Restart the Boiler Game

I got up this morning and checked the fireplace. The fan was off but it was still warm inside and after poking it a bit, still glowing. I ended up burning eight of my Synth-A-Logs along with a couple of real logs. I kind of had to start with real wood and get it going really well before the Synth-A-Logs took hold.

So in the span of five hours, from 6 to 11PM, I warmed the house without firing up the furnace. Because my Synth-A-Logs are made from newspaper I have already purchased and cardboard cores I get for free from work, I'm going to make the claim that it was cheaper to heat the house with the fireplace than it would have been to run the furnace.

Of course, I am not taking into account the time it took me to cut up the cardboard cores to a suitable length and stuff them with newspaper. However, since my time is cheap, it's not a factor in the equation. I am therefore further making the claim that because I heated the house in this manner, I saved about 11 dollars.

Speaking of the furnace, it's time to start playing the Boiler Game. From what I can tell, the record for the Boiler Game is October 21st. Last year, I fired up the boiler on October 5th.

It is getting close to having to fire it up again. It was 37 degrees this morning on my way to work.

The problem as I have recently recounted here is that the boiler is not ready to be restarted. I still have a radiator out of the system and my attempt to plug the pipes that connect that radiator have been unsuccessful.

I'm going out at lunch today to look into the purchase of a tapping kit (I think that's what it's called) in order to thread the empty pipe in the Living Room so I can cap it. The compression joint I have applied does not stop the pipe from leaking.

I don't think I'm going to get that radiator reinstalled into the system before I need to fire up the boiler. I haven't heard from PowderTech, the company that presently has the radiator and is in the process of painting it.

Not Much...but Somethin'

I didn't get a lot done tonight but I did conduct a little fire experiment. 

I broke out ten of my Synth-A-Logs and decided to see how well they would burn through an evening. 

They burn for a good thirty minutes, maybe even a little more and they remain pretty tightly wrapped which keeps them going for a long time. 

I got a final coat of stain on my last major piece of Living Room Trim. I can't install this baseboard yet as Susan has some wall papering to do were it goes.

I guess that will be my excuse as to why I didn't do much tonight.

Not as Good as I Thought I Was

As I progress to installing more and more pieces of trim back into the Living Room, I see more and more stuff that I still have to do. I have a lot of small pieces of trim and base shoe that I haven't stained yet.

The other thing I am realizing is that I am not doing a good job of labeling and identifying the various pieces of trim I have removed. I keep coming across pieces of trim with nothing on the back to tell me where it goes.

I thought I had labeled EVERYTHING. I would have sworn to it. Oh well, it looks as though I'm going to miss "Handyman of the Year" again!

Three of the trim pieces I stained tonight are boards I had to do some major gluing repair too. I think they came out pretty good.

The one with the hole in it is where an outlet goes. It was split in a couple of places. I'll have to be careful when I nail them in place to keep them from further damage. Although, I think they are stronger where they are glued than they were before.

Sunday in Suburbia

Sunday was another crappy day of cloudy dampness as it threatened to rain but never really let loose with anything substantial. That worked out great for me as I had several projects I wanted to complete that danced the merry line between indoors and outdoors.

My first project was to get some chemicals into the hot tub. I filled it about a month ago and I always let it fester for a couple of weeks before adding anything. It was well overdue and a bit funky smelling. But, a little Boost here and some Sanitizer there as well as a portion of sweet smelling Mango crystals and all is well.

Except for the part where the rack that supports the cover pulled its screws out from thir moorings. I'm not sure what to do to solve this problem. I think I can unscrew everything and slide it over an inch and re-attach it. That will have to wait for a sunnier day.

Next I scooped the ashes from the fire place. I must say that I am happy with my Newspaper logs. They burn for about 30 minutes and while they leave a lot of ash, it's in a nice tight bundle that scoops out easily.

Susan replaced the wall paper she was not happy with as I moved on to replacing trim. I got it all installed around the mantle.

You can compare this picture to yesterday's photo of the fire burning to see the trim added around the mantle. Except for the fact that I took the other picture at a really low angle that hides where the trim would go. So, never mind.

My other project was to put new trim in place at the end of the mantle.

As shown in the picture above, you can see there is no trim on top of the mantle in that corner, and in fact, there never was. Susan thought it was odd they had not continued it all the way to the end of the bookcase. I screwed up and rubbed some stain on the wall that then required me to get some trim on there. So I found some suitable wood, did a half assed job of milling it to match the other trim and then cut it to fit in the corner.

I stained it today and hope to install it tomorrow after work.

