The Old Man and the Street

Today was the first day that it felt cool enough to turn on the heat in the house. The thermostat claimed it was 62F, so we set the heater for 68 and turned the system to “run”. I went around and opened the radiators that would open and skipped the ones with frozen valves. The valve on the radiator in the master bedroom just spun around and around without moving, so I left it alone, hoping that it was broken in the “open” position.

I would like to note that our radiator system does not use steam to heat the radiators, but instead uses hot water. This detail is vitally important to the next part of this story.

A few hours later, M. called down to tell me that the radiator in the master bedroom was still ice cold. I went up and fiddled with the valve a bit, and upon noticing that it didn’t seem to be going up or down, which I’ve always assumed is what valves did as they opened or closed. So, feeling clever, I pulled the valve upwards as I turned it up. I then found myself standing straight up with the valve in my left hand, and a lovely seven foot high geyser of water coming straight up out of the radiator, me thinking, “Hmm, that’s just a bit unusual.”

I hurriedly jammed my thumb onto the open hole where the valve recently sat, yelling at M. to run and get some rags. After stopping the flow (the pressure in the system is only about 14PSI), I thought about how to restore valve A to orifice B without flooding the bedroom. I decided that a quick-change maneuver was in order, and held the valve knob and stem near the valve opening. I counted to ten, pulled my thumb off the opening, and jammed the valve stem back in as hard as I could–it stayed in place, but to be safe, I wrapped it down tightly with plastic wrap and tape. I made a mental note not to pull on any more radiator valves.

The house came with this swingset in the backyard

but we really don’t have any use for it, so I called up my friend J., who has twin 2 year olds, and asked him if he wanted. Well, “free” is J.’s favorite word, so he drove over in his truck and J., D., and myself set to work taking the set apart.

As I ducked down to start removing the bolts that held the bottom parts together, I noticed some writing under the swingset:

Joe and Augie, if you’re reading this, sorry about the toys, but they had to go. 🙂

On Saturday, I mentioned that the phone wasn’t working, but that the buttons made tone noises. It seemed really weird at the time, but I couldn’t make sense of it.

In the shower this morning, I was thinking about this problem, and it finally occurred to me that the phone was behaving exactly as though it was off the hook. A mild wave of nausea passed over me as I contemplated the task of rewiring all the phones.

I let my mind drift, and suddenly something clicked. I went into mental steadicam mode: starting in the front yard, through the front door, down the basement stairs, into the back part of the basement, and zooming right up to a telephone sitting on top of an old board that had been nailed across two rafters. The phone was, of course, off the hook.

I remembered seeing this phone during our inspection, but don’t recall if it was off the hook or not but I can only guess that it was.

I mentioned this odd vision to M. this morning, and as I walked to the house after work to meet her there, my cell rang, and the originating number was the house. Sure enough, she had found the phone and was calling me from the new phone.

So now, infinity minus one things left to worry about.

Walking back from lunch, we met a few neighbors on the street and found out the backstory behind the house across the street.

It’s a beautiful home with 12 foot ceilings, plenty of stained glass, and a backyard that would give Butchart Gardens a run for its money. It was for sale about the same time as our house, so we snooped around when it had an open house, but was waaaaay too big for us (not to mention way too pricey). As I told the Mrs., we’d need GPS’s and walkie-talkies to find each other in there.

The weird thing about the house was that, according to city records, the owner had purchased it a year ago, and was now selling it. This is somewhat unusual to begin with, but even moreso in the case of this house, which has some historical significance (despite the aluminum siding–ick).

Anyway, the neighbor who lives to the left of this house explained to us that the owner bought the house and moved in with his wife and young daughter. Six months later, they moved out and into a new house in the suburbs.

It turns out that their daughter had been eating lead paint chips and got really sick. Really scary stuff.

Here’s hoping that she’s since gotten better.

After living in a condo for three years, my wife and I bought our first house today.

When we went over for the walkthrough, we found an electrician in the backyard, digging a trench to run a new line out to the garage, which had shorted out (again) the night before. “Jeff” assured us that he’d be all finished by the time we got back from the closing.

So off to the 1:00 closing, which turned out to be in the back room of a local law office which was already in the back room of a local insurance office.

Coincidentally, the back room in question was a mere five feet behind the back wall of the deli of our favorite local grocery store.

It was just that kind of place.

Anyway, our attorney was late, then the bank took forever to put the loan through and we didn’t get out of there until 10 to 4. We grabbed some sandwich fixins from the deli next door and headed back to the house to eat and wander around the house enjoying our new purchase and waiting to get an estimate on refinishing our floors.

The “Floor Guys” were a father and son team, and couldn’t have been any nicer… there’s a very good chance we’ll go with them.

We (my wife M. and I) have been looking for a house for almost a year now. We’ve taken quite some time because we were looking for some very specific things in a home:

• An older home (> 75 years old) that is architecturally interesting
• Walking distance to public transportation
• A garage (or space to build one)
• A full basement

We’ve looked at over 70 houses and been to countless open houses. Finally, our search is over: today we went under contract to buy our house. Here it is: