Weekend DIY at Chateau Papillon: Toilet Replacement

Channel-lock pliers. Bolt cutters. Hacksaw. Brake cleaner. WD-40. 9/16 box end wrench. Chisel. Screwdriver. Socket wrench. Hammer. Putty knife. These are some of the tools needed to remove the old toilet in my bathroom at Chateau Papillon, thanks to the heavily-rusted flange bolts holding it to the floor. After all that, I wonder if a sledgehammer might not have done the job of all of them together and with more satisfying fun to boot.

Replacing a toilet isn't really that hard of a job--I've tackled far more challenging DIY projects at Chateau Papillon in the past.  Still, like so many home improvement jobs, it ended up taking a lot longer than I'd expected; I had figured on about an hour total to remove the old toilet and install the new one, and it took closer to three.

Why the new toilet?  It was an "impulse buy" at Costco, I have to admit.  Beth and I had gone specifically to check out a laundry sink--something I spied at a Costco in Richmond last summer but which until now our local one had never had in stock--and right next to the sink were several high-efficiency, dual-flush toilets for under $90.  That's a pretty good buy; I'd looked at similar units at Lowe's and Home Depot before, typically for upwards of $150 with several brand-name models over $280.  Couple with that the fact we'd just gotten back from Spain, where like so much of Europe the toilets are similar to the one in the store, and we were sold.

Not to mention that my bathroom's old toilet was wearing out--I'd had to replace several parts on it over the past couple of years.  Nor that it was a water-hog, slurping down around 5 gallons per flush.  I don't think it dated back to the original home construction (mid-'60s), but the toilet wasn't much newer than that, either.

First, the old toilet (pictured above) had to come out.  Turn off the water, flush, pour a bucket of hot water through to empty the bowl, and remove.  You'd think that wasn't going to be a very difficult task, but you'd be wrong.  Two flange bolts hold the toilet to the floor, and the problem with older toilets is that the nuts on those bolts are typically rusted solidly in place.  Worse, the flange bolts heads simply fit into a slot on the flange beneath the toilet, so there's very little leverage to be had: the entire bolts will just spin in place.  Enter the list of tools and materials leading off this post...

I tried penetrating oil, WD40, and even brake cleaner (which consists mostly of very light, very volatile hydrocarbon solvents), and though I did thus manage to dislodge quite a bit of rust, that was it.  I had the most success gripping the tops of the bolts with some really big channel-lock pilers and using a box-end wrench to twist the nut in the opposite direction--though this really crushed the threads on the ends of the bolts.  Unfortunately, one bolt was so rusted that the end simply snapped off when torqued--and of course it wasn't the end between the toilet and the floor that broke.

Next came a chisel; I figured if the bolts were that fragile, I might be able to snap them off beneath the nuts.  This meant some rather awkward hammering, as I didn't want to slip and shatter the toilet itself into a million tiny fragments of porcelain.  That didn't get me very far, and next up was a hacksaw.  The problem there was that my toilet was crammed back into a nook, giving me all of a couple of inches of space and a completely useless angle to use the saw.  I gave up on the saw, but perseverance paid off in the end when I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters onto one of the two.  This gave me enough leverage to twist the entire toilet free without further work on the second bolt, as I was able to rotate the toilet around the flange enough that the bolt head aligned with the slot used to originally install it (sort of like the wide part of an old-fashioned keyhole).

A wax gasket serves to seal the bottom of the toilet to the floor flange and sewer pipe, preventing leaks.  The old gasket has to go so that the new one will seal properly.  I discovered in removing the sticky, gunky old mess that whoever had installed the current toilet hadn't taken out the original gasket--there were two, nested sets of rubber seals and wax gaskets!  (You can see one of those in the photo to the left.)  A putty knife, several pairs of gloves, and some rags took care of that phase of prep, all the while with a rag stuffed into the pipe to prevent icky sewer gas from filling the room while I worked.

Notice, too, that the old toilet tank had leaned right against the wall and collected a nice bit of moisture, as well as some mildew where the original wallboard had apparently never been painted at all.  Taking care of that required a scrub brush, some bleach, and a couple of hours of drying time followed by several coats of paint--thankfully, we still had part of a gallon of the "Miami Mist" color on hand.

Everything finally prepped meant it was time at last to install the new toilet.  New flange bolts into the flange: check.  New rubber seal and wax gasket: check.  Remove the rag in the sewer pipe: check.  With Beth's help, I got the new toilet in place, gave it a little twist (to seat the wax gasket properly), and secured it to the floor.  Note that I absolutely slathered the new flange bolts with WD-40, as I expect I'll need to move the toilet at least once when I get around to a total bathroom remodel in a couple of years and retile the floor and walls.  Hook up the water, fill, and flush: nice.  No leaks.

The dual-flush on the new toilet uses only 1 gallon of water for the "light" flush (and though it may be a bit grotesque of me to say so, I do typically follow the Southern California dicta of letting yellow mellow to save water, too) and 1.6 for the "heavy" flush.  While some high-efficiency models are prone to clogs and otherwise problematic, this one seems to work like a charm so far.  (We'll see if the dual-flush mechanism on top of the tank confuses anyone the next time we have guests over...)

The old toilet, thoroughly cleaned, ended up on the cub for Habitat for Humanity to pick up, bound for a new home no doubt.  A little disappointing, I must say, not to take drag it out into the woods for a consultation with a shotgun, but, like the new toilet upgrade, a more environmentally-friendly choice.

Chateau Papillon has an "English basement," opening out onto the backyard with one of those ubiquitous sliding glass doors.  Or perhaps I should more correctly say had one of those sliding patio doors; one thing that had nagged us since moving in back in 2008 was the door's poor operation, and the fact that even fully open, it was just an inch too narrow to easily get the bird cages out or to bring things like appliances in.

The solution, obviously, was a nice French door, which we could swing out on both sides.  So, when Lowe's ran a 15% off special order doors sale earlier this fall, we went in and picked out a fairly basic Energy Star-rated model sized to replace that leaky, finicky old sliding door.

Installing the new door was actually very easy; the hardest part was getting the old one out.  I'd done such a job caulking the old door last year that the metal flashing around it was quite loathe to come loose, and I managed to destroy my caulk remover in the process (as well as the metal flashing--but we'd no real thought of salvaging it).  With advice from uncle E.C. and his contractor's expertise coupled with physical labor from my dad and sister Brooke, we got the new door in place with the only snag being some 1/4" cedar planks I had to remove around the opening.  Fortunately, the sill was pretty level, and the sides fairly plumb, requiring very little shimming and adjustment--for proper alignment is absolutely critical when installing any door, much less a French door where anything out of square will result in poor operation and often a gap between the two doors instead of a weather-tight seal.

