Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

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Lily left the valley
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Lily left the valley »

SweetCottage wrote:Hi Beebe, I live in western MA and have steam heat. {snip}
Wow. :dance: Thank you for the very well defined advice on all fronts, but especially the valve which I was only guessing about. I haunt the site you mention, but already had a huge stack of books on my plate so I hadn't gotten to the books specifically for boilers yet. I'm still a bit in learning mode as to vocabulary to better my searches on that site. I'm slowly shifting into "winter project mode", and right now I've been up to my ears in insulation info as well as dealing with the plumbing emergency we had.

I had started a specific thread about our system right after we moved in, but it's buried now. A few things were addressed back then, which I'll detail below.

We may outright replace the one vent in the bathroom that it looks like they punched a second hole in it. I will reread your overall advice more thoroughly later to see what could help with the tropic bedroom rad, and to make sure I will be adjusting the valve in the office correctly. The latter has worried me the most, because you can see where the wood was damaged prior to us buying, and I'm betting it's for the same reason there's a towel there now.

I did know about the vinegar bath, but did not manage to get around to that this year because I was too easily distracted by the other stuff, especially our long neglected yard. :oops: I have vinegared the shower head, though, because it was spraying in 20 directions, which was especially bad for the full sized original wood window/trim in the one tub wall you can see pictured in an earlier post. :lol:

At first, we had issues with the upstairs not heating much at all, but I got that figured out a while back with help from folks here in the thread mentioned above. Some of the rads throughout were a bit off level, which we've fixed either with some very small oddball ceramic tiles I found for free or wood shims if the tiles were too tall. They are all fine now as to level. One (that tropic bedroom) is at a very weird angle away from the wall, and when we tried to walk it back, we realized we'd have to undo the connecting fixture a bit and weren't quite ready for that (tools all jumbled still). It's on the ToDo list.

Thanks for the reminder about the pipe vents. I've been looking at our bells, but need to do more research. They do have some accumulated gunk on them, but they seem to be working as intended.

There's evidence that the cellar lines were insulated at one point, but I think it was the asbestos cement, and they removed it for renting.

When we had the too cold issue upstairs, we had a case of too much water, and fortunately the drain hose for the boiler was left behind by the POs so that wasn't hard to remedy, though I fretted over the lost water. Now, though, after adjustments to all the levels, I check at least every other day and we are needing to add a bit of water now and again, but not very much at all when we do. That actually surprises me because the tropic bedroom and office I thought would still be pushing out a lot, but apparently not.

One other thing that had been throwing the system off balance is the between the first floor front of house rooms (library, parlor) there is only one door on the entire 30ish' of wall, and we had been keeping it closed because our older kitty was having some stress issues and making messes all over. That would result in those front rooms being quite warm (but not tropic), and the boiler would run longer before the thermo would register high enough to click off. Now that our kitty has calmed down, we've been keeping the door open most of the time, and that makes a world of difference. The tropic-ness of the upstairs bedroom in particular isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. It was thick like pea soup when that door was closed, and now it's more a really muggy Southern day.

I've been wanting to move the thermostat because it's in 3 of the 5 spots they say for it to never be: near a window/door (it's by both), in direct sunlight, and on the wall behind the kitchen stove (on the dining side). We still haven't found a good "spot" to move it to yet, given the layout and doorways/stairs/hallway of the dining room. Our goal is to narrow that down this year, and move it next spring.

I also still have a fair amount of air leaks to seal of various sorts regarding doors/windows. I'm tackling those as I can and budget allows. We've done some temporary measures in some cases which help, but eventually will bronze and reglaze the remainders. We also have an issue with some of our aluminum storm tracks not being square, but we've only fixed them "enough for now" because we plan to replace them with wood storms later as time/budget allow.

Lastly, we are missing one rad, in the kitchen, and there is no rad nor pipes in the one bedroom upstairs which we're still a bit puzzled about and couldn't get any answers from the family as to why.

From what I found under the fake wood vinyl slats they put down in the kitchen, it's evident that the rad had a major mishap, where the vinyl got brittle and melted. We have been looking at replacements, but have not yet had funds for it. So far, because that room is so small and there's no door between it and the dining, it's been coolish in there, but not horribly so. We hope to get a replacement by next year's winter at the latest, but time will tell.

