricks.  My former boss gave me half a bag of mortar mix (hey, again I love free).  I have to mix it with water to the right consistency and then with a trowel work the mortar inbetween the bricks.  There aren't a lot of bricks that need pointed, but to hire it out would still be costly.  An afternoon of my own sweat equity will take care of the job.

My DH will be working on a drippy faucet in our bathroom.  I would love to get a new faucet but our budget has been and will continue to be tight.  So, if we can put a little work into it and just have to replace a washer or two, that is good enough for me.  However, if new washers can't fix the problem, we will purchase a new faucet.

March was fraught with added expenses such as a new washing machine and some hired plumbing work as two examples.  The month of April is continuing the theme of added expenses with a truck repair bill and the possibility of replacing our refrigerator.  To help with these expenses I have cut back our grocery bill to just the necessities which means milk, eggs, butter and fresh produce.  We can easily live off what is in our freezer and pantry. 

One thing I have learned over the past few months is that when I see unforeseen expenses coming our way I can rely on a stocked pantry to get us by.  I will be doing this for the next few months as our emergency fund has really dwindled since I became unemployed.  Thankfully we have had money in savings to pay for these added expenses but we need to replenish the emergency fund.

Since starting this post, the clouds are now rolling in and my neighbor has started to mow his lawn.  He is probably hoping he can get it done before the rain comes.