Back to the 1940s

After making three non-working radios into really non-working radios, the fourth radio has come to life. It's an RCA table model with all new capacitors and one new tube.



This one actually functions like an old AM radio should. This short video may or may not play on your computer.

Let me know if you can view it (and hear it). I'm still trying to master this embedded video concept.

Next victim
This is an old Silvertone (Sears Roebuck) farmhouse radio, designed to be powered by two dry-cell batteries. Each of its five tubes uses only 1.4 volts.

Note the intricate tuning cable-and-pulley setup.

New hobby—old radio—new things to learn

First, you get an old radio
Not as easy as it sounds, but I finally found an old vacuum tube radio. My goal: to bring it back to life.
Here's the victim, an RCA 8X541. Never heard of it? Neither have I, but this is what it looks like—fancy maroon plastic case with gold dial. Suitable for any decor.




A bad beginning
I found the radio for sale with a DNW label. That means does not work. An examination affirmed it. Here's the power cord.



Old tube tester 
I don't really know what I'm doing, so I tested the tubes. Three of its five tubes didn't score well on the old tube tester. They failed, but still qualified for the Hope Scholarship.



It's an old tube tester because:

• it is old
• it tests old tubes.

Before
Here are the guts, exposed for all to see. All those yellowish cylinders are paper-wound, wax-coated capacitors. All were bad.



After
It's not as cluttered—because today's caps are small.


















I changed about 10 capacitors, with one to go. The big yellow one is on its way to me.

The notepad is from a print-shop auction about 30 years ago. I have hundreds of these pads for notes, sketches, and calculations. 

Next step? To learn what the next step should be. More reading and more YouTube.

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Ugh—yum—ugh

Long walk with pizza in the middle
It began as a short walk, but I convinced Joan that a walk along the unfinished Beltline would be an adventure. So we tried the section between Boulevard and Hill Street.

We averaged about 20 minutes per mile, including fighting through the kudzu, but not counting the stop at Grant Central Pizza. Here's the map.

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Is that why they named it Hill Street?
That's all kudzu between me and the top of the hill. Well, not really. That's a steel tower on the left.

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Rest stop
Just so you know, it's not as comfy as it looks.




















The bed my not look so great, but you awaken to the sweet scent of kudzu blossoms.
And yes, kudzu really has flowers, and they smell something like Juicy Fruit chewing gum.

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Indiana Joan in a clear area

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No wonder trains quit using this trestle


Erosion reveals the wooden pilings supporting the concrete trestle.

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We found a lost dog on Atlanta Avenue.

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Grocery cart? Fan cart? What's the difference?

A new lease on life
The fan is so heavy that it has to have a rolling base. I decided on a grocery cart. These ubiquitous beasts lurk in creeks and bushes throughout the neighborhood, and I'm kind enough to take them in and give them a new home.

Here's the beginning of the major surgery.

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Balancing act
The fan is loosely balanced on the base. I'll need to make something to hold it in place. I'm thrilled with the ease of rolling it around.














But there's one little problem. Read on.

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The shortest distance between two points is a curve
It's hard to find a good orphan grocery cart these days. This one wants to go in counterclockwise circles. Looks like it was dropped from 50 feet, or lost a battle with a car.


I'm not sure what I'll do to fix it, but right now, it does not meet my minimum expectations. 

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Old motors never die, but they get sick . . .

I'm a great fan of old motors
Here's that fan (again) with its non-functioning motor dangling at the upper right.

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First, you need lots of electrical testers
I tested the starting capacitor with my new capacitor meter and realized I didn't know what I was doing. The reading told me that the capacitor was no good or that I was no good.

Nonetheless, I bought a new capacitor—the shiny thing below.



I plugged in a 110-volt test cord. That's an electrical cord with two exposed conductors just waiting to do damage to whatever they touch.

So I touched them to the motor contacts and the motor almost jumped off the work bench.

Lesson learned
After all that excitement I clamped it in a vise, touched the conductors to it, and it started and ran like a new motor, albeit a very dirty new motor.



Gene Wilder was as surprised as I was.

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Coming soon: Putting the motor and fan together just to see what happens.

Stairway painting almost complete

Update
Yes, while I lie on the sofa and eat grapes, Joan toils away on the stairs. See how happy she looks?


Pretty soon, I'll be measuring, cutting, and installing the trim. Then we will decide whether we want some type of stencil or other graphics on the red risers. Suggestions?

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Visitors from the hood
Our friends Susan and Larry stopped by and I posed for this photo so that everyone would think I had something to do with all this beautiful work.

And yes, the metal beef-stew sign will soon be back in its place on the wall.

