How my Saturday has gone: 8AM - call Lowe's. "Do you guys have anyone working today that can cut and thread black gas pipe? I won't know how long until I start but want to make sure you guys can do it before I tear it all out" Lowe's guy - "Yeah, sure, I just did some for a guy" 11:30 - after padlocking out the meter, throwing the breaker on the furnace, and with blisters and what am guessing is a torn tendon in my chest from breaking loose crossed, rusted, and glued to never come loose pipes all morning, jump in the truck and drive to Lowe's. Get there, and guess what? Pipe cutter has been tagged out with Tuesday's date on it. Awesome. Call the Lowe's in Heath, about a 50min drive. "Hey, do you guys have anybody that can cut and thread black pipe working today?" Lowe's guy - "UUUuuuuh. I don't know". CLICK. Spend the next 10 minutes trying to call back, just rings and rings and rings. That #%^hole. Call the Home Depot in Heath. "Do you guys have anyone there that can cut and thread black gas pipe?" Both the nicest and most indecipherable Englishman starts talking to me and eventually we sus out that no, not until tomorrow morning. Go BACK to Lowe's, thinking I can lego together some different lengths to get between 13.5 and 14ft and at least get my furnace back on. Silly rabbit. You honestly thought that there'd be 10ft lengths in stock? No, how 8fters? No. How about some 3/4" couplers? No, but you could buy a handful of T connectors and a square plugs if you wanted to use 2 60" pieces and a 48". 1:30PM - drive to Mansfield Lowe's, they are about the same distance away but show 10ft lengths in stock, will just hang it out the back with a flag. Get there a little after 2PM to find they're out of everything 6ft and shorter. At this point, I have made my peace with how this is going to shake out. Get some lunch, stop at the Boot Barn and do some shopping, drive back to Mt Vernon and stop and visit with my mom. 5:57PM - come home, get the space heaters out of the storage room and pour about half a pint of bourbon. Am so done with this mess. Moral of the story? Lowe's hires stupid people, and when Lowe's is the only place in town that can cut black pipe? HIRE A CONTRACTOR SO IT'S THEIR PROBLEM. Guess I'm waking up cold and most likely hungover and driving to Home Depot tomorrow morning. It's a good thing I'm excited about building this space for my trains, otherwise I might be tempted to sell this place altogether.
Hang in there, Paul. It will eventually get better. Hopefully you can get everything you need Monday morning and get the heat back on.
Monday? Did you say MONDAY? got up early to a 56F house and got dressed, drove to Heath and got the pipe lengths I needed, came home. I fought with everything for another couple of hours, about 11:30 I took the lock off the meter, turned the gas back on and sprayed all my connections for bubbles. After being completely shocked there were none lol I turned the furnace breaker back on, and after a few minutes and some snap crackle and popping that made me insanely nervous, warm air started coming through the registers again. For a job I was expecting to take me maybe 2-3hrs, I spent a day and a half on it. That said... it's probably a good thing, most of that was in such sad shape. I do not know what they used to join those pipes, but it wasn't good. It took me an hour to get the first collar backed off enough so I could turn anything, and I had to make two full rotations with a sledge on the piece coming out of the wall before I could turn it by hand. Gas fittings are supposed to be tight, yes, but not permanent. I didn't do this to update as much as to get an open-element heater away from what will be an awful lot of my time and money when I can move into here (not to mention the room to move around), but there's only about another 6-8ft of gas pipe total that I didn't just replace. Probably a good thing. I ran 5/4 boards all the way around the room so I can have something to stop the ceiling up against, but looks like I may be painting them now that the one got absolutely blasted Some thumbs for your viewing pleasure:
and, just because no home project is complete without one of those 'what the heck??' moments... The longest pipe was being a pain and refused to thread, so I had to do a makeshift hanger that still gave me a little room to move stuff around. In one of the piles of randomness I haven't gotten to yet, I had an old set of iron keys that are for decoration, but grabbed those and threw them over a nail sticking out of a joist just to keep it there. And then I forgot about it, and closed everything up. Oops. I now have a set of keys I can slide up and down 11ft of black iron pipe for no reason whatsoever. I mean... if that's the worst outcome of this endeavor? I'm ok with telling the story every time someone walks in.
Well, you could attach some sort of drop cloth to the wall on one end, and then attach the other end to the keys and make a makeshift sliding curtain? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I figure every good conductor knows where his keys are at all times, so if I set up my trains in there I'm always going to be covered
You did a great job, Paul. I didn’t know they had people to cut and thread pipe on Sunday. It’s good that you were able to get the job done today.
The Baptist church had a men's program so people could get straight and sober . We installed a new gas furnace and didn't anyone to hook up the black pipe . Well me being me I spoke right up , I can do it ! Never mind that I never did any pipe work before , But I had seen it done . So we had a pipe threader and a cutoff wheel . About 3 hours later I had the job done used a bit extra pipe goop and no leeks ! Also no inspection I'm not a pipe fitter . But after about 16 years there has never been a leek . If I'm not mistaken you should be able to rent all the tools you need at Lowes or H.D. Mike
I was at one of my local Lowes last week in lumber and I liked the sign they had: "No project cuts" lol Their saw was "down" and they didn't know when it would be up again.
We'll call it train... adjacent am trying to get that space ready to set up a full layout instead of little bits and pieces here and there that I don't want to finish up and wire, etc until something more permanent is available. It's just been cold and awful so much lately. It's 54F and warm out today - give me 3 days in a row just like this and I could probably finish it and stop talking about it lmao As a former Lowe's store employee, I can confirm that sign says that because otherwise Gertrude F. PomPomHat will inevitably come in on the busiest day of the week and say she needs 13 1x2s cut to 9-13/16s, but not any of these, because they're all crooked. If I had a dollar for every time I had to explain to someone what a 24-tooth panel saw will do to a sheet of 5mm Sureply... that saw is put in the stores to literally hack something to fit into a vehicle. It's the furthest thing from a precision instrument you can fathom The fact that it's always broken? Well, I can also confirm sometimes those lumber mouthbreathers put that sign on there because they don't want to do it. Sometimes it is broke, sometimes it ain't.
