Replace the Oven

The oven in the kitchen stopped working, so I replaced it.

Linda picked out a 27 inch GE model (JKP15BABB) that is the same size as the previous one, so I can just pull the previous one out and put the new one in.

Unfortunately, the mechanical controls that the old one used are no longer available; now we have electronic controls. The installation instructions say that the circuit boards can overheat if there is not enough outside air flow, so I had to cut an opening under the oven into the drawer below the oven. $660.27 from Bettis Appliances.

Update:  June, 2019.  The top (broil) heating element burned out.  Spectacularly.  We were trying to cook some salmon, and suddenly there was a burst of light, sparks and flames.  The element burned for some time, and eventually a section about an inch long fell off.  Turn the power off (at the circuit breaker).  Let it all cool overnight.  Then remove two screws, unplug the broil element, go get a replacement piece -- WB44K5009 Broil Element $61.11, plug it in, put the two screws back that hold it in place, turn the power back on, and everything (seems) to work again.

Second Mortgage Re-financing

In 1994, we refinanced the mortgage to a 7/23 ARM with an initial interest rate of 5.99%.  The interest rate is to adjust in May 2001, and probably significantly higher than we can get elsewhere.  Plus Linda has moved in and bought half the house, so it makes sense to refinance again, to get a lower rate than we expect. (Note: turns out the adjusted rate would have been 8.75%).  And it turns out that I had started a new job and my employer has an arrangement with Chase Bank to provide low-cost mortgages (as a way to attract new employees).

So we refinanced with Chase Manhattan Mortgage, getting a 15-year fixed rate mortgage for $140,000 at 7.25%.  This paid the balance of the second mortgage of $139,801.05 plus closing costs.  Closing costs included a 1% loan origination fee ($1400), title insurance ($1131.70), and an appraisal fee ($300), among other things.

The appraisal compared our house with 3 close-by that had been sold recently, trying to adjust for the differences in age, size, and so on.

Again the appraisal tried to figure out exactly the size of the house.

Interestingly, the previous appraisal  thought the house was 3048 square feet; this one things it is 3022 square feet.  The garage was 592 but is now 591.

The photos of the house show how the landscaping has changed, in the front

and in the back

Replacing Tile in Guest Bathroom

We replaced the original tile around the guest bathtub with new tile. The selected tile was an 8 inch by 8 inch square of blue.

The tiles were 77 8x8 Spanish Pastel Blue (A2VLEV) plus 45 trim pieces 2 3/4 x 8 SBN of the same color. This came to $220.65 from Brick & Tile Center, 12024 N. Lamar on 15 June 2000 (Check #441).

The tile was installed by Smittys Tile (Everett Smith). He removed the old tile, and the sheet rock behind it, installing 1/2 inch Durarock Board instead of the sheet rock. Then the tile was installed on the Durarock Board and grouted.

Smittys Tile started this work on 26 June 2000, and finished up by 28 June for a total cost of $1500.00 ($500 down and $1000 on completion).

A series of minor improvements

Nov 1997

Install an electrical outlet in the office for a wall clock. I have a large, old clock from the International Time Recorder company, from 1928. The original clock mechanism needed DC current, so a shop converted it to AC. To hang it on the wall, I need an electrical outlet to plug it in.

Also, install a third light over the front door. The front door has two lights, one on the wall to the left and one on the wall to the right. But the door itself is set back 2 feet or so from the exterior wall, so these lights really don't illuminate the front door. I added a third light hanging from the ceiling right in from of the front door, in a style that matches the two wall lights, and powered by the same switch. This lights up the area directly in front of the door much better than before.

March 1998

Add a phone line to the Dining Room. We are using the Dining Room as a TV room, and we have a new device that allows us to access the internet on our TV. It uses a dial-up internet service, so we need a phone line close to the TV, which is to say, close to the cable outlet for cable TV.

January 1999

Plant a couple more trees. One of the two Chinese Pistache trees by the kitchen died. Replace it with a Mexican White Oak. At least that is what it was sold as. I tend to think it is something else, a Burr oak possibly. But trying to identify it on the internet suggests it is a chestnut tree.

The other tree is another Drake Elm. We have two Drake Elms on the West side of the house and they have done quite well. Plant another further south, in a line with, and spaced like the existing two. It's much smaller now, of course, but in 20 years, maybe it will catch up.

More Dirt. 6 yards of growers mix to spread on the lawn to improve drainage. $202.43 from Austin Landscape Supplies.


