File this under: You live, you learn. So, we’re constantly renovating our house (but we never clean or invite anyone over). Last year was the big ticket item upgrades. You know, those things that you install to make the house more efficient, not really to make it look good.

We got new windows over the summer. They look great and if I didn’t keep the shutters closed all the time, they would let in tons more light than our foggy old ones. New insulation was inserted around the frames and they are totally energy efficient. The draft is gone!

Then came the new boiler. Our old boiler labored on quite noisily. It would have lasted a good bit longer with some maintenance, but we wanted to move it to a different location in the basement. We would have been hiring a plumber to do all that work to install the old inefficient boiler? Nah, we got a new boiler AND water heater because that was being moved also.

So, I couldn’t wait to test it all out this winter! I thought the house would remain toasty warm with the heat kicking on only every so often.

Silly me. What did we (the husband) overlook during our renovations? The radiators are too small for some rooms! The previous owner had ugly radiators in front of the window and exposed pipes all over the house. We wanted to hide our heating behind the lovely custom radiator covers.

It’s not the end of the world. We will add more heating tubes under the radiator covers and install radiators in the hallways where there is no heat source. The problem is that we don’t want to turn off the heat on days like this to work on it.

Alas, with new windows and boiler we are still not quite there yet. But if we had the old window situation, I’d be typing this with thermal gloves. So it’s definitely an improvement.

Stay warm!

Oh PS: FYI, our tenant likes it cool upstairs and has-not-turned-on-his-heat in about 2 years. Crazy Canadians!