Hood project, kitchen discovery, boiler check

Today's post is a catch-up on a few little issues of note.

Hood Project:
First, as you can see from the Flickr pictures, we got the hood up. Actually, our good friend Matt got the hood up. Thanks, Matt! So it's functioning as an air re-circulator and light. We're working on getting a guy here to hook up the duct-work, which is what those pictures are about.

Kitchen Discovery:
While Matt was working on getting the hood up, he discovered that a large part of the wall by the hood/stove area appeared to be magnetic. Weird. While digging around in that wall, looking to find a way to thread the new electrical connectors for the fan/light through the wall, he discovered some strange red metal:

Upon further investigation, it appears that this wall was at some point TILED IN RED TIN! Amazing! Here's a tile Matt managed to pull out of there:


Also, keep in mind that the floor (see earlier post) was a green marble-ized paint job. Whoa!

Boiler Check:
Yesterday, our plumber came and did the check-up and clean-out of our gas boiler (it had been two years since we'd had it done). He also replaced the glass that lets us see the water level. Nice. So we're all ready when we have to put on the heat.

That's about it from 83 Durant. We're putting away the air conditioners, getting out the cardigans. I love fall in New England. My book deadline looms, but hopefully we'll do some fun things and have some blog posts next month.

Stove!

Here's the long-awaited post on the NEW STOVE! Hooray!

Jake did the research on getting a new stove way back before we left for vacation. We have gas (ha!) and Jake did research on Consumer Reports and whatnot to find what we wanted. He also did some sweet sweet bargaining, doing some internet sleuthing for a good deal, and finally taking that deal to Home Despot, where they gave us a price 10% cheaper than Best Buy was going to give us. Nice move! We also got a free delivery deal, and some kind of rebate thingie. All in all, good work on Jake.

Upon our return from vacation, we had the impending stove delivery to deal with, combined with the getting rid of the old stove, which is still actually functioning. Just for old time's sake, here's our old stove (with the final blueberry-peach crisp it baked for us sitting on top):


You may remember it from stories such as the time we used a bungee cord to fix it, or the time Jake fixed it with help from some random dude he found through the internets. Good times, good times.

We were very hopeful that we could find it a new home, and Craig's List didn't fail us. Magee stoves w/ built-in heaters actually are pretty popular out here for folks who want to heat small cottages or apartments. The company doesn't exist anymore, but the old stoves don't die -- they are built to last. We actually sold the thing for $150, which was a nice bonus. (Yes, we fully disclosed all info about the stove to the buyer).

The new stove and matching hood was delivered and the old one taken away; the only thing left was to hook up the new one. Should we call a professional for this job? Well, maybe. But instead, Jake took on the project, with the professional help of our good friend Matthew. Thank you Matthew, for overseeing the potentially very dangerous gas hook up!

So here's the stove, in action (cooking breakfast!):


We also have the matching hood, which we need to install. The old hood was the kind which recirculated the air right back into the kitchen. So in other words, it was pretty much useless. This means we have a bit of a project ahead of us, installing the new hood so that it actually vents outside. This will be a very big improvement on the kitchen (and hopefully enable us to start a kitchen painting project!), but will take some engineering. This will NOT be a do-it-ourselves project. We have professionals on board, and hopefully we'll be having it done in the next few weeks.

I know our loyal readers will be disappointed if we omit the gorey details and associated discoveries that the new stove hook up created. So for those of you who still care, here's what it looked like when we took the old stove out:




That black pipe on the left is the gas hook up. Jake (w/ Matt's assistance) took the top part off, and hooked up the flexible gas hook-up right above the shut-off valve.

And here's a close up of that hole:



The hole is where the heater vented outside, through the chimney. New gas stoves don't need this kind of vent, so now we just have a hole there. After we get the hood hooked up and whatnot, we'll close up this hole and tile over it. No one will ever know it was there. Unless they read this blog. We feel this is a better solution than what was done with another hole in this same chimney.

And here's a close up of the flooring underneath the stove:


Take a good, close look. Does that look like a piece of linoleum to you? Yeah, it did to us, too. We thought that was weird. But what's really weird is that that is actually a piece of plywood that has been PAINTED and made to look like linoleum. Someone apparently took quite a bit of time, using green paint as well as white and black, and various faux-finish techniques to make this look like marbled linoleum.

All that, for a piece of floor that is UNDER the oven. That seems crazy. Why do that? I am intrigued by the suggestion that Matt made that perhaps, at one point, the ENTIRE KITCHEN FLOOR was actually done in this way, and when someone came along and tiled it (which is what we see on the rest of the floor) they just cut away around the stove, leaving this piece un-tiled underneath. This actually makes a fair amount of sense, given the rough cut look of the edges. But seriously, can you imagine the entire floor being painted like this?

So far, the new stove has been awesome. It has several different-sized burners, as well as a huge center burner that can be used with a griddle (see above photo). It also has a warming drawer underneath for all those big dinner parties. Yes! The big thing is that it's BIG. Actually, the outside dimensions are smaller than the McGee, but without that heater on the side, the oven itself -- inside -- is MUCH larger. We're happy about this. We're also happy that, you know, the door closes, the light works, and we can see through the window to what's cooking inside.

I will say that one down side to the new gas stove is the fact that it relies on an electric ignition. This is probably safer, and perhaps more energy efficient than the always-on-pilot light that the McGee had, but, when the power went out, our McGee still worked. That was a nice feature. With the new stove, if we lose power, the stove won't work either. Sigh. But overall, this is a nice step up.

