What About Conan O'Brien?!?!

The funniest thing is that this is on nbc.com

Cheers.

NoMaHst Land

Talk about an epiphany.

A lil' background. The neighborhood association to which my residence belongs is called the "Capitol Hill North Neighborhood Association", otherwise known as "CHNNA" (everytime I get an email from the google group I see "China"--but that's getting away from the point). A pet peeve of mine (I'll include it on #2) is when an emerging or transitional neighborhood that is adjacent to an established neighborhood tries to throw a directional suffix at the end of the established neighborhood in order to swagger-jack the established neighborhood's name. You see this a lot in Montgomery County where White Flint is now called "Bethesda North" and Gaithersburg (around Montgomery College) is now called "Rockville North". Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Burleith or Glover Park was once called "Georgetown North" by some overzealous real estate agent trying to make a sale on an over-priced listing.

Needless to say, the name "Capitol Hill North" has been a splinter in my mind for the longest. While I understand why--the housing stock is quite similar and Florida Avenue does make a good northern boundary--I still don't agree and it strikes me as the quick fix for a neighborhood that has always had its own distinct identity separate from "Capitol Hill" (H Street has always been the unofficial but visual boundary between these two worlds). Moreover, given the introduction of the New York Avenue Metro Station (to the west) in the early 2000's and the re-emergence of H Street as a destination entertainment corridor (to the east) in the mid- to late- 2000's, I feel that the boundaries should be expanded east of the current 8th Street demarcation. Personally, I feel that the character/atmosphere of the area is best defined by the triangular boundaries of Florida Ave to the north and east, H Street to the south (maybe G Street if you want to get it all) and the railroad tracks to the west. With this area definition, you get the full scope of the area:

• Homes Adjacent to the Tracks - homes that are less "architecturally significant" but well-located given the proximity to the metro; additionally, given the prevalence of industrial zoning that still remains around this area, the area has the upside of redevelopment potential for large scale mixed-use or residential projects in the future
• East End Homes (east of 9th) - homes that also aren't as "architecturally significant" as those in the "Heart", but are also well-located given the proximity to the entertainment side of H Street (both these and the above will serve as good rental stock over the long term
• Homes in the "Heart" - these are the homes that are roughly between 4th, 8th, H and L. The stock and size is nearly identical to those of 2-stories on Capitol Hill; these homes probably sell for the most north of H street given they're perfect starter homes for young couples looking to start a family, most of which have English Basements, and, from Fall 2008 to probably July of 2009, were affordable.
• H Street - the "spine" of the area that all those within the area use in one way or another--whether to travel (auto or public transit), entertain, or satisfy basic needs (i.e. Rite Aid, Chinese/Fast Food, small grocers, etc.)--and others outside the area travel to for entertainment purposes
• G Street - the most expensive homes in the area due to their proximity to Capitol Hill--indicating the influence, albeit somewhat limited, the adjacent neighborhood has on our neighborhood...let me put it this way: I bet we go into Eastern Market and Barracks Row and their local corner stores and laundromats as much as they come to H Street, Florida Ave Market and use the NY Ave Metro.

The name for this area a few years back was "Near Northeast", but somehow that got lost in the shuffle. So, for the longest, I've been racking my brain trying to think of a clever name. It came when I least expected it. I was in Sova on H Street and looking at their blackboard of drinks inspired by D.C.'s local neighborhoods and streets. I didn't see my specific area and I made a mention of such to the bartender saying something to the effect of, "I'm trying to think of a name for where I live to use for a drink but its kind of a No Man's Land..." And then I realized it...

The emerging commercial area west of the train tracks is called "NoMa" for "North of Massachusetts Avenue. This is the commercial area that many people that live in my immediate area (adjacent to the tracks) are pinning some of our hopes to in that it'll be bringing jobs and a Harris Teeter grocer to the area. I thought for a second of maybe calling it "NoMaD's Land"--in honor of those who ventured like nomads to this area over the last several years to buy and live (yes, I know there have been people that have been living here for 30 years plus and they're quick to scream gentrification, but I'm meaning "venturing" in a more economical/future sense in that they were willing to take a chance, with their money, for what they felt was a good deal in light of future goods/services and upside they had faith would come to the area...hate it or love it, call it what you will).

But how do you explain the "D".

What if you replaced it with an "H" and threw "st" at the end...

"NoMaHst Land"

It probably looks better on a map. And if it were to get used as a designation, I'm sure there'd be plenty of jocular variations in the vein of "No Mas Land" or even back to "Nomad's Land"...but at least its better than riding the sweaty ball sack of Capitol Hill.

Just my 2 cents.

Cheers.

Let There Be Heat!!!!

