Busy Day: Furnace, Insulation and Peaches

Last week of August, two months before the weather starts to turn, we got our shiny new gas furnace installed, replacing the old sooty oil furnace. Rakeesh (the plumber), a type-A maniac from Guyana with four cell phones strapped to his belt like magazine cartridges, and his crew of three men, drove up at 11:30 am, just after the street cleaning vacuum truck passed by. It took 4 guys to unload the Burnham Furnace out of the van. They disconnected the old pipes and reinstalled bigger pipes to code.

The van that the boiler was delivered in. Notice how all the guy's homeland is represented on the graphics.

We disconnected the rest of the radiators on the second floor and moved the stove, so that I could demo the parapet wall and Joe Taco could look at the framing job that had to be done in that section of the house.

The parapet is the money pit of the job. It's where all the water from the roof drains onto and has been a problem area for a while, judging from the leaks on the floor below. We decided that the whole section needs to be redone; re-framed, re-insulated, re-plastered and concreted. But since we are technically starting from scratch, we get to redesign the area, which means we will be putting in French doors in the place of the windows, making the little parapet a lovely outdoor cafe on the second floor, as well as becoming the smoking section for our guests, when we have parties.

Last weekend, Harley and I also began putting up the first layer of insulation.

before

and after insulation.

At the end of the day we gave the plumbers some peaches picked from our second harvest. We also realized that to keep the peaches from getting out of control, we need to pick a bowl full everyday.

Our First Harvest

Now that the oil tank had been vacuumed out, I thought it was a good time to work on the outside garden. Also there was wood piling up in the garage from the demolition, that we couldn't easily throw away, I decided to make use of it and build a compost container. Queens Botanical Garden had sent us a pamphlet on how to get started, and what not to put into the compost.
I spent a few hours trimming the peach tree and thinning out the grape vine. At the end of the day, we had about 6 bags of yard waste, and with the construction garbage piling up in the garage, we didn't want to put the new bags on the curb.
The compost bin is built with old 2x4 and the wood lathe from the upstairs walls. Chaim thought it looked like a pig pen. With so much wood lathe left over, we probably could raise some pigs in the side yard. I wonder if you need a permit for that....

Our first grape harvest! We believe they are concord grapes.

The first peach to become pink.
In a few weeks hopefully we can make some peach cobbler.

A few weeks ago we began collecting rain water, trying to be more Eco-conscious. Here is our small collection system. It began to storm and we were bummed to see that our plastic system had only collected about one inch of water.

We later went upstairs to see the gutter from the roof was emptying gallons and gallons of water onto our first floor roof parapet. We realized that the next time it rains, we need to funnel the rain water from the roof, and forget about our Poland Springs bottle system.

Let There Be Lite

After a month of construction, we finally have electricity on the second floor and garage, no walls but power!

After the insulation and drywall is put up, then we can install the ceiling fans and switch plates.

Panel with added switches. Now we are waiting for an all house surge protector, a little box that will connect to this box essentially turning our whole house into a power strip. Hopefully we can get one from the brother-in-law. No more extension cords!

Eureka! Eureka! Oil Tank Mystery Solved

Chaim posing with the oil vacuum truck

When we bought the house, we knew that we would have to decommission the buried oil tank in the side yard. The problem was that everyone we got estimates from (Oil company that used to deliver the fuel, to 3 different contractors) could tell us what size the tank was. The best guess was that it was either a 550 gallon or 1100 gallon tank. If it was a 1100 gal tank, that would mean a space the size of a small studio apartment was buried in the side yard.

The oil tank was the scariest unknown of our whole construction job. We had read and heard nightmares of people going bankrupt because of oil spills. Chaim told me that his brother-in-law's company had moved to Iowa because of a 250 million dollar law suit for contaminated soil in North Carolina. When we told one of Chaim's High School buddies named Captain Video, about the fear of oil in the ground, he came back with - "where did all the damn oil come from in the first place?"
hmmmmmmm, something to think about as we called the final company for an estimate.

Today two guys from Pro-Test, Andres and Tommy, the company we had hired for the soil test, came to cut and clean out the tank. Whew!

After they cut the top of the fill pipe in the front of the yard, the guys took a brand new tape measure and used it to see how far back the tank was buried in the yard. They stuck it into the hole just like putting a dipstick into a car to check the oil level. After pulling out an oily tape measure, they told me the tank was buried 26 feet back.

