My $70 a Month Heat Bill

 Everyone always wants to know how we can have a $70 a month heat bill in the dead of an Iowan winter - in a 1905 Victorian house - well this is how we do it.  NOTE the house is 1105 square feet.

We keep the house at 65F during the day and 58F at night or when we are not home. Caulk around the outsides of every window, door, etc. and do this every few years, oh and LOTS of insulation! We use mortite on the inside for the windows, the windows are original except for two modern windows and it's the modern windows that leak like a sieve. 

Winter 2010

Make sure to change those furnace filters too.  Another tip is to put insulation behind outlets and switches that are on outside walls, these are also major draft stoppers.  Repair any storm windows with new spline and the fuzzy insulating stuff every 10 years or so.

It also helps that we are on budget billing, and the gas company keeps bugging us to pay the new rate which is $59 a month but John keeps refusing.  November is our reconciliation month, and by paying the $70 a month we don't get a "suprise" spike in our heat bill.

edited to add:  The orignal builder insulated the house and big time, way back in 1905, he filled it with woolrock from the basement all the way out the attic rafters.  We're thinking he didn't like being cold. The house maintains and beautifully, it's been 65F in here for two weeks now.

Paint Update 102511

Now with some color!

Porch Clean Up

We spent some time cleaning the front porch this afternoon and now it looks pretty nice, well as nice as a 105 year old porch can look.  John hung my cupboard out there, an old primitive I've had hanging out, and then we put a table under it so now I have a potting table and a place to put pots.  I planted some smaller pots with marigolds, will have to purchase more marigold seeds, and will plant some petunia's tomorrow.  Pictures coming soon.

The Haircut

I bought a vintage Oster barber set at a local shop this week, for a whopping ten dollars.  Sooooo tonight I gave John a much needed haircut, no easy task I might add.  Above is the box and some of the accessories most of which I have no what idea any of them are for~!

Kitchen Sink!!!!

Let the kitchen remodel begin! We picked up a 40 year old sink today that had never been installed, what are the odds of that happening??? The sink is 20 x 42 inches with 9 inch deep bowls. I can fit my largest canner inside a bowl - I've waited years for this to happen. Anyway porcelain on cast iron, for a total cost of $75!!! Btw it's an American Standard Sink - see other post with pictures of sink bottom etc.

As soon as I find the windows for the new sink wall, we can gut the kitchen, do the wall repairs (we're replacing a door that is no longer used) etc., I will have a brand new to me kitchen! Everything, well except for the structural elements, has been salvaged, re-purposed or is vintage.

All American Canner

A very old All American Canner, it's a 915

Bad Stove!

My stove died tonight!!! And since we cannot find the serial number on it, it's over 50 years old, we cannot get it fixed! So now I'll start searching freecycle to see what I can come up with since I don't have the funds to purchase anything right now. I needed to go on a diet anyway, this is really going to put a crimp in my canning season!

Carla Emery"s Old Fashioned Recipe Book

Carla Emery"s Old Fashioned Recipe Book an Encyclopedia of Country Living copyright 1977. Carla rewrote her book right before her death several years ago.

I get a lot of emails asking me where I learned what I know, most of it is from helping my parents when I was growing up. We always had a very large garden, canned, dehydrated foods, etc., and we raised rabbits and chickens for food. I've supplemented what I knew with books such as these (this book was in with a lot of books I purchased at a sale).

Non Slip Jars

These were in the bags of jars that dh's co-worker gave him, they are WAY cool!

Mirror Frame

This old frame was attached to a dresser that is basically no more, I plan to paint it have John insert a piece of plywood, that will be painted with chalk board paint, and will then attache it to the front of the house. Oh and I plan to attac some vintage blue quart jars to the frame to fill with flowers and such ;-) I'm thinking a nice pink will make the frame look wonderful, with some red over aqua in the recessed areas.