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Staring at the stair

Joan works tirelessly
Yes, she loves to paint stairs. Well, maybe it's not love, but she enjoys it. OK, she hates it, but she does a great job. This is the undercoat for the soon-to-be distressed treads. The risers are barn red, and the treads will eventually look something like the kitchen floor.

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From the kitchen, looking up toward the old beef stew sign.
We have fifteen steps, which ruined our plan to use a hexadecimal number on each riser. Maybe Roman numerals, or binary. We'll figure out something, but I'm definitely not adding another step.

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Kitchen floor complete (almost)

All done, except for trim work
Yep, the job that progressed at the same pace as the repaving of I-20 East is now almost done. The flooring planks are installed in the kitchen, pantry, and back-door alcove.

This is the kitchen. The floor is really a bit brighter (whiter) than the photo shows.

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View from the back-door alcove through the pantry to the kitchen.


This certainly exceeds my minimum expectations. I'm so glad Joan did the painting and distressing of each plank, followed by meticulous coatings of polyurethane. By the way, the final coat included tiny, tiny particles of slip-resistant compound—something like micro-sand. And it works.

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My own fan club
I was banished from the work area for about two days (while thousands of coats of polyurethane cured), so I went dumpster diving.

This old fan was tossed from a Decatur church renovation. The contractor agreed that I could take it, and I convinced him and a handy exterminator to load it into my truck. It pays to look old and helpless.

This spotless one-horsepower motor did not work. But at least the troubleshooting kept me busy and out of the house.

I have a half-horsepower motor that should fill the bill. I just hope it's the strong half of the horse.












Next time: Maybe the base trim
On the horizon: Painting the stairs in some decorative and unusual manner

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I hate doing detail work

Repetitive tasks drive me crazy
Undercutting door jambs and base molding is important, but I want to scream. After a few hours of doing the same thing over and over, I'm ready to quit. But it's important in the long run.

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One million little slices of wood
Yes, I exaggerate.

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Joan can handle repetition
Here, she's using a tiny bottle with a tiny nozzle to drip polyurethane varnish into tiny holes—hundreds and hundreds of tiny little holes. It makes me nervous just thinking about it. She will do this, let it dry, then sand. And then she does it again—two more times.

I don't ask questions.

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We are grateful for:

• the vacuum cleaner with its 30-foot reach
• the oscillating tool
• painter's tape
• wonder bars from Harbor Freight
• Sharpie pens
• air-powered nail guns

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Next time, the almost completed floor (without the cabinet base trim)

How difficult can it be to nail down some boards?

I yearn for a 90° angle in my house, or two parallel walls, or a somewhat level floor. Hell, it doesn't have to be level; I'd settle for planar instead of curved.

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Measuring for the cuts

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Making the puzzling cut with a jigsaw, of course.

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There's no way this will work
Here's that first full-length piece of flooring after being cut and hacked and filed to fit around the refrigerator base and trim.



Next time: Installing the floor

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Kitchen floor installation begins

In the beginning . . .
We removed the stove and cleaned up the debris as best we could, then went outside and cut the first plank.

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One down, many to go. I'm using a pneumatic finish nailer and 15-gauge nails every 12 inches or so. No one is measuring. Nothing in this house was measured when it was built in the 1940s, or during its many little additions, so why start now?

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The flooring for the stove recess is complete. Joan has added about three more coats of polyurethane varnish.

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Next: Planning and beginning the main part of the floor.

Kitchen floor: version 28, but who's counting

We've considered ceramic tile, vinyl tile, sheet vinyl, pre-finished wood snap-together boards, industrial locking tile, and others. Most just won't work with the irregular floor, so now we've manufactured our own special 1/4" plywood planks with custom painting and distressing.

Here's Joan with the first coating of primer.

Boards drying after prime coat

Finished boards curing on sun porch

The flooring is made from 1/4" B-C plywood, ripped to 6" and 8" widths by a cheerful Home Depot employee. Joan primed them with diluted black paint, then slapped on a coat of white, then used a scraper, hammer, chain, and other implements of torture to distress the wood.

Next: Installing the floor

Taste is in the mind of the beholder

Tempered glass is expensive
After breaking two windows with pebbles thrown from my mower, I decided to make some protective shutters for grass-cutting days.

But nothing about our house is traditional, so we decided on corrugated metal shutters that rolled on a track.

Front of the house with two shutters installed, plus one shutter (barely visible)
on the side room (right)

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I could have bought the track and the hardware, but why do that when I can spend weeks planning and making them myself. Some of you will  understand. The tracks are made from rusty angle iron and the wheels are from old rolling warehouse ladders. The corrugated metal is—well, just corrugated metal.

These shutters certainly meet my minimum expectations.

Closeup of track and wheels. The axles were made in my shop.

The original sketch and the first of six axles