Thank you again for all the advice, and the diagram especially is helpful. I will report back once I've had time to give it the proper attention it deserves, and attempt some further repairs.
--Proud member of the Industrious Cheapskate Club
--Currently pondering ways to encourage thoughtful restovation and discourage mindless renovation.

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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Lily left the valley »

Oh, Home Despot, to think of the tightly knit and happy relationship we used to have. You've fallen so far, my old friend.

The good news is the cord did show up as scheduled yesterday. The bad news is what a clustermagaddon to return a whopping two items, one of which I didn't even bother to open the box of at HD. The poor clerk had a devil of a time because they had split the order in two after having already split the accessories off from the appliance side of the bill. So she had do double the work for a mere two items.

Worse, apparently HD has recently changed a policy (and I can't recall now if this is only where web bought items area concerned) where the returns we made could not be simply put back on the gift card, they had to go on a "store credit" card (as opposed to web credit? We were really confused about this, as was the clerk). The card she filled also later didn't want to read at the checkout, which no one could understand. Minor bizarreness with a return, but still not as smooth as returns used to be.

We'd really only stepped inside that particular HD once before, and although it was one of average size, the selection I was used to overall concerning parts was dismal. Especially when we were looking at appliance related parts. Fortunately, we managed to find what we were looking for after a bit of hunting, and left with both cards at zero balance after paying a 37 cent overage. No more having to deal with those, though we were encouraged to keep the rechargeable gift card, which I thought funny since we had just tossed the store credit one a mere 20 minutes after receiving it. The new store credit cards have a scratch off pin like the gift cards, so they can only be used once. I'm sure it's a fraud protection measure of some sort, but what a waste, decries the tree hugging part of my brain. It seems small, but think of all the folks who will go through what we did, and let's just leave it at that. Why couldn't they just scan a credit off a paper slip bar code if it was a matter of different vendors dealing with the back end of each card type? :confusion-scratchheadyellow:

Earlier that day, I went to PYCA, partially to kill some time waiting for Sean to finish up at work, so I could walk home with him. (Not sure if I mentioned this, but one of the things Sean loves about our location is it's roughly less than a ten minute walk to the PO. So even if we do get socked by a storm, he can just walk and not have to clean off the car or worry about whether the roads are plowed.) I finally picked up an item she was holding for me (Xmas present), and a cute old Xmas card I plan to use as decor, gutter clips for Xmas lights, as well as a comfy lap blanket. I had brought her another item that came from the batch of the neighbor's clean out, and I helped a bit with a window display changeover. She has more old used cards at her house she's going to bring in for me to go through, and I'd like to get three or four more to make a hanging drape of them. I've been really happy with the bartering we've done in various methods, as it has turned out to be a nice way to pick up things here and there without taking away from larger ticket items Beebe needs. I have my eye on an older Swedish hanging piece, but I'm going to leave it up to the fates. If it's still there in a few weeks, it comes home. If it's gone, then it wasn't meant to be.

She has a lovely set of square curtain rod swing hardware, with all the pieces including the rounded rectangular curtain rings. They have a single leaf in the arrow head manner as the detail. I know my Floor Manager isn't fond of that style, but he's also not adverse to it and I would only used them in one room. I've been digging through her window hardware, trying to find one of those rods that flat fits on the hardware. We have the hardware, but not the rod on our front door, and I like the flat style for doors. I bet eventually one will show up.

Speaking of our former neighbor, there has been a flurry of activity at the house of late. It looked like all the siblings were there the other day, and since the house still hadn't been put back up for sale, I said to Sean "I bet final walk through is soon," and he agreed. They still haven't removed the part of their clothesline that is attached to our garage, and we're not thrilled about that, because Sean heard their realtor tell them they had to take it down. They also never asked permission to leave it, which if they had, we were leaning towards allowing. Now we don't know what to do. If there is someone closing on the home now, and we take it down, we'll look like jerks. If we wait until they move in and ask them to take it down, we'll look like jerks again. Not a great first impression with new neighbors.

