So... What are YOU doing? - Part 8

[tango]

A bit more demolition. I isolated a nasty draft insofar as I figured it was coming from behind the sink unit, but couldn't figure out how to get everything apart. Today I figured how to get everything apart, undid the drain pipes and cut the feed pipes so I could remove the top with the sink in it, and took the units out so I could get at the drywall, then pulled the drywall down. Lots of nasty featherboards nailed to the concrete block and eventually I found a problem, a gap in the brickwork big enough to put my fist in. I'll bet that's the reason it was always cold under there, and there was a nasty draft, and the basement room below is colder than it seems like it should be.

For now a load of the featherboards are ripped apart ready to be burned. I hate to burn 100 year old cedar but getting it off the wall ripped it apart and I have so much cedar it's hardly worth keeping scraps of it. I've got a pile of drywall that needs to be broken into smaller pieces so I can bag it up, and a wad of fiberglass stuffed into the offending hole. So now we wait to see if it fixed the problem or if there's something else ugly going on there.

 

[Lamb]

Getting ready for church. We have a meeting afterward so it will be a long day for me.

 

[tango]

The space with the hole in the wall is better but still not resolved, there's still a chill that hangs in the air. So I guess I need to pull some more stuff apart to hunt it down.

 

[Lamb]

It's grocery shopping day. I don't need as much this week and when that happens, I try to get a duplicate of something that usually costs a bit so that I can stay under a certain amount each week. So on some weeks I'll need to buy more food products and other weeks it's the cleaning products. Some things are more costly, and I try to spread it out to maintain that goal amount so I don't go over.

 

[tango]

It's grocery shopping day. I don't need as much this week and when that happens, I try to get a duplicate of something that usually costs a bit so that I can stay under a certain amount each week. So on some weeks I'll need to buy more food products and other weeks it's the cleaning products. Some things are more costly, and I try to spread it out to maintain that goal amount so I don't go over.

I like to do that sort of thing too, fit the bigger stuff in on an otherwise cheap month so you don't get the sticker shock when the credit card bill arrives.

 

[Lamb]

I like to do that sort of thing too, fit the bigger stuff in on an otherwise cheap month so you don't get the sticker shock when the credit card bill arrives.

Yep! Paper towels were on sale again, and I didn't have to buy meats this time, so I bought the paper towels and now I'm all set for a while since I still have some in the basement. Ever since the Covid hoarding fiasco, I started to hoard things myself I won't be without ever again ahahahah

 

[tango]

Yep! Paper towels were on sale again, and I didn't have to buy meats this time, so I bought the paper towels and now I'm all set for a while since I still have some in the basement. Ever since the Covid hoarding fiasco, I started to hoard things myself I won't be without ever again ahahahah

We do much the same with toilet paper. During the fiasco we very nearly ran out before we were able to find any for sale, even if we were willing to pay a silly price for a single roll of premium toilet paper. Now we buy packs of 24 or 32 depending on what's available and when we open the last pack we put it on the shopping list.

I'm thankful to have the space to maintain a small store of stuff to tide us over in the event of a supply disruption. It doens't even have to be a farce like covid, it could be something as simple as going to the store and finding they don't have any, or needing to get through a few days if conditions make the roads dangerous.

 

[Lamb]

We do much the same with toilet paper. During the fiasco we very nearly ran out before we were able to find any for sale, even if we were willing to pay a silly price for a single roll of premium toilet paper. Now we buy packs of 24 or 32 depending on what's available and when we open the last pack we put it on the shopping list.

I'm thankful to have the space to maintain a small store of stuff to tide us over in the event of a supply disruption. It doens't even have to be a farce like covid, it could be something as simple as going to the store and finding they don't have any, or needing to get through a few days if conditions make the roads dangerous.

Or when you have guests over and they use more than you expect!

 

[tango]

Or when you have guests over and they use more than you expect!

There is that. I'm not aware of any of our more regular guests being particularly heavy on the paper, but always best to have some in reserve just in case.

 

[Krissy Cakes]

Watching wrestling

 

[Lamb]

There is that. I'm not aware of any of our more regular guests being particularly heavy on the paper, but always best to have some in reserve just in case.

You never know when you'll get a pregnant lady who keeps using the restroom LOL

 

[Lamb]

Watching wrestling

Who won?

 

[tango]

You never know when you'll get a pregnant lady who keeps using the restroom LOL

If you have a lot of pregnant friends that's possible. I don't think we have any friends who have any expectations of pregnancy.

