It's Not a Dry Heat

The actual onset of warmer weather is really here. For the folks who don't live in the Mid-Atlantic region, let me explain--we don't get much "springtime" weather here. Nope. We go from "Crap, it's COLD!" to the proverbial "It's like a sauna out there" in what seems like two weeks. Sure, we get some nice flowers for a while, but the reality of living in an area primarily built on reclaimed swampland eventually strikes home every year in the form of pretty serious humidity. Just lately, we've been experiencing damn-near rain forest weather--temperatures in the mid-70s/lower-80s and rain, drizzle, sun, torrential downpour, sun, rain... at least it hasn't been necessary to water the new plants. But it's been humid. Really humid. And humidity is unpleasant inside the house. It fosters mold and mildew, it makes things smell funky, it creates an environment for all kinds of gross bugs... it's just unpleasant. Additionally, a humid basement affects the floors directly above, which means the basement won't be the only stinky, buggy part of the house--the first floor will get icky, too.

If you remember this post, I mentioned the need for a dehumidifier in our basement. We made it quite a while without one, but after about three weeks of mixed rain and sun, it became obvious we really needed to do something. All of the tell-tale signs were present (funky smells, extra moisture in the air, etc), and the basement really had a damp atmosphere. Now, I know most fully underground basements smell a little "off," but ours was actually getting a little... err... reeky.

Let me back-track a little here. We haven't really done much with The Serpico House's basement yet. Every other week, Avy and some friends hang out and do some belly-dancing down there, and I have a little amplifier and some guitars in there, too, but it's basically just an empty, carpeted room. It's nice... or, rather, it was nice... until the humidity started kicking in. Starting after Avy's dance rehearsal the other day, when the ladies emerged from the basement, there was a distinct aroma of something other than that of natural human exertion. It was a sort of moldy, vegetational smell.

And that's when I knew we really needed to get a dehumidifier.

So, I started looking around online... the average price for a consumer-level, standard-sized dehumidifier sits somewhere between $160-$350. Most dehumidifiers work by drawing moist air over a refrigerated coil with a small fan. Since the saturation vapor pressure of water decreases with decreasing temperature, the water in the air condenses and drips into a collecting bucket. Dehumidifiers are rated in pints (25-pints, 45 pints, etc), and this refers to the amount of water it can remove from the air in a 24-hour period. The higher the pint-rating, the more powerful the dehumidifier.

After digging around for while, we decided on this one...

It's an LG 45-pint unit. We bought a refurbished model because it came in at a pretty reasonable price when compared to a new one, and the reviews were all at least four-star our of five. It showed up last night, and I set it up right away. My first impressions were that it is somewhat larger than I expected, and it's pretty weighty, too. It didn't take much to get it going--set it down, plug it in and that's it. A fan noise starts up (it's not too loud to me), and you don't notice anything special happening right away.

I guess I started it up around 6:30pm. We went about our usual evening routine, and around 10pm, I went into the basement to check it out. I may be somewhat overly ambitious, but I am pretty sure I noticed that the basement had less of a mildewy odor. When I checked the collection bucket under the unit, it was about 1/2 full of water. I dumped the water and turned it on again. We went to bed about an hour later.

This morning when I woke up, I checked the dehumidifier, and it was still running. I checked the bucket, and it wasn't completely full (the unit is supposed to turn off when it's full), but there was a lot of water in there. I dumped it and started it up again. I could imagine this getting a little old... luckily, this thing is supposedly equipped with a hose-draining option (that sounds naughty!), which allows you to attach a length of garden hose to the unit and lay the other end in a sink or drain. This allows you to set the humidity level for whatever you like and let the unit run when needed without dumping the bucket. I think we'll eventually do this.

For now, the bucket works, and I foresee that the basement (and the rest of the house) will be more pleasant.

Like, Wow, Welcome...

When we first looked at The Serpico House, one of the the bits of furniture left behind was this vanity. It used to sit in what is now our guest/turtle/computer room.




Avy really liked that little vanity, and she wanted to put it in our bedroom as a, you know... vanity... a place to sit and put on make-up, etc.

But she made the error of putting it at the foot of our bed when the cable TV guy came to hook up service. As a result, one the TV was hooked up, the vanity became a TV stand by default. See?



That kind of sucked for Avy, because, with the TV on top, this thing is not very useful as a vanity in the traditional sense.

So, when we had the opportunity, we decided to wall-mount the TV and put that vanity into its intended place and make things better.

We ordered a wall-mount. We even ordered a little shelf for the cable box. It was going to be so sweet. Except for one thing... our bedroom LCD can't be wall-mounted. Yeah. Lame, right? It happens to be a little older, and LCDs from 2006 apparently weren't all made according to VESA standards for LCD mounting screws. Long story short--that TV ain't going up on the wall without a lot of extra work... so, not wanting to be defeated, we ran out to Wal-Mart and bought a little cheapo desk to use as a TV stand. It's an ugly desk, really, so we covered it with a tapestry. Here's the result...


It gets the job done, I guess, but it kinda makes the bedroom look something like one of those new-age bookstores. We'll figure out something better in the future. This works for now, and Avy gets her vanity back...

We're going to hang a mirror on the wall in front of the vanity, and I plan to build Avy a picture-frame jewelry holder. More on that later...

Surprise... Landscaping!

Well, in my last post I mentioned that I had a landscaping pro coming to work on our yard soon.

I guess I misunderstood when we spoke--I thought he was coming a week from this past Friday. I was wrong. He came this past Friday. It was so cool.

When Avy, Xavier and I arrived at home, we obviously noticed there was a strange truck in the driveway. Everything became clear to me right about then...

And we were happy.

Here's the newly cleaned-out back yard.

I don't know if this picture does the work he did in the yard proper justice.... there were a lot of branches and left-over leaves laying around, making the yard look smaller and messier. He also cut the grass.This is the top of our driveway. I don't have a "before" shot right now, but take my word for it--that area was full of debris. Now it's clean and neat. It's so much nicer.


These are the bushes in front of the house. I was frankly kind of embarrassed at the amount of leaves that were underneath these. Landscaper dude got 'em out of there. Nice.


This is the tree in the front yard. Landscaper dude didn't do anything to the tree, but it's pretty, and I actually was incorrect in identifying it in previous posts. I thought it was a Japanese Maple. It is not. This is a Dogwood. And it's pretty sweet.

This is the front of the house. The grass is nice and neat, but, if you look off to the right, you can see a big pile of leaves right near our neighbor's house. Those were all in our backyard. I wish I had taken a picture of the landscaper's truck--the back was almost overflowing with leaves. He said he'd been there since mid-day. He finally left around 8pm. That's a lot of work for one guy.

So, what have I learned? Well, I really need to pay better attention--I need to listen when someone tells me a specific day they'll be showing up. That way I won't be surprised by stuff like this. I have learned that gas-powered lawn implements beat the crap out of electric implements. Big time. The drawback is that nasty gas smell. And I have learned that sometimes it is pretty satisfying to pay someone to do a job that you want done well. I walked around all weekend saying, "I love this yard."

Odd side note: It seems like every one of our neighbors took a cue from our yard work--for the rest of the weekend, all you could hear were lawn-mowers, weed-whackers and leaf-blowers on our block. I must say, it's pretty nice to live in an area where the folks really take pride in their homes.