Mortgage paid off

We made our last mortgage payment.

When the house was built in 1986, we took out a 30-year mortage to finance it.

• 15 July 1986 -- 30-year mortgage for $200,000 at 8.5% interest
• 15 April 1994 -- 30-year mortgage for $159,200 at 5.99% interest
• 11 December 2000 -- 15-year mortgage for $140,000 at 7.25% interest
• 14 October 2002 -- 15-year mortgage for $125,800 at 5.75% interest

We were aggressive in paying extra principal when possible.  Even so, it took 24 years and $227,651 in interest to pay off the original $200,000 mortgage.

End of work for awhile

Sprinkler system repair

We have been having a minor water leakage problem in the back yard. The initial problem was there was a damp spot in the back yard right at the fence. I tried to read the meter at the street, and then read it again 3 hours later with no one home but me. No change in the meter. So I wasn't sure it was ours.

But when I started to dig there, I found a sprinkler head. So I took the head out and capped it off. That stopped the leak. Or at least it did at that spot. Now there was a new wet spot out in the yard. Again, this was another head and I capped it off. I want to excavate and rebuild this section of the back yard anyway.

This worked for several weeks, then a new wet spot showed up about where the zone control valve should be. I have never replaced a control value, and it turns out I need to have open heart surgery, so I called Jonathon Griesheimer, who had previously replaced the main sprinkler control value for me. His phone is 512-836-6539. I didn't have the time to figure out what the problem was before I went in for surgery.

But while I was in the hospital, he came out, figured out the problem and put in a new valve. There was an indirect comment, thru my girlfriend's daughter that the valve is too far underground. Which would be expected, since we have been raising the level of part of the back yard in this area. This then took 3 hours of labor to dig everything up and replace the leaking parts. $260.

So that solves that problem, and I'll just have to wait for another 6 weeks or so before I can consider going back to work.

Replacing a toilet in the guest bathroom

We've had a suspicion that the toilet in the guest bathroom leaks, at a low level. But it also has a tendency to get clogged, and it's a 25 year old model, so the current ones should use much less water. And that bathroom is next up on interior remodelling, so rather than repair it, we will just replace it. 

The unit we have in the back bathroom seems to be working fairly well. It's an American Standard Champion 4 model. We can get this from Home Depot, but only in white. Linda says she wants "Linen" which is an off-white, and that needs to be special-ordered. I order it on 22 May 2010. $500.93 for the Toilet -- Right Height, Elongated Bowl, plus the matching toilet seat. It finally comes in on 8 June, but then we have Lauren's high school graduation, so I don't get to installing it until 13 June. 

Everything goes very well at first. Removing the old toilet is as expected. Removing a bunch of bolts. Turn the water off at the wall. Take the pieces outside, with as little water leakage as possible. Clean out the old wax ring that was under the old toilet. 

Turn off the water supply to the house, and replace the cut-off valve at the wall with a new one. I have trouble putting the new wax ring in place. The box with the wax ring says to press it on the up-side down toilet and then "set it in place". But when I flip the toilet over, the wax ring falls off. And positioning the new toilet bowl over the bolts is difficult, since you can't see the bolts when they are under the toilet bowl. 

 Finally get it set in place, and bolted down. Then attach the tank, and a new water supply line. Everything goes together just right -- no leaks. 

Then flush the toilet the first time, and it leaks under the bowl -- flowing gently out along the floor. 

So I take everything apart. The water supply line. The tank. Remove the bowl. The wax ring had shifted and half covered the hole into the floor. Remove it. Back to Home Depot to get another wax ring. Reinstall just the bowl. Test it this time by pouring water into the bowl with a bucket. Still leaks. Take it apart. The ring is pretty much in the right place. But normally when I've put in toilets, after installing the wax ring and putting the bowl on top, it's squishy as the bowl compress the wax ring into place, sandwiching it between the floor and the bowl, spreading out slightly and sealing everything. I had not noticed that this time. So it would seem that this unit is a bit further from the floor than a normal toilet bowl. 

