Given the tall nature of our stairwell, we needed to build a platform to allow for the installation.

Our designer found an artist that fashioned a gorgeous chandelier out of brass and hand blown glass. We are just thrilled with the result.

The post Chandelier! first appeared on Building From Scratch.

Wanting something more permanent, we had a fence built, partly inspired by the front yard fence of a house down the street.

The end result turned out very nice.

One neat feature we added is an inner gate the blocks off the run around the coop and forces the chicken into the run.

This comes in very useful when the chickens just won’t cooperate.  There have been a few times where I’ve had to chase them around and around before finally catching them one by one to put into the run at night.

The post House tweaks – chicken fence first appeared on Building From Scratch.

The process was surprisingly complicated and thorough.  They started by grinding down the entire floor, grinding out any cracks, and then filling them.

Then they ground the fills down, cleaned the floor really well, and literally poured and squeegeed the epoxy down.

With the epoxy still wet, the covered the floor in the decorative flecks.

Once the epoxy was dry, they cleaned off any loose flecks, and then added a top seal coat.  The end result is beautiful.

From there, we added some built-in shelving, and a workbench shelving combo.

The post Garage makeover first appeared on Building From Scratch.

We constantly run out of bookshelf space, so we added built-in shelves to two of the girls rooms.

We’re still waiting for the painters to have time to paint some of them.

The post House tweaks – adding shelves first appeared on Building From Scratch.

We also bought a nice piece for our guest bedroom.

We’ve got more to go, but I think finding the right artwork is supposed to be the fun part, so we’ll take our time. We’ve been to a few art shows, galleries, and Sunday art walks in the last month, enjoying the process.

The post Art! first appeared on Building From Scratch.

We are pretty thrilled with how our front yard has turned out; our lavender is in bloom, and our lawn has finally come into its own over the winter and is much more resilient now.  I finally have it on a regular watering schedule and don’t have to water from above much, if at all.

We’ve had to deal with a few yard pests, like moles, which we’ve aggressively trapped as soon as they appeared.

We also had to deal with some persistent skunks.  We hired a trapper which ended up trapping 5 of them before they stopped coming around.

Our hedges have shown a nice growth spurt this spring.

One thing we’ve noticed is that with a lot of grading done on the property, we removed quite a bit of the topsoil and exposed the “hard pan” soil beneath it.  We should have amended the soil with more compost when we planted, but we didn’t really understand the need.   So it will take time and effort to build up good soil health and new topsoil.  To that end we plan on composting relentlessly and applying our compost around the yard everywhere we can, which will help add nutrients and microbes to the soil, and soften it up.  Any plants that don’t survive, or aren’t thriving, we will replant with a larger and deeper hole, and mix in more compost.

We recently watched a movie called Kiss the Ground, which talks a lot about how plants help to build a health soil biology by bring nutrients to the microbes that develop there, so it seems that just having a healthy, well planted yard will help transform the soil.

The post Landscaping two years in first appeared on Building From Scratch.

We’ve struggled over the last year to get our audio / video, network, and home automation system completed.  We had issue with our integrator that in the end, proved terminal.  The work just wasn’t getting done and we had problems with some of the items that were installed.

So we hired a new integrator and began work in earnest about a month ago.  The first thing we had to do was to go backwards a bit, ripping out some of the stuff the previous integrator had installed.

But they quickly made progress on all fronts, with a team of guys swarming through the house during a week when the family was gone.  We’ve now got a more functional network, wifi that covers most areas, a home control system that is 70% complete, and improved audio-video systems all through the house.

We’ve made a great start but, this is a big project, and there is still a lot to do.  Just getting equipment is a challenge these days with shipping bottlenecks and chip shortages, so some of the projects are stuck waiting for equipment.

When it is done though, we will be able to control everything through a single smart phone app, dedicated remotes, or with dedicated wall mounted tablets, including:

• house lighting
• landscape lighting
• music
• tv / video
• electronic shades
• home security
• surveillance cameras
• garage doors
• door locks
• HVAC
• pool
• water heater recirculation
• smart water shutoff
• house air circulation fan
• fireplaces

It will be a pretty awesome system and our new integrators are very responsive and have been continually working to get things done.