Next they dug up a 4x4 foot perfect square down to the top of the tank. Andres used a gasoline powered saw to cut this hole into the tank. Here is the cut hole with smoke coming out of it.



Then another company drove up, double parked in front and vacuumed the oil out of the hole.








Here is a view of the empty tank with the sludge at the bottom.

Yuck!

While the guys were occupied in their quadrant of the yard, Chaim took the opportunity to use their shovels to dig up the ivy roots.
At first we liked the look of ivy on the brick, giving it a nice collegiate feel. But later with our new home owner eyes, realized that the vines were not so good for the mortar on the brick and it was filled with bugs.
So a week ago we had cut the vines and they had all died, still clinging to the side of the building, and with every breeze, bringing a bit of fall early to 54th street, as brown leaves swirled about on the street. In one week, the hardy tough roots had began to sprout new ivy. So Chaim was determined not to have to keep battling with them. He was going to get to the root of the problem.
Tommy told Chaim at one point to go to their truck and get a tool called a mattock (similar to a pickaxe), to really do the job right. Here is a picture of Chaim with their array of orange painted tools battling it out with the tough roots.
After the tank was vacuumed out, Andres donned a Yellow suit and jumped into the hole to clean out the sludge. He told me that the tank was 4 feet in diameter but could not tell me how big it was until he was inside. As he was sludging out, I yelled down- "Well, how big is it?????"

In a resparator muffled voice he answered back-
"2000 gallons"

Holly crap!
Chaim and I looked at each other as dollar signs added up in our brains.

After about 10 minutes, Andres climbed out of the hole and said, "Just kidding, it's only a 550 gallon tank"

Ha Ha.

Now we have a 55 gallon drum of oil sludge sitting in the yard, to be picked up before next week. The guys filled in the hole and put a temporary PVC pipe from the tank so that in a week or so, another crew can come to fill the empty space with foam and sand. Then we can all exhale a sound of relief from this ordeal.

The Multi Ethnic Mart

On 58th Street where Roosevelt and Woodside Avenue intersect sits a small grocer called Big Boy's Farm. We assumed that it is Latin owned since it is packed with Mexican products, and an array of Goya products I've never seen. The first time we went in to inspect the produce, we were very impressed with all the fresh herbs

yerba buena

papalo

and greens we hadn't seen before. What was even better was that they are all labeled with hand written signs in English.

As with most immigrant run businesses, there are one or two humorous spelling errors in the store. We now call the store the Bong Juice Seller.


The other night, we stopped in to get some watercress and watermelon. As we stood on line, I noticed that the Asian man and customer were conducting the exchange speaking Japanese.

When I got up to the counter, I asked him
"anata wa nihonjin desu ka?".
(are you Japanese?)

And he answered back in Japanese that he is Kankoku jin (Korean.)
He asked me: "Furusato wa dokodesuka?" (where is your hometown?)
Then told me that he had lived in Kobe for a time.

As we were leaving, Chaim told the Korean man, who spoke Japanese, behind the counter at the Mexican Grocery store:
"Muchos Kamsahamnida", and I said "Oyasuminasai!"

A Four Dollar Movie

We discovered our local movie theater this week. On Tuesdays, all day, you can see a movie for $4.00!!!!!! That means that 3 people can see a film for almost the same price of one ticket in Manhattan. They also have matinee prices: any show before 5pm is $5.00.

The films are your usual mega-plex fare, but for $4, I'd sit through almost anything on a hot summer day or night. This evening we saw "The Bourne Ultimatum". It was not as bad as we expected, and we actually thought it was pretty good. But it was a $4 good. We probably would have been more critical if we had paid $10.50.

The Sunnyside Cinema definitely has character. The interior hasn't been updated since probably the 1970's, the films are scratchy and there is soda splashed on the screen. But I can't believe it's only 4 bucks!!!!!!!!!

Ode to Julius Schmidt

While tearing out the plaster and lathe walls, the guys unhooked the main radiators so we could get behind them to frame out the window wall. These old behemoths are very heavy (about 300 lbs each) but beautiful at the same time. We plan to get rid of them and install baseboard heat, similar to what is used in Europe.