I got the new door insulated (with low-expansion spray-foam) and caulked, as well as locksets installed and keyed to our existing house keys--a nifty feature, that.  There's still work to do; the inside needs some case molding, and the outside a fascia board along the top as well as possibly some casing along the outside edges.  Too, the strike plate for the main lock needs to be aligned better, and the handedness of the lock swapped (as the levers appear "upside-down" as installed).  But so far, so good!

The old door will be going to Habitat for Humanity, assuming they want it, as we got it out without any significant damage.  Now, if we'd only managed to get the door ordered before the submission deadline for the second round of Virginia energy efficiency rebates, we'd have saved about $100 more on the cost of the door.  Nevertheless, we made good use of our energy rebates, between replacing our furnace and a/c unit, buying a high-efficiency washing machine, and getting a home energy audit (the fruits of which, in all the caulking and other insulation work I've done, are seen in each month's energy bills).

Transforming Chateau Papillon's Landscape: Building a Wildlife Sanctuary & How You Can, Too!

Videographers Alison Fast and Chandler Griffin

Not too long ago, I blogged about some of the steps Beth and I have taken to make over our yard at Chateau Papillon into a more natural landscape and a habitat attractive to all sorts of native wildlife (and intend to expound upon those topics, later, too).  We signed up for the Audubon at Home program and made our yard wildlife-friendly--and now, we're playing host to the National Audubon Society and volunteering our yard to appear in a video they're producing about how everyone can work to help birds year-round from their own homes.  Even if you're not a first-responder scrubbing clean the oiled birds of the Gulf after an environmental disaster like we recently witnessed, you can indeed still play a very important part in providing healthy habitat for migratory birds.

So when the call came out yesterday from the local Northern Virginia Audubon chapter's environmental education coordinator requesting help in putting together a video about the Gulf response, I jumped right on board; even though Beth and I typically are too busy to volunteer much of our time, this was simply too good of an opportunity to pass up, helping get out the message that everyone can play a role.

I remember how, shortly after the magnitude of the BP Macando well disaster became known, I rushed over to my computer and started pricing flights to New Orleans and to the Gulf panhandle of Florida.  I wanted to be there, instead of sitting helpless here at home.  Just thinking about the tragedy and its effects upon wildlife got me both angry and teared-up at the same time.  I had to do something!

But when I spoke to a friend in Florida--Adam Kent, current President of the Florida Ornithological Society--Adam gently suggested that most volunteers, though meaning the best, would have to be constantly supervised and guided to make sure they didn't do more harm than good (stepping on a threatened tern's nest, for example).  Instead, Adam said, we should be doing things at home like putting up nests specifically for species  around our home, like Eastern Phoebes (platforms sheltered high up near the eaves would be best, he said), and helping the silly Carolina Wrens who'd chosen to nest in our mailbox (we put in a second mailbox and labeled the two so the postman wouldn't drop mail in on top of the eggs).

Indeed, the contributions we can make from home and in our own backyards are actually more important than being on the front lines of response to an environmental disaster--more of us can participate, and over a larger area and much longer span of time.  Keep in mind, too, that what we do in our back yards has a much larger effect when summed across the country as a whole, and a more lasting one: we can change the environment for the better throughout our lives, not just on a single weekend or two of volunteering in the Gulf.

And the backyard contributions need not be something which consumes all of one's time or resources, either.  Though Beth and I certainly spend a huge amount of our own time and energy in our "outdoor living room," even small gestures can make a difference.  For example:

• Out in the yard with the family or pets?  Spend a few minutes looking for and removing invasive plant species, which crowd out natives and often don't provide as good of food or shelter for wildlife.  Beth and I have almost gotten our Japanese stilt grass under control simply by pulling up a few handfuls at a time whenever we're in the yard.
• Put out a feeder or two, and keep it stocked with black oil sunflower seeds--you'll pay a bit more for black oil sunflower, but it's generally a better seed and in our experience attracts less non-native "pest" birds (like House Sparrows and European Starlings).  Over time, you'll find yourself adding additional feeders to attract a variety of birds; we have thistle for finches, a sugar water feeder for hummingbirds, suet cake feeders for woodpeckers (including one designed specifically for larger species like the Pileated), and a flat tray feeder the Mourning Doves and Blue Jays love.
• Plant and encourage native species suited for your terrain and conditions.  They'll do well, and you'll be amazed at how much less fertilizer and pesticide is needed to keep them healthy.  Native plants attract a wide variety of native insects and serve as food and habitat for all sorts of wildlife.
• Add a water feature; it can be as small as a bird bath.  Our little pond has been a great habitat for native frog species (who found it on their own--build it, and they will come) as well as an attraction for our many backyard birds.
• Collect water from the gutters in rain barrels and use it in the yard instead of the hose.
• Create a "brush pile" somewhere in your yard instead of bundling up all those twigs and sticks for pickup at the curb.  Wrens and several other species of birds will thank you.
• Encourage neighbors to keep cats indoors!
• Many areas have free mulch available--make use of it.  We've used our locally-available mulch to help build up a layer of rich soil around the yard and to reclaim some of our lawn into new, more natural habitats: meadow in the sunnier spots, filled with bird-, bee-, and butterfly-friendly native wildflowers; forest floor in the shadier areas. 

There are countless more things you, too, can do; the list above covers only a few of the steps we've undertaken over the past two years in our back yard.  The Audubon Society of Northern Virginia offers several resources with more information for those living in the Washington, D.C., area, and the National Audubon Society's Audubon at Home site offers tips and a starting point for citizens nationwide.

Anyway--on the video shoot itself: the videographers arrived, along with National Auduon Society Gulf response communications coordinator Finley Hewes, around 7:30am, having flown up from New Orleans the night before.  They'd been working hard on the bulk of the video, from the beaches of the Gulf shores to trips out onto the water to see first-hand the front-line response to the oil disaster, and would be finishing up with the footage of what people can do in their own back yards.  We took a lot of footage, showing us walking around the yard, pointing out the native plants and their benefits to wildlife, and then spent time on an interview.  I'm sure most of the footage will end up on the cutting room floor (after all, we're just the closing anecdote to the video), but I'm still looking forward to seeing the finished product and will post a link to it as soon as the National Audubon Society folks put it up online.

I think we really conveyed the message that there are indeed things that we as individuals can do every day to help out; I'll post another blog entry later spelling out in detail some of what we shared and how those tips can help you, too, take care of the birds and other wildlife around you, no matter where you are.

Transforming Chateau Papillon's Landscape: Building a Wildlife Sanctuary (Part One)

Here at Chateau Papillon, we've been hard at work on the outdoors as much (if not more so) than the indoors.  When we first moved in, the lot was something of a blank slate, outside of the wonderful mature trees surrounding the yard.  We waited through the frustrations of a short sale largely due to the yard's potential, as it backed up to Fairfax Villa Park and offered the certainty of attracting a large variety of birds and other wildlife.  Since moving in, we've planted dozens of native trees and shrubs, have reclaimed large sections of drab lawn into more naturalized habitat, and have chalked up a list of 54 different bird species to-date.  So when the Northern Virginia Audubon Society announced the "Audubon at Home" wildlife sanctuary certification program, we thought to ourselves, "We're already 95% of the way there!"