(insert pic of thermostat)

OK, this is the story for another blog.

I could go into the background of the contractor/owner relationship with Victor, but for the sake of keeping this blog as short as possible I'll say he quite simply saved my 203K renovation. And I'm very happy with the end product. However, some things were outside of his direct control, and given the many hiccups that came along with this project and the relatively small margin he was getting on it, to a certain extent, he didn't want to bother himself with it. And I understand that from a business standpoint. Lemme get to the point...

A general contractor (GC) on a gut-rehab project like mine is most likely going to hire sub-contractors (subs) to do certain tasks within the overall project. One of the subs he's going to hire is one that specializes in the mechanical (or HVAC--Heating, Ventilating, and Air-Conditioning) aspects of the job. Long story short, I didn't like his mechanical sub. I saw it from the beginning when they started framing the duct work where the ducts come into the house from the outside shed (they put it too low) and in the middle when the put the duct work behind the bathroom mirror instead of the adjacent wall (see If I Could Do This House Over #1 blog) and towards the end when issues with where and how to place the return came up. But it wasn't until the onset of the coldness of Winter '09/'10 that I saw just how much these guys didn't know what they were doing.

Now, the women that had been to my house always complained that it was cold, but I figured this was a women thing cause its been proven that women are more sensitive to cold than men and none of the guys that had been to my house complained it was cold. However, towards the end of December and the beginning of January, I began to see that the thermostat never got about 55 degrees. It was time to get a second opinion. So Mom recommended a guy they use around their house and sure enough, there was an issue with the HVAC...well, 'not technically'. It was an issue with the return duct, it wasn't wide enough to suck air out of the house at a faster rate than what the HVAC was pumping it into the house. This all stems from the fact that the mechanical subs on the renovation used what's called 'flex' duct work

(insert picture of flex duct work)

The diameter on the duct work was too small to adequately handle the air flow being pumped into the house. It gets even smaller when it has to turn a corner. Needless to say I needed larger metal duct work to do the trick. Given the small crawl space under the joists (between 6" and a foot), I needed 8" x 18" duct work.

(insert picture of metal duct work)

However, Mom's guy quoted WAY too much--I don't know if he over-charges Mom and figured I'd be a sucker too or he just didn't want to do the job cause it would have involved a lot of dirty work (i.e. crawling through the crawl space of the house and staying down there while you install it). In any event the second quote (courtesy of a guy that does the HVAC work for Darryl, a contractor friend of mine) was less than a third of what was quote prior so I went with them. Btw, I had other reservations about the first dude cause he said the ceiling fan should spin the wrong way in the winter and summer months (that's another blog too) and he charged me a trip charge of $99 on top of the $129 for an hours worth of labor to diagnose the problem. Maybe he knew he wasn't going to do the project and hit me on the front end.

In any event, dude came by and did it today. Came back around 5pm when he was finished (still a bit skeptical cause while I heard the HVAC pumping air through the vents louder than before (a good thing), it was only through a couple of the vents downstairs. So I put the thermostat up to 80 and went back to work. Got back around like midnight and sure enough, we were at 80!

Back to buck-ed naked time!

Cheers.

Pet Peeves #1

Yet another recurring series...

• Metro train operators that pronounce 'Judiciary Square' as 'Jew-dis-SHU-wary' Square. WHERE'S THE SECOND 'U' AT?! And don't make this into a D.C. accent thing because...you're a bamma! On to the next one...
• Homeless people that get mad at you when they ask you for change and you say 'No'. F*** that, even when you say you don't have any they get mad and say stuff under their breath. I'm sorry, since when did I have an obligation to have money when you asked, much less give you some if I did have it, much less support your pandering?...
• When someone asks me to resend an email that I sent to them prior that they said they received but its either somewhere in their inbox or junk mail. Is like you're passing the work of "finding" the email onto me. LOOK THE ISHT UP YOURSELF! Why should I have to search through my "Sent Items" folder and resend it to you, worse yet re-type the damn thing. I went through the trouble of sending it to you, now you go through the trouble of finding it! On to the next one...
• When the dude with the Hispanic accent on the Metrobus radio commercials they play on 980 AM says, "Not technically, but they all run on alternative fuels" (just the 'not technically' part). Great, now I'm gonna have that suck in my head for the rest of the night.

Cheers.

What About Jimmy Fallon?!?!

With all this Leno/O'Brian shake-up news...what's gonna happen with Jimmy Fallon?

I mean, I heard that after the Olympics, Leno's gonna be on at 11:35p for a 1/2 hour, then Conan will be on for an hour starting at 12:05a. After that, then Jimmy Fallon'll be on...but what happens if Jay's show isn't as popular as he was back when he was the host of the Tonight Show or he throws a hissy fit asking for an hour? Then, unless he leaves, Conan's going to get bumped back to the late night slot and Jimmy's screwed.

