Neil Fein's Blog

I've known our PSE&G bills are high, but really haven't had any basis for comparison. Recently, when I was helping Craig clean out the house after a flood, he was chatting with the contractor; apparently he pays one-third what I'm paying a month.

This says to me that our house is insulated not much if at all. Well, Martha and I thought about it, and decided that we're losing heat through 1) the large picture window in the front of the living room, 2) the wall-mounted air conditioning unit, and 3) everywhere else, particularly windows.

Caulking and foam will take care of much of this -- and it's cheap. However, the picture window needs more drastic action. We could either cover the whole thing in insulating plastic for the winter, or we could finally, finally throw curtains up. Curtains would also block sunlight, keeping the place cooler and saving on electric bills in the summer. Curtains can also go with us to our next place, so curtains it is!

We went to A Home Repair Store^[1], and settled on a particular curtain rod system, also thinking it could go on other windows if we liked it. Then we stopped into a fabric store and bought fabric, batting^[2] and backing. So far we've spent $60 for the hardware and $40 on the fabric. I think we could have done a little better. But if this saves us even a little on the energy bills, it'll pay for itself in a few months. ^[3]

I got the curtain rods up, not a big project. And Martha pinned the fabric of the first curtain, also not a big deal^[4]. She started sewing, and the machine wasn't working. I tried, it still didn't work. A call to her Mom didn't help, but somehow by trying many different things we were able to get the machine to work. I was merrily sewing along, and suddenly I sewed on top of a pin and broke the needle. ^[5]

To be continued...

^[1] I have nothing against Home Depot per se, but their customer service is pretty abysmal.

^[2] Batting is a cotton-like substance you put between two layers of fabric to make blankets and such. We got pretty thin batting, as we are talking about curtains here.

^[3] Well, that's the theory. If not saving on our energy bills, we've at least done some decorating.

^[4] Not a big deal for her, pins and I don't communicate well.

^[5] I called Judith to share the irony of the situation, and she mentioned that this was a demo sewing machine, sent to her by a manufacturer, which she reviewed in an article.