The Plan: Basement Renovation

We are endeavoring on a major renovation project that is beyond our capabilities, so we have found a contractor to help us renovate our unfinished basement. The plan is to clean out the basement (currently our catch all storage area) so we can add a full bathroom, a few closets, and a new living room. In an attempt to save money on this project we are planning on acting as the project manager and have decided to handle the designs and permit process ourselves. Wish us luck.

We haven’t signed a contract yet with the contractor, we’re waiting for the permits to be finalized so we can them included in the SOW. The hope is next week I can go back into the permit office and pay some exorbitant fees and walk away with a beautiful permit, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

Mid-Century Hi-Fi Restored

We picked up this old mid century hi-fi stand awhile back, but it needed a fair amount of work. There were a lot of blemishes on the wood and the previous owner started drilling holes in the white support pieces trying to remove them (I assume they didn't have a saw). So we cleaned it up and patched the holes and added some additional support . Then we stripped it down and refinished it

BEFORE:


More photos after the jump

Re-Upholstered Erik Buch Chairs

We bought a gate-leg table a few years back and refinished it, but the chairs still needed to be reupholstered.  As you can see the fabric had a number of stains, their previous life was in the former owner's basement as a kids arts and crafts table. We took the chairs to Modern Chair Restoration up in Catonsville, MD. We saw a post on their blog detailing a re-upholstery job of our same Erik Buch chairs. Katherine did a fantastic job and even gave us some great tips on how to re-upholster faux Eams lounge chairs (we just finished one and it turned out great, the posts are in the works).

BEFORE:

Solar is Improving the Value of My Home

According to a new study of home sales in California by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, not only can homeowners with solar PV recoup the cost of their solar investment though energy cost savings and sale of the home, solar PV actually increase the resale value of existing homes. SunRun created the infographic (below) based on this research study.

I know I live in DC and not California, but I have to assume there are some comparable lessons to be learned from this study. I wonder if my 4kw system would really return 16-20K?

Solar Production To-Date

I thought I should revisit my solar project now that it’s been up and running now for 4 months. According to Enphase Energy, the company that digitally tracks my house’s energy production, I’ve produced 1.72 MWh which is enough energy to power 57 houses for 1 day. Additionally, they say my carbon offset to-date is 1 ton or the equivalent of 30 trees. The Enphase meter reading system is pretty cool they gave me a little device that plugs into my router that displays my current energy production and relays that information to their website. I can view the energy production of each of my solar panels in real time and if one of the panels isn’t working correctly I’m notified immediately.

180.8 kWh February
436.9 kWh March
468.5 kWh April
580.3 kWh May

As you can see my production has only gone up since its dismal performance in February. Hopefully my system will continue to improve and at the end of the year truly produce 80%-90% of my energy usage.

Matte Black Side Table

My better half returned from work the other day with this great side table. It just needed a little love and fresh coat of paint. We decided to remove the hand carved piece at the base of the cabinet. It looks like it was an addition to the piece and it didn't really go that well.

BEFORE:

Hardware removed, but still in its original condition.  Here you can see that hand carved piece at the base of the cabinet.

Let There Be Lights

Another thing I've been meaning to post is that we finally replaced a number of chandeliers on the first floor of the house.

First up we replaced the terrible florescent light in the kitchen with this beautiful school house light with a green stripe that matches the wall color.



Next we found this wonderful Danish Modern chandelier with five glass globes. It looks really cool and matches our bedside lights exactly.