The post Audio / Video / Network / Home Automation reboot first appeared on Building From Scratch.

One of which is solar.  We initially added 8Kw of solar on a single roof plane, because we weren’t sure how much usage we would have and we didn’t want to overbuild the solar.  But at the time we first inatalled solar, we also installed additional roof brackets and conduits for more.

Then after a year, it became clear we could handle quite a bit more, with our electricity usage, and we also got an electric car, and installed a pool.  So we installed another 6.4 Kw of solar.

And we still weren’t quite producing as much as we were using, so this year we installed another 4Kw, putting panels wherever we could.

You can see the new panels are considerably cleaner than the older ones.  Not to self to get up there with the softened water to wash them all off.  That mostly maxes out our solar potential, mostly because we can’t add any more without up-sizing our two existing inverters.  But I don’t think we will need more than that.  With some efficient time use of electricity, we should do pretty well.

We didn’t stop there however.  We also installed some solar water panels for our pool.

This involved digging about a 50 or 60 foot trench to get the water between the panels and the pump.

The pool solar panels took the pool from 70 degrees all the way to 86 in a week, in mid April.  Pool season is here!

So far we’ve hit a high of 89 with just the solar panels.  The temp has dropped a bit in the last two weeks as we are experiencing some of our towns infamous “May Grey” in which the sky is overcast for most of the day.  This also about cuts our solar electric production by 30-50%.

Overall, I am pretty happy with what we’ve done with our house resource wise.

• We produce most of our own electricity
• We rarely have to run AC at all.  Instead we usually just open some windows at night to cool the house down, and the well insulated house stays cool most of the day.
• Our pool heats itself, and the pumps run on solar electricity.
• Our Electric car runs off of solar electricity
• In the wetter months, our water bill reduced by about 1/3, which means that we aren’t really using a huge amount of water on our landscaping.  This is thanks mostly to subterranean irrigation.
• We now have a Flume water meter monitor, so we can tell exactly how many gallons we are using at any time of the day, and attribute our water usage to a specific activity, to help us figure out more ways to conserve.
• We always have the fact that our grey water is plumbed separately in our tool belt. At some point we can start recovering our grey water and use it for landscape irrigation.
• We grow our own vegetables and get our eggs from our chickens.  I can’t wait until our fruit and avocado trees are producing.

The post Even more solar! first appeared on Building From Scratch.

There is still plenty to go, and things like art will probably take years more, but the house is starting to feel more and more comfortable.

The post Interior furniture first appeared on Building From Scratch.

With well-established landscaping, the root systems tend to go deep enough to make them more resilient to imperfect watering conditions. But with newer landscaping, we are finding that things can be a little sensitive.  As we have redone our entire lot throughout this project, not much on our property has been in the ground for more than a couple of years.

Lawns

One problematic area has been our lawns. Because we opted to go with subterranean watering, until the roots are well established, we have to make sure and additionally hand water them from above so they get enough water.  We also have to be sure not to over-water them from underneath; if the deeper layers of soil stay constantly wet, as the roots aren’t deep enough to constantly pull out the water, that can lead to root-rot which will prevent the lawn from thriving.

I started giving it once-a-month fertilizer last month and it has greened up nicely.  I really liked the deep watering it got with our January rain storms.  I’m still watering a little from above, but it generally seems more resilient now.

Hedges

The hedges have been frustrating.  On the western side of our property, they are doing very well, and have a dark green coloring.

On the eastern side however, they are showing a lot of leaf yellowing.  One cause of leaf yellowing can be a PH imbalance in the soil, which can prevent the plants from taking up iron.

Another cause can be a lack of iron in the soil.  After a dose of fertilizer and two doses of iron, they still aren’t looking any better.  Time to bring in a specialist.

Watering

We have a smart watering system that can be controlled from a phone app, which is nice. But I still walk around once or twice a week and check everything with a long moisture meter, just be sure I am not over or under watering. I sure would like a network of smart sensors that would automatically monitor the soil moisture and water when needed instead of maintaining a schedule; sort of like a Nest for your yard, that learns what your yard needs over time.

Perhaps I’ll have to invent that.

The post Caring for the yard first appeared on Building From Scratch.