Our Habitat Certification Sign!

The Audubon at Home Wildlife Sanctuary program encourages everyone--from schools, businesses, and churches to individual homeowners--to treat their property like a wildlife habitat, by taking steps to naturalize, bring in more native plant species, and provide food, shelter, and nesting habitat to our most important and needy species of native wildlife.  The program stresses environmentally-friendly landscape management practices, from reducing and managing runoff to cutting back on pesticide and fertilizer usage, all of which are important but often-overlooked adjutants to caring for native flora and fauna.

We recently completed our certification, and looking back, have come a long way at Chateau Papillon in the just-shy-of two years we've spent here.  Though I could fill up several posts with just the "before & after" shots, a few do bear inclusion for comparison's sake today:

Backyard, in June, 2008 (before)

When we first found the listing for Chateau Papillon, the back yard was one of the biggest draws, but as you can see above, not a whole lot was going on beside the shade from the mature trees along the periphery.  We didn't do that much work outside immediately after buying and moving in over Thanksgiving in late 2008; we had too much to do inside even if the weather had been more amenable outdoors.  After a visit to Merrifield Garden Center in the early spring of 2009, we came away with a lot of ideas in our head for what to do to transform our yard and make it "ours," along with five dogwoods and a river birch to plant.

Back yard, September 2010 (after)

That first winter was fairly mild, as was the start of springtime, but we already knew one of our first challenges was going to be runoff management: after a series of March rains, we had a swamp and a river running through it in no time flat.  Just about any rainstorm left similar signs of its passing upon the yard.

Ile du Papillon?  Spring showers make for puddles and rivers in the back yard.

We have tackled that problem in stages.  The first phase is visible, in fact, in the photo above: mulching the yard and replacing grass which simply doesn't get enough sun and which doesn't thrive atop our yard's densely-packed clay.  We undertook several courses of sheet mulching, recycling many of our moving boxes into a layer of weed-choking cardboard atop which we spread several inches of leaf mould and then shredded hardwood mulch obtained free-of-charge from Fairfax County's recycling center.  (In fact, we've to-date trucked in more than 40 cubic yards of free mulching material--worth a few thousand dollars if bought by the bag from the neighborhood Home Depot.)  Over time, the sheet mulch breaks down, forming a layer of rich, well-drained soil atop the hard-packed clay.

We created mulched zones originally as "natural areas" in the shadiest parts of our yard, recreating a more natural "forest floor" beneath the mature trees.  Just the mulch alone has significantly improved our runoff management; now only the most intense of monsoons produces any "rivering" in the yard, and we've extended the mulched areas significantly across the back yard and into a large section of the front as well.  Where before a solid rain meant a muddy morass that persisted for days, we now have rich soil and mulch cover which can be walked upon within minutes of a storm's passing.

Beth and Chance Plant a Dogwood

Next, though sometimes our choices haven't been perfect, we've planted stuff.  Lots of stuff.  Starting with those five dogwoods and a river birch, we have gradually begun to define a mid-story of smaller trees and shrubs beneath the towering mature trees edging the yard.  Those first trees have been joined by many more--four more river birches, an American redbud, a pussy willow, two hawthorns, two cypresses, and numerous self-seeded tulip poplars and a mulberry.  Native shrubs by the truckload have joined the party: common ninebark (one of our favorites); more than a half-dozen red osier dogwood shrubs (beautiful red stems in the winter); American and inkberry hollies galore (and one English holly hybrid for contrast); Virginia juniper; native hemlocks; several different native Viburnums; several blueberries and a blackberry; two sweetshrubs; and several more exotic junipers.

That doesn't count all the bulbs, wildflowers, ferns, and perennials we've added, which include meadow-loving tickseed (coreopsis), purple coneflowers, Black-eyed Susan, wood aster, cardinalflower, columbine, violets, foamflower, and much more.  Outside the hostas (requisites for a shade-covered yard!) and several of the bulbs, pretty much everything is a native species, too.

Most yards really shouldn't be oceans of neatly-cut grass, anyway; grass requires a lot of fertilizer and pesticide application--bad for many reasons, including runoff--and isn't all that great from a biodiversity standpoint, either.  In fact, wide swathes of green lawns weren't in fashion in the United States until post-World Wars, when troops brought back the idea from Europe.  Habitats like meadow (filled with wildflowers and native tall grasses), wetland, and forest edges are much better homes to wildlife and better for our environment.

More to come: the Audubon Habitat at Home program is not just about the new plantings, but about control of invasive species, too.

Weekend Scones Report: Breakfast In... the Laundry Room?

At Chateau Papillon, we have a tradition we call "weekend scones," where at least one of the two mornings I bake up something special for breakfast.  It doesn't have to be scones proper: in the past, I've made donuts, muffins, cookies, cakes, tarts, and all sorts of other tall-glass-of-milk-worthy confections.  This weekend's dish: Walnut Cream Cake.  This weekend's cafe locale: the laundry room.

Yes, that's right: we had our breakfast in the laundry room this morning.  We finally replaced my old washing machine--on which I'd replaced the drive coupler three times over the years and into which I put a new clutch a couple of years ago--thanks in large part to Uncle Sam, the so-called "stimulus act," and its energy efficiency rebate funds.  No more clanking-transmission on the old machine, and to boot, we have an Energy Star model which uses less water and electricity and gets our clothes cleaner than the old one.

Though the new washer was delivered on Friday afternoon, we didn't have the laundry room quite ready for it yet: we still had tile prep work (floor leveling, mostly) to complete under the old washer and the dryer, and of course tile to lay in that same area.  We'd been putting off those last few bits of work as we turned our attention to the outside at Chateau Papillon and got our early spring gardening chores in, but with a new washer to install, it was time to get moving on the tile.

We had a marathon tile laying session Friday night, wrapping up around 11:00pm and emptying out around three more cartons of tile--we've still got around 15 more to go to finish the hallway and parts of the storage area in our "water closet."  Late Saturday afternoon, we grouted the entire area done to-date, then sat back to let things dry so we could replace the appliances this morning.

After maneuvering the washer into place, getting all the connections set up, and the washer leveled, we tossed in a load of dirty clothes to try it out and make sure everything was properly in place.  That's why we had breakfast in the laundry room, mind you; we may be kooky, but not so much so a morning in front of a new washer is "entertainment."

Chance pronounced the new washer properly leveled as he tested it out for vibration on its inaugural load.  We still have my old dryer, which though 12 years old really hasn't seen that much use (none, in fact, from 2004 through late 2009); I didn't see a good reason to replace it yet, particularly since there aren't any energy rebates offered on dryers at present.

