Saturday, January 3, 2015

The house smells heavenly right now...

The house smells heavenly right now...  My lovely bride is making her signature chili, and the smells of meat and spices and tomatoes is pervading the house.  It will be several hours before it's ready to eat, and I'll be drooling with anticipation that entire time.  I handle this by carrying a towel around to wipe up the drool as necessary.

One of the hazards of cooking in a kitchen we just moved into is that we're missing staples normally on hand.  This has cost me two trips to the store already this morning, to buy bell peppers, bay leaves, and brown sugar.  The early morning staff at Ridley's was quite amused by my early purchases – and by my return trip.  I think they're placing bets on whether I'll need a third trip :)

Kudos...

Kudos ... to Door And Window Hardware for some excellent customer service.  I purchased some beautiful solid brass entrance door hardware (made by FPL) for our new barn.  These are both Kentucky companies, and may be related to each other.  There are two “sizes” of door hardware commonly sold (with a different “backset” – 2-3/8" or 2-3/4").  Before I ordered the hardware I measured our doors – but I screwed up somehow, and mistakenly ordered the wrong size.

This past Monday I called the folks at Door And Window Hardware, told them this is what they get for selling hardware to an idiot, and asked them what I could do to exchange what I bought for the correct size.  It turns out that there are two mechanisms (the deadbolt and the latch assemblies) that are different between the two sizes; all the other parts are the same.  So Jeff, the fellow I was talking with, offered to simply send me the correct parts for free, if I'd cover the shipping.  Of course I said yes to that, and yesterday (Friday) the parts arrived, along with a bill for $5.80 of shipping (the cost of the USPS Priority Mail box).

I can't imagine how the process of fixing my mistake could have been any simpler or more pleasant!  The FPL door hardware is beautifully made – solid and rugged, and I suspect will long outlast me.  Combine that with top-notch customer service and you've got a product that's hard to beat.  We'll be buying some new hardware for our house next year, and we'll be getting it from these folks...

Progress report...

Progress report...  Yesterday was one of those (pleasant!) days when we felt as though we'd accomplished a lot.

On the network side, I finally was able to bring up all the gear for the new house network.  It's all working as desired, with nothing left to do other than some documentation and cleaning up the wiring (which I'm going to start on as soon as I finish writing this).  After that, I'll be setting up the barn's network – but as it's a near duplicate of the house, that should go very easily.

We “hung” a bunch of stuff on walls yesterday – not pictures, but rather things like a key holder (a casting of cats facing away from you, with their tails making key hooks), our kitchen bell, etc.  Most of these things needed mounting hardware that we didn't already have, so we picked that up at Lowe's in the morning.

On the same trip, we dropped a bunch of stuff off at Deseret Industries (roughly, an LDS version of Goodwill – but better run).  We also took a turn through their store, to see if we could find an old used overstuffed chair or sofa to put in our cattery.  We don't want to put anything nice down there, as the cats would quickly shred it :)  They had a fairly large selection of chairs, and a couple sofas, all at very low prices (generally between $20 and $30), but none of them tickled Debbie's fancy.  We later stopped in at a furniture consignment store (Savvy) which had much nicer stuff (too nice for the cattery!) but at prices that looked to me to be about half to two thirds of new furniture.  Signs made it clear they'd negotiate, though (“Make us an offer!”), so I suspect those are just the starting point of a haggling session.  Not my style.  I wouldn't do well in the Middle East, where such haggling is de rigueur...

Our builder (Jim J.) has been beavering away in the nice, warm interior of our barn.  The heating system has been performing flawlessly for a over a week now.  I'm struck by two things about it: the evenness of the heat (it's perfect everywhere, with no drafts at all), and the nearly absolute silence of it.  I can only hear the boiler if I'm standing within 10 feet or so of it, and once the door to the mechanical room is installed, I'll bet I can only hear it from inside that room.  Jim's got all the first floor sheathing completed, and the cleanup done.  He's also got the partition for my office on the second floor finished, and there just some sheathing to finish up.  In a day or two he'll be ready to have the insulation guys come back to finish up the very last of the insulation work.  At that point, he'll have a bit of sheathing to finish up (maybe 3% of the entire job), a couple of interior doors to install – and he'll be finished.  Well, finished at least until spring, when he'll get the final exterior work done (stone washed and sealed, and siding painted).  I'm pretty sure that within two weeks, the interior of the barn will be ready for us to start my part of the work: installing lighting, electrical outlets, painting, finishing the office, etc.  Woo hoo!