The Old Man and the Street

Before putting the fridge back in its place, I tipped it up and vacuumed out about a pound of dirt and pet hair, but only after pitching a dozen or so magnetic letters that had found their way under there.

We went to remove the nest of insulation that some critter had made in the crawl space under the breakfast nook, and I discovered that one wall of the crawl space seemed to be made out of an old hutch of some sort. I ripped the doors off and found a 30 year old can of bug spray, a glass milk bottle full of sand, a coffee can full of rusty nails, and a few jars of an unidentifiable green granular substance. I trashed everything except for the milk bottle and blocked the bottom of the doorway with some bricks and an old limestone lintel in the hopes of keeping out the critter. How many more flammable items will we find in the house? Stay tuned for more exciting flammable finds!

In other boring news, I got the bathroom door back on (with the hinges right-way up), our alarm system was installed today, and M. and I got the first of 5 heavy-duty steel shelves assembled. Woo.

Today was the first day that it felt cool enough to turn on the heat in the house. The thermostat claimed it was 62F, so we set the heater for 68 and turned the system to “run”. I went around and opened the radiators that would open and skipped the ones with frozen valves. The valve on the radiator in the master bedroom just spun around and around without moving, so I left it alone, hoping that it was broken in the “open” position.

I would like to note that our radiator system does not use steam to heat the radiators, but instead uses hot water. This detail is vitally important to the next part of this story.

A few hours later, M. called down to tell me that the radiator in the master bedroom was still ice cold. I went up and fiddled with the valve a bit, and upon noticing that it didn’t seem to be going up or down, which I’ve always assumed is what valves did as they opened or closed. So, feeling clever, I pulled the valve upwards as I turned it up. I then found myself standing straight up with the valve in my left hand, and a lovely seven foot high geyser of water coming straight up out of the radiator, me thinking, “Hmm, that’s just a bit unusual.”

I hurriedly jammed my thumb onto the open hole where the valve recently sat, yelling at M. to run and get some rags. After stopping the flow (the pressure in the system is only about 14PSI), I thought about how to restore valve A to orifice B without flooding the bedroom. I decided that a quick-change maneuver was in order, and held the valve knob and stem near the valve opening. I counted to ten, pulled my thumb off the opening, and jammed the valve stem back in as hard as I could–it stayed in place, but to be safe, I wrapped it down tightly with plastic wrap and tape. I made a mental note not to pull on any more radiator valves.

So I gathered up my can of deep tint primer and my can of “Autumn Red” and toddled off to Home Depot to, hopefully, find out why three coats of paint plus a coat of primer still isn’t covering the walls.

I talk to “Richie” at Home Depot, and he shakes his head, saying,

“Awww, red is always a difficult color to paint… when you bought it last week, didn’t they tell you that it would take anywhere from two to SEVEN coats?”

“Hell no! If they had told me that, I would have bought a different f*cking color!”

Anyway, I manage to diffuse my rage (there’s never any point at yelling at someone who works at a Big Company, because it’s Not Their Fault in the first place), and he gives me another gallon of paint for a dollar. What a bargain! Good thing that my time is worth nothing. Ugh.

So I went home and put the third coat of paint on the kitchen. I’ll be putting a fourth coat on there and the breakfast room later. *sigh*