6th Mensiversary

Happy New Year. I wish you all the best in 2013 and more so for this overly prolonged renovation.

I was hoping that the new year will bring some good luck to this seemingly ill fated project. Basically everything that could gone wrong indeed went terribly wrong. Ok, maybe not everything, but definitely way too many.

As the 6th month rolls around, we are dealing with details now. On this mensiversary day, there are quite a few activities:

Radiant Heat Boiler - Lipp Hydronics Inc.

The weather has been constantly below freezing these days so finally on Sunday 12/30 I was thinking that the heater should be turned to at least 55 to make sure that the pipe won't burst. Well, no actions from the old radiant heat boiler...dead silence. I called the reliable Lipp Hydronics Inc. for a check up, but of course everyone is having heating problem so Mr. Bill Lipp didn't show up until today 1/3. The first thing he did was pump up the temperature gauge to 90. And guess what, the boiler started cranking. He told me that half of the house calls he made had this problem. Homeowners shut down the system during the summer months and then to reactivate all you need is to crank it up high, basically disregard the temperature setting. He also checked the pressure and the valves. So to make sure all is well the temp needs to remain at 90 overnight to make sure the boiler keeps working. I'm just thankful that I don't need a new boiler and that the heating is working. So next time if your boiler seems to be on strike, turn the temperature to 90 and save yourself $145.

Liebherr Refrigerator

There has been a problem with the installation of the fridge for over a month now (I was just ignoring the issue). The strip of wood at the top of the opening is too low for the fridge to go in. There has been a few rounds of adjustment, apparently it still doesn't work. So finally Peter suggested to take the strip off, put the fridge in and then adjust the wood. That should be simple enough, but now after the fridge is plugged in it is making so much noise that I need to track down Liebherr to ask for a technician to come and look at it. Why can't the fridge just plug in and work? It's hard not to feel that bad luck is just following me around. Of course I spend more than an hour doing this and the technician won't contact me until next week to set up an appointment. 

The gap on the top where the wrongly dimensioned wood strip was.

Bosch Dishwasher

Same issue with the dishwasher. It won't go in. At least now that the wood is taken out and the dishwasher is in, I haven't gotten any complaints that it's not working, yet. Really, it's ok? I sure do hope so.

Again, the gap was wrongly calculated.

Baldwin Door Handles - PullsDirect.com

The door handles were ordered on 12/3. Finally on 1/3 they arrived. I ordered 2 entry handles (keyed), 1 left handle and 1 right handle. They have different model numbers.

Baldwin EN.TUB.R.CRR

Baldwin EN.TUB.L.CRR

I ordered 6 privacy handles with lock, 3 left handles and 3 right handles with different model numbers.

Baldwin PV.TUB.L.CRR

Baldwin PV.TUB.R.CRR

Well, they took a good month and then completely ignore the order and sent me all right handles. What's the model numbers for? So I called them and of course I need to send the wrong ones back before they send out the correct ones again. I still wasn't too unhappy yet, just cursing about my bad luck. But after talking to Miss Emily on the phone I finally received an replacement order email with 4 right handles, not left. Seriously, this is a very simple order. PullsDirect can get it wrong twice? So the order is to send back 4 right handles and then receive another 4 right handles? And they sell door hardware? Dealing with left and right shouldn't be this difficult, especially for a business that's center around shipping door handles. They all have left and right versions. Towards the end of today I still haven't gotten a straight answer yet and I was on the phone for 2 hours. Think again before you order anything from PullDirect.com!