So, we had a very nice day accomplishing baby steps toward the completion of the Living Room. We took a walk over to the Hub Tavern for Accomplishment Celebration Beers and returned for a nice dinner Susan prepared in the Crock Pot.

Then we sat around all night and got fat.

...and drunk!

EyeHandy Projects

We came into possession of more furniture today. It's a queen headboard with a matching dresser and night table. It's nothing special but everything is in good condition and it was a decent price...$250.00.

So I borrowed Mark's truck and get the stuff moved. On top of that, I had trim to stain and wanted to try again at soldering the pipe to the radiator in the TV Room.

But first, it's rainy and chilly. I estimate from the Stanculator Weather Station 5000 that we received almost three eighths of an inch of rain today. I decided I needed to try and warm up the house with a fire.

This was our second fire since the install back in the early days of September and I ran it all day. It is working just exactly the way I hoped it would. It really heats up the living room and then wafts warm air upstairs through the staircase to warm the landing. 

My pipe sweating skills have greatly improved. I watched a couple videos on line after doing a search on "soldering copper pipes". I found a great video from this Production Company called "Eye Handy". They have a bunch of videos featuring scantily clad buxom babes showing how to do things like change a tire, repair a hole in drywall and solder a copper pipe. Soldering pipe with Tara is highly recommended.

Thanks to Tara, I figured it out this time and was successful. The key this time around, aside from Tara and her excellent instruction, was starting with a clean fitting. I got the emery cloth to properly sand the areas to join and I purchased the right flux. This flux is a waxy sort of goo that promotes adhesion of solder to the copper. The stuff I used before was what Susan uses when she does stained glass. It's very watery and it is hard to tell if it is even still there.

The other trick was to heat up the pipe and then touch the solder to the seam. It draws itself into the joint and makes a nice clean professional looking seal. And this time it held!

Unfortunately, my impromptu jerry-rigged compression joint repair on the pipe in the Living Room is not working. It's leaking water through the cap. I may try to seal the cap completely with JB Weld or some other kind of epoxy sealant.

I got the Living Room Radiator to the sandblaster yesterday and with any luck, I could have it back by next weekend. Then I just have to figure out how to re-attach it.

Susan is not happy with her wall papering and removed a bunch of 
what she had applied. Then she got to work on the second panel of the stencil.

This is going to look bitchin'!

Sweating the Solder and just sweating

I had to clean the fish aquarium tonight. It's a job that I hate doing so much that by the time I get to it, it really needs to be done. I'll need to do it again soon if I want to try and stay ahead of it.

Susan had to work tonight so I decided to try my hand at getting that Radiator in the TV Room installed.

I thought I could patch the small holes in the fitting with additional solder. I attempted three different times, each time trying to fill the system with water to see if I succeeded. Each time having to drain the system to keep it from leaking all over the floor.

I finally loosened the nut connection on the one side and heated up the copper pipe and turned the fitting off the treads on the other side. I'm going to buy a clean new fitting and try again this weekend.

Stencil Town

Susan started stenciling today. She is now one quarter closer to being done with the medallion around the light.

I worked on trim and the mantle. I think it is starting to come together and there appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel. However, it could be another train. I still have a bunch of staining to do. It seems to grow.

The other project I have to get going on is the boiler/heat system for the house. I managed to plug the pipes in the living room for the radiator I removed. I've been dawdling on getting that thing out of the house and to the sandblaster/powder coat painter. It's not going to be installed this season. Hence, I plugged the pipes.

I have another radiator in the TV Room that needs to be re-installed. Part of that reinstallation requires sweating the pipe. For the uninitiated, that means soldering the pipes together to create the seal.

I'm not very good at it. My first attempt last week resulted in a leaky pipe. It took about a half hour of filling the system before I saw the leak. So I stopped filling, drained a little and tried to re-solder. That didn't work either so I drained the system and moved on to other porjects...stuff I could handle, like sweeping.

Baby Step 2013-09-18

Susan was able to remove the guilty wall paper from the wall by steaming it off. It came off in one piece and she will probably be able to use it again.

I got a little staining done on the mantle and included a bit of window trim as well. I'll get a second coat of stain on tomorrow. My goal is to have the mantle back in place this weekend.

We are in that weird no man's land right now where no heat or air conditioning are required. So right now, for at least the last couple of days, we've had an incredibly small carbon footprint. We have made up for it with our incredibly large alcohol footprint.

The small carbon footprint will end soon but I'm enjoying it while I can. The alcohol footprint will continue to grow and grow and...well, you know.

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I had hooked up the radiators to our system in preparation for re-energizing the system when the weather required it.