These old radiators and the heat brings me back to another day from my past.
My sophomore year at the Kansas City Art Institute, our professor Dale Eldred brought in his friend, Julius Schmidt, a master caster. He had been teaching at the University of Iowa, but rumor had it that his way of casting was not up to the safety standards so OSHA periodically shut down his foundry. In the casting world, he was a legend. He is responsible for introducing iron casting to the academic art departments first at Cranbrook Academy, by designing his own furnace system and was so dedicated to his craft that he had a cult-like following.

I remember the casting process being very strenuous and built muscles in my arm I never knew I had. The first week with Julius, he drove a group of us to the local dump to look for old cast iron radiators. We hauled the heavy pile of scrap back to the sculpture studio and then took turns crushing the radiators into 3" pieces with a heavy sledgehammer. That took about a week, hammering every day. We looked and felt like ex-cons working on a chain gang.

Julius taught us the process of melting iron in a cupola of his own design. He used a method discovered during the Industrial Revolution, of alternating coke (derived from coal) with the iron to to be used as fuel. The handful of us donned heavy leather gloves, jackets and boots in the late September heat and spent hours shoveling the mixture into the furnace.

When Chaim and I first came to our house to an open house and met the owner, Rachel White, I noticed a cast iron sculpture of a nude figure in the side garden. Rachel told us she had graduated from Alfred in the sculpture department and had studied with Julius Schmidt. She had bought the building hoping to turn it into a sculpture studio and make art. Unfortunately the grind of this city chewed her up and spit her out, landing her in Coral Gables Florida.

I hope this does not become my fate.
Julius Schmidt, is still alive and casting. I think he is probably in his eighties and is still a professor emeritus at University of Iowa.

The Crew of Joes

At 8:35 on a Sunday morning, Frankie and his crew of four people came to begin the electric job on the house; Ralphie, Joe, Johnny and Ralphie's brother, who we thought was named Spencer, but later found out his name is also Joe.

We got lucky with the weather, and it wasn't as brutal as it had been. Very efficiently they snaked cables, drilled holes, knocked out patches of plaster and re-filled the holes. They also convinced me that I can frame out the whole house and save $1000. So tomorrow I order about 50 2x4s to begin the framing job, and hope to have it finished before we order the sheet rock. The guys left around 6pm after a few Heineken's. All in all, it was a very pleasant and an unsweaty day for me.

Trash Pickup: Second Round

Joe Taco told Chaim that Joe the Malaysian from High Pearl Seafood Restaurant (one of Chaim's favorites) is in the garbage business. So for our next 2 tons (and hopefully our last) of garbage awaits in the garage for the second dumpster to arrive.

Chaim and Dumpster guy taking a quick break before our final garbage is driven away.

Mondays and Thursdays are garbage pickup days. So last Wednesday, Chaim stocked our fridge with beer and seltzer and went to the bank to get some cash for "Operation Sanitation Bribe". The plan was to run outside when we saw the city garbage men and palm a $20, give them some refreshment, in the hope to get them to take some of our bags. Unfortunately they were gone by the time we woke up.

At around 12pm, we heard the noise of garbage trucks, so Chaim ran outside to try again. Ray, the developer from down the street was already outside shaking his head. Apparently, the truck had gone by but the Sanitation Police was trailing behind, so "Operation Bribe" was abandoned for the whole block once again.

Rebirth Of A Salesman

Unlike Arther Miller's play, the salesmen in the year 2007 are still alive and kicking. They no longer go door to door, but they still carry their travel cases and sample kits and drive over to make house calls.

This was the week of window estimates. I've seen a lot of windows and been fed so much technical information about vinyl welding, double pane, triple pane, Argon gasses, Krypton gasses, and what the standards for UV coating, bla bla bla bla bla..... And since these gases are clear and odorless, who would know that these so called energy efficient windows have Krypton in them, unless Superman was trying to break in.

All of the schpeal is actually quite boring and my eyes begin to glaze over after the first 10 minutes. We just want some windows, and anything is going to better than the 1930s single pane, cracked and rotting away framed windows we have, so we are easy customers.

We got three very different quotes, each $1000 different from each other, but the quality seem the same. The first salesperson who came to the house was actually a woman. The first woman I've dealt with in over a month, which was very refreshing. She looked like the typical lesbian gym teacher (short hair, golf shirt with company logo and buff) but was very efficient, knew her stuff and did not try to sell us anything we didn't need. We liked her the best out of the lot.