Tonight, when we got home, the way we came didn't drive past that house to be able to see which cars were there, but one of the garage bays was open, the backyard floodlights were on and a few house lights. They were still that way the last time I was in the kitchen a few hours ago. Before Sean went to bed, he said he did notice the For Sale sign was gone, and he's convinced they've started the move in already. We're wondering if the one family member (cousin, I think) the family thought they'd sell it to eventually did buy it, or if it was a non family buyer. It being Friday, the records likely wouldn't update just yet, but I checked Zillow anyway, and no change. So I guess we'll figure out whether we have new neighbors or not eventually. It's kind of nerve wracking, especially because of how close the houses are even if part of the property line has a stockade fence. I really, really hope we get along with whomever it is.

I'd actually been starting to put a small basket together with a few "might have forgots or buried in a box" sorts of house warming type items (tea towel, laundry liquid/softener samples, etc.) After that one day when I guessed that they might be preparing for final walk through, I just felt it might not be a bad thing to have ready in case I was right. I'll try to finish putting that together later today, just in case we get a knock at the door soonish from new neighbors.

One thing I have been noticing to a fault lately is all of the places where there are trace or greater paint or plaster remnants and finger/hand prints on surfaces that were never cleaned up. The downstairs bathroom door is the absolute worst, and I'm thinking when I do get to that, I'll just surface treat the entire door, then revarnish the whole thing. Revarnish or reshallac? Woo, my brain's tired. Shellac. I double checked. It was a long day. :D

A few other bits done in/for the end of year yard effort, but I'll post that over in Park Ave.
--Proud member of the Industrious Cheapskate Club
--Currently pondering ways to encourage thoughtful restovation and discourage mindless renovation.

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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Lily left the valley »

Yesterday was focused on picking up some much needed things for Beebe.

One of the items we had bought with our store credit was a replacement burner for our old stove. The former had developed a hot spot, cracked, and that was that. We bought what we thought was the closest match, and without giving it as much thought as I realized after brunch of eggs and tea when we tried to swap out for the new, it wasn't close enough. The one connection rod had a bigger bend than the other, and it would not fit. :doh: All the other times I'd bought replacement stove parts, whatever I bought fit just fine. Never did it occur to me that there might be differences in what I assumed would be standard for all once you got past the plate vs. curved wire connection issue. Even though the stove looks really old, ours was manufactured in the 70s. So not terribly old in my mind (and this could be my age talking.) Not sure when what happened design wise did as to creating more (or less) variations, so who knows why that coil wound up having differences that way.

I started to realize how valuable the manual I managed to get my hands on for the stove really is. When I worked getting the coil separated, I noticed the bits of wire splaying out from the connector inside the stove. An entire re-wire may be down the road sooner than I want to admit from the evidence I can see (hairline cracks in wire sheathing and such). I was hoping that when we swapped the burner today, when we finished, we'd then finally move the stove so I could get to the two connections I still haven't fixed because I cannot move that stove alone. The big disadvantage to cast iron--there it is for me--especially with concern for the flooring below--partially original wood and later added lin/cong/marm-oleum (we're still not sure). Again, not today.

So we packed the replacement part back up, and after a phone call to make sure about whether the pricing was a minimum of 3 bales for the insulation (nope, it seems they have a minimum 3 for shipping purposes), up to the Twins we thought we were headed. Except the car wouldn't start. Wasn't even making that gasping "I'm trying" turnover noise. Just the click-click-click counting out like failing CPR compressions. So out comes the trickle charger, and I started our first load of laundry to be going into the new dryer. (Which works great, by the way! :dance: )

The waiting at that point resulted in a serious discussion about getting rid of his car, and what alternatives we had as to doing so and getting him a better used at the same time. The PT is a bit of a sore spot, because I never was shown the car prior, and also could not believe what he allowed himself to get talked into regarding the contract for same. It's been a recurring problem since he got it. His failing inspection was just another nail in that car's coffin for both me and him by this point. It not starting with the battery we just bought earlier this year was yet another. The car has so many electrical issues we've had to deal with in the short time we've had it. We will be going to a place in town tomorrow (if he doesn't get called to sub somewhere) to see if maybe we can work something out so he can get rid of the PT and get an all-wheel he'll be happier with, without upping the payments we've been paying too much/too long. We'll see how that goes. He doesn't have much longer on the payments, and the prices at this place are reasonable, so it may work out. :handgestures-fingerscrossed:

Sean had taken a different route up due to the time of day, and we somehow missed a turn and wound up at Lowe's first. We decided to roll with it since we were there. This time I had made sure to bring the broken burner coil, and fortunately, they had a bit wider of a selection. We found a good candidate for a match (the flat connectors are a shade thicker, but the female side can be adjusted, so I knew it shouldn't be an issue.) We also had taken some stock of the back of the PT and realized three would likely not fit well because of how the wells come into play. So we only bought two, figuring if it looked like we might be able to get a third in we could just walk back in and get one. We just got the two in, so that was a good call. He's going to pick up another round on Wednesday when he's working at another PO up that way.

