Closet Facelift

Over the past few days we've been renovating our bedroom closet. The closet wasn't terrible to begin with, each side had a bar and a shelf, but it could be better. Rachelle wanted some kind of shelving unit with some drawers and found what she wanted at a combination of home stores locally. We got the shelving unit from Home Depot and the black shelf hardware from Lowes.

There wasn't much demolition to be done. The shelf and the bar just lifted out, but they were set on pieces of wood that were nailed into studs. I was rather surprised how hard it was to get that wood off the wall.

We set the top shelves and bars up way higher which allowed for a lower shelf and bar too. This setup allows for the same amount of bar space while adding 7 shelves and two drawers.

The only casualty was my left thumb. I had to cut the bars and shelves down to the right size with a hack saw. By the time I got to the last shelf I was trying to do it quickly because it was getting dark outside and the mosquitoes were coordinating an attack. When the saw finally went through the last little bit of metal, things bounced around and somehow the saw ended up hitting my finger. It didn't really hurt too much, but bled for like 2 days. At least I think it hit my finger with an up-stroke, the teeth on the saw are oriented to do the most damage with a down-stroke. Whenever I do work of this nature I just expect to get hurt somehow; blood is a good indication that you're actually getting something done.

Refinance

We recently refinanced our mortgage. I hate moving and am planning on dying in this house so it was a good time to take advantage of the low interest rates. I was really surprised this whole process was actually rather stressful and annoying. I would think everyone involved (banks, lawyers, appraisers, etc) would have this process down so it would go smoothly, rather than furiously doing some things, then waiting for weeks and more furious stuff and more waiting.

Our original loan was through Chase so they were the first lender I went to. When you get a new loan with the same company you can avoid certain fees, specifically NYS mortgage tax and possibly other things like title insurance. Unfortunately Chase didn't work out. Their rates were pretty high and even though I was saving on the mortgage tax, they seemed to make that up in other fees (surprise, surprise).

We tried giving a local bank a shot: Fairport Savings Bank. They failed miserably. I scheduled a meeting with their mortgage guy and sent him PDF copies of statements and other stuff so he could prepare some real numbers for us. When we get there we find he had a death in the family and wasn't there, so we met with the branch VP. I don't think that guy even knows what a mortgage is. The numbers he gave us were way off and he even told us we would have to pay an entire year's worth of interest at closing. 1 year! I think he meant to say 1 month and asked him again, but he was sure it was a year. Then I contacted the original guy a few weeks later asking for more accurate numbers and he never got back to me. I finally got him on the phone and he said he would email me some good faith estimates that day. I never heard from him again. One reason we were trying with them was their website said they'll waive the NYS mortgage tax. I thought it was a local bank trying to get more local customers. Later I found out that only applied to current FSB customers; that wasn't explained anywhere on the site.

I also called HSBC since they have most of our money. The guy was honest on the phone and told me there was a 5/8 overlay for refinances. This means any interest rate they advertise (on their website, on TV, in print) is really 5/8 of a percent more just because it's a refinance. He said they did this just because they had too many refinance requests they needed to scare some business away. Lame!

Then we went to Canandaigua National Bank (CNB) who ended up having the lowest rate and similar closing costs to others. We ended up going with them.

So there was this mad dash to get a rate lock since the rates were going up. It was only good for 60 days, and since so many people were trying to refinance, appraisals were taking around 50 days to get done. That made me kind of nervous, but it all worked out. So we rushed around at the beginning then waited 2 months then had to rush around at the end (or so I thought). If you close at the beginning of the month you have to pay more interest at closing than if you close at the end of the month. I sweet-talked our lawyer into scheduling the closing for June 30th when he really didn't have time until July 3rd. When we got there on the 30th I found out for some reason they treat the transaction as if it happened 6 days later, so even though it was June 30, in lawyer and bank land it was July 5. It's ok, even with the extra interest we were trying to avoid, the closing costs were way cheaper than I expected and we don't have to make a payment until September!

According to some online calculators, just with the new lower interest rate we're going to save a little more than $40,000 over the life of the loan. Well worth the stress.

Housework

I've been doing a bunch of things around the house lately. We're in the midst of refinancing and part of that is getting a bank appraisor to say our house is worth at least 20% more than the amount we want to borrow. So in order to help him decide on a larger number, we tried to make the place look as nice as possible.

