Boiler Shelves

Yesterday was kind of a sad day because it was the Mariner's last regular season game. And since they have had such a crappy season, it's their last game for 2026. No playoffs. 

They ended with a losing record...76 wins and 86 loses. They were 5 games back from the Houston Astros who won the American West Division with a record of 81 and 81.

So Baseball is over for me for this year. It's time to move on to other stuff.

I spent part of the weekend putting together racks for the Boiler Room.

Here are some pictures of things down there.

Later today, Susan and I will try to get the shelves organized and loaded with all the stuff they are going to contain.

It's amazing how much room we have down there now. It's really going to be nice and organized down there.

Because of the added space, we are able to reorganize other rooms down in the basement. I took a rickety old metal shelf we were using and moved it to the back room were the outside back door is near the other fridge and freezer. I have it all organized with light bulbs now.

I managed to make it less rickety by screwing it to the wall. That baby is pretty solid now.

It feels like Fall has arrived out there in the world. It's a nice sunny day today but I think our high temp is going to be in the 50's. We have to start thinking about transitioning to colder weather. 

And Ghoul Alert, Halloween is just over a month away!   Eeeeeeeeeek!

Kitchen Faucet Pressure Improvement

Welcome to the first full day of Autumn.

I have returned from my morning travels. I ventured out and took the faucet back to the Depot and then looked at what else they had. Nothing I looked at worked. Partly because the valves on our supply lines are half inch and all the faucets I looked at were 3/8's.

I decided to come home and remove the faucet we have and search for whatever restrictors I could find.

I have tried and tried to remove the nozzle from the hose and all it does is spin. I messed with it a bit and found that by pushing on it and then turning it, it started to spin off. Somehow, pushing on the nozzle unit engaged the threads and I was able to remove it. 

Upon turning on the water with the nozzle removed, I got quite a much more powerful stream of water than we have been getting. That told me the restrictor was in the nozzle head. One of the first things I got to come out of the head was a big chunk of rusty sand. I banged it several times on the counter and got more sandy residue out of the head. I also removed some plastic pieces that were in there that I assumed were causing flow problems as well.

And I was right. The water pressure is much better, and I can live with that, for now. 

So, that all turned out to be a much easier fix than I anticipated and much less expensive than a new faucet, which is a good thing.

Now I can turn my attention to the Boiler Room and getting an idea of how we want to place the shelves.

Inspections and Shelvings

I got a call from the Spokane Building Inspector first thing this morning. He said he would come by around 10:30.

I was out on the front porch reading the newspaper when he walked up. His name was Eric. I took Eric down to the Boiler Room and showed him the new outlet and the Boiler. It took about three minutes for him to say it all looks good and he was outta here.

So, my concerns about him finding problems down there from other projects we have done were assuaged, and we still get to live in the house.

Next project was to get a new faucet for the kitchen sink and to look at some shelving racks for the Boiler Room,

We went to Home Depot and bought a faucet and also looked at some racks. The stuff they had there wasn't what I had in mind, so we went to Costco.

To make parking even more fun at Costco, they had a huge section closed off as they are planning to repave the whole thing...one section at a time.

We got in and found the racks, and I think we are going with the really solid one that is six feet tall and measures 48" x 24". At 95 bucks, I think we will get two.

Once we got home, I started check out the new faucet and quickly came to the conclusion that it wasn't going to work.

So, that's going back and we will figure something else out.

 

Faucet Inspection and Boiler Inspection

I got under the kitchen sink today to see if I could figure out how to improve the water pressure. The first thing I did after removing all the stuff under the sink, was to disconnect the hot water line of the faucet from the hot water supply line. I attached a short hose that I was able to direct into a bucket and turned on the valve.

The water pressure was quite strong, much better than what the faucet delivers. 

And it only took about thirty seconds for the water to turn hot.