Man, I'm just saying this cause 1) he's got the Roots as the house band and from what I've seen and heard, they're really refreshing to the whole late night format; and 2) Jimmy Fallon is actually kinda funny. I literally 'lol'-ed watching it with Grandma last week.

My 2 cents.

Cheers.

Operation Weezy F. Baby

In case you haven't noticed, I get these from illseed.

Cheers.

Eat a Bagel!!!!

Too funny.

Jonah would love this.

Cheers.

Verizon Arenas

I'm going to try to keep this as short as possible...

First and foremost, now I didn't research this but, if carrying an unlicensed firearm in the District is illegal and punishable by jail, then that's the law that should apply to Arenas--by now we know that he brought unloaded guns into the MCI Center that weren't registered in the District of Columbia, nor MD nor VA nor any other state as far as I know.

**Right now, Rihanna singing, "where dem bloggas at? where dem bloggas at?" is pulsing through my head...in part because I'm here writing as a partially (maybe mostly) uninformed individual. But this is my opinionated blog that no one is reading so...**

Anyways, and I've said this for Tiger Woods, athletes and entertainers are not only abnormal people because once they become famous (or the people around them realize they will one day become famous), I feel they are shielded from "life on the ground" as most of us know and understand it, but also because at that level of professionalism, all of them possess an "abnormal" competitive nature/drive...otherwise they wouldn't be there. And I personally feel, you CAN'T disassociate that from the person they are off the court. In other words, if I will myself to win this game at any cost, I'm also going to use that same will to bag the baddest chick in the room, do the "dare" that no one else would do in "truth or dare", disrespect to a greater degree that dude that I feel just disrespected me...

Feel me?

Combine the fact of being shielded from reality ($1,000 dollar gambling bets on team private jets, making jokes with real unloaded handguns, thinking that because the threat of violence wasn't apparent to those that witnessed the exchange there is no harm to be had legally either from the heated exchange on the plane or in the locker room with the "Pick One" post it note) and the natural competitive "one-upping" nature of professional athletes (Arenas taunting Crittenden on the plane to the point of saying he'll blow up his car to Crittenden saying he'll shoot Arenas in his surgically repaired knee to Arenas bringing 4 unloaded handguns to the Verizon Center so Crittenden could "pick one" to Crittenden allegedly throwing one of the guns across the room then allegedly taking his own weapon and cocking it (i.e. loading a bullet in the chamber) and allegedly walking around the locker room singing to Arenas then laughing at Crittenden's whole act), and voila!...there you have it, the situation we now find ourselves in. (sorry for the super run on sentence).

As Chris Rock said, I'm not saying I agree or condone his actions...but I understand (why it happened).

Cheers.

P.S. As for the pregame "Shoot 'em up" picture taken before Monday's Philly game, I think the same holds true--those that were there feel that the perceived non-threat of violence speaks loader than the fact its illegal to have unlicensed guns in the District...much less the Verizon Center.

If I Could Do This House Over #1

Time for another recurring post.

And I knew this would happen too. While rehabbing my house last year, I got kind of anal about certain things cause, knowing me, I knew that certain things, if done wrong, would forever stick out and urk me like a...perpetual hangnail. Anyways, thanks to my efforts (and the semi-patience of others as I pointed things out), I'd say I got it about...90 percent right. Still, its that 10 percent that I get reminded of almost everyday.

I have a running tally in my head of the things in my house that if I were to do it again (and have a larger overall budget, not to mention), I'd implement. Please note, most of these were realized only after moving into the house (i.e. these wouldn't have occurred to me during the initial process), some are more cosmetic than others, some would be considered more functional. Anyways, I promised myself I wouldn't be doing those novel-long blogs of my Frankfurt heyday so I'm only going to write four at a time and try to keep these short and sweet...coming back to write more installments over the long haul.

