dreamshark, posts by tag: projects - LiveJournal

 Taking advantage of the spring cleaning urge by tackling my closets, looking for stuff to donate to Goodwill. I managed to fill a couple of medium sized boxes with decent donatable clothing and two grocery bags with rags and throwaways. According to The Internet, larger thrift stores don't mind getting rags - they actually have avenues to recycle them that ordinary folk have no access to. At least ever since the old Rag Stock went hipster upscale and stopped taking donations of rags. Anybody else remember when it was called The Rag Factory? 

I also unearthed a surprising number of perfectly wearable, surprisingly nice looking pieces of clothing that had just gotten log-jammed in the back. Now I'm in the middle of a project to add pockets to as many skirts and dresses as possible, which is also a nice way to use up scraps of fabric. Know what makes really good pockets?  Old pillow cases and sheets. 

At Richard's suggestion I expanded my throwaway projects outside and got rid of the 4 tires that some asshole had dumped behind our garage. Man, is it a lot of work to dispose of tires!!! In keeping with its general policy of offering superb garbage and recycling services, Minneapolis does have a way to do this for free, but it's a multi-step, time-consuming process. It's actually harder to get rid of tires than hazardous waste. If anybody ever discovers a cheap, easy way to recycle rubber, the planet will breathe a sigh of relief. 

This entry was originally posted at https://dreamshark.dreamwidth.org/…. Please comment there using OpenID.

 I called the Mpls Solid Waste number and after a couple of runs around a voice mail loop got someone who told me to just put it out with the garbage labeled "solid waste."  Yay for Minneapolis and their stellar waste collection services!!  

So Richard and Thorin rolled it up and tied it with a couple of ropes and then all three of us heaved it out the back window. Yow! As Lydy warned, that thing is freaking HEAVY. The guys seem to think that they can wrestle it to the alley without me, so I'm letting them work on it. 

Meanwhile, the wooden water bed platform has some drying out to do. Turns out it was leaking in more places than we realized and there is a lot of wet wood. Fortunately, the platform seems to be made of extremely good quality plywood and shows no sign of splitting or rotting. I hope there's a new liner in that waterbed mattress box, as the old one was pretty much done for and is rolled up along with the mattress.

ETA: I knew that was too easy. When I opened up the box with the new waterbed it did NOT contain a liner. I double-checked the invoice, and it definitely listed a liner as part of the purchase. Called the store. Apparently a miscommunication of some sort - he seemed to think that I had decided to get the "value package" without the liner after he had already typed up the invoice or some such thing. That wasn't my understanding. And I didn't feel like another 50 mile round-trip drive to pick up the liner. So he agreed to "send it down on the truck," which would get it here tomorrow. But then he called back and said the truck had left already so it won't arrive until Thursday. *sigh*  So two more nights in the guest room. At least that will give the plywood time to dry out thoroughly. This entry was originally posted at https://dreamshark.dreamwidth.org/…. Please comment there using OpenID.

 So far so good. Following tips from seekerval (LJ only) and lydy , we trekked to the far NW suburb of Anoka and purchased a replacement waterbed mattress. There was, guess what, construction on Hwy 169, but other than that it was a pretty easy trip. But by the time we got home it seemed too late to start a major project so we both slept in alternative locations for yet another night. Today we stripped the old waterbed, ran a hose through the window, and started draining it. I vaguely remember last time we did this trying to pour water from a pitcher into the end of the hose to get the air out (WTF?). This time we turned the hose on long enough to fill it with water. Duh. What were we thinking? Anyway, working fine so far - hose is currently watering the highly invasive buckthorn hedge.  This entry was originally posted at https://dreamshark.dreamwidth.org/…. Please comment there using OpenID.

We're heading out of town tomorrow to help Amber move, and our kitchen sink has sprung a leak. I'm desperately trying to find a reliable, honest plumber who is available today to fix it before we leave. Probably going to be impossible, but I'm making calls.

Backup plan - wrap the pipe with plumbing tape for a temporary fix and get the plumber in after we come back in late July. Still could use a recommendation.  Anybody?

[ETA] After several fruitless calls I finally found a plumber who was able to fit us in today and had good reviews on Yelp:  Uptown Plumbing. They're supposed to be here between 3 and 5. Here's hoping they show up, since we're on a plane to San Jose at 7am tomorrow.

That's the estimated number of abandoned underground fuel oil tanks in the metro area. Yikes! So anybody who thinks that Dean's Tanks is limiting their future by doing only one thing (residential fuel oil tank removal) should think again. And if you happen to have one in your back yard, these are the guys to call.

I know that hiring a contractor is supposed to involving painstakingly interviewing multiple candidates and choosing among competing estimates. But so far in our oil-to-gas boiler conversion, the first one was so obviously the right one that I just hired them on the spot. Pete the Boiler Guy and the Asbestos Abatement firm formerly known as Aardvark really were just perfect, so I'm trying for a hat trick. Just one look at the Dean's Tank web page makes it clear that we're talking about another little family-owned business that has been doing one thing for decades and takes pride in doing that thing really really well.