Earlier in the Spring I got the lawn rolled and aerated. We have a pretty flat yard, but just in the couple years we've been here it had gotten REALLY lumpy. I really only wanted to get it rolled because that was the cheap part, but I found out you should really aerate at the same time to aleviate some of the pressure from compressing all the grass roots. That might be a big crock of shit, who knows. I think next year I'll only get the rolling done and see what happens. In typical Joe Reid fashion I hunt around for a deal, don't find any, hire someone and the day before they're supposed to come out, I see a sign in my neighbor's lawn for a different company that is totally cheaper.

I borrowed a powerwasher from Rachelle's father a few weeks ago and cleaned off the house and the back patio. From the day we moved in Rachelle had been telling me we needed to powerwash the house. For some reason the east side was always dirtier than any other sides. By the time I actually washed it, it was turning green from the lawn mower blowing trimmings at the house. The patio was also filthy, but it wasn't obvious just how dirty it was until I made a clean spot.

The front walk is all concrete which cleaned up very nicely. There is only one crack in it and I didn't get too close to it because the powerwasher would break up the material used to fill that crack. You can see the original darker color of the concrete next to the crack below.

We also got our driveway resealed last week and again in typical Joe Reid fashion, the day before they were supposed to come out and do it I got a flyer in the mail from some other company advertising a cheaper price...

Dredgery

Last weekend while walking the Erie Canal in Fairport I saw a hydraulic dredge parked in the village and thought it was pretty cool. As far as I can tell, this thing is like a big floating vacuum cleaner. It's got a big nasty auger that gets dragged along the bottom loosening the sediment that gets sucked up and filtered out.

I really wanted to climb on it, but Rachelle didn't let me.

Peaches

You might remember my post from last year about my peach tree and how I was totally robbed of all my peaches by bugs and squirrels. Well the blossoms fell off the tree and all the peaches have just started growing.

This year I'm taking a more proactive approach and spraying it with "fruit tree spray", which as far as I can tell is an all-purpose insect repellant and fungicide. Before I sprayed it the first time I also thinned it out by removing a ton of peaches. I read online that they should be about 5-6 inches apart. By removing some peaches, a lot more energy is used to grow the remaining ones.

Spraying might prevent the bugs from attacking them, but I don't think this is going to stop the squirrels from stealing them. Last year when I only had a few peaches left on the tree in August, I was mowing the lawn and a half-eaten peach fell out of a huge tree in another part of my yard! Some bastard squirrel had ganked one and dropped it when I came around with the mower! I was pissed. Some people online are saying the only thing you can do about pests stealing fruit is to get a dog or a cat which isn't going to happen in the near future. Maybe I'll build some kind of electric thing to go around the trunk and zap the shit out of them when they climb up. It could make for some good videos.

Death Wobble

Picture it: You're barreling down the highway at 70mph and the road starts curving gently to the right. In the middle of the bend you hit a bump with one of your front tires causing the car to shimmy back and forth. Under normal circumstances you might feel some sideways motion in the steering but it goes away almost immediately. Now image it doesn't go away but actually feeds off itself causing the front end of the car to shake violently enough to knock the fillings out of your teeth. This is called death wobble, and it's fairly common in Jeeps. I think it was named as such because when you experience it, your life flashes before your eyes.

I don't have any video of my car wobbling, but I found a youtube video that shows it pretty clearly:

It's kind of like the wonky front wheel on a shopping cart.

It's common on vehicles that are lifted; raised up higher off the ground with big tires. When the car is lifted the geometry of the suspension is altered things don't behave as they were designed.

My Cherokee currently has the wobble (for the second time) which is super annoying because it's all stock. The first time it happened was a few years ago and was caused by a dead steering damper. It had a bad spot right in the middle where it wasn't dampening anything at all. It happened again recently and I was hoping it was just another dead steering damper, but it checked it and that's not the problem. So there is a huge list of things I have to check to see what is causing this:

• Wheel balance
• Track bar (connects the axle to the frame to prevent sidways motion)
• Ball joints
• Control arm bushings (allow the axle to move up and down with bumps)
  
• Tie rod ends
  
• Steering box slop
• and about 100 other things...

I'm fairly positive it's not the trackbar or the tie rod ends, they seem to be rock solid. My dad talked to a friend of his who owns a repair shop and has a jeep and before my dad could get the words "death wobble" out of his mouth the guy said "ball joints." I'm pretty sure mine are original to the car so they have 133k miles on them and are probably ready to be changed anyway. I'd rather do this job myself because it doesn't look that hard from what I've seen online and I already have the special press needed. I'm just a little apprehensive because they are so old and rusty and anytime you do something like this on an old car something won't go as planned. I'm going to call around to see how much some local shops want to do the job, but I have a feeling it'll be way more than I'm willing to pay.