• Heated Floors in the Kitchen Tile...and maybe in the bathroom ;-). While the bathroom would be more of a cosmetic (i.e. sexy) thing to put in (coming out the shower on heated tiles is the hotness, no pun intended), the downstairs actually has a more functional purpose. With the onslaught of Winter '10 in full effect (read: cold as hell), you really develop the appreciation of a certain law of physics--heat rises. Now, aside from the fact that my HVAC return duct is inadequate to service the house (right now its literally below 50 degrees on the first floor and I'll probably have to spend more than a couple grand to get that redone...but that's another story), its ALWAYS cold on the first floor, even with a working system. This is exacerbated by the fact the floor of the 1st floor is the lowest (read: coldest) point of the house and the ceramic tile in the kitchen IS AN ICE BLOCK in the winter! Even with socks on. Its to the point that if I wake up in the middle of the night thirsty as hell, I'm just like "F*** it, I can't get to the refrigerator". Long story short, having heated kitchen tiles would not only reinvigorate the idea of cooking in my house during the winter, but would also probably lower my overall gas bill cause the radiant heat from the floor would actually serve as an alternate (albeit small) heating source for the lower level.
• Light Above the Kitchen Sink. I have a corner sink. I also eat out more than I eat at home so it makes more sense for me to wash the limited dishes I use by hand than to load up the dishwasher. Unfortunately, the placement of the lights in my kitchen (a centered rectangle of 4 recessed lights), creates a shadow over the sink when I'm washing. Not that I can't see what I'm doing, but it would make tons of sense to have another light there right above. This would also be functional for any future corner shelving I put up there over the sink.
• Install a Recirculation Pipe. Ok, now this one may be a bit difficult to explain, but I'll try. I installed a tankless water heater in my house. Your traditional water heater stores like 30 or so gallons of hot water that the house draws on as needed. As the water is used the tank fills itself back up with regular water from the street and heats it up til the entire tank is back to the temperature you set it to hold the water at (hence, when a whole bunch of showers have been taken in the house, you only get lukewarm or cold water cause the tank is dealing with a sizable portion of fresh water from the street that hasn't been heated yet). Conversely, a tankless water heater doesn't store any water. Rather, it heats the water right as it comes into the house (with a gas or electric heater that is more powerful than the heater used on a water tank). The good thing, aside from being energy efficient in the amount of gas or electricity used to heat the water, is that you never run out of hot water. But there is a downside, and its on the front end...it sometimes takes a number of minutes for the water to get hot (sometimes up to like 2 to 3 minutes...literally). The reason for this is that once you turn of the water and don't use it for a while (ex. over the night), the water in the hot water pipes gets cold. Then, when you turn on the water in the morning, all of the cold water in the hot water pipe needs to get flushed from the pipes before the newly heated water, provided by the tankless water heater, reaches the spout. There is a way around this though...a recirculator pipe. What this is is a 3rd pipe (in addition to the hot and cold water pipes) that allows for you to set the water heater to a specific time that you'd like for the water to be hot (say, 6am). Then, at that time, what the system will do is drain the leftover cold water from the hot water pipe into the recirculator pipe, thereby allowing for newly heated hot water to fill the hot water pipe and be used as needed (with no wait for the water to get hot). The cold water in the recirculator pipe is then recirculated back into the system to be reheated and reused. Make sense?
• Placement of the Bathroom HVAC Vent. Now, this one I knew about before I moved in, but by the time it was done, redoing it would have costed more money than it was worth. Basically, drywall is hung over wood studs that are about 3 inches wide. This space behind the drywall allows for many of the mechanical, electrical and plumbing elements of the house to be hidden from view (sort of like the guts of the house). In the bathroom's case, they placed duct work for the HVAC vent behind the wall of the bathroom mirror. So what does this mean? It means that I can't have a mirror that has a recessed medicine cabinet behind it cause the area behind the drywall where the recessed medicine cabinet would go is now occupied by damn duct work. How does this affect the bathroom? That means I had to pay like $500 more than I should have for a stand-alone cabinet that I hung over the wall above the toilet as opposed to paying less for an all-in-one mirrored cabinet. Had they put the duct work behind the adjacent wall (like they were supposed to...meaning, I told them to do it), I would have not only saved money but had extra room on the wall where the current cabinet is to, I don't know...hang a picture or something. I guess that's why I didn't stress it too much--the aftermath was primarily cosmetic, even though the issue had structural origins. But, this was just one of the many issues I had with the HVAC subcontractors my GC on the project used. But that's a $2,000-$3,000 story for another blog.

On the next installment, I'll talk about how 3 inches affected the layouts of the whole 2nd floor.

Cheers.

P.S. Guess I just can't get away from novel-long blogs.

The Denman-Werlich Residence

I could appraise properties like this all day and never get tired...

Finished my first report of the year in 3 days, and I must say, it's pretty thorough...and not even for the summary report that it is, I mean this thing could pass for a self-contained.

I think part of the reason for the beastiality, aside from the fact I'm trying to get more focused in the new decade, is the fact I thoroughly enjoyed inspecting, researching, analyzing and reporting all of the facets of this property's value...not to mention the fact its "goooo-gious" as Kadija would say.

Seriously, if I could be the dedicated guy in the office to do these types of properties in the once-in-a-while chance a request for bid comes through our office...I'd do it for half the price.

Real talk.

Cheers.