Then we made our way back to HD, did the return, then I got some gap insulation supplies, a 3 pack of the thicker window shrink wrap...and we would have had leftover on our store credit. As I pondered what to get with the remainder, I double checked, and the coil we needed, HD didn't even have. So I was glad we took the chance and got it at Lowe's even though it meant we had to pay rather than use store credit. I spied casters. This winter, I'll be starting to give some form to the shop in the unfinished cellar, and I like mobility when I can get it, so I picked up four lower end casters for a smaller work surface/storage cart I can push around when needed. The casters pushed me a few bucks over, but now or later it would be spent.

One good thing that happened on Sunday when he was doing the local Amazon deliveries was that he got a chance to talk to both his outgoing PM and his new one a bit. It seems that everyone is happy that when his carrier retires, he'll be stepping up into her spot. It's just a question of when she officially retires. Because her health isn't great, they're very glad that she's trying to stick out Xmas, but everyone also knows at any time she might have to just give up and leave earlier than planned. (Hiring a new sub during Xmas doesn't work because by the time they're done training, season's over.)

We did have a good talk after that about how we need to sit down once he gets an idea of what the new pay will be (minus bennies), so we can change our budget accordingly. We're both in agreement that the hole we dug into our line of credit we want to pay off as quickly as we can manage. We also talked about when I'd like to get back to at least part time work again, because it really is driving me crazy not working at all.

So later today, after I sleep, I'll finally be going back into the attic to shop vac vintage mouse poop, make a decision about the infamous quilt up there, and then start to install what we bought so far.

I've been using information I found online as a guide for how I want to at least start the first layer. Hopefully within the next year or so, we'll be creating the in/out spaces you can see in the diagram below where the closets are concerned (and the dormer to the front of house). We know doing this in pieces isn't ideal, but it's what we can manage, and something is better than just a single quilt. Some of you may remember my joke about said quilt probably a year ago now, when we did our inspection.
Image Image

One thing we are wildly curious about is how much of a difference insulation will make over the unheated bedroom on the second floor. After much debate, we decided to do that side last. I've been keeping a thermometer in there to keep track, and tonight it was 50°F around 8pm. We keep the house at about 68. We keep the hall door closed, but there is a gap and it's right at the top of the stairs, not sure how much that's helping.

Oh, and speaking of heating...that full tank of oil we got a week ago? Just about 1/8 is already gone. Yikes! We had the "pay less than $1000 for insulation in pieces this year to save maybe that much, or risk losing same rate until we can buy it all at once, which worst case could be spring" discussion. It was the shortest discussion I think we've had over something that involved serious money. It's really hard to find info about what happens if you only do part, so I can't say for sure how long it will take until we can notice a difference after what we hope to install this week. We sure are curious, though! I've even been thinking about whether insulating half will make the other half worse, chimney sort of effect in a way, all sorts of things...time will tell. :confusion-waiting:
--Proud member of the Industrious Cheapskate Club
--Currently pondering ways to encourage thoughtful restovation and discourage mindless renovation.

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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Lily left the valley »

Finally met one of our new neighbors today. It was cold, she was on her porch in a tank top, so short chat. They closed last Friday. Didn't learn much other than her name and that she has a daughter that is also living with her. She mentioned that she used to live in Lawrence, and was so happy with how quiet it is here, as she lived on a main street there. So not much to go on, but she seemed nice enough.

Why Thanksgiving might be interesting:

A Tops took over Stop n' Shop's spot earlier this year. Sean saw their advert for one of those "buy this turkey and get $25 of thanksgiving dinner bits for free" ad, and could not be talked out of it. I was not happy because most of the freebie items were low quality that we normally wouldn't buy for various reasons. I also was eyeballing the turkey, and wondering what on earth Sean was thinking. (Some folks reading this might remember why, if not, answer is a bit below.)