June 1999

Linda is moving in. She has a small dog, Coco. Previously, we had a fence around the house, but only on the property line, so it closed the yard off from the neighbors, but didn't close it off completely. Now we need to be able to keep the dog in the back, so we need to add the extension of the fence from the property line to the house on both the left and right sides. Just Fences did this for $630. Two sections: 23 feet on one side and 14 feet on the other. Each with a gate.


July 1999

The tiles in the center bathroom are coming lose, and the sheet vinyl in the kitchen is showing its age. Replace both of these with tile from Texas Floors. The kitchen gets a large light colored tile, while the bathroom gets a blue grey tile. $3243.00


January 13, 2000

Install a big sink in the garage. We had a small after thought of a sink in the garage, but it was barely large enough to wash your hands. We need a place to wash Linda's dog. Someplace we can stand up and still use the sink. I stripped everything out of the corner, and remove the old sink. Then a cabinet from Home Depot -- just a pre-fab white formica on press-board unit. $182. A pre-formed formica counter top of just the right size. A really large plastic sink with a combination spray unit for a faucet. 177.00. The plumbing is more complex than I am used to, so get Austin Plumbing Repair to put it all together. $273.16.



January 29, 2000

In the attic, over the center bathroom, rewire the lights. There are two main light fixtures, one over each mirror. These are the main light fixtures. There is another single light over the toilet, but that is seldom used. For some reason, the lights were originally wired, so that one switch worked one of the main light fixtures and the other the single light over the toilet and the other main fixture. This is the opposite of the Master bathroom, where one switch works all the main lights, and a separate one works the light over the toilet. So I re-wired them, so that the one light switch works both main light fixtures. This means that for most use, only the one switch is needed.

A skylight in the kitchen

October 1996 to January 1997

The kitchen has always seemed dark. It gets light from the windows in the breakfast nook, and thru the dining room windows, and some from the living room, but it has no light of its own. The result is that the kitchen lights are almost always on. And still it seems dark. The kitchen lights are a big wooden box on the ceiling with three 2-light fluorescent light tubes in it. This is positioned in the middle of the kitchen, over the island.

My idea was to replace it with a skylight. The skylight would provide natural light directly to the kitchen. I could put it right over the island, replacing the kitchen light box. But then how to light the kitchen at night? One idea was to put fluorescent lights around the skylight opening, but instead we decided to put lights on top of the cabinets, facing up, to reflect off the ceiling. This provides a more diffuse light.

At the same time, we put halogen lights under the cabinets, to provide spot lighting on the counters.

Kai Brown helped with the design and implementation issues, including getting a guy to come do the skylight installation and electrical wiring for the new lights. $1522.00

We settled on a Velux Model FS skylight, with low-E, insulated, Argon gas double paned glass, of a 21.5 x 38.5 inch size. The interior kitchen opening was somewhat larger -- 24 x 48. This was installed in the roof and then a channel was constructed thru the attic down to the kitchen. The channel was sheetrocked and textured on the inside, matching the kitchen ceiling.

In the attic, I insulated all around the skylight channel,

For the primary new lighting, we got shop lights from Home Depot and laid them on top of the kitchen cabinets. The shop lights are meant to be plugged in, so we put new electrical plugs in the walls just above the cabinets. This works. It's not as "finished" as it could be. I think we could finish it more by putting some moulding sticking up 3 or 4 inches -- to create sort of a short wall around the top of the cabinets, so that the lights were below eye level -- recessed. But functionally it works pretty well. We ended up with three 2-bulb fluorescent bulb fixtures -- one over the stove, one on the adjacent wall and one on the cabinets between the breakfast nook and the kitchen.

The under-cabinet halogens generate a fair amount of heat, so I try not to use them much. The power cords for these under-cabinet lights run along under the cabinets to a set of electrical outlets installed in the wall just below the cabinets, and controlled by a light switch in the wall. Again three units, covering most of the counters under the cabinets provides good coverage. The installation is pretty obvious if you look under the cabinets, but since most of the cabinets start (or end) below a normal adults eye-level, they are normally not visible at all.

Attic basics

The house is fairly large (3000 sq ft) for a one-story house. The roof pitch is fairly low, but still with such a large house, there is a lot of space in the attic. Mostly the space is wasted. It's dark, and full of insulation and hard to get around. And why would you want to get around anyway? It gets really hot (really hot -- this is Texas).

