Posts Tagged ‘house’
4 items.
Yesterday was our “house-aversary” wherein we achieved one year of living in our new place. I have gathered many pieces of wisdom, knowledge and information in this 365 day period that I should like to share with you now.
1. Assume the Worst
I wish it weren’t so but it must be, based on all my experience to date. The previous owners of our house were some kind of crowd of thumb-fingered, well-meaning blockheads whose reach exceeded their grasp by a couple of orders of magnitude. There is so much that we just shake our heads in wonderment, trying to decipher the train of thought that led to a particular set of decisions being made (viz. all the wiring, most of the plumbing, a pretty fair percentage of the decorating, etc. etc.)
2. We Mock What We Are To Become
Even as I wrote the above, I realized that anybody coming into our house now (or likely me in two years trying to do something else) will feel exactly the same way about me as I feel about the previous owner. There are surface-mounted wires all over a couple of rooms because I didn’t want to hack up the wall. The power for the new fan in the bathroom comes from the same junction box in the basement that feeds the basement bathroom light, the exterior outlet and the backyard light. All of these decisions seemed like a good idea at the time but in retrospect (or from any outside viewpoint) they were pretty dumb.
3. You Can’t Tranquilize the Neighbour’s Dog or Grandkids
Although you definitely should be allowed to do both.
4. Living Four Doors From One’s In-Laws Is A Mixed Blessing
On the one hand, pies for no reason. On the other, they notice when I don’t mow the lawn for three weeks (though this resulted in it magically becoming mowed [Thank you, Ed]).
5. (Related To Above) Reel Mowers Work Best When Used Regularly
Going through 3″+ grass with naught but muscle power is a challenge at best and rare torture the rest of the time. 5.a. is that mowing one’s 1/4 acre lawn with a reel mower in under an hour in 30 degree weather is a recipe for dizziness.
6. It Is Important to Have at Least 5 Circuits in The Kitchen
And really unimportant to have labelled any of them on the panel in the basement
7. Immediately Over The Electrical Panel is The Best Place to Have the Shutoff For the Outside Tap
8. Water Shut-Offs For Toilets Are Highly Over-Rated
9. Brown Is The Best Colour For A Bathroom
In fact, they liked it so much that there were five different shades of it present before Amy painted all the trim white.
10. The Best House Ever Is Our House.
don’t you know it’s gonna last
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Guess who has two thumbs and the ability to install major appliances. THIS GUY.
Roughly six months before we moved from our townhouse to this, our purchased domicile (ours and the bank’s. Mostly the bank’s), we acquired a nice, new laundry team (which would be the worst super-hero group ever. THE LAUNDRY TEAM — FIGHTING STAINS AND GROUND IN DIRT AND CRIMINALS) consisting of a high-efficiency front loading washer and a similarly high-efficiency and front-loading matching dryer. Our townhouse had an electric hook-up for the dryer so this was copacetic. The new house, however, has gas and came with a roughly 30-year-old gas dryer which was, not to put too fine a point on it, not highly efficient. It would take a very, very long time to dry stuff, compared to the electric one.
You’ll note the past-tense use there. The old dryer was pretty useless. Amy’s been hanging our laundry on the line all summer (with nary an wind-drive shirt escapee since about May) but as there is frost in the forecast and apparently snow en route, the old dryer had to go and this was today’s entertainment.
I feel fairly certain that the dryer was purchased in 1979. There are several clues leading me to this assumption, viz. the patents under which it was constructed are listed with years beside them and there is none higher than 1978 with the notice ‘further patents pending’ alongside. Also, the warranty registration card was still in the manual and it is a punchcard, apparently for use in ENIAC or some similar unit.
The ‘flexible’ hose connecting it to the gas supply appears to have been installed in 1979 as well, and never, ever moved since. I suspect that someone with a lot of time on his or her hands and a decent mass spectrograph could go through the layers of lint and do a pretty fair reconstruction of the last 30 years of fashion based up on the makeup of the fibers contained within. I am not that person so I went in with broom and later vacuum cleaner to deprive science of this gift. The ‘flexible’ hose had become fairly rigid with age and would no longer turn freely in the sockets at either end. This forced me to just keep twisting it until it broke. Fortunately for me (and the house, and all our worldly goods), the former owner of the house hired somebody with at least a modicum of common sense to install the gas supply as there was a shutoff handy. After wresting the flexible tube from the grip of decades of disuse, I made a very quick and rather panicky trip to Rona to get a 4″ long cast-iron pipe and cap to form the belt to the shutoff’s suspenders. Just to be sure, I turned off the power to the whole house and flipped the furnace off just to make sure there were no sparks and left a note on the counter that said POWER IS OFF FOR A GOOD REASON. BACK A.S.AP. I used Teflon tape to seal the threads and it’s supposedly good to 100psi in gas situations so I am hoping that between the shutoff being shut off and the new cap, gas leaks won’t be a problem.