So we went there on Tuesday, and the store seemed, well, not fully stocked. Turns out they are closing before the end of the year, and when we asked no one knew if another store would be coming in after. Sean is still flabbergasted that they're closing this location in less than a year. I'm fine with it, because we normally shop at the other two grocery stores in town anyway. This was a good thing, as they've been scaling back on deliveries. Why? Because they were out of most of the free bits of the deal, but were open to certain substitutes which were better quality.

We made out like bandits, really. Other stuff we bought was also on sale because they're trying to clear out what inventory they have left. So we saved almost twice what we spent. The savings were helped along by redeeming an end of season sale rain check we had for ice cream in now chilly November, so they still had plenty in stock.)

I waited until yesterday to finally ask, "So...where are we cooking the turkey?" As I've mentioned at least once here, we still have not fixed the oven. We do have a toaster oven we've been using in the interim since it's just the two of us, but there was no way that turkey was going to fit in there.

He hesitated just long enough to confirm my suspicion...he'd forgot the stove still didn't work. Then just as I was about to say something, he quickly said, "I was going to cut up the turkey and cook it in pieces in the toaster oven." Mmhmm. :lol:

He also forgot to take the turkey out of our new mini upright freezer (bought when we got the dryer--thank you stupid early black Friday sale). The same freezer we put in the spare bedroom that has no heat, and despite the fact that we had lowered the gauge to knock it out of deep freeze temps, it was at -7°F when he took it out last night (I lowered it again, and we're finally at 0°). It's brick solid. So now it's sitting on the counter, but I sort of doubt he will be able to cut it up tomorrow, especially since the kitchen is the room with the missing rad.

I did suggest before he went to bed that this would be a really, really great time to finally FIX THE STOVE and then he can at least cook it in there. Of course, the part I bought might not be enough. There's a chance the thermostat might be broke too. I'm hoping just fixing the connector will be enough, though.

Oh, and speaking of the stove...the bend in the new stove top coil was lesser, but still not less enough. :crying-pink: At least when we take it back to Lowe's, the credit can go towards our next load of insulation. Looks like I'm going to have to go to the local Appliance shop in town and see what they can do for me as to helping me find the exact coil I need.

So today will be interesting as to whether we have turkey or not! At least the free pie is already cooked. :romance-admire:
--Proud member of the Industrious Cheapskate Club
--Currently pondering ways to encourage thoughtful restovation and discourage mindless renovation.

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Lily left the valley
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Lily left the valley »

We both blissfully slept in today, and thankfully the turkey defrosted before supper time! :dance:

My Floor Manager did vote against fixing the stove, but considering he made the entire dinner around a stove with only one working burner and the toaster oven, I think it was more than fair to let it slide. (If anyone's wondering where the balance is for that, I was responsible for all the table setting, clean up and dishes.) I am aiming to work on the stove, though, as soon as I finish the first layer of insulation in the attic. I really miss baking in my regular sized pans and have a promise to keep related to same.

I did poke around our storage closet in the spare bedroom to get an idea of where the Xmas boxes are. Fortunately we did a fairly decent job organizing when we put things in there. Not sure when exactly we'll start decorating for that. Likely not until the second week of December. We still need to make some room for the tree in the library, at the very least. :mrgreen:
--Proud member of the Industrious Cheapskate Club
--Currently pondering ways to encourage thoughtful restovation and discourage mindless renovation.

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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Lily left the valley »

Welp, I've been remiss in updating about the attic progress.

Things I've learned/discovered so far:
- There is no good place to "hang" my worklight up there. Fortunately, an old trusty C-clamp fixed that problem.

- The width between the joists on either side of the hatch is not the standard width up there. :doh: Apparently it was due to the chimney being right next to the hatch that it is narrower somehow. This means I'm really glad we didn't buy a full pallet from HD, because most of it would have been too narrow! So we dodged a bit of a bullet there.

- Our joists are comprised of sistered pieces. I honestly haven't looked at them all just yet to see if any are one piece across, but so far as I've seen, nope.

- We definitely have a balloon frame, and some scraps were placed in the attic between the exterior supports to cover the long way down holes (and likely act as fire blocks). They aren't very well fitted.

