And also today…
Posted by aaron in laundry room, shed on 22 October 2008
Put up a small shelf in the laundry room, and picked up the permit for the shed. Hey look, I’m legal:
Quick fix
Posted by aaron in laundry room on 22 October 2008
The dryer vent hose was just tucked in the back room’s partly open window, which made for a draft when it was in use. To vent it out without keeping the window open – and this is temporary until I decide if the washer and dryer are staying in this upstairs room, and if so where to put a vent in the wall – I built a quick… I don’t know what you’d call it, but it vents without keeping the window fully open. It’s just a board that runs the width of the window with a hole for an old vent pipe I salvaged. The dryer vent is just attached to the pipe with a screw-tight pipe clamp.
Two adjustments were necessary. First, the window sash is very old and unevenly worn resulting in some gaps between the sash bottom and the board. I just ran a strip of self-adhesive weatherstripping foam along the board.
Second was the making the pipe clamp work – the vent hose is about 1.5″ wider in diameter than the old pipe to which it’s connected. Tightening the clamp would tear the hose and/or provide a bad seal. Again, the weatherstripping foam came into play – ran it around the pipe a couple of times to bulk up its diameter, then put the pipe clamp over that section and tightened down a little. Seems to be working fine – virtually no fog on the inside of the window so it appears all the air is going out the pipe as desired.
This still needs two minor things – some caulk or spray foam to plug the small holes between the pipe and the board hole; and some insulation between the glass panes to keep drafts from coming up since the window is still partly open.
Tuesday
Posted by aaron in backyard, shed, tools and materials on 21 October 2008
Bullets, because it’s been a long day:
– applied for permit to have the shed put in out back; looks like that will be fine
– hung a couple of pictures (long overdue)
– dragged all the old shed up to the driveway and sorted the scrap pile into aluminum and steel
– cleared some undergrowth from around where I plan on having the shed installed
– pulled down some broken branches that were stuck in other branches after that storm a few weeks back
– cleared some brush from the area around where the shed should go
– tried installing a missing storm window in the dining room. Having trouble finding one that’s the right size – moreover, the sash cords are broken on that window and at one point the lower sash slammed down and I lost a piece of 100 year old glass. C’est la vie. Tomorrow I’ll take that whole storm down and try and get something to fit.
– moved a lot of furniture and tools around in the living room because I had one half of Ian Wilson’s band crashing overnight.
– older note but worth mentioning: cleaned several of the downstair’s radiators’ steam valves with vinegar and now have minimal whistling.
The worst thing on the outside of the house
At least I hope that’s the case.
There are two big picture windows in the living room, both with some stained glass. The one on the west wall (which is the most exposed to the elements) looks like it hasn’t been touched in decades – when I moved in, I could see some separation between the glass and the wood framing elements; the caulk is severely damaged on much of it.
Now, the storm window that’s coming will go a long way to protecting this, at least for this year. I’ve had good success with plastic sheeting in the interim to keep the rain and some of the wind away. Tape on the inside plugs the biggest gaps to prevent drafts. I don’t plan on working on restoring or in any way fixing the two sashes anytime soon – painting the exterior frame and getting the storm in is likely all I’ll do this fall. However, there are two questions that this window raises.
The first is the obvious – how to best go about fixing the sashes, especially the multi-framed stained glass one up top? Any resources anyone can point me to would be much appreciated. The second is a historical one. Everyone who’s looked at this glass has said the same thing – it’s not original, and likely went in well after the other stained glass in the house. Is there a way to narrow down when the glass was installed – the color, the style of framing?
Sunday
No more creative a title than that. Today was a productive continuation of yesterday – swapped some lightbulbs through the town lightbulb exchange (Oberlin College students and town residents can turn in incandescent lightbulbs and get CFLs instead – totally free thanks to a donation from an anonymous alum), took my new jigsaw out for a spin (pictures hopefully tomorrow when the rest of that project falls into place), and painted several windows. Most of the windows have pretty weathered sills and surrounds – it’s been a while since anyone painted the trim, let alone all the shingles. As long as the shingles aren’t loose, they should survive the winter regardless of paint. The trim on the other hand really needed a good seal – I’ll probably go over the sills and any rough spots with a second coat this week.
Once again I failed to take a before picture. Just pretend the trim looks like everything around it.
Oh, and also mowed the front lawn – who wants to take bets that this won’t be the last time I’ll do that this year?
That worked surprisingly quickly…
This time of year, apparently all it takes is two walnuts and a squirrel will squeeze itself into a space barely larger than itself (there were no mid-size traps available at Lowes). I put it out last night as the sun was heading down and when I got up half an hour ago, I found… success!
Just released the critter into the arb. He was healthy enough to scoot from the trap to a tree 20 feet away in about .003 seconds, so I think he’ll be fine.
Now to fully patch that hole in the porch eave so this doesn’t happen again. This task will be made much easier, I hope, by the fact that I FINALLY bought a jigsaw. After several trips to Jamie’s without stumbling across a solid one for cheap, I caved and decided that fixing the eave, building a vent slot for the laundry room, etc, etc were more important than bargin hunting. I may have failed flea marketers everywhere, but at least my house will not have unnecessary holes in it this winter.