We've still got a little bit of rebate funds available; between the furnace last fall, an energy audit, and the 20% rebate we'll get back on the new washer (on top of the sale price + 10% additional off at Home Depot), we should have around $200 to put toward either a new water heater (ours is 15 years old and rather cranky) or else an Energy Star-rated French door to replace our sliding patio door.

Recapping Some Recent Cuisine de Chateau Papillon

My mother in law P.A.T. always claims that being in the kitchen energizes me creatively.  It certainly pays not to argue with one's mother in law--particularly when she's right.  I enjoy building upon culinary inspirations from many sources, be they travel (like the Mozzarella di Bufala bruscetta I baked after our trip to Italy); cookbooks (sometimes I even follow the recipe); or even lack of a dinner "plan," when I rifle through the pantry and fridge and build a whimsical dish from whatever I have on hand.

This past weekend, the fantastic weather had Beth and me eating out on the patio each morning, enjoying the sounds of springtime.  Thus, I spent a pretty fair amount of time in the kitchen and put together a couple of dishes I'd like to share.  First, for Sunday, I baked a vanilla-orange buttermilk pound cake; I wanted to make a breakfast/brunch item which would take advantage of fresh fruit, could be enjoyed with coffee, and was something different than the scones and pancakes I so often cook on the weekends.

After flipping through my baking staple cookbook, The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg, and scanning several fairly exotic quick bread, muffin, and cake recipes, I decided on pound cake--but Bo's recipes are typically scaled for the restaurant kitchen, so rather than dig out my calculator and multiply all the metric ingredients (real chefs bake from measurements by mass, not volume) by 40% to account for the smaller pans, I consulted another of my favorites, Alton Brown's baking text, I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking.  Then it was time to tinker.

Most people will say you can't mess with recipes for baking, but I'm here to say that so long as you know what you're doing, you most certainly can (Beth, though, might still refer to it a "tampering" with the recipe instead of my preferred "tweaking" or "tinkering").  I wanted a denser, finer texture than Alton's pound cake, so I swapped half the all-purpose flour out for cake flour; the lower protein content of the cake flour would result in less gluten linking in the finished product.  (Incidentally, I note Alton's online buttermilk pound cake recipe on Food Network's site uses cake flour and an extra egg, among other differences from the one in his cookbook.)

I also used dehydrated buttermilk instead of fresh--we never use all of a container of fresh buttermilk before it goes bad, so we now keep plenty of powder on hand and just reconstitute it as needed.  And, of course, the flavoring: two vanilla beans, their insides scraped and added to the batter, along with about 4 tablespoons of fresh orange peel I'd grated myself as a byproduct of the hand-squeezed OJ we've enjoyed of late, and finally about 2 tablespoons of Grand Marnier, the definitive orange-flavored cognac every cook should have on hand.  As for that orange peel: just use a Microplane grater and skim off the outermost rind; use it fresh, or spread it in a thin layer and allow to dry, and store in an airtight bottle.  (The greenie in me must also note that the leftover rinds, chopped finely, go into our compost pile afterwards.  No wasting here!)

After baking in a bundt pan, I served the cake with some homemade whipped cream (with a quart of heavy cream going for $2 or so at Costco, no reason ever to use canned stuff!), sweetened with a bit of vanilla sugar.  (One more "waste not, want not" note: the vanilla pods I scraped out go right into a cannister of plain old sugar, where they infuse it with fantastic vanilla flavor for coffees and baking!)  Fresh strawberries finished the cake off--and a cup of espresso.

On Saturday morning, we'd already had some leftover cookies which I'd baked earlier in the week, so for late breakfast I wanted something a bit more savory.  I had several mushrooms getting near the end of their culinary lives in the fridge, just begging to be used, so I sautéed them and incorporated the fungi into a couple of omelets.

There's something of a skill involved in cooking up an omelet verses something simpler, like scrambled eggs, particularly when nonstick cookware is verboten (due to the potentially-deadly fumes when overheated; we have several birds at Chateau Papillon, you may recall).  The key is in getting the pan properly lubricated--I used a mix of canola-based cooking spray and fresh butter--and at the right temperature.  I scrambled a couple of eggs up with a pinch of salt; a fork does wonders for scrambling an egg with much less mess than a whisk, I might add.  When the pan's at the ideal temperature, the eggs will "set" on the bottom very quickly when poured into the pan, so during those first few moments, it's critically important to keep the pan moving.  If done properly, the eggs will set up on their bottom but not stick (remember, move the pan around, shaking it in a slightly circular motion)--and then it's time to quickly add any fixings before the omelet cooks through!

I had the mushrooms ready, along with a few grinds of black pepper and some crumbles of goat cheese; these went in, and then with the assistance of a spatula, I flipped the omelet over in half and let it cook a few seconds more--then off onto the plate.  Voila!  Mine also included some prosciutto, something off-limits to pescetarian Beth; had we a bit of smoked salmon, she'd have gotten that.

The Locavore's Dilemma

Back in grammar school, you probably learned the terms herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore, but I'm betting your teacher never said anything about "locavores."  Quite simply, a locavore eats food grown as close to home as possible.  Still, there's a bit of a dilemma for the gourmet cook, for though locally-grown food offers a lot of opportunities and flavors, sometimes that imported cheese or out-of-season produce is a necessity for the menu.  And the ingredients for locavore cuisine are typically more expensive, too.

Beth and I try to practice local food buying when possible.  More and more grocery stores are identifying locally-grown foods, with some, like the Whole Foods chain, often identifying the distance from the store to the farm or producer.  And, of course, there are farmers' markets and local co-ops--not to mention the ultimate in local food production: growing the food in your own back yard, using local materials and natural practices (no trucked-in $4-a-bag mulch or fertilizer: use free local compost, for example).

Locavore culture is what the "organic" food craze should have really been about, even before the corporate megafarms got into the "organic" gig and drove the term into meaningless vapidity.

Locally-produced foods have the obvious benefit of reduced carbon footprint: they don't require the carbon investment of extensive transportation, first of all, and additionally were and likely were produced with less mechanized processes and with less petrochemical-intensive pesticides & fertilizers.  Beyond the carbon advantages, though, locally grown/raised food has several other benefits:

• Supports local farms and businesses, which often (but not always, depending on where you live) tend to be smaller, individually- and cooperatively-owned, vs. the mega-agribusinesses that produce so much of our food.
• More flavor: because they don't have to be shipped long distances or stored for long periods, the varieties of produce grown locally tend to be much more flavorful. Consider a typical heirloom tomato from the farmer's market compared to a megamart beefsteak tomato: one is almost good enough to eat as a meal on its own, the other a bland pap bred to survive picking by machine, rough handling, and shipping across the country or continent.
• More varieties: megamarts and big agribusinesses want to sell a lot of a very few sorts of produce and to offer the same products everywhere.  Local growers plant and harvest what works for the local conditions and often have a much broader selection which never darkens the shelves of the neighborhood megamart.
• More natural: if buying foods which grow or occur naturally in the area (and in-season), that is--something which is more likely with locally-produced foods.

