Landen's Bedroom Makeover Progress

Our first ceiling that is not white. It turned out great and really adds warmth to the room. The color is slightly lighter than the camel color that is on the walls.

Pre-carpet, the blind is still covered and the frog tape is still on, but it's coming along.

No bed yet, well a bigger mattress on the floor. But the carpet is in and the tape is off the wall. Landen's listening to a book by They Might Be Giants on CD here. Good thing it's a CD, I don't think a tape would have played very well.

Landen's Bedroom Makeover Begins

We started redoing Landen's bedroom today (our three-year-old.) He's due for a major upgrade. As we were saving and saving to get our house paid off the past few years, his room was definitely neglected. His dressers are about 35 years old. For about the past 6 months, he's been sleeping on the floor on his crib mattress. The paint on his walls is merely some leftover paint from cans in the garage mixed together into an acceptable light teal color. His carpet is just a remnant that we tacked to the floor with no padding. His light is the last remaining antique fixture in our house.

On deck for the makeover - a new loft bed (with dressers, shelves and desk built in underneath,) new paint, new carpet, a new light and a new valance. Here are a few "before" pictures.

New Tree

Geothermal Heating and Cooling System

Two years ago we were in need of a new furnace. We chose to have a geothermal heating and cooling system installed. Ours is a WaterFurnace brand system, installed by Collier's Heating and Cooling out of Warsaw.

Geothermal Heating & Cooling Systems:

• Use NO natural gas. Our natural gas pipe is capped off.
• Are considered to be around 400% efficient. The top natural gas units are around 95% efficient. Geothermal systems are much less expensive to operate.
• Work best if you do not set the thermostat back at night or while you are gone during the day. There is very little fluctuation in the temperature of the house all winter or all summer.
• Provide a more comfortable indoor environment.
• Do not dry the air in the house out as much in the winter.
• Do not produce any carbon monoxide gas.
• Are quiet.
• Do not have an outside unit for air conditioning. (Our deck is SO much more pleasant to use now that we don't have a noisy air conditioning unit beside it.)

We are extremely satisfied with our geothermal heating and cooling system. Now that we've had one for two years, I would not want to live in a house without one. I'm really surprised that geothermal systems aren't WAY more common than they are.

Mr. Sump Pump

We moved into this house almost eight years ago. Since then I don't think a year has gone by in which I haven't worked on some sort of a sump pump project. Here are some of them that I can remember:

• Change where pump discharge line goes into sewer
• Change pump discharge line to go into the lawn (this was necessary because when the line went right into the sewer, the result wasn't always that pleasant in regards to the bathtub drain.)
• Run discharge line in a trench all the way across the lawn into the ditch
• Have Kristi bail water into the bathtub while I run to get a generator from my father-in-law
• Install battery back up pump system
• Install new main pump
• Install new battery in battery back up system
• Install new switch on main pump
• Run main pump back into the old sewer hook-up-connection because of main line running across the lawn into the ditch freezing
• Install new backup system that operates on the city's water pressure - this one goes into the original sewer connection, but is not powerful enough to produce ill effects in the bathtub (It also will work if the main line freezes.)

Oh and last year I pumped out my cousin, Rocki's flooded basement and installed a new sump pump for her. I guess I'm just Mr. Sump Pump.

The new water powered backup system has been my spring break project. It's done and working. There is one leak - but hey it's leaking into the sump pit! So I'm going to fix it later. Then I'll have another sump pump project to add to my list.