Bleeding Radiators

It's that time of year again.

When it starts getting cold, it's time to bleed the radiators.  Usually you can tell which ones need to be bled by whether they get warm or not.  ;-)

We've been in the house long enough to recognize a pattern.  There are a couple in the attic that get a little air in them.  The rest are typically fine except for one in the kitchen.  For some reason it always has a lot of air in it.  And that means the kitchen is stone cold while the rest of the house is quite comfortable.

If you look closely, you can't find the guilty radiator in this picture.

That's not because it isn't there.

Rather, it's because it's cleverly disguised as a set of kitchen cabinets.

That's right.  It's that little slot underneath the window that lets the hot air escape from the radiator (normally the perforated metal grate on the counter covers the hole; I've removed it to get to the bleed valve).

It's extremely effective at keeping our seldom used baking dishes pre-heated.

It's also effective at taking up lots of cupboard space.

It's not so good at keeping the kitchen warm.

Oh boy am I itching to completely remodel this kitchen...

Carriage House Doors - Part 2

Early in the year we had new carriage house doors installed.

The doors were primed prior to being installed back in January.  Obviously it was a little to cold to paint then, so I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

For no particular reason, I guess.

Last weekend I finally got a round to putting on the finish coat of paint, just in time as it were - overnight lows are expected to be in the 20s over the weekend...

It's the same color as the trim on the house and it works well with the stone.

Boiler Pump

A few weeks ago it started to get a little cool at night.  We haven't had the heating plant "cleaned" since we moved in four years ago, so we figured it was time before we needed to turn on the heat for the winter.  We also received a "Fall Tune-up" special in the mail that happened to be from the same company that installed the new boiler for the previous owners. Things were starting to align.

When I turned on the boiler, the pump started to make an awful racket.  It didn't make that noise last year.

Good timing.

When the service guy came he checked everything out.  Everything on the boiler all looked good, except the pump.  It would run for a while, make an awful racket, and then shut off.  So they ordered a new pump and would come back in 10 days or so to install it.

Meanwhile, it started to get chilly at night so we broke out the blankets.

When the new pump arrived they came to install it.  It took several hours to drain the system before they could remove the old pump.  There's a lot of water in those old pipes.

When they finally could remove the old pump, they discovered that the blades on the impeller were pointed the wrong way.

It's a wonder we got any heat at all...

Scrape and Sand

Once I removed all the old nails and staples, I could start preparing the frames to be re-painted.  I paused halfway through to take this picture.  The one on the bottom/left is already done.  The top/right one is untouched.

The paint had some serious "alligatoring", so it was time to get down to bare wood.  I spent most of the day with a heat gun, orbital sander, and dremel to get into all the nooks and crannies.

I still have a bit of work to do to repair the bottom edge of each door before starting the painting process.

And the screw holes for the hinges are shot so they need the dowel and glue treatment.

Choosing Fasteners

Let's say you were choosing fasteners to attach the small, 3/8-inch thick piece of molding in the center of the picture.  Which do you choose?
a - the 2.5-inch brad at the top
b - the 1.25-inch brad second from top
c - the 3/4-inch brads at the bottom

For some, the correct answer might be c - the 3/4-inch.
Apparently, the right answer is d - all of the above.  Or what ever random fasteners you have lying around.

I'm in the process of re-screening the french doors for the pedimented window.  These are the random mix of nails used to hold this small screen molding in place.  You can see a piece of the molding still attached to the door at the far right of the picture.  You can also catch a glimpse of the small bit of screen that was still in place.

The molding came off in about a million pieces, so it's not salvageable.  What was underneath the molding was equally interesting.

There were bits of at least three different kinds of screen.  Each was attached with different types of fasteners: tacks and at least 3 different types of staples.  Obviously this has been re-screened many times over the life of the house and no one has bothered to removed the remnants of the previous installation(s)...

So I get to do it.

Sweating Pipes

This is the story behind adding the water line for the new fridge.

There is all manner of water lines down in the basement.  It's an impressive historical record of water supply lines throughout history, both galvanized and copper pipe.

And there's some interesting stuff, too.

• Shutoff valves in random places (the one the hot line shuts off the kitchen and the master bath, while the cold one only shuts off the kitchen sink!).
• Shutoff valves that are labelled for gas rather than water...
• Random pipe diameters.  A 1-inch line that randomly chokes down to 3/4-inch for no apparent reason.
• Short bits of pipe soldered together to make a longer run.  It's only a 3-foot run, why not one 3-foot piece rather than 6 6-inch pieces with 5 couplings?
• Lines that are capped-off in odd places.  Not near the last branch, but 10 feet after the last branch.