I’ll just take a moment here to say how great an invention the Stab-lok system of circuit breakers is. I am not particularly nervous about replacing outlets and fixtures and such things, but I have never taken on the installation of a new breaker before. On today’s first, non-panicky trip to Rona, I had picked up the 10-gauge, 3-wire (technically four wires counting ground), outlet box and breaker needed to actually power the newer dryer. I bought a dryer receptacle months ago at Home Depot. The installation was very, very straightforward.
- Mount the outlet box (surface mount because I am not really into cutting holes in the panelling that I intend to remove within the next five years)
- Run wire from box to panel, drilling hole in ugly panelling with 5/8″ spade bit
- Strip wire ends and attach to receptacle
- TURN OFF MAIN BREAKER
- Pull cover plate off breaker panel
- Strip panel end of wires
- Install wires much as previous installer did. Ground to grounding bar, neutral to neutral bar
- Attach ‘hot’ wires (black and ‘red’ which is actually pink) to new circuit breaker
- Snap new breaker into panel
- Turn everything back on
- Dry clothing
In much the same way as doing something on my computer from the command line makes me feel extremely competent and highly manly, taming electricity is really, really good for my ego.
we used to say the stars are forever
Inspired by Anthony’s work and to a lesser extent by the poem he originally read, I submit for your perusal:
Thirteen Ways of Looking at My Living Room
I
Seating for five,
Six if two are good friends
This is the living room.
II
The bookshelves rest against the walls
Like trees that have been cut down
Shaped by machines
And forced to support their pulped and pressed fallen comrades
III
The fireplace logs are tapered
They pretend a depth that does not exist
Whose idea was that, anyway?
IV
We never got around
To staining the blanket box
Food was more important at the time
V
Pale blue walls
Dark green curtains
Perhaps
The previous owner was colour blind?
VI
Until today, five stalks of bamboo
Then one of them withered
It’s probably not symbolic
VII
Several of the floor boards have
A great variation in colour from
One end to the other. Do oak trees
Have no quality control?
VIII
Library books stacked on the piano cause
A sudden feeling of dismay
“Are you overdue?”
IX
Planter on the windowsill
Dried and dusty reminder
Of the mortality of oregano
X
Yellow red brown
Green white blue
Blue orange red
Ludwig Gerstacker
XI
The intricate texture of the ceiling makes me hope
That we never have to patch it
XII
Green IKEA boxes built of
Paper
Two more CDs and we’ll need to buy some more
XIII
The dancing of dust bunnies in the gentle breezes
Makes me wish for central vac
In the Town of Lincoln (where we live), one can acquire the privilege of fire in one’s yard for the paltry sum of $10. Last week, I went down to town hall and asked about it. There isn’t a test or anything (apart from being able to write one’s name and address). One can just go and fill out a form, pay $10 and have the ability to set things on fire. What an age of marvels.
We were able to put it to good use this evening. We had several of the youngish people from church over after service for a barbecue (twice-dropped sausages are twice as tasty as ones that have never hit the concrete, apparently) and a camp fire.
We went to the Superstore this afternoon and purchased a ‘moon and stars’ fire pit. It is about 60 cm in diameter and has (as advertised) punchouts of moons and stars all around it. I spent part of today splitting the branches of the pine tree down to manageable sizes and we burned quite a lot of it along with most of the box in which the fire pit came. We toasted marshmallows and made S’mores. The best way we’ve found to make them is using chocolate digestive cookies (they are digestive cookies that have chocolate on one side, if you haven’t seen them). The chocolate has a really low melting point and won’t fall off the cookie as the classic Jersey Milk chunks are wont to do. We have a couple of telescoping toasting forks that have a sort of rotating bit that are super useful for such things. I think probably the onus of having to mow the lawn is worth being able to burn stuff on top of it. A pretty fair trade.