Also done yesterday – ordered the shed, put up the second light in the hallway (thank you again, wire clippers!) and… something. I must have done something else yesterday. I need to keep two lists – things to do and things I’ve done. Yes, I realize this blog was supposed to be the latter.
Excitement! Adventure! Explosions!
No, not really with the explosions. Actually, not really with the other two if you don’t find boiler maintenance to be exciting or adventurous.
The boiler’s water level sight was coated with rust and other sediment, so I took the opportunity to, as my neighbor Joe put it, get to know my heating system. Monroe’s Heating is right up 58 and Tim, the owner, was able to stop down today for a full cleaning and inspection. Gave me plenty of do-it-yourself pointers (including ‘clear out the sight glass like you’d do with a gun’ – a point not lost on this former Boy Scout, although it’s been almost 15 years since I’ve done that), spotted a couple of potential trouble spots and told me what to look for to know something has to be replaced, screwed everything back together, and headed off.
Minor snag though – he detached the wires powering the starter by hand to shut off the power (not recommended, but doable if you know where to grab and not grab – I always flip the breaker first, but then again I’ve been known to look both ways and still step into oncoming traffic) and thus was reattaching and capping live wires. I think one of them was loose as a result which kept the burners from kicking on when I turned up the thermostat this evening. Ten minutes with some electrical tape though and things are running fine.
Except for the last part of today’s adventure. Heat comes on, normal radiator noises, some of the abnormal radiator noises I’ve been meaning to address (see below) – and then a new noise from the radiator in my bedroom (which I could have sworn I turned off) which sounds suspiciously like water splashing on the floor. Somehow the valve had been turned upside down and had bled out a good half cup of water. Fortunately I caught it and mopped everything up before it could damage anything.
What all this means is that I’ve just added a significant (in terms of time) project to my Project Weekend – getting all the radiators in shape. I’ve been hearing some bad whistling on the downstairs radiators and have been meaning to clean them out – you can literally screw apart the valve and tap/blow out most blockages, and vinegar and hot water works for anything worse. The color of the water on my bedroom floor tells me that there are probably deeper clogs in each unit, which means putting some vinegar into the boiler* and doing some brush and wire work on the inside where the valve screws in. A couple of units also have excessive sloshing sounds, meaning I should level them to make sure water runs all the way back out and down to the return piping. After all that I should still bleed each radiator before winter, but pulling the valves to clean them technically overbled them. This will probably be a two-part project, then. 1) Clean the valves and level the radiators to eliminate unwanted noises; 2) Let the boiler push air and water back into all the radiators, then go through and bleed as necessary to ensure even heating.
*Careful with this if you have a boiler system of your own. It’s not caustic, but it can still do damage. Plus my system is a pretty simple steam system – yours may not like the home remedy approach (assuming you have an annual professional checkup anyway your boiler company should be able to tell you the risks and benefits). Moreover, and here’s the ‘planning’ part of all this – if you’ve ever cleaned out an iron by putting vinegar in the tank, you know what steamed vinegar smells like; not bad, but not what you want around your house all day. You’ll need to leave windows open to let the smell dissapate – shouldn’t take long, but unless this weekend’s temperatures get back to the 60s, the vinegar treatment may have to wait ’till spring at my place.
You know what’s useful?
Posted by aaron in closet, laundry room on 16 October 2008
These things:
Thanks to them, the new light in the upstairs closet is finally installed, and (since it’s mid-line on a circuit) the light in the laundry room is now back on.
And it only took an hour and a half (although fifteen minutes of that was searching for my wire strippers. Which still haven’t been located. Whatever – bedtime.)
This was the old fixture. Clearly it needed replacing:
With friends like these…
I should have more people over more regularly. It’s not just the multi-person projects that get done (painting part of one of the exterior walls, for example), something about having other people around gets me more active, to the point that I’ll swap a couple of mismatched cabinet handles in the kitchen (that I’ve been staring at for months) while we’re all standing around and chatting.
Sarah and Mike stopped over today and we did the above plus: mapped out shed dimensions to make sure I’m placing it well; installed a new jack in the basement to replace one that was missing (!); moved all the tree limbs that came down in the storm the other week to the front for city pickup; and I just put some plumbers tape on a valve in the upstairs shower to stop a small drip.
Pictures soon.
Catch up
Still digging out at work, meaning not much has been happening at the house. I hope to be back to actually part time soon. I also hope to order that shed in the next two days which will really be the last big thing that needs to happen before winter hits. Even the scraping and painting and such are either isolated sections or, should it come to it, they can wait.
Things done today:
– more porch scraping since the weather was nice; found that the squirrels are getting ready for winter and thus need to get kicked out now.
– hung blinds in the kitchen window so it looks less bare
– turned this:
into this:
Also discovered that this light fixture and both outlets in the room are on the same breaker – the ceiling units and the outlets in other rooms are often separate due, I suspect, to when the lines went in. This is a little bit of a concern because I thought at least one other load is also on that circuit, meaning tenants might not find it so easy to watch TV, have the light on, and run the popcorn maker or whatever else they’re doing at once. Will need to double check the panel labels and add this to the list of rewiring jobs for next summer.
Finally, the latest entry in the series ‘People Who Passed Out Asleep on my Couch’. Doug took a red-eye drive in from Minnesota (11.5 hours) and fell asleep mid-sentence whilst laying on the couch.