Well, despite all that, there are times when you have to be up there. Telephone wiring. Cable wiring. Working on the air conditioning duct work. There is some storage area up there. There are enough times that it would be useful to be easier to get around.

The idea with the attic work was fairly simple, in concept. I wanted to lay down a subfloor over as much of the attic as made sense which would allow me to walk around safely. To do the work, I needed improved lighting. And I wanted to be able to easily upgrade the insulation for the whole house, to reduce the cost of cooling the house during the hot Texas summers. So a floor, lighting, and insulation.

This project went on and on, starting in about 1996 and continuing until 2008 when it was finished. By finished, I mean that

• I had a window for light, as well as 5 fluorescent shop light fixtures (each with 2 three foot fluorescent light bulbs)
• The insulation was 18 to 24 inches deep in most places, and included a roof ridge vent for both insulation and ventilation.
• The A/C duct work was buried in insulation, and protected as necessary.
• The roof area (underside) was covered with a reflective foil thermal barrier.
• I had well-defined flooring down on all the areas that had enough headroom to allow standing up.
• The floor areas were "walled" with foil covered fiberglass insulation board (duct boards) to hold the insulation back.
• I had electrical outlets at regular intervals

This took so long because I was only working on it on weekends, and then generally only in the morning (since it got really hot as the day went on). There was no real plan -- just a general concept, so it proceeded in fits and starts. Generally, I worked first to put in the lighting, so I could see.

I removed the roof supports that were left by the builders. It's not clear to me if these roof supports had only been meant as temporary bracing while the roof was built, or if they were necessary, but, empirically, I could remove them and not notice a change in the roof. Then I worked on the flooring in an area. The downstairs ceiling is basically 2x8's filled with loose fiberglass insulation. To reinforce the floor, I ran 2x8's perpendicular to the existing 2x8 ceiling joists. Between these new 2x8's I put fiberglass batts, and then covered it with 3/4 inch plywood. Then I put in vertical framing as a wall around the floor, providing support for the roof, separating the non-floored areas from the non-floored area.

This continued from one area to another, extending the floored area, allowing easier work on new areas.


April 1996

Upgrade the duct work from the grey flexible ducts to mylar flexible ducts. $1280.

April 1996

Mortgage Refinance and Appraisal

I kept the house in the divorce.  A "Special Warranty Deed" dated February 24, 1994 made me the sole owner of both the house and the mortgage.

After the divorce, it seemed reasonable to refinance the house, removing my ex-wife's name from the loan.  This was accomplished on 15 April 1994 with a new 30-year 7/23 mortgage of $159,200 at 5.99%.  This paid the balance of the first mortgage of $154,809.21 plus closing costs.  Closing costs included a 1% loan origination fee ($1592), title insurance ($1501), and an appraisal fee ($325), among other things.

A 7/23 mortgage is a variable rate mortgage.  The rate is fixed for the first 7 years, and then adjusts to a different rate for the last 23 years.  The rate would change on 1 May 2001, and could go as high at 10.99%.  The new rate is 1% more than the 30-year standard conventional fixed rate mortgage index of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), rounded up to the nearest 1/8 percentage point, but limited to no more than 10.99%.  While this is potentially a high interest rate, my expectation would be to either sell (both kids will be out of high school by 2001) or re-finance before that time.

(Update: the Fannie Mae index for May 2001 was 7.21, so my new interest rate would have been 8.25%)

The appraisal compared our house with 3 close by that had been sold recently, trying to adjust for the difference in age, size, and so on.

The appraisal tried to figure out exactly the size of the rooms.

and how they were used.

As well as what the house looks like, front

and back.

Outdoors and Upgrades

April 1993

More dirt for the yard and flower beds. 12 cubic yards of Landscape Mix from Whittlesey $234.36.


June 1993

Upgrade part of the sprinkler system in the back yard. Dug up rock from the center of the back yard and put in another sprinkler head, more dirt and grass sod. $38.62

August 1993

Replace the front door lock and handle. The original door knob was meant to be just temporary, so it finally came time to replace it with a real door knob. This is a big brass unit with buttons on the side and a built-in deadbolt. From Stripling-Blake. $529.98 plus $238.03 for installation.

August 1993

Repaint the house. Mike Thompson $1480.00 He last painted the house in July 1992 for $2790, but this time it was only one coat, not two. Again Kelly-Moore Color #364, Natural Cedar.


