Saving rain water

Well, we would if it would rain. Georgia, or at least Atlanta, are devoid of precipitation, it seems.

City of Atlanta water is really expensive. Something about investment in new sewers or something, but it's an incentive not irrigate vegetables with the stuff out the taps and Steff's veggie garden will need plenty.

So we got a tank and I plumbed it into the gutters as well as the A/C condensate waste and the pressure release valves of the water heaters.

The A/C should give around 10gallons a day on a hot day and there will be 2 units when the downstairs apartment is up and running.

The tank is 330gal which would be filled by a rain fall of less than half an inch for that much roof.

2 gutters feed it from either side, but i have not figured out what to do when it overflows.

Just about finished!

We spent a lot of time and money making the upstairs apartment very nice, in the end it proved just too nice to let out so we decided to move our stuff up there and we're so glad we did!

The last straw in that decision was the deck's construction. I couldnt stand the thought of tenants hanging out there, looking down on us in the lower apartment. It just didn't seem right.

So we dragged most of our stuff upstairs and here are some pics. It's about 95% done. there are still some things to do like finish the closets so there are shelves, get a chest of drawers, that kind of stuff, but you get the idea.

I put some old pictures in for comparison:


Kitchen

As it was



First it had to come apart

Dusty, horrible mess



Exhausting...



What a spending spree at Ikea and a lot of work can accomplish. Just need an oven, but they're really expensive

The concept - As we'd have liked it

The finished room - quite like the concept

Outside

Old, fairly useless space

Revamped with french doors to the office/back bedroom. The cage door is now white with a bug screen installed and new locks. Obviously the deck is the best bit.

Complete with BBQ and hand made table

Back bedroom

how it began: 2 windows, 4 walls, 1 ceiling... not good enough

What we need is to spend hours pulling down the ceiling and making a massive dusty pile of crap in the middle of the room

A little sweeping

A little drywall

Plus some french doors, paint and a few bits of furniture and you've got yourself a lovely office.

Front bedroom

The front room even had the remains of a squirrel nest in the ceiling. It received the same treatment, off with the walls, in with the insulation, drywall, paint. Nice.

Just need some places to store our stuff.



Bathroom:

There aren't many pictures of the 'before' as I didn't have a decent camera when I started the demolition.

This is why the bathrooms were in bad shape. The cold water pipe had broken off and soaked both bathrooms

Not in bad condition, but it held a secret...

A hidden window. Understandable as those old sash windows are impossible to keep watertight so a cheap way to fix it was to cover it over, but we wanted light back in the room

Firstly, some demolition had to happen

water damage to the beams and floor had to be fixed

Dad at work on the sink

The finished article

Living room

The living room as it was, complete with window AC units

Agency photo of the dining room/kitchen wall with surface-mounted plug sockets.

Mid work. Very bored of lugging sheets of drywall around



Looking toward the kitchen, well, where the kitchen will be.

Will it ever be better?



Nicer with new lights and drywall

Finished living room

Finished dining room



Deck day!

(Steph writing)

We have a deck! Considering it's the kind of thing we really wouldn't want to get wrong, we hired some pros. The guys showed up Wednesday morning with a load of wood, and got to work:

By the end of the first day, it looked like this:

 Guess who likes the new deck!

Here is the newly opened frame around what used to be a closed porch:

 The view through the French doors:

The guys came back this morning to finish the stairs:

Oops! Who put those new adirondack chairs out there? How convenient that it's sunny, clear, and 65 degrees outside...

Extractor

The extractor/range hood was part of the plan, but we spent ages trying to find one that wasn't $1000 and eventually this is what we came up with

Assembled, but there's a problem

The mounting hardware was about 16 inches too long, this meant that the gap between the cooktop and extractor was about 9 inches. Not good, but the grinder helped trim the whole down.

Here's how we kept it level and in place whilst installed.

Here's the front side of the chimney after screwing it together at back. As i'd trimmed down the mounting, the thing did not sit square on the ceiling. Easily fixed with screws

Suprisingly the chimney pipe thing lined up with the vent in the roof. Shame it was 2.5 inches different in diameter

Here's the final result