Yes, I have been way remiss in documenting the work on the house, about three months worth of remiss. So, here we go.
Heating
I have three of the four radiators mounted, one in my room, one in the living room, and one in the dining room. And resulting warmth where it is needed most! I have been too damned lazy to drag the fourth upstairs to the walk-thru closet and hang it, but that will happen soon enough.
One of the fittings to the living room radiator has been leaking just a tad. I closed both valves, and have determined that it is leaking from the radiator at the fitting. I will pull it, re-tape it, and re-attach it, praying all the while.
Pictures:
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| Dining room radiator and freshly painted baseboard. That color is also planned for the windows. |
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| My room, new wall mount electrical on its way in. Didn't want to mess with that *after* I'd plumbed in the heater. |
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| Bedroom radiator, and electrical ready for outlets, both ready for connection. |
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| Wider view. |
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| This reminds me of the funky house at Knott's Berry Farm, where everything is off level such that things appear to go against gravity. STG, the radiator *is* level. The window, not so much. New copper water line is visible. |
Leveling the floor
When I started jacking, the first thing that happened was the main support lifted off the floor, then fell over:
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| Note the dry rot at the bottom! |
As near as I can tell, the floor is now pretty much level. I'm using the 12' radiator as my rough guide, but my next trick is a level string across the floor to make sure.
I still need to jack the sagged part of the dining room floor, which I did not know about until the old radiator had been removed:
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| That would be about a 1 inch gap between baseboard and floor, with exterior brick peeking through! |
This is more or less directly under the window. Now that the rest of it is reasonably level, I can feel the drop off
here when I walk across the floor from the stairs to the window! The joist along the wall, like the center beam, has got the dry rot. I bought two more jacks at Home Depot, one allocated to shoring up this section of floor.
Once I'm satisfied that the floor is as level as I can get it, it will be time to replace the cross beam, re-attach the joists to said new beam, and put in new supports. When that's done, I'll move the beams I used for shoring to create new support between the new beam and both parallel exterior walls. Then, I can begin to think about shoring and supporting the second (and thus the third) floor. I'd really like to have an open arch between the dining and living rooms for that, but it requires engineering that is way out of my league. And money. Lots of money, I suspect.
Garden
I've cleaned up and re-arranged the kitchen bed, gotten three of the other four beds tidied, and one planted with seed potatoes.
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| Overview view, potato bed to the right not shown. |
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| Tidied kitchen bed, onions/garlic at top, strawberries and Yet Another Rosemary (YAR) in the center, and four of the oregano lower, |
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| The rest of the oregano in the border twixt the patio and garden. |
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| Teeny, tiny strawberry shoots in the other half of the border garden |
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| Mostly garlic. This bed still needs tidying. (Duh) |
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| The tall bed, with a couple of the potatoes peeking up. |
I have an interesting assortment of potatoes. I grabbed another bag of the red, white, and blue mix at Home Depot. On the way back home, I got some Yukon Gold and a different flavor Red from the Cape Horn garden store. Next year, I'll be getting my seed potatoes there, as they were only $0.69/lb, as opposed to $3.98/bag of 12. Plus which, I suspect that I can cut them up into individual chunks, each with an eye, to get multiple plants from one tuber. (If what Matt Damon did in 'The Martian' is any guide.)
Deb sent me some seeds, too. One pack of oregano, one of a hot pepper, one of Basil, and one of Cantaloupe! Burpee included a pack of seeds for flowers that are supposed to attract bees to the garden; those will go in the border bed between me and my neighbor.
And, there you have it!