- The gap around the chimney is definitely wide enough for my FatMax tape measure to fall down on the thinner side. Fortunately, I put it down with the wider flat, so it didn't go down the hole. I have to research about this more, as I really don't know a lot about the fire concerns. I've seen other attics where wood is right up against the brick, so I need to learn what's considered proper. The mortar doesn't look too bad from what little I checked, but the bricks...I'm seeing similar deterioration to what I've seen in the cellar. Pretty convinced we have no liner, and I'll need to price that out next year.

- There is a lot of debris and garbage up there in addition to the poop I had seen prior from sticking my head up and getting in far enough to set up the work light for the MASS Save fellow. A lot of it was hidden behind the blocked sight line of the chimney or because of the depth of the joist bays, so it wasn't evident when I had looked about prior. Apparently someone(s) smoked their homemade bong up there (I found one plastic soda bottle variant so far), and Good n' Plenty and soda was their munchies snack of choice it seems, though there were other snack garbage bits too. No wonder we had mice.

- Whenever they added the two triangular vents up there, they hacked away at the wood (both siding and framing) to make it fit. Not a sound job by far, and I don't know when or even how I'll fix that just yet. All the wood they removed was just left below the window, lots of splintery bits, which of course poked right through the kitchen sized (thin) bag I had brought up for cleaning. :lol:

- When I went to look at the far vent, which was still open, I found what looks like an old ironing board, which I thought curious since we have the built-in. Then I found another surprise, which distracted me from trying to close it. (Should get to that later today.)

- I also found some fabric, and when I went to look at it, thought I found a dead mouse, but it turned out to be a bat. I shined my worklight through the entire attic eaves, and saw no other bats. This goes against everything I've read about hibernating bats here. I've also never heard of one cozying up inside fabric! I couldn't find any guano piles. I did spot one plank (of course near the topmost part of the roof peak) that seems to have had a knot that fell out. So maybe it came through there, although I couldn't see any daylight. It could have also shimmied up the framing behind the walls and wouldn't even have had to squeeze itself much to get past the fire blocking in place.

- Because of Xmas rush, I have no helper. So it's taking me much, much longer to clean up there because of the hatch, and I can't just hand stuff off to my Floor Manager because he's been working. Thankfully, we had a bucket small enough to fit with me at the same time going up/down. I'm thinking of trying to do a pulley set up so it's safer for me going up and down the hatch in the closet. Just need to find one of our pulleys.

- Oh, one last thing I almost forgot. A soft metal in smallish sheets (maybe 4' x 4'?) They were just strewn about here and there, and I have no idea what they are or what they are for. The seem oldish to me, not modern galvanized or anything like that. I should be able to bend them enough to get them down the hatch, but I have no idea if they were supposed to be some sort of flashing or what. :confusion-scratchheadyellow:

As a result of all the above, I have yet to put down even one batt. Close, though! I was hoping to do so before tonight, as we'll be dropping down to mid teens. :sad-fever:

I still haven't taken a camera up there. When I finish what I can do for now of the insulation we do have, I'll take some snaps of the vent areas to seek advice.

So that's my update. I am a bit frustrated at the pace, but I also did not anticipate doing this alone, nor the attic needing such a cleaning. :D
--Proud member of the Industrious Cheapskate Club
--Currently pondering ways to encourage thoughtful restovation and discourage mindless renovation.

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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by phil »

maybe the soft metal sheets are zinc for the roof. it kills the moss if you put some zinc sheets on the roof. I wonder if a roofer had the roof open and tossed it in there saving it for re-use?

If kitty is feeling ok maybe you could send him up on a mouse/bat finding mission. If there is a mouse in there the cat will probably show interest in hanging about and if not then at least they leave their scent. I send mine into my attic every once in a while so she can go scout around and do her job. ;-)

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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Lily left the valley »

phil wrote:maybe the soft metal sheets are zinc for the roof. it kills the moss if you put some zinc sheets on the roof. I wonder if a roofer had the roof open and tossed it in there saving it for re-use?

If kitty is feeling ok maybe you could send him up on a mouse/bat finding mission. If there is a mouse in there the cat will probably show interest in hanging about and if not then at least they leave their scent. I send mine into my attic every once in a while so she can go scout around and do her job. ;-)
If the mouse poop was recent, this would be a capital idea.

