Sunday, December 02, 2007
Wintertime Catch-up
Need to finish off a bunch of things I neglected in the last few blogs. The closet is all done and the shelves are in. The shelves themselves are made from the head and footboards of an old single bed. I liked the neat look of them. I had to make the clothes bar myself, not wanting to go buy one. I used laminated Birch and cut it in an octagon, looks slick and custom. No one would ever guess I did it because I am a cheap bastard.
The pantry isn’t quite done, but we needed the room so screw it. My first laminated counter turned out ok after a flush triming bit commited sucide and took part of the laminate with it. Pealing it off and putting a new front strip in resulted in ever so tiny a mismatch but I am the only one who knows where it is. Putting power and a counter top work station in your pantry is a brilant idea but since I never got the rest of the shelving constructed we have piled it with crap rather than apliances. I built the doorframe wrong in about 4 different ways so there was a lot of screwing around with that. Had to take the thing apart and cut it down for both width and height. Now it is hung and being used without any sort of finish on it so later I will be writing about how I can’t get paint to stick.
I broke down and filled the propane tank Saturday…$830. Ouch. Makes you look at the icicles on the roof in a different way, as little ninja heat killers. I have already spent hundreds of dollars on more insulation including blown-in on top of R40+ of fiberglass. There just isn’t room for more, nor would it have any appreciable help. The trouble is our sloped roof on the right side of the house. We can’t get to it so I bet the only insulation up there is 1 ½ of rock wool and whatever vermiculite ran down from up above. Pulling down the walls and slanted ceilings is the only way to fix it but there is time and cost in that as well. Tried setting the thermostat at 50 last night and just using one of those dish radiant heaters (fantastic things by the way) in the bedroom. It is not going to work. I have one of those digital thermometers that records high and low temp. With the house set at 50 and it only being 10 degrees outside the laundry room got down to 33.5 at about 24 inches off the floor. That means the floor is below freezing. So the heat is back up, 60 this time and I will see what happens. It is clear that I need to add some sort of emergency back up in there or I will loose all the pipes if the furnace fails. Rather than include a picture of the melted “hot spots” on the roof I have a great shot of the propane guy leaning against my truck taking a smoke break while filling the tank. For the uninitiated this means opening a bleed valve at the tank so the vapor has a place to escape as the liquid propane is pumped in. Either the whole set up is less dangerous than we have been lead to believe or this guy is an idiot. He did put it out when I came out to watch.
Thanksgiving was fun at the in-laws. A wondrous thing happened, we didn’t talk about politics. That next morning we stood in line at Best Buy to try and snag one of their deals. Last year we did and sold it online with $130 profit. Can you say Christmas money? No luck this time and we walked out empty handed. Sorry about the quality, it is a cell-phone.
The weather has been nice and snowy. I have been spending time in the shop working on a table. I mortised and attached the legs today so it is just about done. I will post pictures. The stove in the shop has been running fine and I added some fans and heat ducts to make it more efficient, much nicer now. I don’t have pictures but imagine a brown box barfing out galvanized tin ducting and smoke, close enough.
Morning rush-hour in Plains:
The pantry isn’t quite done, but we needed the room so screw it. My first laminated counter turned out ok after a flush triming bit commited sucide and took part of the laminate with it. Pealing it off and putting a new front strip in resulted in ever so tiny a mismatch but I am the only one who knows where it is. Putting power and a counter top work station in your pantry is a brilant idea but since I never got the rest of the shelving constructed we have piled it with crap rather than apliances. I built the doorframe wrong in about 4 different ways so there was a lot of screwing around with that. Had to take the thing apart and cut it down for both width and height. Now it is hung and being used without any sort of finish on it so later I will be writing about how I can’t get paint to stick.
I broke down and filled the propane tank Saturday…$830. Ouch. Makes you look at the icicles on the roof in a different way, as little ninja heat killers. I have already spent hundreds of dollars on more insulation including blown-in on top of R40+ of fiberglass. There just isn’t room for more, nor would it have any appreciable help. The trouble is our sloped roof on the right side of the house. We can’t get to it so I bet the only insulation up there is 1 ½ of rock wool and whatever vermiculite ran down from up above. Pulling down the walls and slanted ceilings is the only way to fix it but there is time and cost in that as well. Tried setting the thermostat at 50 last night and just using one of those dish radiant heaters (fantastic things by the way) in the bedroom. It is not going to work. I have one of those digital thermometers that records high and low temp. With the house set at 50 and it only being 10 degrees outside the laundry room got down to 33.5 at about 24 inches off the floor. That means the floor is below freezing. So the heat is back up, 60 this time and I will see what happens. It is clear that I need to add some sort of emergency back up in there or I will loose all the pipes if the furnace fails. Rather than include a picture of the melted “hot spots” on the roof I have a great shot of the propane guy leaning against my truck taking a smoke break while filling the tank. For the uninitiated this means opening a bleed valve at the tank so the vapor has a place to escape as the liquid propane is pumped in. Either the whole set up is less dangerous than we have been lead to believe or this guy is an idiot. He did put it out when I came out to watch.
Thanksgiving was fun at the in-laws. A wondrous thing happened, we didn’t talk about politics. That next morning we stood in line at Best Buy to try and snag one of their deals. Last year we did and sold it online with $130 profit. Can you say Christmas money? No luck this time and we walked out empty handed. Sorry about the quality, it is a cell-phone.
The weather has been nice and snowy. I have been spending time in the shop working on a table. I mortised and attached the legs today so it is just about done. I will post pictures. The stove in the shop has been running fine and I added some fans and heat ducts to make it more efficient, much nicer now. I don’t have pictures but imagine a brown box barfing out galvanized tin ducting and smoke, close enough.
Morning rush-hour in Plains:
