Well, I Survived the Heat Wave
I’ve been racking my brain, trying to figure out where the last week went. I have no photos on my phone, and other than a lot of time sitting in front of the computer I can’t recall much of anything I got done. What the heck was going on?
Oh, yeah. I was hiding.
Trying not to melt or burst into flame.
It was hot here. Really hot. I saw outdoor temperatures at something like 38.4° C, which is basically 101° F. And sadly, the interior of the house was at 36° C at the peak. It was awful. The worst was last Monday, but the weekend was still very hot, and Tuesday was nasty as well. Finally, on Wednesday, the temperatures dropped appreciably.
So, for most of the week I did nothing. Didn’t leave the house, didn’t do normal chores, didn’t even get up out of a chair if I could avoid it. Simply standing up caused me to break into a sweat.
Ugh.
Once the heat let off, though, suddenly there were things to do, or that needed to get done. Most of that was stuff like laundry. Things I put off when the heat was too bad to let me do it, and nothing you care to hear about.
But I did manage to put caps on the tops of the old fence posts in the back yard. Here’s a very exciting photo:
I bought those plastic caps last year, after finally getting the old fence (that had been falling down) removed. Some of the old posts were still firmly in the ground, and since there is a pool in the yard behind us I didn’t feel a huge need to disturb them. But sticking up as they did was silly, so I cut them down to reasonable heights and bought caps.
As it happens the posts were so old that they were actually 4" x 4" in size, not the current 3.5" x 3.5" that we call a “4 by 4.” I had to find caps to fit them, and I did so. But getting them delivered took a while, and by the time I got them and got back out into the yard to install them, it had rained a fair bit.
And you know what happens to wood in the rain, right? It expands.
The caps would not go on.
I put them on a shelf and waited out the winter and much of the spring. Rain continued to fall in huge amounts, so there was no point in worrying about it. But now, after a week of record heat and no rain in some time, I was able to sneak them into place.
I have no idea if they will last. If the posts expand when it rains again they will crack the plastic and this will have been a pointless exercise. At that point I will have to make my own caps out of aluminum sheet or something similar if I really care. We’ll see.
Another very exciting thing that actually got done this week was this:
That’s right! I replaced that door latch on one of the French doors we have in the upstairs hall. Don’t I know how to live!
Back when we moved in that latch was stuck in the down position and corroded into place. It was, to be fair, 25 years old and probably rarely used. The little handle that lets you lift the pin was broken off as well. To extract the pin I had to take out the upper screw, bend the plate out, and lift the pin with pliers. It was a struggle. And of course without the lower pin the door didn’t close quite as tightly.
I went to the local home centre and bought a replacement, but then it rained. It turns out that replacing that latch requires taking the door off the hinges. Given the rain and cooler weather, I let it slide. The latch has been sitting on the shelf next to the post caps for something like eight months.
Yesterday, despite feeling a bit off (probably thanks to my second Covid vaccine shot), I finally took the door down and replaced the latch. There is a door seal on the bottom of the door that needed to come off to provide access, and the new latch pin is a larger diameter than the old one, so I had to expand the hole in the door frame as well. It was more work than I expected, but I did get it done.
While I was messing with those doors, I swapped the door handles. One had broken (I think I’ve mentioned this in the past) and it’s some weird Italian design that is both rare and weak:
I should not be able to pull the handle off like that, obviously. The square stock you see sticking out of the handle is broken at the end. It is supposed to go through to the handle on the other side, and a strange screw mechanism lets you tighten the handles up as needed, with a set screw locking them into place. But that square stock appears to be just pot metal, and it takes all the stress and torque when you open and close the door. It’s a problematic failure point.
Since one of the doors is usually latched into place (and it doesn’t require a handle to open that door in any case) I moved the broken handle to that side, and put the working one on the door we open more often.
But it won’t last. The “new” handle will probably break as well. I need to replace these, but that isn’t a simple job. The holes drilled into the door are much smaller than the usual size, and I am not certain they are even at one of the standard distances in from the door edge. To fix this I need to find a good replacement handle and the right tool for drilling holes in doors for door handles. The latter will have to be some sort of hole saw guide that I can clamp to the door itself, but things are tricky because of the edging strip seen on the right edge of the door in the photos above.
All in all, I am not certain of the best way to proceed with this, and need to do more research. Until then, swapping the handles and getting the broken one out of the way makes the most sense.
When I do find an answer, though, I will be replacing all of these idiotic Italian, non-velociraptor safe handles with something better. To be honest, the new ones will also probably not be velociraptor safe, but they will be better built than these things.
And that brings us to the end of the week.
No, really. I did the post caps on Wednesday and the door work on Thursday afternoon. The heat wave eliminated all desire to do anything for at least the previous four full days.
I wish I had more to share, but you can see I am now picking up the pieces (of door handle, in some cases) and getting on with long postponed projects. The bathroom would be done except for an ant invasion that we are still dealing with. I think the heat drove the ants indoors, and the bathroom I had been painting is ground zero. *sigh* The ant bait is working, but it takes time.
Oh, and Anne had her second vaccine shot yesterday, so she’s now the one not feeling all that well. But in just a couple of weeks we will be about as safe as it is possible to be in the pandemic. I am relieved.
I hope you are all staying cool and getting things done!