As part of finishing our basement, we added a bathroom with a tile floor. As we worked on the plans, one thing that I remember from a friend’s finished basement in VT is how cold a tile floor can be on a concrete slab.  The first time that I stepped on it in the morning in the winter, I almost jumped a foot. Therefore, when planning our new basement, we once again turned to our friends at Warmly Yours for their individual room radiant floor product. We had used the Warmly Yours product in our last house and had it installed in both the mudroom and the master bathroom of our current home.

The folks from Warmly Yours have great customer service and an exceptional product that is very reasonably priced. The process is simple.  All you have to do is submit your measurements online and then their engineering team will create a custom quote and diagram for each room.  For our project, they also recommend a cork underlayment to create a thermal break between the heating mat and the concrete slab, which the tile installer laid down in a thin layer of thinset before laying the heating mat.  We received the whole package from Warmly Yours within a few days of ordering, complete with the electric mat, thermostat, detailed custom installation instructions and a special sensor to use during installation to make sure the wires were not nicked. Continue reading →

There is a phrase that I often hear about the two certainties in life; one being death and the other being taxes.  To that, I would add a third, which is having to clean leaves in the fall. While I love the big oak trees that surround our house, the leaves are a lot of work to get off of the lawn and become even more problematic when they clog up the gutters.  Oak trees also have additional droppings in the spring, which makes cleaning out the gutters in our neighborhood a 2-3 times a year project.  When the gutters get clogged, the water that pours down the side of the house can also cause leaks or expensive ice dams in the winter.
Continue reading →