Catching up

I do not have a client tonight, so I’m going to post a bunch of updates!

You’re still coaching? How’s that going?

Well, I am doing less of it. I really enjoy coaching, but the amount of time was unsustainable. I can’t work full time plus coach that many clients in the evening. Plus, I’m down in Placitas most weekends, and don’t get my chores done!

I’ve been slowly letting the clients attrite (I think I used that word right, but spell-check doesn’t think so. I’m meaning the verb form of attrition. Right? Or no?) Anyway, I’m letting my client load decrease naturally. I’m not advertising and not accepting any new clients. I also increased my rates slightly – not significantly, but sometimes that sort of thing is enough to give clients a good excuse to re-evaluate and decide they’re ready to spend their time and money on something else.

Have you heard about the management position yet?

There’s been some progress. They have been taking their time, that’s for sure. It didn’t advertise until the end of January, and the position closed in early February. Today I got an email requesting an interview, and I now have an interview scheduled for next week.

Do you have a kitchen in the Placitas house yet?

No! (sob), John got fairly far with the project last weekend, but Sam (the brick guy) who had offered to come over and bring some more guys to help lift the countertops into place, showed up alone. And the countertops are too heavy, even for two guys. They are insanely heavy. So John has hired a crew from the place that made the countertops to come out this Friday. (Yay to hiring professional crews!)

How’s the Santa Fe remodel going?

I’m not remodeling the Santa Fe house!

Yeah, right, are you sure? Do you still have pallets of bricks in your driveway?

Ok, well, yes. Sam hasn’t shown up yet to install the backyard patio. He’ll get out here one of these days.

Anything else…maybe?

Uh…yeah. I am taking bids for installation of air conditioning. You have to have air conditioning in New Mexico!

The Santa Fe house has no ductwork because the heat is in-floor radiant. Without ducts, the best option for air conditioning is probably going to be mini-splits. I don’t particularly like how they look, but I have such a small place, I’ll only need two of them.

This is an internet photo, my house doesn’t actually look like this:

And I’m not going to put a gigantic one right over my couch! This is also an internet photo, nothing like my house. Why didn’t they straighten the rug for the photo? Maybe they were trying to make it look more realistic and less like an abstract drawing. This minimalist thing is in style right now. Cozy-not!

I’m thinking just two small ones, in reasonably inconspicuous places. But it’s best to have them on an outside wall, so that is limiting. The guy was originally proposing one big one right next to my kiva fireplace, and I was like, uh no.

Anyway, mini-splits are the rage right now. They both heat and cool using a heat pump, so they are fairly energy efficient. (I only need the cooling, because I like my radiant heat).

They may also make sense for our house in Placitas someday. Right now we have electric baseboard heaters, which are insanely inefficient. During the winter they account for some incredible percentage of our electric bill. 85% I think? So there’s no way we could ever have enough solar panels to go off-grid in the winter unless we got rid of them. (Although even with a heat pump we wouldn’t be able to go off-grid without relying on the wood stove for most of our heat.)

I really wanted to install in-floor radiant heat in the Placitas house, but it’s very hard to install after the house is built, so we nixed that one. I’m glad I have in-floor radiant heat in Santa Fe, it’s my favorite kind of heat. I love the fact that it doesn’t blow air!

If we put mini-splits in the Placitas house we’d probably only use them for heat, not cooling, because our existing evaporative cooler is the most energy efficient option for cooling. Some people don’t like those very well (swamp coolers have a bad name!), but we like them. They work very well in the desert, and they humidify the air. But in Santa Fe I don’t have the ductwork for them. And if it’s going to be a rental someday (which it might), an evaporative cooler would be a nuisance, and tenants often don’t like them.

Evaporative coolers require some fussing around – you need to crack windows open for air flow, and then we get dust storms and electrical storms, and it’s a big pain for people who aren’t that into the New Mexico thing. And you have to do a big switcheroo each fall and each spring, changing the system over from furnace to cooler and back again. And you have to choose when to do it, because once you’ve done it you’re committed for the season. Every spring there are locals whining because they switched to the cooler too soon and now they’re freezing, or they didn’t switch soon enough and they’re baking. Ditto come fall, except opposite. It’s part of the fun of living here.

But not with mini-splits. No “New Mexico character” with mini-splits. Nice and easy, touch of a button on a remote. You can heat in the morning and cool in the afternoon (if you were so inclined).

Anything else I forgot to mention? John was in California last week. This week he’s in Placitas and he has the dogs this week. The dogs are going back and forth, sort of like a custody arrangement, lol! I love my dogs, but I have to admit I was pretty relieved to see them walk out the door with John on Sunday afternoon.

Until I get the backyard patio installed, I’ve got a big dog-and-dirt problem. (That I keep talking about, and you’re tired of hearing about!) Seriously, I washed that mat a couple of hours before I took that photo and look at it!

After the dogs left on Sunday, I got out my new vacuum cleaner, and my new floor steamer, and got my floors all clean. I put the dog gate away in the garage (it corrals the dogs into one part of the house), so now I don’t have half my house blocked off. I picked up all the dog toys that are constantly scattered on the floor like I’ve got several 3-year-olds. And I got my embroidered couch pillows out, and I got my white Greek flokati rugs out and now my house is all just-so.

Here’s my new futon for the office/guest/dog-hang-out-room.

I’m not into the retro-1950’s look, but it was a very low price and fit the limited space. It folds down to be a twin-sized bed. Actually, it’s more like a twin-sized bed for short people 🙂 I also bought a memory foam topper for it, so it should be fairly comfortable for sleeping.

When the dogs are here I put a cover on the futon, the flokati is rolled up and put away, and the pillows are put away. And dog toys are everywhere.

Here’s the living room. Next step is to paint the kiva.

No…painting a kiva is not remodeling!