The radiator in the TV room had been off line for a good couple of years. The one in the living room is going to be out of the system through this winter due to my hopeless procrastinating to get it sand blasted and painted. 

The problem is that the thing is really heavy. I just haven't been able to gather the equipment and people together to get it out of the house. So I have rigged a plug in the pipes going to that radiator.

I was less successful re-attaching the radiator in the TV room. The connection on one side is a simple screw on connection. The other side requires soldering. It was my first attempt at sweating a pipe and I was unsuccessful.

It started spewing water as I filled the system. So the filling is on hold while I try to do a better job of soldering. That will be a weekend job. Probably using someone other than me.

Wall Papering Savant - Not so much

It is time to get back to the serious business of completing the living room by Halloween. That's our new goal.

To that end, we went to the fair on Saturday. Well, we had to. We had not yet made the trip and we needed to see how our wine entry did in the wine competition and it was the last weekend.

I was able to get another entry for the coffee table book I am compiling called, "Fat Ass America".

It's just going to be a bunch of pictures like this. Fortunately, the fair is a target rich environment for these kinds of pictures.

Next, it was time to see how our wine entry did. We entered our Tempranillo and we entered the wine label Susan designed for the Tempranillo.

The excitement built as we entered the Ag Bldg to see our wine. It was a giant let down. While our label design got a blue ribbon, the wine itself got a donut. Nothing but a purple Participation Ribbon. Yuck! We look forward to seeing the judges notes.

So the rest of the fair was what one expects from the fair. I got my elephant ear and my corn dog and a delicious rib-eye steak sandwich. 

Beyond that...it was just the fair.

But we'll be back next year!

So along comes Sunday and Susan is insistent to start the wall papering. I had my projects to work on as well. I connected the radiators in preparation for colder weather, which looks like is coming soon.

Susan spent the afternoon talking to herself and getting up and down and cutting and measuring and completed a good portion of the wall papering. I was impressed with her accomplishments.

We were cleaning up when she suddenly noticed that one of her panels didn't look right. It had a double line in the pattern that should not have been there.

Upon closer inspection, she began to express obscenities the likes of which would make a sailors parrot blush as she realized she had placed the panel upside down.

Fortunately, it was still wet enough to remove and fix. While working on that piece she said, "I didn't do that anywhere else, did I?" I looked at the wall and saw the same double line and said, "Um...yeah you did." Expletives again began to rain down and this piece was too far dried to remove.

After she calmed down, she decided she could order more paper to cover her blunder. But she is understandably upset.

Loooooooooong Weekend

It was a long weekend with a funeral service and lots of family and  others coming in and out. 

The service for my sister Sherry turned out to be very cathartic for me. One thing I know for sure...Sherry lives on in the four wonderful people she raised. 

We had a big party out at Sherry's house on Friday night. There was lots of people and food and drink and a blazing fire with hay bales around it. We were all thinking about how much Sherry would be enjoying this and DAMN her for not being there.

For my Sister

Sherry Garmin, daughter, sister, friend, and most important, joyful mother to four extraordinary children, passed away on August 29th. The legacy of who Sherry truly was shines on in her children, Samantha, Burke, Olivia and Peyton DuPree. In addition, she leaves behind her cherished mother, Trudy Jensen, her brother and sister-in-law, Stan and Susan Burke of Spokane, her sister and brother-in-law Anastacia (Stacey) and Craig Miller of Pilot Hill, CA. A memorial service is planned for Friday, September 6th at 11AM at Hamblen Park Presbyterian Church, 4102 S. Crestline Street. In lieu of flowers, please remember Sherry with a donation to Spokane Mental Health.

Rain is Not News

When Jerry stopped by yesterday to help put up the power line to the Carriage House, he brought some bounty from his garden. Another example of an evil gardener foisting his over production on a naive non-gardener. He brought us all the ingredients to fresh chunky salsa.

So our first order of business for the day was to chop up all the tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, and cilantro into a large Salsa Bowl.

Then we had fresh chunky salsa...which we hardly ever eat. We try not to have chips in the house cuz otherwise, we would eat them.

I'm taking all I can fit into a jar to work tomorrow.

Next, I went to work on the mantle in the living room, sanding the wood putty off and getting it ready to accept stain. I'm going to have a problem with a small piece of the mantle that was added to fill a 14" x 5" space. The piece that was there has bowed and cracked. I glued it together but when I tried to replace it, it cracked in a new spot. I'm going by Windsor Plywood to find a replacement.

Susan continued her work touch up staining the pieces of wood we left in place. Plus she cleaned the pocket doors and did some patching a re staining there.

