Something Awesome: RAGGEDedge Gear

We did a mini vacation to Austin a few years ago and stopped at Toy Joy which is a fun, eclectic toy store that has some unusual items.  M found a bacon wallet and it was great because it got a lot of compliments and laughs.  Everyone loves bacon, right?  One of his biggest complaints was that sitting on a a bi-fold wallet all day was bothering his back like he was pinching a nerve so he started shopping around for a minimalist wallet that you could put in your front pants pocket.

He found this website called RAGGEDedge Gear (they have an Etsy store too) and they have some really neat products.  The wallet he selected is a carbon fiber sailcloth wallet so it is super light and strong.  One side has three pockets for cards/cash and the other is a clear slot for your driver's license.  

They also sell gear bags and Father's Day was coming up.  My parents have a sailboat and are big into racing so we thought the perfect gift was a tote bag made out of hi-tech sailcloth.  My dad really loved it and we were surprised at the size - it was bigger than we thought it was going to be but he says it is perfect.  We selected the Armadillo 22L style.

So far the wallet is holding strong except for one stitch that has ripped in a corner but it is hidden by the material fold.  It stays clean, it's easy to wipe and the compact design has been perfect.  If you are in the market for something neat I would definitely check out their website!

**I was not paid to endorse RAGGEDedge - I paid for these items with my own money and just think it is a cool business with products that we have enjoyed.  They have no idea who I am**

Review: Nest Learning Thermostat

Our HVAC system was installed in 1997 and I think the thermostat is original to the house.  I don't have any pictures of it but it had 4 controls that you would push up or down and there was a post-it on how to reset it when you change the air filter.  I have never seen a thermostat so old before and we had no clue how to work it.  Solution?  The Nest Learning Thermostat.

Nest claims to be a thermostat that will learn your habits and adjust the AC accordingly to help you save money and energy.  Some energy companies will give you a discount when you have a Nest and participate in whatever energy saving program they offer.  After about a week and a half of using it, it "learns" your schedule and adjusts accordingly.  You can also create a schedule for it.  It will email you a monthly usage report too.

We picked up a Nest at Lowe's for $259.  Let me preface this by saying that I do not believe in "smart homes".  I don't believe in being able to access things like your security system from the internet because I feel that it's vulnerable to hackers, etc.  Maybe these feelings are unfounded but I was resistant to Nest because a) it is kind of expensive and b) the "smart home" factor.  Luckily we only had to buy one since we are a one story home that's about 2300 sq ft.

Set up of Nest is really simple.  We were installing ours on a Friday night after hours but you follow instructions on the website and it walks you through how to connect the wires.  It did say that we had to call customer service because our wires were not straight forward, but we got it installed without incident.  M did email this photo of our wires and they responded the next day with a set up explanation.

So once we got it installed, Nest searches for your wifi connection and gets hooked up to the house.  You can give Nest a new name, tell it where it is located  in the house (our's is in a hallway), set your location, time, etc.  You turn the silver dial to select your option and push into the Nest to select the options.  Nest will use your location to sync up with the weather forecast.  One of my favorite features with Nest is that you can control it from your phone.  I know I said I don't believe in "smart homes" but I have been disappointed with Nest and that is the best feature in my opinion.

We have had Nest for a month.  It is on a schedule where it's at 76* during the day and at 9pm it drops to 70* for sleeping.  I like it to be a frozen tundra when I sleep.  I have half Fridays so around noon it will go down to 74*.  It has learned we are not home during the day so it will go into "Auto Away" mode which means that the highest temp it will get to is 76* and the lowest is 61* before either the heater or AC kicks on.  Every day it will run a report on the app to tell you how many hours Nest ran.  It will tell you if you got a leaf for low energy usage, if it was an unusually hot day so energy consumption was above average, the weather was cool so it didn't need to run as much, or that Auto Away helped you.  

This month we got our monthly usage report and I was really excited because I thought it would go into detail about Nest's capabilities.  What a disappointment!  All it told me is that we cooled our house for 215 hours in July and recommended that we turn our temperature down 30 minutes before we go to sleep to give Nest a head start.  It does kick on to start cooling down for sleep at 9 but we do not usually go to bed until 10 or 11.  Anytime you turn Nest down it will tell you how long it takes to get to that temperature.  Our HVAC is almost 20 years old so it takes way more effort to cool our house than a newer system.  I honestly hope it breaks so we can get a new one while we are under our home warranty.