October 1993

The sprinkler control system was just tacked onto the interior garage wall when the sprinklers were installed. I re-did this by cutting out the sheetrock and framing a little cubby hole between the studs. I added another electrical outlet in the bottom of the framing specifically for the sprinkler control. In theory, I could add a door over it, but there seems no reason to do that.

Feb 1994

Cut down about 10 male mountain juniper trees -- I'm highly allergic to them. To replace them, I planted 2 peach trees, plus a harvester peach, a red delicious apple, a golden delicious apple, and a pear tree. Also 3 Rough-leaf dogwood trees.

March 1994

Put a new Oak shelf in the Master Bedroom closet. Eight feet long, 1x12, oak. $44.40

A little later, I added another one to the Master Bedroom closet ($13.48) and one to one of the kids bedrooms ($10.11). The builder had put in poles for hanging clothes. These were supported by metal brackets that are designed to hold a shelf above them, but he didn't put the shelf in. These three shelves were basically filling in all the shelves missing from the supports. These two later ones were pine, so they were much less expensive than the oak one. Partly this was cost; partly it was because they are not as long, so don't have to be as rigid. Each shelf was stained and poly-urethaned (two coats).

16 April 1993

A coat rack for the back bedroom closet. Brass hooks on a wooden plaque.

24 April 1993

A ceiling fan in the one room that still doesn't have one. I think Leanne had the ceiling fan, so all I had to do was install it. Needed a fan brace plus some wiring and switches.

28 April 1993

Install a wire shelf and hanger rod underneath it in the utility room. This was positioned up over where a freezer could be put. 20 inches deep and wall to wall.

Even More Making a House into a Home

July 1992

Planted two new trees in the small peninsula of dirt between our driveway and the neighbor's driveway. Bradford Pears. These have worked out beautifully. They are of moderate height -- maybe 20 feet tall, but very round in shape. In the spring and summer, they have large green leaves. They provide much needed shade for both our drive (in the morning) and the neighbor's (in the afternoon). In the fall, the leaves turn brilliant shades of yellow and red.

15 July to 30 July 1992

Thompson Painting, Drywall and Handyman stained and sealed the outside wood. Under the eaves, and around the windows and doors. The wood gables on the left, right, front and back. Kelly Moore Color #364 Natural Cedar. $2790.00

22 July to 29 July

Install ceiling fans in both kids bedrooms. Fans, pull-chains, lights. This was easier because I could get access in the attic to the electrical and framing work in the ceiling. Removed the old light fixture, and put in a new electrical box and fan brace. Ran extra wire and put in a new switch box, so that instead of the old single switch we now have two switches -- one for the light and one for the fan. $124.68.

21 Sept 1992
17 Oct 1992

Bought two wooden shelfs (at Target) and installed them in the Master Bathroom and the middle Bathroom. These are solid oak shelfs, with a little rail around them, to keep things from falling off. $37.98.

October 29, 1992
Upgrade the sprinkler system. There were some dry spots in the yard, so I asked Gorbet, who put in the sprinkler system originally, to come back and add some more heads and move heads around, as necessary to get better coverage. $123.03


November 7, 1992

Bought a cubic yard of Garden Mix from Gardenville for the yard. $30.24.

Bathroom Repairs

July 1992

For some time -- 2 years -- we had noticed problems with water in the shower area. After a shower, we would find water outside the shower, in a corner on the tile. The problem was a leaking shower pan (under the tile). The water would leak into the space under the tile, on top of the concrete slab, and then migrate out from the shower. This caused water damage to the bathroom shower walls, and even into the bedroom.

All the tile had to be replaced around the shower and tub.

Frank Leitzel was the general repair person. He first removed all the damaged tile from the floor and walls. Instead of the pre-fab shower pan (the part under the tile that had leaked), he installed a fiberglass pan, custom made to the shower.

Then we had to re-install the tile. Myrle Brooks did that. He did a "mud-set" of the tile, which should be better, in the long term, than the standard "thin-set".

The hard part for us was finding the workmen, and picking out the replacement tile. Naturally, it being 6 years after the house was built, the old tile that we had picked out was no longer available.

The general repairs were 1325. The tile installation was 850. The tile cost 514.68. Our house insurance covered a lot of the repairs for the damage. They paid 4400.28 for the damage. Unless there is more that I don't have records for, it looks like they paid us 1810.60 more than the cost of the repairs.