We had dinner on the front porch and then watched an incredible storm pass through town. The wind came up really fast and the rain poured down for about half an hour while lightning flashed all around us. And then it was gone.

We went in to watch some television but the show we wanted to see was pre-empted by the local news coverage of the storm that had just passed through.

A note to local news...a rain storm with lightning is NOT NEWS!!! Even if some people lost power. It's weather and weather happens almost every day. Get off camera and let me watch "The Mentalist"!

Jeez!

Accomplications

We accomplish stuff, but usually with complications. So I have coined a new word. Call Meriam-Webster!

We started the day with a stroll down the block to investigate an Estate Sale at the home of our neighbors Ed and Sally. They own one of the largest houses on the park and have recently been forced to move to a care facility. Sally has been declining a lot over the past couple of years and that huge house just became too much for Ed by himself. So they are selling their stuff and eventually, selling the house.

Susan and I have wanted to get in it for as long as we've lived here and it was worth the wait. It is a fabulous house with some beautiful touches to it.

This stained glass on the main staircase has intrigued us for years. We first noticed it walking down the alley years ago. It is even more fabulous from the inside.

Another nice touch it has is this relief design in the ceiling of the living room. I've never seen that before.

We got out and returned home for a day of toil. One of my main goals was to get the power line re-attached to the Carriage House. With the expert guidance of my pal Jerry, it took just a couple of hours.

With power back in the carriage House, I went to the Living Room to sand. Here are some pictures of the area I sanded.

I have removed the rest of the mantle but have to work on this portion in place.

I also got some wood puttying done on some other pieces I'm working on and I transferred a batch of homebrew into its secondary fermenter.

Our neighbors Lou and Tammy have been getting their paint on and after several weeks of prep work, started painting their house today.

Friday Agenda

I am writing this post from the front porch. I have taken the afternoon off and have a few items on the agenda for the afternoon. 

Among them, a visit from an Arborist who is going to inspect the tree in the back and give me an estimate to take it down. I'm also going to get an estimate to give it a trim.

More importantly, there is an Estate Sale going on down the street in a house we have been dying to get into. The old couple that owns the house, Ed & Sally have moved to a care facility and are now selling the contents of their house to raise some cash. Since they are no longer in the house, it is the sensible thing to do.

They have been antique dealers for years and the house is rumored to be FULL of great stuff. The house itself is something I really want to see. Susan got in there this morning and told me it's amazing.

I am waiting now for the Arbor Guy but if he doesn't show up soon, I'm going to leave him a note directing him the the correct tree and have him call me later with the estimate.

The Arbor Guy is here. Back later!

1:28PM: The Arborist is telling me $1,200.00 to remove that tree. I'm going for a second opinion.

We have managed to do work on the house every night this week. One night it was just browsing on line looking at tile and drawer hardware, but that counts.

We ended the night with a lovely pit fire. And then, off to bed.

Ancient Chinese Secret

We have decided to follow the old Chinese Proverb that states that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Translated into our reality, the remodel of a single room begins with the single swipe of sandpaper.

We have decided we must do some work in the Living Room every night...no matter how small. We are trying for at least an hour. We have done it so far for the last two days and we are pleased. Not great progress. Just progress!

That'll do, pig!

Stan's Handy Tip # 347

How do you take a mess that looks like this...?

And turn it into this!

Since we are getting the new Fireplace Insert (hopefully this coming week) I have been on the lookout for things to burn for later in what will be, "the burning season".

So after doing some research on things that burn, I have discovered that newspaper burns. Coincidentally, I receive the newspaper daily. Do you see my point? I have something delivered to the house daily that burns. How can I exploit this?

At work we get rolls of vinyl on cardboard cores. We save a few to use as mail tubes or for packaging but they are essentially garbage.

So I have begun collecting them. I cut them in half, which is close to the width of a newspaper. Then I take a short stack of newspapers and roll them up as tight as I can. If I have the right thickness, they slide easily into the cardboard core and I have a StanMade Synthetic Log.

I made eleven of my synthetic logs with that stack of newspapers pictured at the top of this post. I realize these are not the same as burning hardwood but I'm hoping that the chamber of an efficient, state of the art fireplace insert will get maybe 20 minutes out of one. Heat is heat and I'm on a quest to effishansize this house. 

The insert is only a small cog in my overall wheel of efficiency. We shall see how it works. By the end of the week, I'll have enough paper for five more of these.