 

[tango]

So far the work I did sealing some gaps in my latest work space seems to be helping a lot. There are a couple more gaps I found but it's hard to figure out how to physically get at them. I don't think many of them will make a huge difference but there is one I can mostly get at that will make a difference, and another one I'm expecting to find when I can clear some more stuff away that I'm expecting will make a big difference.

The trouble with the one I'm expecting to find is that to get at it I need to pull a baseboard off the wall. That's easy enough, but there's an old fashioned cast iron radiator in front of the base board which needs to be disconnected and moved. The pipes beneath it are cut off so it should just be a matter of undoing the hefty nuts holding the pipes to the radiator, but then moving a radiator that probably weighs 3-400lb (ideally without ruining the floor) isn't a trivial proposition. I'm not yet sure how I'm going to do that. I've moved radiators that weight before with a heavy duty hand card, propping it with wood scraps so it doesn't tip and using a heavy duty ratchet strap to make sure it tips back against the cart rather than forward and onto the floor. But those were tall whereas this one is short and wide.

 

[tango]

I managed to undo the pipes from the radiator, and moved all the wood from the top of it so that's now stacked elsewhere. Now I just need to figure out how to move the radiator...

Bible study group tonight, so it's not happening just yet.

 

[Lamb]

It's grocery shopping day! And laundry and cleaning and oh, getting things removed from under the sinks so the plumber can install new faucets tomorrow.

 

[tango]

I managed to get the radiator onto wheeled platforms, kinda sorta. It's not very stable and given it weighs more than I do by quite a margin I'd rather it was more stable before I try and wheel it. I set some pieces of old ceiling tile underneath it, in the hope that the middle of it would compress the tile, but it didn't work out as well as I had hoped. Now I need to figure out if it's safe to lever the thing up again so I can take the ceiling tile off and just put the platform under the legs of it.

The major downside is that I need one hand to lever the thing and the other hand to steady it, so I need my wife to be moving the wheeled things around. It's not a demanding job but it means she's in the line of fire if I drop anything and that alone makes me hesitant.

 

[Frankj]

I managed to get the radiator onto wheeled platforms, kinda sorta. It's not very stable and given it weighs more than I do by quite a margin I'd rather it was more stable before I try and wheel it. I set some pieces of old ceiling tile underneath it, in the hope that the middle of it would compress the tile, but it didn't work out as well as I had hoped. Now I need to figure out if it's safe to lever the thing up again so I can take the ceiling tile off and just put the platform under the legs of it.

The major downside is that I need one hand to lever the thing and the other hand to steady it, so I need my wife to be moving the wheeled things around. It's not a demanding job but it means she's in the line of fire if I drop anything and that alone makes me hesitant.

Any chance you could ease it onto its side so it has a low center of gravity and be stable? Or increase the wheel width which will have the same effect?

 

[tango]

Any chance you could ease it onto its side so it has a low center of gravity and be stable? Or increase the wheel width which will have the same effect?

I considered laying it down but that requires a lot of control. Wheel width isn't something I can change because I'm using pre-made wheeled platforms. I tried making my own but the wheels I can get are either so big I can't hoist the radiator high enough to get them into place, or too weak to take the weight. Laying it down wouldn't change the center of gravity all that much - it's more or less square but nearly six feet long and made of cast iron (hence the weight).

Laying it down should allow me to put a platform under each corner and have more space to work with, rather than trying to get a platform under each corner leg. It's just a question of figuring how to lay it down without it falling.

With something lighter there would be all sorts of options but this thing probably weighs somewhere between 3-400lb so it's not likely to be very forgiving of mistakes handling it. I nearly managed to drop it on myself earlier but thankfully had my 3-foot wrecking bar within reach so I could use that to lever it back to where I wanted it.

Despite nearly dropping it I did manage to get it far enough away from the wall that I could pull off the drywall behind it and all the nasty featherboards, and the baseboard that was obstructing access to where I suspected the draft was coming in. And sure enough, I found another hole in the wall. The hole is now filled with spray foam and the nasty draft is no more.

 

[Frankj]

I considered laying it down but that requires a lot of control.

I have no idea of the type of room it's in, but if you have any anchor points (inside or maybe even outside) it a come along or two sounds like it would give you the control you need and keep you away from it as it is moving in case of a fall. I've move some pretty big stuff with them in the past. In my visualization of the problem the only concern doing it this way would being certain the base of the thing couldn't slide back toward the wall as it was tilting over and create an uncontrolled situation.

A come along would also give you the advantage of being able to pull it from the base so that the pulling forces are well below the center of gravity and prevent a tilt over from occurring.

What type of floor is it being moved over and how resistant to damage would it be? Sliders might work as well as or even better than wheels if you can pull it with a come along.