A Little More Light

Last month, we had an electrician come and expand the exterior lighting slightly. Back in September, my office moved locations and now I'm able to regularly bike to work. Since we don't have a shed or anything, the bikes are kept in the basement and I use the walkout to exit the house each day. Fifteen years ago, when Celeste was a baby, I used to leave the house through the same basement door in the middle of the night,^* and while it was always dark, it wasn't that big of deal.

My goal is to be a bike commuter for as much of the year as possible. Figuring that as winter nights grew longer it might be helpful to have some light by the basement door when I was wrangling a bike and backpack and everything else, it seemed logical to add a light by the basement door. Evelin suggested that since we were having electrical work done anyway, we also add another exterior outlet in the same area.^†

Per my preference for dark-sky friendly fixtures, we got a John Timberland Danbury Modern LED barn light. Instead of a normal lightswitch, we went with a Kasa HS200 Smart Switch, which makes it easy to program the light to turn on/off automatically when I'm leaving/coming home and, if it is off for some reason, I can turn it on with my phone. We have a few other wifi-enabled plugs (mostly Kasa and one WiOn) and they're much better than traditional mechanical timers and are also great for things like Christmas lights.

Up next? Still slow-going thoughts on expanding the house up or out, that old carpet in the basement, and who knows what else.

^*When Evelin went back to work part-time after C was born, she went in to her office two afternoons a week. On those days, I shifted my work day to align with (then) IMAS's Italian office and left the house at 3-somethingalltooearly in the morning. Evelin was concerned that the front door was too noisy, so I started using the basement door.

^†When we bought the house, it had one exterior outlet on the side of the patio that was primarily for the pond's pump. After the patio and pond were removed, I stupidly cut that wire off at the exterior wall and sealed off the wires inside; years later I realized it would work to have an (interior) outlet there instead of a sealed junction box. We added an exterior plug to the front of the house at some point and one on the deck as part of the huge kitchen project, but now there's one more set of outlets on the back of the house.

The Wall

Evelin has long wanted to do something about the retaining wall in the backyard. It's painted cinder blocks and while I did pressure wash it once a few years ago, getting off a good bit of dirt, grime, and some of the old while paint, I'd agree that it didn't really look great. In my mind, it looked organic and rustic; for Evelin, it just looked shabby. (Picture below cira 2014)

This spring, Evelin pulled the trigger and called the painters. She did agree to go with a dark green color, instead of the black she'd initially been pushing for, but Celeste remained worried that it would be too dark and ugly. For Evelin, the goal was to have the wall basically "disappear" if you were looking at it from down the hill or through the neighbors' yard from the street behind us. It's still too dark for Celeste, but I think it looks good and gets the job done. (Picture below circa yesterday)

One other undocumented here change: Last August, we took out two dead/dying trees in the side yard: A black cherry (Prunus serotina) and a white oak (Quercus alba). Both were big enough to require city approval for removal, but both were clearly dead enough to necessitate it. We still need to plant two trees to replace them, we've talked about doing pawpaws (Asimina triloba), although a sugar maple (Acer saccharum) would be cool (albeit not at all right for the climate), but we haven't yet. The city did plant two new trees in the right-of-way — a pin oak (Quercus palustris) and something else (Not quite sure) — so we haven't felt pressure to replace them just yet.

Inside the house, no major improvements or changes of late, other than replacing the downstairs smoke alarm with a Nest Protect. The old one alerted us at 2 a.m. last Saturday night that it was dying. At some point, I guess I'll replace the basement one with a Nest and then everything will be networked.

Still undecided is if we should ever get around to popping the top and adding a third floor master suite.... Quinlan would love the opportunity for a larger room (her current room would become a critical part of the stairwell), and the roof is going to need to be reshingled in the next year or three, so we probably need to think seriously about it, if we're going to do it.