Anyway, I called the number and got Doug, the owner (Dean was his father). He just happened to be in the neighborhood doing another estimate, so he came right over. Took a few measurements and concluded that the tank runs under the backyard retaining wall and would be impossible to remove without wrecking the yard. Which makes it a perfect candidate for "in-place abandonment." That requires a removal waiver from the city inspector, but no problem - Doug works with him all the time and was sure it would be no problem.

The estimated price sounded very reasonable, considering it includes $500 worth of permits, removing and recycling the oil in the tank, removing all filler pipes, and even patching the basement floor after they dig the fuel line out of it. So I said sure - when can you start?

20 minutes after he left, Doug called back. He's already gotten approval from the city inspector, sight unseen. So I guess he was serious when he said the inspector trusts his judgment. If the permits come through without delay he hopes to have it done in the next two weeks. 

There are horrible crashes, clangs, and grinding noises coming from the basement as the Aardvark Asbestos Abatement Company destroys our 100-year-old boiler. 

Okay, all the sff paperbacks are on shelves with their spines visible! Well, for certain values of "all."  I'm not counting the anthologies, but those will fit on the shelves downstairs in the den if I don't find a better place for them. And, most important, I'm not counting the probably THOUSANDS of books that Richard has hidden away in the den - many of them on shelves but probably not all of them. These are newer, bloated size paperbacks, mostly of a genre I have no interest in. So for the purposes of this project I'm pretending they don't exist, except for when I find little caches of books that I feel are longing to be reunited with their sisters in the back room (like all that Mercedes Lackey).

However, I am not satisfied with the way things are arranged: A's and B's in the hall, B's in the shelf by the attic step, C's and D's on the shelves in the middle of the office, and so on. I want them to flow logically from A-Z, and I'd rather not use so many of the hardback-sized shelves for paperbacks.

So ideally I will finish up this project by adding a new set of paperback shelves in the hall where the tipsy pile of books and comics used to be. Unfortunately, as far as I know, nobody actually sells paperback shelves. The best I can probably do is a much-too-deep cabinet with movable shelves (and preferably extra shelves for sale as piece parts). Width should be somewhere between 36-41" and height between 45" and 60". Ideally, depth would be no more than 6" but I don't think anybody sells shelves like that. Depth could be as much as 11-1/2" without exceeding the space. Richard has some in the den that more or less fill the bill (except that they are in use, of course). He thinks he got them at Menards. Anybody have any other suggestions?

ETA: It looks like the best bet is to search for DVD or "multi-media" storage units. I still find it mind-boggling that NOBODY makes shelves for paperback storage, but as far as I can tell that is in fact the case. And even compact DVD shelves are hard to come by. A CD/DVD case is less than 6" deep, but most of the storage systems have shelves that are 9.5" deep. Why??

But this one doesn't look too bad. The shelves are only 7" deep and adjustable and the whole unit is about the size I want. I'm more in the mood to just go out and BUY the shelves I want, put them together and finish this project. But if that is just impossible, I can order these.

Look what I found inside my window - an old wasp's nest!! Even though it looks like it's been there since ancient Roman times and is obviously empty, I'm afraid to touch it.

There's also a lot of dust and not two, but FOUR sash weights. I'll be darned - double hung windows! The top casements are so thoroughly cemented in with layers of paint that it never occurred to me that they could move.

You know what a sash weight is, right?  You've got your old window casement made of solid oak and it weighs a ton, so there is no way to raise the window without a counterweight. So there's these little ropes running up the inside of the window frame and over a pulley and into a dark place where they are attached to heavy iron weights. This works great for about 80 years - then the ropes start breaking. To replace the sash weight cords, you remove the window casement and open up the little doors on either side of the window frame so you can get at the sash weights and replace the cords. When we first moved into this house (almost 30 years ago) I found most of the sash cords broken, and spent a week or so industriously replacing them so I know how to do this.

Then I got to the master bedroom and was stymied. There are 4 windows in that room, and none of them have sash weight doors. Some of the windows still had one sash cord when we moved in, but in the intervening years all but one has broken. This makes those windows damn hard to open, as they weigh a TON. Every now and then I take out one of the window casements, stare at the interior of the window frame in perplexity, and then put the casement back in. Really, NO DOOR.

Today I was hanging some mini-blinds in there and decided to try one more time before I screwed the blinds bracket into the window stop, thus making it that much harder to get the window out. Once again, no sash weight door. So I decided to just dismantle the damn window. Specifically I am prying off the piece of woodwork between two of the windows, hoping against hope that the sash weight for the right side of the left hand window and the left side of the right hand window are in there. More to come...

Richard went out to turn over the compost yesterday, and guess what was living in it? Ouch. Fortunately he got away with only 3 stings, but he wasn't happy. Now he's trying to figure out what to do about it. The usual methods (e.g., pouring kerosene down the hole and setting it on fire) would result in destroying or poisoning the compost. He's wondering if soaking the pile with water would flood them out.

My suggestion is to wait for the first frost. But I think he was hoping to use some of the composted material before then. Any ideas?