Obviously, we are replacing the faucet. We will go to the Depot or some place and see what we can find. However, before I open up the new faucet and install it, I'm going to closely inspect the old faucet and see if there are limiters in the hoses that keep the water pressure at such a useless force.

So, stand by cuz this is not resolved.

In Boiler news, Element Air hired an electrician to come in and install an outlet in the wall next to where they hung the new boiler. Apparently, the electrician pulled a permit. 

Other than our re-roofing project a few years ago, there has not been a permit used on this property for anything we have done.

Because the electrician pulled a permit, the inspector told me that Element Air needed a permit to install the boiler. 

So, after some wrangling around, we now have a permit for the boiler, and I guess the inspector will be calling on Monday to arrange the inspection. 

Because I have done all the wiring down in the basement, I'm just a little worried about getting the inspection. My plan is to show the inspector as little of the basement as possible.

I guess that would include any access to this Blog.

Tankless Success

I have just completed my first tankless hot water shower. It was lovely. The water was hot for the whole shower, and it took about the same amount of time for the water to get hot in the shower.

Our kitchen sink is another matter. I just timed it and it took over three minutes before the water was hot.

We have had an issue with the kitchen sink since the remodel. There is not a lot of pressure in the water flow which adds to the time it takes for the hot water to get to the sink.

I'm considering buying another faucet to see if that solves the water pressure problem. Another fix for the hot water delay is to buy and install an under sink hot water tank. It's a small one-gallon tank that will serve the kitchen sink only. 

We have resisted doing this because we did not want to lose the space the small water heater will take up. I'm investigating the possibility of installing the small tank in the basement.

Boiler Installation - Finally

The days are getting shorter and the night are getting cooler. So, it is perfect timing that the guys from Element Air have started installing our new boiler yesterday. They got the new boiler unit hung and vented.

Remember this?!

This is how it looks at the moment. 

Quite a difference.

We have so much more room down in that space. We are thinking of purchasing some nice, sturdy shelving racks that we can place down there. In the meantime, they have a lot of work to do.

Zane has just told me they won’t get it done today because their suppler is out of a crucial part.

One of my projects for today was to put away all our air conditioners for the season. We have one in the kitchen and one in each of the big bedrooms upstairs.

It turned out to be a fairly easy job. The most difficult part was getting the kitchen a.c. upstairs to be stored. I’m not supposed to lift anything that heavy even though it is well within my capabilities. But Susan won’t let me.

So, we carried it up together. It went very well and everything is packed away for 2026.

Now all we need is a furnace.

Wedding Report

The wedding is in the books and the best thing we can say about it is, “IT IS OVER!”

Everything went very well. The weather was just right. Not too hot and not too cool and no rain.

We had right around 50 people and it was all very manageable. Susan and Mark did the bulk of the work concerning getting all the food prepared, out, and cleaned up. Well, lots of people helped with the cleanup.

As I said earlier, it is over and we have decided we will never do it again.  The people that have wedding venues and operate them definitely earn their money.

Here are some pictures.

First Mow

It's been about two months since the new lawn was installed. It received its first mowing yesterday. It looks pretty good. Here is a before and after picture but it's thrown off by the amount of sun in the first picture.

We are approaching the big wedding weekend, which is only a few days away. The stress factor is arising.

Good-Bye Dead Patch

 Today was another step forward in some major yard work. I have been fighting with my Wall Street Parking Strip for over 20 years. Despite my intense efforts to water this strip, the grass refuses to stay green.

Here is how it looked as of this morning.

And here it is how it looks now.

We chose this low maintenance alternative after talking to various neighbors and seeing the results from our previous landscaping where we laid smaller gravel around the garage and Carriage House.

With the help of our neighbors, Fred and Cole Anderson, we have transformed that patch of dead grass to this low maintenance strip of rock.

Here are some pictures of the process.

I'm quite pleased with the aftermath of this project. I'm waiting to see if there is any backlash. Generally, those of us who live around the park prefer green space but technically, this little strip is not "on the park".