As to the bat, in Massachusetts, although only one species I know of is listed as endangered, the Massachusetts Homeowner's Guide to Bats explicitly tells you to leave hibernating bats where they are for the remainder of the winter, then take occlusion measures in the early spring. Part of the reason is because of how badly the white-nose syndrome has decimated bat populations in New England overall. It seems they feel that if one colony found their way into your home, that's one that won't be part of a larger colony in an abandoned barn or cave where they have a better chance of being infected by WNS. My biggest concern is why the bat is solo. If it is sick (not WNS, it obviously did not have that), I don't want our kitty contracting anything, because she'd be more susceptible to it at her age.

I hadn't even thought of zinc! I do know zinc can make some really neat countertops. Hmm. I may have a use for those sheets, since our countertops in the kitchen are pretty small, and I'd like to get rid of the old red that's currently there. I'll try to take a picture tomorrow. We do have one spot on the west side where trees the neighbor planted on the property line are shading and dropping lots of bits. One tree does have some branches that should be cut back, but we don't have a tall enough ladder yet, and since they're on our side, I don't think he'll cut them for us. We've pulled some really large mossy clumps out of the gutters which we moved to appropriate garden beds.

Unless Sean is called in tomorrow, we'll finally be teaming up to continue the attic work, and I will look very carefully again for more bats. I'm hoping to get that vent on the west side shut if it can be, and pick back up with the cleanup. It will go much faster with him down below emptying buckets and handing up batts of insulation.

Speaking of insulation, some good news. When we were looking at our cellar bulkhead walkout today, many of the uprights in that structure (which is weirdly partially insulated with I guess found bits of bead foam and blue sheet) are perfect for the 16" center sized insulation. The front most bay is closer to 24", but we'll work around that. So we can use what ever is left of the bales we bought so far there. We also need to build up some kind of proper header for the Frankenstein door there. More on that later when we get that far.

We did finally install the foam sticky insulation I had found in a box around our front door. Last year, there was a weird plastic strip stuff that looked like a poor folks' sprung bronze and it didn't work well. We had actually sealed over the frame with duct tape last year out of desperation due to budget. Fortunately, that cleaned up well in the spring when it came off since it wasn't there very long. It did help, though, as did the towel we ran under the door and rolled up on both sides. We found, at the lower side where the gap for some reason is bigger, old wool or felting tacked on. I kept it to take a pic, but forgot to do that before dinner. I may still do a quick and dirty slip on draft blocker for the base for this winter, because I still haven't decided which type of draft blocker to permanently install at the base of the door. At least this year, with the foam, I can still get mail from the front door, rather than walk around each day. :D

I've started sealing the gaps between sashes with that putty like rope stuff. Only done one room so far, may do more tonight.
Last edited by Lily left the valley on Thu Nov 30, 2017 12:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
--Proud member of the Industrious Cheapskate Club
--Currently pondering ways to encourage thoughtful restovation and discourage mindless renovation.

phil
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by phil »

the kind of zinc they use on roofs is thin , it looks like oxidized aluminum but it is quite soft, you'd be able to easily bend it with your fingers.. the stuff suitable for a countertop would be quite a bit thicker. if it were leftovers from the roof it might be full of nail holes? it could be some aluminum flashing too. if it is tin it would be attracted by a magnet but lead, aluminum, and zinc and nickle will not attract a magnet. some stainless is magnetic, some isn't it's an alloy so depends on the makeup. older pennies are copper, newer ones have some iron in them because some are magnetic. we dont; use pennies anymore but I have a cache of them and I can't bear to take them in for what little they are worth. I found I could separate the old from newer ones easily with a magnet.

when my cat catches mice she seems happy to bring them to show off. she's never eaten them and she's never seen an empty dish either so I just congratulate he on her triumph and take them away, distract her with more food Ill open a can of tuna and she forgets everything else and runs to rub my leg waiting for the juice ;-) I tap on the dish when I feed her and now she's trained to come a-running if she hears that sound.. the sound of a can opener is an even higher level command lol...

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Manalto
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Re: Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

Post by Manalto »

Michael Pollan makes a compelling case for how cultivated plants have, in a sense, trained us. We coddle them, remove their pests and competition and ensure the success of the next generation. Regarding cats and dogs, I know for certain that they've got us very well trained.

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