Back to Home Depot again. In addition to the normal wax ring, they have an "extra thick" one. Costs an extra dollar, but it's about twice as deep. Put that in place around the hole in the floor. Position the bowl on a couple of pieces of wood to hold it up until the bolts show through the bolt holes, then pull the wood out and lower the toilet bowl. Feel it squishing the wax ring as I press down on the bowl and tighten the bolts. This time it works; no leaks. Put the rest of it back together. 

Altogether it took about 6 hours, but that included three installations, two removals, and two trips to Home Depot.

Digging in the corner of the yard

Not much to report for this weekend. I was able to dig for a couple of hours on Sunday. I'm starting in a new corner of the yard. The objective is to clean out this section of rocks, and upgrade the soil, so we can move the oak trees from the area by the box over here.




I'm starting in the corner and working my way out. I'm still a foot or so away from the actual fence line, so that it holds the fence in place while I dig. Once I get it in the condition I want, I'll pour an edge wall with rocks on top next to the fence, to keep things from digging in or out under the fence.

So far it looks like a classical dig. Lots of smallish rocks -- smaller than a watermelon -- and a couple of really big ones. I've pulled them out of the hole, but I still need to move them out of the way. I'm not sure yet how much dirt is under the big rocks; I'll work more on it next weekend, with any luck.

Changing the Stovetop

Ever since the house was built, it's had a Thermador electric stove top. It's showing its age. One light doesn't work any more, and the pans under the burners are in bad shape. I've replaced them at least twice, but still they get baked-on spills. And Linda believes that a gas stove is better, so we are going to switch it out for a gas model.



Consumer Reports lists the Sears Kenmore Elite 3249 as its top ranked 36-inch gas cooktop, and after looking at several places, we choose it. We were unable to find one in stock, that we could actually look at, so we went over to Sears to order one. As it happens, just the day before, someone had returned a new one, and so they had an open box of that exact model, in Stainless Steel, on display for half-off. So we took it.

As you might expect, things are not perfect, as it was missing the installation instructions. With some work, I found a PDF file of the installation instructions on-line and printed them out. I started the installation early on Saturday and finished up about 8 pm, so it took all day, and three trips to Home Depot.

The first problem was to remove the old cooktop and make the hole in the counter larger. The depth is okay, but we are replacing a 30 inch cooktop with a 36 inch cooktop, so I needed to make the hole wider.



Once that was done, I dropped the cooktop in place. This looks like it is almost done, but most of the work is still ahead.

The obvious work is attaching the gas line to the cooktop. The builder had put the gas line in, but just capped it off. I had to remove the cap and put a cut-off valve on. Then I could run the line from the cut-off valve to the cooktop itself. That was actually fairly easy. You have to be careful to seal all the connections, and then test afterwards with soapy water to look for any leaks (which will make bubbles).

The really difficult part was providing it electrical power. The electrical cooktop had a 220 volt direct connection. This same circuit runs the wall oven next door to the cooktop. It would be possible to use half the 220 to get the 110 that the gas cooktop needs, but not safe. Since the oven runs on the 220 circuit, I had to just cap it off and seal it away.

There are some 110 circuits that run around the counters to provide power for kitchen appliances, so I tapped off one of them and ran a wire down under the cabinet and put in a new outlet. That was the most difficult part -- running the extra wire down in the exterior wall behind the cooktop. But it didn't have to be pretty; it just had to be right.




So with these tasks complete, we now have a new gas stove top.



The next project in the kitchen should be new counter tops. Granite, I assume.

Another spot to dig -- the South Pit

I dug back to the fence line along the right side of the electrical box, getting all of the stump and it's roots out. Going all the way down to bed-rock, I found the trench that runs along the fence (from the corner of the Bamboo Grove that holds the electrical, telephone and cable wiring.

Then I filled it back in, at least partially.