Overall my review of Nest is positive even though I have been so disappointed with the information it provides.  I truly expected a smart thermostat to tell me all kinds of information about how I could lower my energy usage and save money.  Granted, we do not necessarily follow Nest's recommendations (especially at night) but it has been really interesting to see how much our AC unit runs on a daily basis and just generally what kind of hot/cold temps our house feels good at.  Nest does "auto away" us on Saturday/Sundays which is fine but if we are doing projects or moving around a lot I have to adjust it so it feels cooler.  Sometimes it will go back to "auto away" after I turn the temp down so that is kind of frustrating.

I also have tried to enroll in the Nest discount program that Reliant Energy provides but I still have not received any emails so I need to call them again.  You can save up to 80 cents a kilowatt hour when you participate in the program!  

The one thing I am REALLY interested in trying is the smoke/CO2 detectors that Nest makes.  They are $99 each so that is a little pricey but they come either battery operated or hard-wired so you could take them with you if you moved.  Our house is small so over time that would be a beneficial upgrade.

Attic Ladder

One of the unexpected expenses we have had since we moved into the house was the attic ladder.  This house was built in 1980 and I think it is original to the house.  When we were moving in and M tried to get on the ladder to haul Christmas stuff up - it buckled like it was about to snap.  For three weeks we had our stuff all over the house while we tried to figure out what to do.  Our inspector was not able to get up into the attic using the ladder because the former owners were crazy hoarders and had so much crap blocking it that all he could do was open it part way and get inside using his own ladder.  If we had known we might have asked them to fix it.  Or maybe they broke it hauling their stuff down?  Who knows.

Anywho...I called our home warranty company to see if an attic ladder is covered.  It's not and neither are fire ants so that was disappointing.  Maybe it was just me but I wasn't sure if you could buy a ladder, had to call a contractor or what the solution was.  So I did some googling and low and behold - you can actually buy an attic ladder and install it yourself!  CRAZY!  Last weekend we spent Sunday installing it and frankly the whole project is very straightforward - except for tedious task of the temporary support beams while you bolt the ladder into place.

I think it took us three hours to install it and the only casualty was our garage fridge getting a decent dent on the edge when M dropped the ladder.  I thought that when you bought an attic ladder you were replacing just the stairs - it is actually a frame, ladder and door.  We selected an aluminum ladder which in hindsight was the best choice because I had to lift the ladder up to M so he could settle it on our temporary support beams and a wood one might have been too heavy.

The part we struggled with was lining up the temporary support boards.  They give you specific measurements on how far apart to space them but ultimately when you pull the door down, there is not much frame surrounding the door so we ended up picking up the ladder, shifting it to crack open the door and slide it under the support beam.  The only post-install fix we need to make is lowering the legs - now when you are on the ladder it is not touching the floor.  Luckily that is an easy fix.  As you can see from the pictures, our supervisor couldn't take how slow the minions were moving on this project!

This weekend we have my company family picnic (which is actually a Rockhounds baseball game) but otherwise we are going to cool it on projects this weekend.  We agreed to start filling in the pond hole and maybe rip out the half dead plants at the front of the house but otherwise, nothing major this weekend!

That Guy Craig and His List

Today we got all of the monkey grass out of the yard around the fountain and.....got rid of all the rocks too!  We have a love/hate relationship with Craigslist.  We have had good experiences with it for the most part but people can be flakey and you have to have the mantra of "first come, first serve".  I would say the #1 most important part of using it is to get a free Google Voice cell phone number.  They won't know your real phone number when they call/text and it is just an element of safety.  Today I posted all of the rocks up on for free - and a nice couple who live south of Midland came by and picked them all up.  They even took the stuff we were going to toss because they said it was easier for them to get rid of it since there is a caliche pit close to their property.  It feels really good for the yard to look like progress has been made and it has been overcast all day long so the weather has been on our side!  The river rocks still linger and we need to start scraping them up and figure out how to get rid of them.  No one on Craigslist seems to want them if they are not pre-washed and properly packaged.  Since I am not a garden center, they are out of luck!

The other project we started today was seeing what these trails of river rocks are that run around our workshop.  We bought a pick ax last weekend at Lowe's and M insisted we would never use it....it's the #1 tool used on these outdoor projects lately so the joke is on us!  The guess is that the trenches are french drains - but they aren't proper french drains.  A correctly built french drain is a trench that has rocks and then a pipe with lining around it to divert the water.  The "french drain" at our house is a trench lined with what looks like aluminum flashing, no holes and rocks on top of it.  We have managed to rip out one side of the drains and have the side of the shop to go so who knows when that will get done.  Our old house had french drains built into the gutters which was a nice feature except that they were not done properly and our yard was always so squishy when it rained.  Our new house does not have gutters but we are considering having them installed at some point.