All those benefits aside, though, as I said earlier and as the title of this piece suggests, being a locavore isn't always the easiest or best option.  Locally-produced foods are typically available only in-season, and though formulating a seasonal diet (vs. simply taking advantage of seasonal foods) is laudable in and of itself, it's also quite a challenge--more of one than I have time to tackle despite my culinary creativity.

Some foods simply aren't available locally regardless of the season; Virginia isn't exactly brimming with citrus growers, for example.  And there are regional specialties not available (or not with the same defining characteristics) except from their native production areas; think of the French appellation d'origine controlee, or "AOC," and similar systems.  Even absent the regulatory strictures legally linking a particular food to one region, imitations from elsewhere often lack the distinctive something which one can't simply replicate locally (consider, for a moment, the French notion of terroir, which is at its heart the fact that the land from which a particular grape, tea, or coffee grows in imparts a specific, characteristic quality to that foodstuff).  So though one can likely find a local substitute for Parmesan cheese, Champagne, or proscuitto di parma, it simply won't be the same.

I do, however, have to say as a cook I do enjoy the challenge of recreating regional specialties with locally-available ingredients, and I love the inspiration of regional cuisine even if not working with the specific ingredients.  But then again, though a local chevre soft goat cheese is something I've used quite successfully in bruschetta in the past, it simply doesn't compare to an imported bufala Mozzarella from Italy at that culinary task, either.  So the occasional taste of non-local food shouldn't be considered in inexcusable sin for the environmentally conscious, should it?

Finally, there's the financial cost aspect.  Locally-grown food can be cheaper, but in my experience, rarely is, and in some cases, can be significantly more expensive for the consumer than the fruits of a carbon-dependent, far-flung transportation grid.  We bought a huge container of seedless red grapes at Costco last weekend, imported from Chile... for $7.  Domestic grapes at the grocery store ran more than that for less than half the quantity, and were of inferior in quality (and local grapes aren't available right now, either; even the domestic ones have been trucked from California).  And heresy of heresies: the Tuscan blood oranges we picked up for $9 at Costco are far superior in taste and convenience than the Florida oranges we bought at the grocery store.  But some local food is comparable in price; farmers' market produce typically beats megamart prices, at least around here; meat from a local farm or slaughterhouse--if bought in bulk--is much cheaper than at the supermarket; and that gallon of local milk we got at Whole Foods was within a quarter of what the stuff trucked in from out of state and sold at the grocery store cost.

I guess, then, it's good that we're at least aware of the financial costs (overt and hidden) as well as the environmental trade-offs involved in buying and eating non-local foods.  That we're even cognizant of the issues of locavore cuisine and the unsustainable life our civilization is pursuing full-speed-ahead and damn-the-torpedoes is a step up the green ladder from the vast majority of consumers.

But it's still a dilemma nonetheless, and not one I'm willing as yet to solve wholeheartedly and completely on the local side.

Getting an Audit of the Good Kind: Greening Up with a Home Energy Audit

This past Friday, Beth and I had an audit--but not one of the unpleasant IRS kind.  No, we'd taken advantage of the Virginia energy-efficiency rebate program to replace our furnace and a/c unit earlier in the year, and thanks to the weird way Virginia thought out (or failed to do so, I guess) the program, which included $250 toward an "energy audit," we had to complete everything before filing for the furnace--as once we've claimed part of the Virginia rebates, that's it: no claiming the furnace first, then the audit, and lastly any improvements made thanks to the audit.

As expected, the auditor came by with a blower door and nifty forward-looking infrared camera.  Basically, the blower door--a big fan in a frame which installs in the front door--establishes negative pressure inside the house, and spots of air leakage and other thermal issues thus become easily visible on the FLIR photos.

Heck, with the blower door in place, several of the air leaks were self-evident; simply placing my hand in front of them, I could feel the flow of air through cracks in the caulking around my office window or the light fixtures in the living room.

While we're still waiting for the full report from the energy auditor (at which time I'll finally be able to file for our Virginia rebates), I've already done a huge amount of work on remedying the basics.  Seven tubes of silicone caulk so far: I've applied caulk around the window frames--many of which were quite leaky, even though the windows themselves were not--and around several exterior air leaks, like the front door and the gap between the attic fascia boards and the brick, which let cold air straight into the attic beneath the layer of insulation.  And getting up into the attic gave me the chance to finally get around to wiring a light fixture in the library, and we've ambitions to install several more fixtures (a bedroom ceiling fan, a light fixture over the stairwell, and a couple of spotlights over the picture rail and bird art--all before we seal several air leaks along the tops of the walls and install another layer of fiberglass insulation.

Already, the house feels warmer with the reductions in drafts, and I'm sure our energy bills are going to be falling--and we'll be helping the environment as well.

Green Is a Christmas Color: Recycling and Reusing the Wrapping

For those of us with an environmental bent, the Christmas season can pose something of a serious challenge: how to deal with the waste generated by all that pretty wrapping paper! According to this article, Americans generate 4 million tons of trash annually from shopping bags and wrapping paper. That's some serious trash! I can recall when growing up, the whole family would open gifts, and we'd fill up two large trash bags or more just with our wrapping cast-offs.

For someone like me who tries to recycle every scrap of paper--from reusing pages from the printer by virtue of the second side for things like printed coupons to tearing the plastic address windows out of junk mail and adding the envelopes to the recycling bin--all that gift wrapping does amount to a green conundrum. I love wrapping gifts, putting together just the right combination of color and accents to make the packaging as nice as the present itself--but I don't like waste, either.

We've kept ribbons and other decorations for several years now; in fact, we had two entire moving boxes full of saved (and at least once-used) ribbons in the basement, and I found another box when we cleaned out our storage unit. We also have saved away scraps of some of our favorite wrapping papers each year.

This holiday season, we've both put our saved paper and ribbon to good use, using it to wrap many of the gifts we're giving each other and our friends and families. I found several bins of decorative accoutrements like boughs of imitation holly and frost-rimed winter "berries" that we'd picked up at Boxing Day clearances at Michael's and other crafty shops--bins I want to empty out and be done with! (We've much better things to store away, after all.)

Too, spreading out our Christmas over a period of several days has allowed us to reuse the same wrapping paper on several gifts, as some are opened and others wrapped: for example, I reused the same metallic red paper (which would be tough to recycle in the bin, too) on three separate packages for Beth--a smaller one each time, yes. Scraps which are too small, are ripped, or which have too many creases end up wadded up as surrogate tissue paper to pad other presents.

Though it makes it easier to guess the contents of wrapped packages, we've also gone with more "direct wrapping," where the gift itself is wrapped without being placed into a larger box. Oddly-shaped items can be fun this way, like the Vanilla Bean Noel lotion from Bath & Body: directly wrapped, it looks a bit like a piece of cylindrical candy. For those items requiring a box, we've saved Amazon and other small cardboard boxes expressly for that purpose.