This has accomplished the basic goal for this section at this time -- removing the stump, clearing out the rocks, and making the soil better by increasing its organic content. I've mixed a lot of last Fall's leaves into this dirt as it was shovelled out, and then shovelled back in.

It appears that we will want to move the remaining trees. These are Shin Oaks -- a small native oak for Central Texas. It likes full sun, has low water requirements and likes the limestone based soil. So it's a nice tree, and we don't want to lose it, but it's sort of in an inconvenient place. My idea is to move it over to the corner of the yard.



So that will be the next area to dig. We will dig this area up, to get down to bedrock, clean out the rocks and improve the soil, then move the Shin Oaks over to that area and see if we can get them to live there. That will allow me to continue the excavations by the electrical box.



This area is where the compost pile was -- we've moved it now to back by the Bamboo Grove. Also we have had a couple of trees planted in this area, so the soil is somewhat disturbed and uneven; after the trees were put in or out, the soil settled. So part of the goal is to even up this part of the yard. We will need to be careful, since it will settle after we are done.

Digging out the stump

Having gotten down to bedrock, the primary goal is to dig out the stump, so we start to dig back towards the stump. First we dig back to the concrete slab that the electrical box is on, and then we start to dig around the stump, counter-clockwise.

With daylight savings, it's lighter in the evening, so I've been coming home from work earlier and trying to dig from about 6:00 to 7:30 in the evening. After the weekend, and 3 or 4 evenings, we have dug our around half the stump.





Another weekend of digging and we have most of the dirt from the back side moved out. Once you get about 3 or 4 inches down, you hit the roots. I use the "axe" part of my grubbing hoe to chop at the roots next to the stump and at the edge of the hole that I've dug to get the roots out. This disconnects the stump from the roots out in the yard (which will eventually be dug up or die).



And this evening, having chopped my way around the stump, I could just reach down, and use the longest remaining root to lift the stump up and on its side.




It's really heavy. I can't think of any reason anyone would want a stump, so the next problem will be to break it down into manageable pieces and haul it out. I have a couple of wedges and a sledge hammer that I will try to use for that this next weekend.

Another weekend of digging

Not too much progress this weekend. I got the rocks out of the hole from last weekend, and dug some more.

I've put the rocks out on the curb to get rid of them. Craig's List seems like a good way to get people to come haul them off. They use them as landscape rocks, I assume.



After getting the rocks out, which required using the jackhammer to break several into smaller more manageable pieces, the rest of the time was just digging, and moving the dirt out of the way.



There is a solid layer of rock about 20 inches down. I expect several weeks of just digging, to get the soil cleaned up, removing rocks and mixing in compost.

Starting The Box

The next area to work on is a planter/bed area just off the porch. It was dominated by a large cedar tree, which we had cut down. So now we have a stump to remove. I've started by clearing off all the previous plantings, and removing the little stone edging around it.

Here's what the tree looked like before it was removed.



And that leaves me with the following to work on:





And in particular the stump.



I expect to dig around this until it's isolated and then break it up into smaller pieces to get it out.

After a couple of days of digging, I have exposed a couple of big rocks in a 5 foot by 7 foot hole. I managed to pry the small one out and put it on the stump to get it out of the way. I pried another larger one up on top of another. I may need to break these into smaller chunks to make them manageable.



Under these rocks, about 21 inches from ground level, it appears I have a solid, smooth unbroken layer of rock, so that's about as deep as I can go.

After this work, it has rained, so I can't really do anything more until it dries up. And Spring Break is over, so it's back to digging only on the weekends.

Last work on the Bamboo Grove

I'm off work on Spring Break, and it's stopped raining for a few days, so I was able to go out and shovel more dirt into the bamboo grove. This should fill it back in. The wall is done, and other than needing to bring in more dirt as things settle, the Bamboo Grove is done. All the dirt has been dug up, the rock removed and the dirt quality improved. As the dirt settles, I will probably need to bring in a bit more.