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| Fully functional home at last!Yes, you heard it here first: the Nelson home has hot water, as of 11:40am today!
It took a Dream Team of professionals to connect the dots and shoot the troubles, but in just a couple of hours, we went from "you're kidding me" disaster discovery, to "you're good to go" final recovery.
The Team (never before assembled in one boiler closet until today):
Danny Castro, the ElectroMan-- electrician who wired the house and the boiler himself
Seth Spangle, the RadiantMan-- contractor who assembled and installed the whole radiant-floor and domestic hot water system (but left the wiring to Danny)
Mac, intrepid engineer with Howard Industries and manufacturer's rep for the boiler itself.
Wish I had been there to take photos and hand out chocolates, but I left for an appointment with an author soon after Mac had arrived this morning. More on that later.
The important thing is that now, after five weeks and three days of living in our new home sans hot water (and sans gas for much of the time, too), we really feel like the house is DONE. Now we can do laundry here. We can use the dishwasher. We can put away the crock pots that have provided hot water in every bathroom. We can take showers!
I cannot tell you what a relief this is. A huge weight off our shoulders. Just three days before my mom comes to stay with us for the weekend, too! Yaay.
(Next big challenge: unpacking and organizing all our books! woohoo...  | | |
| Furniture-moving day!March 29-31, Kathryn's dad & aunt helped us empty out the storage space that held our books and wall art (photos, paintings, posters), Christmas decor and all the kids' stuff that didn't fit into our small apartment. It felt great to close out that storage space and not have to pay rent for it the first of April.
Now, with the help of Reggie and Sheldon of Starving Students Moving Co., we have emptied out the storage space that held all the furniture we salvaged from 29th Street (plus chairs from my parents). Those guys were great-- friendly, efficient, and very strong:
"Um, do you want me to remove the drawers from that file cabinet for you?"
"Nah, I'm good." Sheldon hoists it into a hug and starts marching.
"Those drawers are stuffed full."
"Yeah, I can tell!" Sheldon trots up the stairs as if the cabinet is empty.
(...You go try to pick up a full file cabinet. Or a decent-sized empty one, for that matter...)
Because of them, today's impressive moving-in progress was actually fun. We even invited them to dinner but they had to get the truck back to the lot, etc. Maybe we'll see them at the housewarming in May.
I sure hope so, because in all the excitement and busyness, I completely forgot to take photos! By the time I remembered, it was just me and Kathryn and the ubiquitous Dorothy Steventon. She took this photo of us, all sweaty and grubby, with a happy huddle of furniture behind us:
[insert photo soon!]
Next major steps: getting our gas meter installed and gas service turned on, and the Big Moving Day coming up, April 19th.
Not to mention completing a slew of draft posts that cover the past several months of the life of this nascent urban home... | | |
| Freed from its steely shackles
Ah, the house can breathe again! Getting rid of the scaffolding feels like getting a cast removed. The house did not necessarily feel shackled or trapped to me, although the scaffolding certainly restricted movement around the outside... but now that it's gone, what once felt "normal" now feels like wide open space. The sky is visible from anywhere you stand outside! If you take that for granted, wrap your home or work in scaffolding for 10 months.
With the scaffolding, our view of the stucco and roofing was mostly myopic, getting a close-up view of every inch of it, but only being able to see what's right near you, both due to the scaffolding everywhere.
Without the scaffolding, the big picture is suddenly in better focus, but I find myself squinting up at window recesses, wondering "does that need another touch-up or is it just a shadow?" To find out I'll need a really tall ladder. Or go upstairs and lean out a window.
Other news: the mini-split for the garage apartment is all hooked up and ready to go, except for the power cable, which Danny might take care of this afternoon. | | |
| A Worthy Holiday TraditionSome background: besides Easter, my favorite holiday has to be Thanksgiving. I once saw an info package for college students who were preparing to leave India for a course of study in America, which described Thanksgiving as a "high holy day celebrated by a feast with close family members." At first I laughed because so few Americans consider Thanksgiving a "holy" day or at least do not celebrate it with anything like a traditional American understanding of "holiness" in mind. But think about it: Americans do go to great lengths, make surprising sacrifices, to be with their families on Thanksgiving day. It is the sort of commitment that normally applies only to very important religious events in cultures like Hindu/Buddhist India or many others around the world. And the "feast" bit is spot on.
If we Americans were to add God to our Thanksgiving, and really made it a "holy" day, what might that look like? A prayer before the feast? A round of toasts after the feast?
How about helping the less fortunate to feast as well?
My fellow Xtracyclist "Tone" has been combining his love of biking, his career as a bike messenger, and his concern for the less fortunate for eight years now, and makes me long to join him in his happy madness.
Here is his description of it:
Many People probably do not know what Cranksgiving is, so I will describe it briefly. Cranksgiving is an open-course bicycle race where riders go to different supermarkets and get one item of food at each store, then after visiting about four or five stores they go to the finish and all the food is donated to a soup kitchen or food bank.
I started Cranksgiving over eight years ago among the messenger community in New York City, but now that I moved to York, PA I am going to be running it for the ninth year in a row with non-messengers. Fortunately, a friend of mine back in NYC has stepped up to take over Cranksgiving there to keep the tradition going. Also, a messenger couple I am friends with in LA will be organizing their own version for the seventh year in a row. Cranksgiving has also been set up by various people I have known in Chicago, Illinois and Madison, Wisconsin!
I will spare you further details, but If you care to learn more, you can check out a web site I set up to present the first eight years of Cranksgiving as they were organized by me in New York City:
http://www.moon-shine.net/cranksgiving/
Also, if you want to check out the flyer I designed for this year's Cranksgiving in York, PA, I posted it as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file here:
http://www.moon-shine.net/cranksgiving/Cranksgiving-YorkFlyer.pdf
.And if anyone in NYC wants to ride in the Cranksgiving race "under new management" there, then here is the NYC flyer:
http://www.nybma.com/images_flyers/cranksgiving2007flyer.jpg
I'm going to search the web for something about Cranksgiving in LA, and hope that he meant Los Angeles, not Louisiana.
Here's to creative celebration of holidays! "Skol!" | | |
| Oh what a difference a coat of Varathane makes!Yes, the floor finishing is in process. The first two coats are done and cured, the third coat is pending. I slipped in to take some photos of the results, sliding around in my socks on the slick, faintly fragrant floor... which bears only a passing resemblance to the dusty-soft grout-flecked floor of three days ago!
See for yourself: here is the dining room floor being laid...
and here it is FINISHED!
Here is the living room floor, sanded but unfinished...
Here is the living room floor, finished!
You're looking at Cinnamon Mix flooring, by the way.
Most of the rest of the house is Hevea flooring (orchard salvaged trees from rubber plantations). Here it is, all sanded and prepped...
Here it is, finished!
We are using Varathane water-based low-VOC "DiamondCoat" floor finish. It beat out Minwax on a test piece of Hevea, imparting virtually none of its own color and drying to a clear smooth finish. Good stuff. | | |
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