Storage Saga

Like most people, our tool collection has grown slowly from humble beginnings. A screwdriver and hammer cadged from a parent. A 99 cent adjustable wrench from Walmart. A hand-me-down plastic toolbox. Before we moved into our house our tools largely fit into that toolbox. After a few years in our home our tools collection had expanded well beyond a single toolbox. 

For Christmas, our second gift was a full-height, two part Craftsman tool chest.

Four deep drawers in the bottom half and five skinnier drawers and a top hatch in the upper half. The bottom drawer is large enough to hold our power drills and bits.

We layered drawer liners everywhere to try and keep the tools in place and protect the metal drawers. 

Now, nearly all of the hand tools are in one place! There's even a system. Each drawer has some kind of theme or themes (cutting, pliers, power tools, wrenches). We still need to add labels so we know what the drawer is holding before we open them!

The only major category that hasn't been carefully arranged is the most difficult of all: the thousands of random bolts, nuts, nails,  and screws currently strewn across several plastic bins......

Cheap and Easy

We got scared last Friday when we learned our oil tank was broken. We could have needed a new tank or new pipes (and new brick, mortar and cement). Instead, we needed a new mushroom cap. Of course, that $5-$10 part costs significantly more when professionals get involved. But still, it could have been a lot worse.

It seemed that the reason our pipe wasn't whistling was because it had gotten full of gunk. The mesh filter had been pushed down a little ways into the pipe and clogged with debris and dead bugs. Take off the old cap, put on a new one, and we were good to go. See the pretty new top? Shiny!

 We were very relieved to come home the next day to a full tank of oil. All fixed!

Very Belated Holiday Wishes

This holiday season has been a rather hectic one for various personal reasons and we had so many home-related updates to share that I never quite got around to putting up a holiday post. I had nearly no time to reflect on the year and our goals for the next one.

I realized this weekend as I took down the Christmas decorations that I hadn't even bothered to photograph them first. We didn't put up a tree this year because I just couldn't face the task of moving all the furniture around and getting glitter everywhere. And since putting up the tree is supposed to be fun - if it wasn't going to be, then it wasn't worth doing (I know I sound like a bit of a Scrooge). But we still decorated the house with lots of ribbon, candles, and greenery. Here's one of the few pictures to come out of the season - our candy cane and ornament centerpiece.

As an aside, let me highlight the cool work that went into the glittery pedestal on the right. Mom had a few old brass candlesticks destined for the donation bin. She had read an article about how to spruce them up and we gave it a try on this one - a few hits with a spray primer and then a few with Krylon Glitter Blast in Silver Flash made it a festive piece indeed.

Still, I'm a purist and had a moment of sadness for the loss of the pretty brass color. She gave us a few extra sets to paint various glittery and festive colors, but I lost my nerve and they are still sitting in my drawer in their tarnished brassy glory.

To keep with the Bah-humbug holiday theme we took the easy way out and found that Amazon had an instant video of a crackling fire. But of course it was only a joke - on Christmas day D still built us a beautiful fire in the fireplace and, according to my own tradition, roasted marshmallows.

May your year be a happy one full of fun home projects and no unexpected, expensive repairs!

If it's not one thing, it's another

Well, we fixed the heat and got a shiny new thermostat. We thought we were done. But the house had other plans. It seems our oil tank is on the fritz...

Last month when we got our regular oil delivery, we noticed they only filled about 5 gallons - much less than we needed. When we called, the heating company did not know what the problem was and assured us that they would fill it to the top next time. We thought maybe the truck was out of fuel or something.

Fast forward to last Friday. We had another scheduled delivery and this time, D happened to be home. The delivery guy rang the doorbell and said that we had a problem.

First, a review of how oil fill-ups work (I didn't know any of this until this weekend) - the giant fuel hose hooks into the black pipe and dispenses oil. The other pipe to the right lets out air from the tank as it's filling with fuel. It should whistle. When it stops whistling, there is no more air in tank and that means it is full. So this time around (and, presumably, the last time as well), when the delivery guy started filling up the fuel, there was silence. No whistle. That should mean that the tank is full, which it clearly isn't after two months of use.

This can mean a couple of things - the easiest and cheapest problem would be that the whistle is just broken. The hardest is that there is something wrong with the tank. Somewhere in the middle is the possibility that there is something wrong with the pipe connecting the two.

The pipe leaves the tank and immediately becomes embedded in concrete...ugh...

So this could mean busting up part of the wall in the basement, depending on what the repair folks can figure out about the problem. It will certainly mean getting into the crawl space to look around. Right now we are on about a quarter tank of fuel so the situation is not yet dire. They first said they would come on the 14th but we asked them to please squeeze us in sooner and they are coming on Tuesday. Hopefully whatever the problem is, they can fix it quickly.

While we were getting our heating pipes fixed, the repairman tried to sell us on the joys of gas. Our neighborhood already has it, so we would just need to connect to the pipe in the street. Still, it wouldn't be cheap, or easy. And while it would mean some added benefits like being able to buy a gas stove, I'm still not sure it is worth it.

At least for now, we are stuck with having to fix the tank, since any switch to gas would take a lot longer than we have fuel - I assume it's usually something to do once the heat is off for the year.

In related news, our Nest has now learned how incredibly slowly our house heats up. We usually drop the temperature during the day while we are gone, and have it set to be back up to a more comfortable temperature when we come home. When I got home a few hours early last week, I learned that bumping it up just 1 degree takes the house 45 minutes! Yikes!