So, we're able to enjoy the holidays and keep them green; so far, I think we've filled less than 1/10th of a trash can despite unwrapping about a dozen gifts each.

Do-It-Yourself to Save

I've always been a hands-on, self-taught, Jack-of-all-trades sort of guy, and that philosophy extends throughout all facets of my life.  In today's economic crisis, those traits open up all sorts of wonderful cost-saving opportunities.

You don't realize how much you can save by doing things yourself that you'd normally pay others to do until you sit down and calculate some of the savings.

For example, at Chateau Papillon, Beth and I have done nearly all of the work in our renovations; indoors, the only thing we've contracted out to date was the extension of a gas line to the kitchen for our range--and it's not that I don't feel I could have successfully taught myself to do gas-line plumbing, but rather that I'd prefer to have the security of mind in knowing someone who does that work for a living did it safely.  I'd rather my house not go "bang!" after all.

That means our only costs have been materials.  No costly labor (though for those less handy, the stagnant construction industry means you might be able to hire contractors for far less than you would have just a couple of years ago--keep that in mind, too).  That's let us spend much more on those materials and thus get a lot more renovations done than we would have otherwise.

Likewise, I've tackled several home maintenance tasks entirely on my own.  When the downstairs bathroom clogged so badly that the toilet wouldn't flush and the shower wouldn't drain, we could have (and almost did) call a plumber--something that would have cost us likely $200 or more (and I speak from experience--a clogged sink at our prior rental home cost the owners nearly $700 and three different plumbers to fix satisfactorily).  Instead, we spent $11 at Home Depot on a little gadget that screws onto a garden hose and expands to fill the pipe, then directs pressurized water at the clog to break it up.  Snaking that down the shower drain cleared the problem up in less than ten minutes.

In the back yard, we've made great use of local resources; instead of paying quite a bit for composted soil or for someone to haul mulch to our home, we've visited Fairfax County recycling facilities which give away composted leaf and hardwood mulch--the stuff you'd pay $4 or more a bag for at garden centers.  So far, we've used at least six cubic yards of the free mulch--saving ourselves at least $500 and recycling yard waste which otherwise would go to waste (no pun intended).  We've done all of our own landscaping so far, after a (free) consultation with a local garden center.

And it's not just in the home improvement arena where we've saved by doing things ourselves.  Yesterday, I replaced a burnt-out headlight and brake light on Beth's car; we'd have paid several dozen more dollars in labor had we gone to a shop, and the work was only a matter of ten minutes or so.  A while back, I repaired and then reupholstered one of our dining room chairs; the discounted upholstery fabric I used combined with scraps of memory foam from dog mattresses we'd made in the past saved us a ton over what a shop would have charged.  And while we're on that topic: sewing is a great skill to develop, and one which isn't difficult to learn for the purposes of repairs, hemming, simple clothing construction, etc.

Now, you might not feel like you're ready to tackle some of the do-it-yourself projects we have; that's fine.  But remember: I'm largely self-taught, and like me, you have to start somewhere.  Find a relatively easy project to start with.  Visit your local library, home improvement center, or craft shop to see if you can find hands-on instruction--for free or at low cost.  As you complete each project, you'll experience a great sense of satisfaction, and your confidence will grow, enabling you to tackle those larger jobs.

And "do-it-yourself" extends beyond the areas of construction, maintenance, landscaping, and the like; take up cooking, and with any degree of creativity and self-confidence, you'll find yourself quickly moving beyond following recipes word-for-word to all-out improvisation.  For example, one night last week, I glanced in the pantry and pulled out a couple of different varieties of dried lentils, some bulgar wheat, pine nuts, walnuts, an apple, and some cheese that was getting a bit old and dry from the fridge, and cooked up quite a tasty (and healthy, I might add) dish, just from what we had on hand.  No need to go to the store or to spend money at a restaurant; our dinner cost perhaps $2 total in ingredients, and a half an hour or less for me to prepare.  Cooking is a wonderful skill to develop that will save you quite a bit of green.  You might find yourself like me, noting the sale and coupon items at the store and wondering, "What could I do with that?" and thus saving even more!

So consider doing-it-yourself to save yourself a bit of green!

Reducing Consumption: Another Green Idea in the Kitchen

In a prior post, I blogged about some of the things my wife and I are doing to stay green and minimize our impact on the environment.  This evening while cleaning up in the kitchen, I realized I'd forgotten a key tactic we've adopted: reducing our consumption by using rags instead of paper towels for many everyday tasks.

Basically, for things like wiping up spills, wiping down knives, and drying off dishes and other items in the kitchen, you can use a rag.  Then, once you've accumulated several dirty rags, you can wash them in hot water with a bit of bleach and laundry detergent to get them clean again; ideally, the rags are also cheap enough that as they eventually wear out, it's not costly to replace them.

Over Christmas, while in Sam's Club I noticed some bulk washcloths and hand towels; though we'd looked at both Sam's and Costco previously for suitable rags in bulk, nothing quite suitable had been in evidence; cloth napkins weren't absorbent enough, and washcloths didn't have the right texture for wiping kitchen surfaces down effectively.  However, Sam's Club now had a pack of 24 bar towels for something like $6, and as it turns out, the bar towels are just about perfect for general purpose use around the kitchen.  We've got a basket of them on the baker's rack neatly folded, and another basket for the dirties to await their turn in the laundry.

By switching to these bar towels, we've significantly cut our paper towel consumption (as well as the ensuing trash generated).  Previously, we went through at least a couple of rolls a week; now, we're able to stretch a typical roll to a month.  Even better, perhaps, than buying the rags like we did would be to make them from old, worn-out sheets or clothing; however, we tend to donate our older linens and clothes to Goodwill or other charities every year before they reach that stage of rattiness--but for others, that might be a great option to keep those old clothes out of the landfill and give them several more years of use.

I can't take full credit for this idea; several years back, our friends Mindy and John Waltham-Sajdak had already replaced their paper towels with rags.

Doing Our Part to Stay Green

During the long wait for the seller's bank approval to our offer on Chateau Papillon, I read quite a few books on green living, from Insulate and Weatherize to The Home Energy Diet, about reducing the impact we and our home would have on the environment.  Indeed, we determined to handle our renovations in as green a fashion as possible, from the use of low- and no-VOC paints to our choices of renewable flooring materials such as cork and bamboo.

Thinking back now over the past three months we've lived at Chateau Papillon, I realize that though there's still a bit to do (I've got much more insulation to do, for example, despite the amount I've already accomplished) but that we've also come quite a way toward achieving our goal.  Here are a few of the ways we're doing our part to cut our environmental impact and improve our green living:

Recycling

Beth sometimes calls me the "recycling Nazi," due to the degree to which I enforce recycling in our household.  We've always put out wine bottles, soda cans, and the appropriate plastic bottles (numbers 1 & 2 where we live); now, however, I've added paperboard & cardstock to the usual corrugated cardboard pickup, so that we're recycling pretty much everything except for unaccepted plastics (the most frequent being resin code 5, or polypropylene, such as is typically found in margarine tubs and similar containers).  We've also in the past put said unrecyclable containers to re-use for storing leftover foods, etc.  I even bring home from work the cardstock packaging and plastic tray from my typical microwave lunch to make sure they're properly recycled.