Ultimately, a fifty foot tower out back with a power generating windmill will augment our Thermonuclear Boiler, our triple pained, gas infused transparent aluminum windows, our 15 Megawatt Solar Garden, our quadruple insulated cooling unit and the cat treadmill that powers the television.

Treemageddon

The alarm went off at 5:41AM this morning. We didn't set the alarm but it went off nonetheless. 

The alarm shocked us out of a restful slumber to sitting straight up in bed and saying, "What the Hell was that!?"

It was a very loud noise that came from outside our bedroom window. I went to the window and saw that a sizable portion of the fifty foot tree in the back of the house had peeled away from itself and settled into the yard. It took down the power line to the Carriage House and screwed up some of the Security Cameras, but I don't ever talk about those here so...never mind.

So it is not hard to guess what I was going to be doing when I got home from work. I got out my clippers and my cheesy little electric chain saw and I went to work.

Just as I was heading out to begin my toil, my friend Ron called and said he has some time to kill and was coming over to help. I told him I welcomed his help and went to town with my nippers.

In no time I had cut a little path through to the backyard and when Ron arrived, he grabbed the cheesy little electric chain saw and made short work of that forest. 

Once he removed some of the larger branches, the end still attached up in the tree started to move and we realized it was going to be coming down. And come down it did. It hit hard! That would have easily crushed a ladder, squirrel or me.

It is more or less cleaned up although I have a lot more tidying up to do.

Horrible Poster Man

I was checking the posts for the last month and realized I haven't posted shit. I have done a terrible job of keeping things up to date. I have meant to post lots o times. I just haven't followed through.

Well, let's rectify that.

On top of working on the Living Room, which we really haven't been doing, we have lots of little projects going on.

I stopped watering the side yard a while back and now that the grass is properly brown, I started roto-tilling the area. It has turned into a major nightmare due to something I have brought up before.

There is not a square foot of dirt on our little chunk of heaven that I can put a shovel to and not hit a root. I'm not sure if I just created a double or triple negative in that sentence so let me re-state it. We have roots! They are everywhere and they are prodigious.

I'm about one third of the way through the whole grassy area and that has taken me four hours. 

You can see by the pictures that the roots are just big horizontal trees that grow underground.

I'm looking forward to completing this soon and reseeding. It seems a long way off.

Four Thousand Dollar Day

It's muy bueno excitement around the hacienda today as we are having a new fireplace insert inserted into the fireplace. I have taken the day off work in order to be here and get in the way...an essential element of any installation by professionals.

Since we have lived here, we have occasionally had fires burning in the old fireplace but the old fireplace is so inefficient that it did not result in extra heat in the house. In fact, I considered the fireplace to be an open window. It had no damper and no cap. The only thing that prevented cold air from blowing past it and into the living room was the flimsy glass doors loosely wired to the fire box.

It is my hope that today, we are sealing an open window...and getting a reasonable return on heat when we burn.

We spent some time last night removing the glass doors and the old log rack and cleaning out the fire box. We then tried to clean up the tile as best we could.

So they will be placing an efficient insert into our fire box hole and making us an official wood burning household.

The other part of the install is a chimney liner. We had a guy come last year to sweep the chimney and upon his initial inspection, he told us not to burn until we had a chimney liner. The old masonry was deteriorated to such an extent as to make burning a fire a potential hazard.

It is 10:24 right now and Travis and the other guy of Accent Pool &  Spa have just arrived and to start their install. I shall report their progress as they progress with their progressions.

11:45AM: As with everything with this house, it never goes according to plan. If one has a plan, it should include an accordion built into the plan for when is goes un-accordionly.

Our fire box requires some structural masonry work that will delay the installation by a week. There is a curve to the back wall of the firebox (as shown in the picture above) that needs to be cut out. Otherwise, the insert will not fit. That will require a metal plate to be installed in place of the removed bricks to return the structural integrity. That metal plate must be manufactured to the specifications of our little space, which means they will be back next week. 

And so, I have the rest of the day to myself. I have things to do and so, I shall go do them.

DAMN YOU, FLARED CHIMNEY!!!

Here's how it looked after the first round of Crown Molding.

Here is what we ended up with after our fix today.

I can live with this. It is by no means perfect. It's not even in the same dictionary as "perfect". But we can make this work and look good.

We have closed up the gap by adding an extra piece of molding  below the crown. It allowed us to hide the imperfections and it adds a bit more substance to the overall look of the crown.

The corners are a bit rough but even here in the after picture, you can see it looks much better.

All in all, we are pleased! The crown molding portion of the living room is almost complete and now it is time to move on the the wood.....and the radiator.....and the wall papering.....and the chair rail.....check back in August.