We also made a run to the citizen's collection center which is actually really nice and like the one our town had back in DFW.  I wish they were open on Sundays because it would probably encourage us to power through projects all weekend long if we could make another run.  We even met this little 4 ft long guy over by the tree limb/organic drop off section.  No rattle so we aren't sure what he is!

Fontaine Eww

One of the first things we wanted to demo in the house was this fountain.  Our yard has a huge 30 x 30 workshop in the backyard which eats up all of the big yard space.  Because of the shed, the yard is pretty small and mostly just runs along our property line.  When we first saw the fountain it was okay - it was one of the seller's favorite features - but to us it is a mosquito haven, we didn't want the dog playing in it and we like having grass.  I would say the fountain is probably 6 feet long by 4 or 5 feet wide and 2.5 ft deep.

On move-in day the fountain was on and running....and not all the way full.  The next day the fountain was maybe 1/3 of the way full....where was the water going?  Like everything else in our house it probably wasn't well taken care of so I shut it off to see what happened.  By day three it was just a tiny bit of water so we knew it needed to come out.  The mosquitos are really bad at the house so one day I got so fed up I poured bleach into the water until I could buy some water boots to get in there and scoop it all out.  We weren't sure if it was a plastic mould or if it was just some kind of weed/water barrier.  While we were tackling the side yard we decided to start this project.

After mowing down the monkey grasses (gotta check for spiders!) and moving all the rocks, we realized it was just a hole they had double lined.  We broke it up into sections and started tearing the liner with box cutters to try to avoid the stagnant water.  Let me tell you, it smelled so bad when we started pulling the liners out!!!  All this black sludge came pouring out of the liner and settled into the hole - luckily it dried out quickly and it hasn't really smelled since then.

So this is the yard's current state.  I am hoping this weekend we can finish the demo and figuring out how to back-fill this hole.  Ultimately we would like to remove all of the river rocks on the right side of the fountain and make that grass too.  I need to craiglist these nicer rocks - they would be great for someone's yard as a decorative edge on a flower bed.  Unfortunately there are close to 2 truck beds worth of rocks so I hope someone wants them!

Unwelcome House Guests

Last Friday we had intentions of doing nothing after work.  When M got home he went into his closet to change and I hear "Hey come here..."

Why hello unwelcome houseguests...where exactly are you coming from?  I grab the laundry and throw it in the washer for 2 heavy duty cycles and the executive decision is made to tear out the carpet and baseboards.  So I get to work supervising and the real fun begins.

Ultimately it looked like they were coming in from the corner of the floor but once we tore everything out and cleaned it up, they were all gone and we haven't really seen any since the invasion.   For now we have a tiny rug in there until we figure out what to do with the space.  Since the wall against his closet is exterior and there was a "vine garden" outside we decided to tear that out and see if we can find the source.  It was on our project list because the trellis set up was falling over and the vines looked dead.

Unfortunately I did not take many pictures because as a new blogger, I forgot.  There wasn't much step by step to this project - we just tore out the three trellis set-ups, pulled up the metal stakes (which was difficult and one snapped hitting M in the head - he's ok!), dug out the root balls and raked all of the dead stuff up.  We do need to till and try to seed some grass but it is too hot right now so maybe in a month or two.  We also did not find the source of the ants but I spread Amdro fire ant grains every where so I need to see if they are working yet.  Doesn't that look so much better?

Downsizing and Downgrading

When we moved we were lucky enough to have a corporate relocation.  I'm telling you, the only way to move is having someone else do it for you!  Don't get me wrong, we pulled our weight and did several moves for me to come out first and move all of the things they would not pack.  Anyway, it took them two days to pack our stuff and load it up for temporary storage.  When it was time to deliver everything to our new house, I thought I recognized one of the guys from our move out here and sure enough, I was right!  When he came into the house he said "Woah!  Downgrade!"  I totally agree with him...but it won't look like this forever!  It was funny because the more trips they made inside, all of the guys were offering ideas on how to fix it up so even they were excited for the potential.  That is the biggest reason we bought this house - so much potential.

Here are some photos of the house the day we got the keys.  These photos are iPhone pictures so apologies for the quality...I still am trying to figure out blogging before I work on my photography skills!