The plants are in the house.
Well, not all of the plants are in the house. But some of the plants are in.
The final touches are done on the upper cabinets. A small molding has been added around the bottoms of the upper cabinets to provide cover for the under cabinet lights.
Hey, look! More plants.
Here is a closeup of the molding.
It looks nice. If you look closely, you can see the tendrils of the plant creeping up toward the electric sockets. They are taking over already. Spooky.
We have ice!
No, not outside, even though it is cold enough for that. We have ice inside!
Inside of the freezer… the automatic ice maker is working. We have never had an automatic ice maker before. Look at that! Ice! And we didn’t even have to crack ’em out of cheap, plastic (broken) ice cube trays!
Here’s another view.
Woot!
If you think about it long enough, I guess it’s a little weird to build a tight, insulated house so we can heat it to keep out the ice and then put into the house a tight, insulated box and keep it cold so we can make ice in it.
I guess we better not think about it too long. We have ice. And doorknobs. Here is a view of the entry doors into our Den.
Pretty nice! That is the view as you come in the front door. Two 15-light French doors. Classy!
Oh, and the bathroom mirrors are in. Here is one.
The mirror tilts up and down on those two pivot points, so people who are vertically challenged in different ways can center their faces on the mirror. I picked those out myself. Here is a straight on view:
Well, I guess that didn’t work out too well.
I was over at the house this evening, and there are new details to report.
The shower fixtures are in.
The mantel is around the fireplace.
The refrigerator has been installed.
That old stove has been put in.
It doesn’t look too bad. We took that stove out of that other house. We can replace it later if we find something that we like better. For now, it works and we know how to use it.
The fan blades have been turned over and look wood-colored.
The electric panel is finally done! Look at all that stuff!
The Transfer Switch is at the top left. Look! Labels!
The Firematic valve has been put on the oil tank.
Lastly, the lamp pole has been installed by the walkway.
That is all for tonight.
Some more of the fixtures went in today. The lights in the living room / dining area have been installed.
When they are lit up they give off a very warm light.
The fancy light in the reading room has also been put up.
We thought that it would provide an “Old World” look to the room dedicated to books. It makes interesting patterns on the ceiling when it is on.
The Den will be the “Cave Room”, away from the hustle and bustle of the world. The TV has been banned from the Den. Only quiet pursuits will be allowed……….. oh…….. and my banjo playing…. but then, nothing’s perfect.
The fan has been installed in the sun room.
It also has lights.
They were supposed to put the wood grain side of the blades down, but they put the plain black sides down instead. Maybe we can get the guys to turn them over.
Last, but not least is our track light over the peninsula.
It is stunning when the lights are on.
There are other lights, but I am out of time. Just a couple of other things to mention. The dishwasher and kitchen faucet are in.
And the outside sill cocks have been installed.
That is a “freeze proof” sill cock by the way. It is self-draining. All we have to do to winterize it is to turn it off and disconnect the hose. Ask me some day to explain how that works.
I did not go over to the house tonight because they put the last coat of urethane varnish on the floors today, and I am told that it really stinks in there. If you want to experience first hand the kind of stink I am talking about, just scratch the spot below:
OK. If you really did scratch that spot on your monitor……… get help.
As promised, the counter tops arrived today. These are Cambria® counter tops, which are a manufactured quartz product. They are made of crushed quartz with some pigments and resin added to hold it together. Since the quartz is not porous like granite, they do not need to be sealed and molly-coddled like granite, just used. They are made in the good ol’ U. S. of A. (LeSueur, Minnesota). The color of our counter tops is “Bradford”.
Because they are made mostly of stone, they are very heavy, so it was quite a chore to install them. I will let the photos speak for themselves.
Here’s the sink hole.
And here’s a man who really gets into his work!
Slicing off a piece of stone makes a bit of dust.
The biggest piece is the peninsula, which is 9 feet long.
They wrassled it up the front steps.
… and into the kitchen….
where they glued it down to our gorgeous legs.
So here is a quick tour of the kitchen as it is now. The stove goes here.
Here is the view out of the kitchen window over the sink.
Our stone wall is still there, chipmunks and all. We will move the paving blocks out of view next Spring. They will be used for some creative landscaping later.
Looking into the kitchen from the dining area, here is what we see.
A slightly different view, showing where the refrigerator will go (on the right).
And finally, looking toward the dining area from the kitchen floor.
The dishwasher goes in the hole next to the sink.
I guess the appliances go in next. Or maybe the track lights… or the faucet. I’m not sure. Wow! It’s like Christmas in December!……… um……….. well… OK……… that gag didn’t work.
I am sorry, but I have been forced to add a CAPTCHA to the comments page of my blog. The word, CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”
It is a simple test that you must pass before you can post a comment on the blog. All you have to do is read a number on the comment page that looks something like this.
and then enter the number into the field provided on the comment form. If you cannot read the number, no worries. Just click on the button that looks like this:
and a new number will be generated. Heck, you may find that it is more fun just to click on the button and see the weird numbers go by than it is to read the blog. I can do that for hours. Hey! A child of the 60’s. What can I say?
Anyway, the test is easy for humans to solve and difficult for computers to solve. Since most of the SPAM comments are created by computers, this simple test will cut down on the amount of time I have to spend deleting SPAM and will allow me more time to come up with incredibly witty comments for my blog.
Sorry for the inconvenience. Please feel free to leave a comment about it on the blog if you can’t figure it out………. except ……… you will have to do the CAPTCHA to do that….. so never mind.
I have spent too much time lately ranting about the Fallapartment. Hopefully that is all behind us now, and I can stop doing that and get back to the house.
Well, OK I lied. The wheel on the sliding door of the closet fell off and dropped the door onto the floor.
OK. Enough about that. Back to the house.
The reason that I have not blogged about the house recently is that I have not been over there since Tuesday. They were putting down the urethane varnish on the floor, and the fumes were stifling. It is dry now, and here are some photos:
Living room.
Kitchen.
Stairs.
It’s all shiny and new. There are two coats of urethane on the floors now. After the painters and plumbers are done they are going to put a third coat on. Then, the floors will be done.
In other developments, the toilets are completely installed.
And to answer that most important question… yes… they do flush.. yay…
But….
They have not been given the ultimate, final test yet because…. well there aren’t any doors on the bathrooms. Soon.
The faucets and drains are connected in the vanities.
And they actually work as well.
On Monday the kitchen counters arrive. Stay tuned.
Today’s adventure gives new meaning to the term, “Fallapartment“. When my wife came home this afternoon, this thing was waiting for her in the driveway.
It evidently had fallen off of the house in the wind, because there are no other buildings near the driveway, so it must have come from the Fallapartment.
So the Fallapartment, is quite literally, falling apart.
Hey! Got nails?
The result of driving over the unseen board was predictable.
Yep. A flat tire. And here is the little bugger that did it.
The rumor is we get to keep the nail as a special souvenir of the Fallapartment. Perhaps we can have it framed as a reminder not to ever do this ever again.
I tried turning the tire over and running it on the round side, but that didn’t work. So I had to swap it out for the spare…. in the dark…. in the rain…. uphill both ways…. no …. wait… that’s a different story. Anyway, I’m too old for this sh….. stuff.
Of course, the spare tire was flat…. and the jack was seized up. But we persevered and pumped up the spare and oiled the jack and got it done. The car is sitting nicely on its donut spare. Tomorrow we have an appointment at the shop to get the real tire fixed.
And now I have two questions.
The heat went out last night in the Fallapartment. Just when we thought that we were finished with the heating-system-failure-in-the-dead-of-Winter problem, we found the temperature in the Fallapartment plummeting on Saturday night (this always happens on a weekend). As it went down through 63° – 62° – 61°… we called our heating guy to see if he could get it back for us.
Our heating guy is very good to us. He showed up on his Saturday evening to bail us out, even though this is not an address that he normally services. He had no part in the installation of the travesty that we found in the basement, but he fixed it anyway.
Here’s the back story.
I was concerned last week about the amount of oil in the tank, so I called to ask about it, and we came to the conclusion that all was well until next week, when I would schedule an oil delivery. I have been told that the top of the button on the float gauge is where the level of oil is in the tank. Here is the gauge from last night:
So, is it empty, or not? If you read the oil level at the top of the yellow button, we are good for another week or so. If you read the level at the bottom of the button, we are suckin’ on fumes.
Here’s a spoiler: You read the level at the bottom of the button.
As you can see, this ancient technology (a cork on a stick) is “highly accurate”… or not. I will never trust a dip stick ever again. This makes the fuel gauge in our real house
look like a well-designed, high-tech device.
The way to the heating system in the Fallapartment is down a winding stair that is pretty frightening. It starts out here:
As you turn the corner, you are confronted with this:
Notice the black hole on the far side of the stairway, where there is no wall to keep your foot from plummeting into the abyss. The stairs are slanty and uneven.
There is the hole on the right hand side. You must be sure of foot in this part of the stairs.
Turning the corner, you can see the tops of our stepladder and bicycles down at the bottom of the hole.
If you don’t slip and fall, you finally reach the bottom.
Looking back, here is the mess we just came down.
Cinder blocks; sort of glued together. Take a look at how this thing is constructed.
It is basically a pile of debris cemented together at a precarious angle. The angle that you see is not from a tilted camera. Look at the beam at the top of the photo; it goes straight across. The stairs really do lean like this.
But I digress. On to the oil tank. Here it is.
The smears of oil running down the sides of the tank are just special. Do you think it might be leaking? No wonder the basement stinks.
So, last night we called up our heating guy (who is a saint!) and he came out and rescued us. First he filled the tank with oil, then he had to unclog the fuel line to get us running again. Apparently, it had filled itself with sludge when it sucked the tank dry. Here is the fuel line he discovered:
It goes into the concrete floor, which is now illegal. This line should not have been used when they replaced the boiler last Winter because it violates the safety codes. Here is why.
That is a severely corroded pipe, disappearing into the basement floor. If that rots through, there will be a bad oil spill in the basement. There is nothing to prevent the entire tank of oil from siphoning into the basement. And it looks like it won’t be long now. How do you spell “EPA”?
And if we follow the line across the room to the boiler, we see:
The place where the fuel line comes back out of the floor, which is just about as corroded as it is at the other end.
I’m sure glad I don’t own this place. We are hoping that this inevitable disaster won’t happen until we are out.
Oh, and here is the fuel gauge after the tank was filled.
Yep. Bottom of the button. Who knew?
Speaking of moving out of this dump, they are supposed to start finishing the floors at our real house tomorrow. The appliances go in on Thursday. Can moving day be far behind? Soon! Soon!