Though we always recycle plastic grocery and shopping bags, Beth has also crocheted a pair of mesh grocery bags we use alongside several others to cut back on our consumption of the same; paper grocery bags serve to hold our cardstock and paperboard recycling.

I've also been very careful to design, measure, and cut all of our wood used in renovations to minimize the waste (this obviously also has financial benefits), and am looking to find out the best way to make use of the remaining wood scraps: mostly thin strips of low-VOC plywood, molding, and small lengths of 1x4s.  Though commercially these are recycled--typically into composite building materials, such as particleboard and plastic decking (the latter making use of those plastic shopping bags, too!)--I've been hard-pressed to find a consumer recycling option.  It's possible we'll chip them and use the wood in gardening, given it's untreated lumber and the plywood is lacking toxic formaldehyde glues; I'm open to other suggestions.

Energy Consumption

Though the pets and Beth being at home during the day make the best use of our setback thermostat impractical, the amount of weatherizing I've done so far (sealing gaps around several windows, along baseboards, and the exterior doors) has allowed us to at least cut the thermostat back to 69 degrees (thanks to less water vapor being lost to the outside through those gaps), and likewise the furnace runs less often.  Our gas bill is already approximately half what it was at our rental house despite being for a larger home.

We have managed to replace almost all of the incandescent bulbs in the house with compact fluorescents (CFLs), typically cutting lighting costs by 75% or more.  For those naysayers who complain about the mercury in CFLs, let me point out that the local Home Depot accepts used CFLs for recycling--keeping the mercury out of landfills--and that an equivalent incandescent bulb contributes far more mercury to the environment via its consumption of electricity (which via the mining and burning of coal emits quite a bit of mercury).  I'm down to the fridge bulb and a set of small spotlights in the basement, and Beth's bedside lamp, for which there aren't any suitable alternative bulbs at present.

Even better, I've recently been able to replace several bulbs with LEDs, which consume even less electricity (and don't have any issues with mercury, either).  The dining room chandelier had used five 40-watt incandescents, and the candelabra-base CFLs simply didn't fit inside the light sconces--but Sam's Club just started carrying LED candelabra bulbs which consume only 1.5 watts of power for their 40-watt equivalent light output.  These bulbs fit the fixture and are priced right ($5 apiece); price has been one of the big detractors to wider-scale LED bulb use to date--for example, one basement spotlight fixture took three 1.5 watt LEDs to replace three 50-watt halogens, but at a cost of $30/bulb.  Eek!  The only downside is that these LED bulbs from Sam's are very directional (this is a problem with most LED bulbs today, mind you); the majority of their light is emitted straight out the end of the bulb.  I'm not sure why the array of individual LEDs are set up all in the same direction or why the protective plastic casing doesn't have a series of refractive lenses to disperse the light better... but for the chandelier, which primarily lights downward onto the dining room table, they work just fine.

I replaced several smaller external hard drives on my computer with Energy Star rated larger units; getting rid of the old 160 GB, 100 GB, and 240 GB units to replace them with a couple of 1 TB drives not only gave me the necessary storage boost I needed (my photography archive consumes about 1/3 TB at present!) but cut my computer's energy usage significantly; at present, even when all the drives are running, the system's on, and I'm using the external monitor, the whole consumes only 100 watts or so.

This year's holiday decorations were entirely LED-powered; for the Hokie tree, we found some orange LEDs on sale at Costco after Halloween which easily cut the tree's energy consumption to 1/10th what it had been with incandescents--and looks better, too.  Outside, we put up LED lights along the roof line, and for the more traditional tree, we found a few last-minute sales on LED light strands at Target which we used to replace several incandescents.  These LED decorations easily translated into a holiday-season savings of $40-$60 at our current electricity prices!

One thing I'm still working on is the electric space heater we use for supplementary heat in the basement for the birds at night; if run at full power all night long, the heater would consume 400 kilowatt-hours of electricity in a month, or over $30 worth of electricity at current rates.  I've gotten Beth to run it at a set temperature (68) to reduce its usage, and continuing insulation and weatherization projects should help lessen the need to use it at all.

There are times now where I watch the power meter outside and see if barely crawling along, even though we've got several lights on and the TV (an Energy Star-rated LCD unit) as well.  Nice!

Miscellaneous

Our dishwasher features a "Water Miser" setting, which gets the dishes done more quickly and uses less water, yet does a fine job getting them clean nonetheless.  Likewise, setting the laundry load size properly helps use the proper amount of water while still cleaning the clothes effectively.

And, of course, there's the tried and true method of turning things off which aren't in use: the TV, lights, etc., and unplugging "power vampires" like phone chargers and unused consumer appliances.  (Unfortunately, we have to leave the cable box on; it takes a good 5-10 minutes to boot up if you physically cut and restore the power--but at least the power meter we've got on the entertainment center shows the cable box consumes less than 10 watts when idled.)

Future Plans

We've got several plans lined up for the future which should help even more, both near- and long-term.

First, we want to replace our aging hot water heater with a tankless unit; our tank is old enough that a decently-sized, electronic-ignition, variable-firing tankless unit would really make an impact.  The furnace is also fairly old, so when it goes, we'll be looking to upgrade to a more energy-efficient one (the A/C compressor is new enough it won't be a problem).  Our home appliances are in pretty good shape, as they were made in the last few years.  Still, we do want to upgrade the refrigerator and would go with a more energy-efficient unit, and the washing machine could stand to be replaced with a high-efficiency unit, too.

I want to redo my bathroom, and the more modern low-flush toilets have come along well enough that I'm ready to replace the water-hogging ones we've got with better-conserving units.

Our home is oriented reasonably-well to take advantage of solar heating in the winter, and the woods around it will help shade it in the summer.  But there are steps which can help there quite a bit; at some point, we'll replace the asphalt shingle roof (already a light color, fortunately) with something more durable and which reflects more heat.  These are of course long-term projects, as would be adding a solar water heater and photovoltaic cells to the roof.  Shorter-term will be improved insulation in the attic.

In the yard, we're planning to add a vegetable garden as well as several water projects.  From a natural perspective, we want to add a small pond to attract birds, and we also want to improve the drainage of our yard.  I'm hoping to implement a rainwater catchment system to utilize rainwater for gardening and for our pond and perhaps eventually for other uses.  Landscaping is also going to help with the solar benefits of our home as well as provide more wildlife habitat.

The problem with these future projects is that they take money, and given Beth's current job situation, we've had to postpone several.  Oh, well... I'll at least have more time to read books on the how-to end.

