Home Improvement Today?

Not much mud when you're working on solid rock but I did wear my gumboots with my rain gear when I was power washing the stone

 

I see you are using the wire ties I use at work....we call the tool the tool to spin it a whirlybird....is it the same Canada?

 

Same tool yeah , we call it a loop tie spinner

 

yup...the ends come out on the wooden ones.

 

Anybody on TW running any Nest devices in their home? Thermostat, smoke/CO detector, etc. Curious to hear opinions.

 

The last few months have been busy.

Installed a new window in my living room.
Friend and I redid my roof
Removed all trim(house used trim to hide drywall seams) and mudded the drywall joints.
Installed tile by one of my entrances as well as installed my wood stove
Painted my walls
Gutted my en-suite bathroom to begin building a custom tiled shower
Made a wood shed for firewood, as well as started getting wood to build my green house(gotta find windows)
Made a standing garden bed as well as a 20' long raised bed.

Still have lots to do

 

I bought a house, and am closing on it Friday. It will (over time) be a complete remodel for me. First time home buyer and I'm so excited to get started on it. May reach out to some of you in here with questions (see above question about the Nest devices).

 

I have been doing an outrageous amount of research on the smart home devices. Trying to add it for mainly home security reasons. Ended up with a samsung smartthings hub and will integrate Blink cameras when the outdoor one becomes available. Look into IFTTT if you haven't already. Pretty cool stuff.

Nest devices appear to work well but are just really expensive. Thermostat may be nest but not sure yet. Smoke detector will be the first alert.

 

I have a few friends who have the Nest thermostat and love it. 250$ doesn't really seem outrageous to me, as it should pay for itself. The smoke detector seems high though, but I was curious if anybody had one.

 

Congratulations nice house!

Unsolicited advice I can pass along, as my opinion:

• When doing renovations consider the ROI (return on investment) if you're living there less than 3 years.
• Don't go into debt to redo something that is functional. (the old if it's not broken don't fix it) Future you will thank you!
• Take your time and enjoy it!

I've owned two homes before my current one. If I was able to listen to the above advise on my first home I would have been much better off, hindsight 20/20. I haven't used Nest devices yet... I kind of like the simple things in life.

 

I was going to get the nest as my house uses a shirt electric furnace(hydro was pushing anywhere from 300-500 a month in winter). Ended up installing a wood stove instead. Thing hasn't been on in 3 months.

Winter hydro Bill with stove, 75$

 

thank you for the kind words!

I'm very excited to get into it and make it my own. My current "plan" is basically 5-10 years. I won't go into all of the detail but I bought the house for 136,500 and would like to put about 30k into it over the time I live there. Checking the comps and stuff in the area (obviously I can't predict the future) but that would make the home worth ~200k. I'd say that's good ROI. I plan to go room by room, and not actually start major reno until I decide what I can't live with. The house is completely functional and livable as is, but I WANT to update it. That's why I bought it. So excited!!

Aren't the newer devices such as Nest supposed to help make life "simpler"?

 

Im running Nest thermostat and the protect smoke/carbon detectors...

 

and what do you think? worth the money? what's to like and not to like about them?

 

So far it has worked well and we knocked about $60 month off the electric/gas bill but some of that is budget billing as well. Summer months have seemed to average around $43 month in savings...

I do think there is a wider range of products out there that might be better I just have not looked much. I am actually going to be doing duel fuel in the spring w/Heat pump with a 95/98% gas furnace with zoning.

 

interesting. thanks for your input. may I ask your general area you are located? for us here in Alabama, heat is rarely used.

 

Northern Va....Heat pumps work well when the temp is above 32 degrees...

Electric strip heat huge bill killer....

 

I had Nest thermostats but I switched to Ecobee 3's. I prefer them over the nest as they offer better control and more options depending on your system. They also have remote sensors that allow you to average the temperatures between rooms. The only issue is they can be more complicated to install and set-up especially if you don't have a common wire. I have first alert smoke detectors because the nest ones do not have wired interconnect so I would have to replace every one in my house. The first alert onelink has a wire interconnect so it is compatible with other wired systems.

 

hm good info, thanks for your input.

 

I also went with smartthings as it seemed the best suited to use multiple types of devices from multiple manufacturers. You can control all of them in one place which is awesome. I was able to integrate the wifi thermostat and wifi outlet which I already had.