Water Bill

I have been dreading this day.

The bill from the city utilities department finally showed up and as expected, it was quite high. It was, in fact, about double our usual bill of $125.00.

I have been watering the new lawn twice a day since they laid the sod. Plus, I've been trying to keep up with my regular watering schedule for the front and east yards. The east yard, hidden in the back by arbor vitae, looks great. The front yard, the one anyone driving by can see, looks pretty sad. It has tints of green to it, but many other shades of brownish-green and bare spots where no grass grows.

Year of the Yard

It's been a busy month here at the house and I have yet to post any of the improvements.

Let's start with the new deck. We hired Shawn to build us a deck in front of the Carriage house. Here is the photo progression from start to finish.

Isn't that awesome?! It's our new favorite place.

Let's move on to the west side yard. It started out looking like this.

And now,

We are loving this new yard. I've been watering the hell out of it since it was laid in on the 13th. I am not looking forward to seeing our next water bill. After dropping $10K on this project, I'll be okay with a high water bill.

We also laid some sod in the other back yard by the new deck. We also completed the little area where I've been burning the hell out of that damn tree trunk root. We repainted the arbor that blocks the junk space between the garage and Carriage House.

So, here's how that looks.

The last thing we had to do was build a gate for that little opening there. Also, Susan has been prepping the garage for some touch up paint.

And there we have it. We're pretty happy with the whole thing. Stand by there's even more to come.

BiCenQuinQuagenary

 In the news, they refer to this year's Fourth of July as the Semi Quincentennial. That's half of 500 years. I prefer BiCenQuinnQuagenary because it's more mellifluent. At least, it is to me.

We spent the day doing little stuff around the yard, culminating in a visit to our neighbors, Tammy and Lou, who have a pool. We had a great dinner and a nice visit.

We were pretty full afterward and we weren't sure we wanted to go down and see the fireworks downtown. But fireworks won out.

We drove downtown and pulled into this parking garage right by the park. We drove to the top floor and there were already a bunch of families up there.

Susan was apprehensive about going there but the gates were open, so we didn't have to pay, and it was a pretty good place to watch the fun. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if the lights in the garage had been turned out. 

So Happy Birthday, America. I'm awfully glad I live here.

Stump Planter

What a busy day! I'm quite spent.

First of all, it's my mom's birthday. She would have been 93 today. She probably would have hated that.

It's been five years since she died and today, we finally got around to spreading her ashes. We put them in the Little Spokane River from the Bridge out at the Robinson property.

But prior to that adventure, we had a crew from A-1 Tree Service come to clean up our maple tree.

Here's before and after.

They took out a lot of dead branches and ones that were getting near the house. From looking at the pictures, it doesn't look like that much of a difference. They pulled out a lot of dead stuff

We also had the guy level off the top of the stump in the back of the house.

Now it is ready for me to create a little planter out of it.

I used my router to carve out the initial circle and now I'm going to start drilling some holes and hopefully carve out a space we can place a pot full of flowers.

In the process of doing all that, I have really worn myself out. It's great to be in shape.

Also, progress was made today on the Carriage House Deck.

Last Day of June

We had a very productive day.

Susan has zeroed in on a new area of the house to paint so the scraping has begun,

I wasn't really planning on it, but I found myself smack dap in the middle of the arbor project.

Here's the arbor as of the start of the month.

Here it is after todays' toil.

I am for the most part, pleased with the results. Moreover, I'm happy it is almost complete. The only thing remaining is a gate on the open side.

The old lattice was getting pretty ratty and cracked. We pulled it off and Susan repainted the frame. 

I then got to work replacing the lattice. The new stuff was a much tighter weave which better helps hide the crap stored behind it.

I will admit here that I made one rookie mistake putting up the lattice but I'm not going to say what it is. As you can see from the pictures, it looks pretty damn good!

For the sake of reference, here is a picture of the label from the lattice we purchased at Lowe's Home Center.