The Bottom Line

Many of the projects we've undertaken will pay for themselves over time.  The insulation and weatherizing I've put in so far have had a definite impact on our utility bills, as have the more-efficient light sources we're using.  A few of our upgrades and renovations actually have tax benefits as well (and several of our future ones typically have received tax incentives each year, like high-efficiency water heaters and photovoltaic panels), though there's no guarantee that will remain the case).

The intangible benefit is that we know we're doing our part to ensure the Earth and her environments remain viable for the generations to come.

The Library Begins to Take Shape

Another weekend's work has begun on the library at Chateau Papillon, and it's really starting to take shape with the near-completion of the first set of shelves.  Despite another slap in the face by Mother Nature--this when I'm using FSC-certified lumber, no less--with her single-digit temperatures, I managed to wheel out the table saw and cut several more sets of shelves and began unpacking some books.


Though there's woodwork still to be done--puttying and sanding the nail and screw holes for the standards as well as the shelves (which are stabilized by a thin strip glued and nailed to their front edges) for one, then attaching decorative molding to the fronts of the standards and along the ceiling, and of course painting or staining the shelf units, too.  But I really wanted to get a sense of how they'd look and work with books on them, so after Beth and I got the last standard in place for the wall (the one to the far left), I worked on setting the shelves in place and unpacking.

I'm actually getting a bit worried we won't have enough shelving in the library for our books!  So far, I've unpacked nearly seven cartons of books, leaving well over twenty more cartons to go.  Worse, many of those remaining are hardcovers and irregularly-sized books, which won't store as neatly or densely as what I've gotten in place so far.  Count-wise, I probably have somewhere close to 400 mass-market paperbacks on the shelves, maybe 40 hardbacks, and somewhere south of 100 trade- and oddly-sized paperbacks.  That's not even a third of the books in our total collection (as it exists--remember, we need room to grow)--and these first three shelving units represent over 1/3 of the total space we'd intended to devote to shelves in the library as a whole.

I've still got room for perhaps two more cartons of books in the first three shelf units; I've got to cut several sheets of 3/4" plywood for heavier-duty hardcover shelves, though; the 1/2" shelves, even with a strip along the front for stability, just aren't up to full-time duty for that much weight.  That, and I need to go to the hardware store in search of more shelf pegs; for the hardcovers, I've come to prefer L-shaped metal pegs over the inline ones I've used for the most part so far.  That should free up enough wood for four more shelves in these units, and I expect to get the next two standards up tomorrow as well.  They'll give us a narrow unit to the right of the windows, as well as define a corner space which will need some tricky shelf-cutting to fill.

We've got enough wood on hand to run the shelves along the rest of the next wall and perhaps do one set of shelves on the third wall (I hope!), and I've got two large shelf units in my office on which I plan to keep my birding books and my various writing, photography, and desktop publishing references--and perhaps, if I have room, my mythology references as well.  Still, even assuming we use some of the older shelves we'd hoped to discard in various rooms of the house, it's going to be a tight squeeze to get all the books in.  Dare I go through and find a carton or two's worth of books I don't need, and give them to Goodwill?  Eek!

The Trials of Glued-down Carpet

Neither Beth nor I are much fond of carpet in the home. First, we both suffer various allergies, and not only does carpet typically harbor a fauniferous zoo of dust mites and their sneeze-inducing feces (yech!), but its fibers trap various outdoor allergens tracked in by humans and animals alike (pollen), and liquids can transform the padding and backing into mold and mildew factories. Our relatively short time in a temporary apartment saw increased congestion and related allergic symptoms in both of us no matter how much vacuuming we did, due I suspect to the wall-to-wall carpet.

So in moving to Chateau Papillon, one of the first orders of business was the reworking of the floors. Though the kitchen, dining, and entry hall were done in stone tile, and the living room left in original wood, the three upstairs bedrooms had been carpeted, as had the entire basement. We opted for bamboo for the bedrooms (true tongue-and-groove planks, mind you, and not cheap laminate), planning for the light-toned wood to offset the rich color palette we'd selected and help keep the smallish rooms as "open"-feeling as possible--with the added benefit that the Premium Green Bamboo we selected was inexpensive and represented a "green" flooring option in that bamboo is a largely- and rapidly-renewable resource, unlike traditional hardwoods.

But more on the bamboo in a later post. For the basement, Beth opted for cork, another renewable resource (the bark is harvested every five years or so, with the trees themselves never cut down) and one well-suited to her living space, providing a softer, warmer floor surface than other woods or materials like tile. Cork installs like laminate flooring, "clicking" together in either a floating or glued-down installation. But first things first: the basement floors were very nice carpet, which we'd hoped to salvage and make into a few throw rugs...

... until we discovered the basement carpet had been glued down instead of stretched and tacked as was done in the bedrooms. While not unusual for installations over concrete or tile, the carpet glue made our renovations quite painful.  I initially tried pulling up the whole carpet, but quickly discovered how sticky the glue was and gave up on salvaging the carpet.  At that point, I had two options: cut the carpet into strips (which individually would be easier to remove), or apply some solvent to help dissolve the glue.  Given we were trying to avoid fumes--recall we chose low-VOC paints for the basement--and the furnace and water heater would have to be turned off to prevent a possible explosion from the flammable solvent vapors, you can guess which option we chose.

Chance decided he'd "help" as he so often does: by climbing atop (or, as in the photo above, into!) the carpet as we were removing it.  Crazy Chance!

We had to remove the carpet in stages; between cutting the strips (itself a difficult task which wore out my hands and several utility knife blades), pulling them up, and using an industrial-strength floor scraper to help pry up the carpet and padding and remove any particularly-stubborn patches of glue, it was back-breaking work.  As a reward to ourselves (and a break from the carpet removal!), we started on the installation of the new floor before we'd even finished taking up the carpet.

Two layers of 6 mil polyethylene sheeting went down atop the old vinyl tiles to act as a vapor barrier and help keep moisture away from the new cork floors, followed by a layer of half-inch OSB sheeting to act as a subfloor (this I had to "shoot" into the old floor using .22-propelled concrete fasteners; I'm sure the neighbors wondered if World War III was breaking out with all that noise!).  After that, the cork "tiles" (approximately 3' x 1') went down, with painter's tape on the seams to help keep prior rows from moving as new ones went in.


We're almost done with the basement flooring; above, you can see the last bits of exposed vapor barrier along with a bit of the OSB subfloor.  We've finished now up to the last strip, a 3" or so border down the edge of the wall; once that's done and I fill in some gaps along the base of the wall with foam sealant to keep out bugs and moisture, it will be time to put in the new baseboard.

Although it was a LOT of work, I think the cork floors look great.  They're environmentally-conscious in that cork is incredibly renewable, and the brand we chose had very low VOC content (the glues used in their construction make next to no use of formaldehyde).  They're soft underfoot and warmer than I'd expect for installation over a concrete slab.  Overall, we're both quite pleased with the work so far!