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July, 2008
Got the outside of the "train shed" painted -- eaves dark green (3 days!)
and windows a sort of off-white. And we have a train show at the Three
rivers Festival so I've spent a couple of days in Ft. Wayne and will spend
maybe 3 more by the time it's over. I'll be there Wed. & a couple of other
days. You oughta come over. We're at the Historical Museum just off Clinton
Ave. We have a couple of scale miles of mainline. It's going until Sunday
at 5.
So we had a little leak in the washing machine we inherited with this place.
Pretty old, but it's a Maytag. Anyhow, I told Kathy to go and find another
one so she comes back and announces that she bought a matching dryer as
well. OK, no problem. We move out the old washer & dryer and find that the
linoleum is downright *nasty* so she goes and gets a piece that will fit
the room, 6 feet by something. Well, we need to work around stuff and move
the water softener so she empties out about 100 lb. of salt into
wastebaskets and then we move the brine tank. (Installed in 1989 it has
probably never been cleaned-- hey, who cleans out their water softener?
We dumped out the dregs of the salt and some
kind of yukky brown mud -- magnesium oxide probably -- hosed it out in the
driveway.) There was a washbowl
that was nearly falling off the wall and someone had propped it up with
boards; it's permanently gone because as they say, ugly goes clear to the
bone. (There were renters in here, apparently about three over a period
of a few years, and things fell into serious disrepair, like what renter
cares if the washing machine leaks if it still works?) There is an access
panel in the floor where you can get to the
plumbing & stuff, partly for the heat exchanger/blower of the heat pump.
The linoleum on that was glued to particle board that had gotten wet and
the particle board is now mostly "part" and just a little bit of the "icle"
is left so I built a new panel out of 3/4" plywood, currently drying its
paint. Now we notice that the bottom of the 80-gallon hot water heater is
rusty....
Oh, this place is a laugh a minute! I did tell you about the fridge, didn't
I? I told Kathy to find prices on kitchen ranges, dishwashers
and microwaves. I figure one of those is next. (Late note -- Kathy found
that one toilet tank is leaking.) We would really like to trash the trash
compactor and replace it with a cupboard; after all, trash mashers lost
their "cool" about the time of the first Star Wars movie. And if the
disposer even hiccups it's going to the landfill; I replaced the disposer
in Winona Lake twice -- first time, it took five (5) trips to Lowe's before
I got everything to fit, second time we had someone do it for us, only
took 3 trips.
Man-cave is painted! Still have to put in the workbench and cupboards. The cupboards came out of the Winona Lake house, and they total exactly 12 feet which is perfect. Unfortunately, my carpentry turned out to have a 11 ft 11 7/8 inch wall! Well, I have a belt sander....
Spent about $3500.00 on electricians so far. You just don't want to know the litany of dangerous workarounds that have happened on this old farm over the past century (literally). But we understand that electrical codes have, um, changed since 1920. Over the past couple of lifetimes, they used everything but coat hangers in the wiring. First phase was finished today; we were without power for about 8 hours while they worked on a new meter base and distribution center. Monday, Lord willing and the creek don't rise (a major concern around here) they will bury the mains to the outbuildings. (Another major concern: tree limbs taking out power lines due to high winds, epidemic around here. Took 3 weeks for the power company to work us into their schedule for disconnect/reconnect, due to repairing storm damage including the substation across town.) Anyway, the power company is tickled pink that we're redoing this mess -- not that they contributed anything toward the costs, of course. While the power was off, I got up and painted the trim near the "hot" wires while they were "cold", and I could also see what the electricians were doing. Kathy, of course, served lunch of home-made bread and cold cuts (no electricity, no cooking).
Last phase of the electrical (that's a pun) is a new breaker box in the house with a special circuit for the Christmas display. (Don't ask what's wrong with the present breaker box! You couldn't cram another circuit in there without using coat hangers! Like Topsy, it "jest growed" every time an addition was built on the house.)
Moseyed over to the university and was introduced to my new office. Needs more bookshelves, but I have a table saw. I'll have some sort of laptop/docking station setup and for some odd reason, two network connections.
Kathy almost has the house presentable and the "music room" is usable so we've been jamming.