Welcome to 83 Durant, New Stove!

P.S. For any of our readers who knew me sometime around 1990, this post may bring to mind an appropriate sound-track for reading this post: the song "Stove" by the Lemonheads. It's a rather charming, sad song about a guy who misses his old stove. Refrain:
I miss my stove. She's all alone.
She's right out front and looks a mess.
Unwanted guest. We lied to her.
I miss my stove. Feel sad I guess.

I suspect Mr. Dando wasn't really talking about his stove. At least we know that our old stove is living a useful life for someone else's house. No hard feelings, stove.

Appliance Death-Watch: Stove

We've had some trouble with our stove. You may remember our troubles with the door (and the bungee-cord solution) or the time it stopped working, but Jake fixed it. Recently, it's been on the fritz a little more frequently. A couple of time the oven pilot light has gone out, and we had another incident like the previous one, where it seems that the sensor was dirty (but Jake was able to fix it again). All this has us thinking that perhaps we should get a new stove before this one kicks it and we're left with a raw turkey on Thanksgiving, or some other such ill-timed demise.

There are some truly awesome things about our stove. The first is that since it doesn't have an electric ignition, even if the power goes out, we can use the stove and oven. This is a nice feature. There is also a heater in the stove. We don't particularly need the heater, but apparently, this particular model of stove is very popular here in New England, especially for small apartments and beach cottages, where the stove can also serve as a heater for a small space. We've been told that we should sell it, since it will be in demand. If you know anyone in the market for a McGee, let us know!

Meanwhile, we're on the hunt for a new stove. We're also hoping that when we get it hooked up, we'll also get a real hood. The current one just blows the greasy/smokey air right back into the kitchen. The stove is up against a chimney, so we're hoping we can vent such a hood right out of the chimney. Currently, the chimney is only used to vent the stove, but, as we understand it, the new model stoves don't need an outside vent. We're still looking into this, but, again, for all our mechanically-inclined and general home-knowledge-inclined, we'd love to hear your advice on whether such a venting via the chimney is possible/safe.

Small update

So Lucy has sorta put the blog on hold for quite some time now. We don't really do much home improvement, other than taking dirty diapers out to the trash (a definite improvement). Things are going pretty well. After a few days of much fussing and very few long stretches of sleep, Lucy slept last night from 7:45 pm until 5 am this morning. For those of you who can still do math, that's OVER NINE HOURS! We've been reading two sleep books (The No Cry Sleep Solution and Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child) to figure out how to get Lucy into napping more during the day. Maybe if she does, I'll start posting more.

We have another stove update: the oven door is broken. For a few days, it was just "a little bit broken," meaning, the oven door didn't shut all the way, but you could still use it. Now it is in full scale broken-ness, meaning that the oven door will not stay closed at all, unless it is held up, say, by something like your hand, or, as you can see here, a bungee cord:


Any suggestions from our readers that don't involve bungee cords or buying a new stove? I know, I know, someone is going to complain about why I'm so down on bungee cords (see this post for my previous anti-bungee-solution stance).

In other small updates, those of you who were our guests last winter will be pleased to hear that our heating system is not nearly as noisy as it was last year. Those of you who have had the pleasure of sleeping at 83 Durant in the winter time may remember some scary pipe and radiator banging. Apparently the poltergeist living in our boiler has left. Perhaps it was the boiler cleaning, or perhaps it was the new steam vents, but it's much nicer this year. We do need to re-shim this radiator:

Because it seems to be the biggest source of banging right now. But other than that, we have mostly peaceful nights (except for that whole baby waking every four or five hours situation).

Long time, no blog

I haven't managed to blog in over a month, for reasons that can be summed up in one word: Lucy. I have her in the Baby Bjorn right now, where she's alternately sleeping and nursing. I'm taking a break from grading to do a long-awaited blog update.

Obviously, things around 83 Durant have changed enormously. Every room in the house is in complete disarray. We did manage to get a Christmas tree while Jessamy was visiting. It's pretty funny looking, but I like it.

In other repair news, we had to get a new kitchen faucet after my mom discovered a substantial leak running under the sink. We didn't know how old the faucet set was, so we ended up getting a new one installed (back on December 5th, for future reference). The faucet head pulls out to be a sprayer hose, a feature we like a lot.


We had another kitchen failure this week: the oven stopped working. We were a bit distressed by this, particularly when Jake discovered it when he was about to put a batch of cookies in the oven, and while we had a whole chicken in the fridge that we had planned to roast for dinner. The stove is pretty old, but we like it, and in any case, we weren't exactly prepared for such an expenditure or the researching of the right stove.



So we did the usual: turned to the internet. If you google "Magee Stove" you'll find very little useful information. You will find this hilarious link, which is to a letter to the editor of the MIT newspaper announcing the candidacy of a Magee stove for student body president. Follow the link -- it's really funny.

Jake thought this link from a do it yourself message board was promising, and he actually called a guy's home phone number to ask for help. Jake will hopefully fill in the details here about the exchange, but after a few back and forth phone calls, the guy talked Jake through how to fix the stove! It was awesome!

That's all for now. I imagine our home projects (and the blogging about them) will be slowing down. We'll try to keep getting the pictures up on Flickr for your enjoyment! Happy Holidays from 83 Durant!