Not much progress was made on the Baltimore house last weekend. As you saw from yesterday's post, there was a great accomplishment, but not much progress.
Friday we got the drier moved to the basement. Yummy brought a dolly (sp?) from work. But when we went down the second step there was a bang, things got away from me, and I caught the drier by it's power cord before it got too far. Mind you, I didn't tell Yummy that until she was holding up the other end. Not on purpose. It just didn't come up. It turned out that the handle on this dolly extended and there was a missing support pin to keep it from coming out.
Saturday we took the washing machine outside and down the basement steps out back. I forget that using a dolly to move thing changes their dimensions. If we'd carried the washer with moving straps we would have been fine. The dolly tilts the load and makes it harder to take narrow corners. We had to wiggle the washer around a short passage and move the dolly over the washer and... well, the important thing is that it's done. Then we ran it and found out that our three legged utility sink had a U trap full of sand. Thanks contractors.
And Yummy stood up too soon coming out of the basement. She cracked her head and was woozy for the rest of the day.
Instead of slinging mortar like we planned, we worked outside. I weed whacked the yard, Yummy cleared leaf debris and cat poop out of the window well. Then we started cleaning the alley. Yummy had really thick plastic gloves for cleaning the yard of an abandoned house while I went along raking and sweeping the alley.
Next weekend is a neighborhood clean up that we're helping to organize. The city is providing us with a WHOLE DUMPSTER for the neighborhood. I may have mentioned our meeting at the incinerator a few weeks ago. They're providing extra dumpsters, moving equipment, and personnel to help clean the neighborhood. So we were getting a start on our alley. After cleaning the alley we met with one of the other organizers. Then we walked the major alleys in our neighborhood to find the popular dump sites to attack with front loaders. Yeah, a couple of white folks walking the alleys of Baltimore with a notepad and pencil. We probably shouldn't have survived that.
Lots done. Little of it on the house.
Sunday was frustrating. Two weekend from now we're running one part of another neighborhood cleanup. We were supposed to meet someone to see the site. But we got stuck in a 5K mosey for the Ronald McDonald House for 45 minutes. After cancelling that we tried to get something out of Yummy's storage locker, but it's too full to get anything specific out. On the way to a coworker's to drop off work Yummy's cousin called. She was passing through the state and wanted to have lunch. So that was nice. Lowes didn't have a radiator bleed key. And the hardware store we thought probably would have one was closed on Sunday. Still, needle nosed pliers did the trick of opening the bleed valves. That night I finally found the spigot for draining the radiator system and where the radiator and clean water systems connect so I can eventually refill the system. After draining everything I got two problem radiators unhooked and drained a bit more. I saved some of the water in a jar so I could play with the iron shavings suspended in the water. The smaller radiator got moved to the first floor on it's way to the basement. The larger will stay right where it is and go back on when we're done with the room.
Ok, maybe we did do a lot. Just not much that we'd planned to do.
1 comment:
When you are ambitious, it is hard to do as much as you plan to.
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