Someday, when we remodel the kitchen and master bath, I'm going to replace all this junk with PEX.

At any rate, I had to tap into an existing copper water line.  Though I'm getting better at sweating the joints, I'm still not good enough.

Well, good enough to get a joint that doesn't leak, but not good enough to get a pretty one.

Or, apparently, to prevent a little excess molten solder from dropping onto my finger.

Lovely isn't it?

Only a few bad words were spoken...

New Fridge

 One of the last appliances from when we bought the house was the fridge.  It's been a little under the weather since day 1.

The ice maker had something caught in it (looked like an old ziplock bag), so it was all jammed up and wouldn't work.  Naturally, the water line for the ice maker was connected to the back of the fridge, but the other end was just dangling down in the basement.  The was no indication that it had been connected to anything.  No shutoff valve with a missing connection.  No capped-off branch line.  Nothing.

The face plate surrounding the crisper drawers would fall off at the slightest touch.

Things at the back of the fridge would freeze solid while things at the front or in the door would be slightly below room temperature.  Regardless of the temperature setting.  It would be especially bad during hot weather.

And the thing would make more noise than a 727 at takeoff.

The hope was that we could live with it until we gutted the kitchen...  We'd been trying to nurse it for as long as possible so we could avoid getting a temporary one, but...  The hot weather over the past month forcing us to throw out a bunch of 3 day old food that had become a science experiment was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Friday night I pulled out the old fridge (see top photo).  Much amusement and muttering resulted from the science experiment that was exposed.  Note - the only thing we're responsible for in that picture is the stray nerf bullet.

SWMBO spent two hours scraping up the crud that had been beneath the old one.  Good thing she was wearing a hazmat suit.  The results are shown in the bottom photo.  Note the shiny new water line that's properly connected down in the basement.  There's a story behind that, too...

At any rate, the new fridge came Saturday morning.  And we don't have to go to the store to buy bags of ice any more...

Spooky

It's an old house.

It makes noises - radiators tic and pop with temperature changes; floors creak and groan with humidity changes.

Weird things happen - light bulbs flicker; the cook top fan turns on when we boil water and the fan switch doesn't turn it off or on (surprise! something that doesn't work! ;-)

But they've always had reasonable explanations.

Until now...

See the little round makeup mirror?  It's one where you can touch the base to turn it on/off or brighten/dim it.

Well...

We had a couple of instances where it's turned on by itself.

Or off by itself.

Not just when no one is around.

One night I was lying in bed reading a book.  SWMBO was in the bathroom.  The light turned on. I got up, touched the base to turn it off, and climbed back into bed.

A minute or so later, the light turned back on again.  I sat up and looked around, wondering if the dog had brushed by it or something.  Normally, she wears her collar so I hear the jingling of her tags.

So I asked SWMBO, "Where's the dog?"

"In here with me," she replied from the bathroom.  "Why?"

"Your mirror light just turned on by itself."

"No way!"

"Way," I said as she walked into the bedroom.  "See?"

"You did that."

"Nope. I've been lying here the whole time."

She walked over, touched the base to turn it off, climbed into bed, and started to read a book.

Five or ten minutes passed.

The light turned back on.

She turned to me and asked, "How did you do that?"

"I didn't," I grinned back.  "Maybe Emerson did."

Her eyes opened wide as I looked toward the light and said, "If you want us to keep restoring the house back to what it should be, you'll quit messing with that light!"

And the light turned off.

It hasn't happened again...

RHA Garden Tour

Last Night the Ramsey Hill Association had a Garden Tour for members.  Ours was one of the featured gardens on the tour.

The Threadleaf Aborvitae was one of the plants that drew the most attention.  Also of some interest was the Canadian Hemlock "Gentsch White" and the detail of its foliage.  Here's a link to a photo album for the garden with lots of before, during and after photos for each step of the journey.  And we're not done yet, so the journey will continue.

We're hearing rumors that our house will be on the RHA's house tour this fall (link to last year's event).

The Stone Wall - Part 2

Every weekend the MN Historical Society has walking tours that start at the James J Hill House and end up going past our house.  Some stop and emphasize the stone wall around the property.  Usually they focus on the unique feature of the top of the wall; the vertical stones.

As the tour guide mentions, it's modeled after walls in parts of Great Britain.  The idea with the vertical stones is that they keep sheep from jumping over the wall.

As far as we know, none of the previous owners kept sheep on the property and we don't have plans to, either...  And the wall wasn't built until the 1920s.

The second photo was taken near Burford in the Cotswolds in England.  The area is known for its sheep.  Though the walls here are dry-stacked, they have a similar vertical stone arrangement on top of the wall.