You may recall that last April, M and I had the old decaying support pillars of our century-old home replaced with steel columns. Here are the retired wooden pillars:

M instructed me to make sure that the contractors who installed the new columns left the old pillars with us. She had something arty in mind; I had no idea what, exactly, but have learned to rely on her judgment in such matters. So the old columns sat in the basement for a while, and were relocated to the back yard after that.

Months passed (envision pages of a calendar flying, just like in the movies), and we moved on to other house renovation projects. The new kitchen took shape, and M eyed the walls of that room. She described what she wanted to do: mount the pillars on a wall or two (or three) as accent pieces. To that end, M used a sander to remove the paint from the pillars, and then used the table saw to first cut away the old decayed ends, and then to cut the pillars into sections. She experimented with stains on a couple of the sections, but ultimately decided that the natural distress of the wood looked much better.

And then, with some minimal assistance from her husband, M mounted the post sections on the kitchen walls. Like this:

Closer view here:

And here:

My wife never fails to amaze me.

Behold: the mighty spud!

The spud is the part of a cast iron radiator which connects one side of the radiator to the valve (where hot water or steam enters) and the other side to a union joint (where water/steam exits). A deceptively unassuming piece of hardware, the might of the spud lies in its ability to resist efforts to remove it when it has been connected to the radiator for ten thousand years, as many before me have learned. And as I know now!

For every piece of hardware, there is a tool for working with it, or so we are taught. The recommended tool for removal of a spud is called a spud wrench:

The shape of the spud wrench is designed to fit against the two metal ‘buds’ inside of the spud. You then clamp a sturdy pipe wrench to the spud wrench and torque it mightily to loosen and unscrew the spud. Well, that’s what I’ve heard. But what if a spud wrench is as rare as hen’s teeth in your area? I searched high and low at various hardware stores, big and small, for this tool, only to be met with blank stares or the wrong kind of spud wrench altogether (intended for sink and toilet work) or the news that ‘we just sold out.’ Oy.

This is no impediment to the creative and embittered homeowner, though. Time to make shift with the tools on hand. Insert the handle of a smallish pipe wrench (twelve inches, say) into the spud:

Attach a larger pipe wrench to the smaller one:

Now wrench it! But with steady applied force; no jerky violence, please.

This is how I removed the balky spud from one radiator, and I was terribly pleased with myself. That is, I was pleased until I tried to repeat the procedure on the two spuds on a second radiator. This failed, for the buds inside these two spuds were so corroded that they simply snapped off, causing the handle of the twelve-inch wrench to spin impotently in place. Anger…rising…

So what does one do in this spot? One relies on previous unfortunate experience. Earlier, I had goofily turned the nut of one spud in the wrong direction while trying to disconnect the spud from a radiator valve; I cranked the nut away from the radiator and towards the valve. What happened is that I broke the nut, basically; I would up wrenching it off the spud altogether and onto the valve. That was an accident – but I realized that I could perhaps use the same procedure to either remove the nuts from the spuds on this last radiator – in which case I could apply a pipe wrench directly to the outside of the spud – or the spud itself might finally loosen as I cranked the nut and valve away from the radiator. So I took an old, unattached valve, spun the nut onto it, and then held it in place as I deliberately spun the nut in the wrong direction (towards the valve and away from the spud).

And goddamn if that didn’t work. On both spuds. I was able to spin them off (with some elbow grease).

The first success might have been mere happenstance, or shithouse luck, as they say. The second success raised this approach to the level of recommended procedure, and I am happy to share it with you.

For a look at the way normal people remove valves and spuds from cast iron radiators, I recommend this terribly helpful post by Josh at Bungalow Twenty-Three.

To commemorate the first full-featured blog post I have written in many an age, I have chosen tuxedo cat Baxter as my topic. Of the felines who allow M and I to serve them, Baxter is first among equals. Indeed, as the image below indicates, he is truly Top Cat:

Stylin’! And appropriate, because Baxter is indeed the gray and white eminence of our little cat kingdom. He is very much a status quo kitty and likes everything to be just so. He shares this trait with another benevolent dictator, the legendary Fat Controller of the railway lines on the mythical island of Sodor in the Thomas the Tank Engine stories, one Sir Topham Hatt. Both cat and Hatt hold order and usefulness to be the highest qualities, and both abjure confusion and delay. In chaotic household situations (which occur often, sadly), it is common for M or I to observe that “Sir Topham Catt was cross.”

So, yes, we think of Baxter as being our own Sir Topham Catt, feline controller. He doesn’t seem to mind.

Yes, it’s a five-foot thistle plant. A member in good (and tall) standing of the family Asteraceae, taking up a lot of space in our back yard. This botanical intruder came seemingly out of nowhere, much as a front yard predecessor had a couple of years ago. The new thistle was easily twice the height of the previous one.

We let the thing grow out of sheer amusement; God alone knows how tall it would have gotten had we not finally taken the axe to it. We had a recent house inspection, and even prickly freaks of nature must give way when property values are on the line. I have no doubt, however, that some close relative of The Thistle That Stood Like a Man will grace our lawn one day.

The noise that you didn’t hear yesterday – but which I experienced, and for hours, thank you – was the sound of a jackhammer reducing the floor of our basement to rubble. Yes, there were reasons for this, big ones and good ones.

The modest house owned by M and myself is just over a century old, and it has all the ‘character’ and ‘features’ that one might expect of a home of that age. Among them are three support pillars in the basement, wooden posts measuring six inches by six inches by about six and a half feet. I do not know if these pillars are original to the house – that is, if they’re all of a hundred years old. I shouldn’t be surprised, given the condition of the posts where they met not only the floor of the basement, but perhaps even the soil beneath.

The base of the wooden pillars were in varying states of decay from age and contact with moisture. While not at the point of disintegration and collapse, the condition of the supports allowed us to see that unhappy event off in the distance, if you know what I mean. Time for replacements, yes?

Friends and colleagues think that M and I are among that efficient elite of homeowners who identify problems and immediately move to solve them. HA HA HA – er, I mean, no. We’re nothing like that. The idea of replacing the basement supports was more than a year old before we finally decided to act on it. To our credit, at least, we actually did. M identified a contractor, the requisite exchange of signatures and cash took place, and two decent fellows came along yesterday and did what they did.

The piering guys added two adjustable support poles to accompany the three we already had in place (ours were originally placed there to address a squeaking first floor, not to keep the house from collapse). They then knocked out the three wooden columns, then set about jackhammering holes in the floor to accommodate poured cement. Once hardened, the cement will serve as footing for new steel columns.

So now we wait. M wants to keep the newly-retired wooden columns for repurposing. Something arty, no doubt. The piering contractor will show up in a few days to install the permanent steel columns (and to haul away the shattered rubble, we are assured), and we can then move on to the next project on the list.

And M said:

I’ve got my thinking cat on!

Tee-hee!

Because our newest kitty, China, complained that the photo I posted of her earlier ‘sucked dog balls’ (actually, what she said was ‘Miaoww,’ but I understood what she meant), I have posted a new pic that meets with her approval.

Everybody, this is China. Er, China, this is everybody. You may remember China from such films as ‘The Feral Family.’

(Apologies for the grainy mobile pic. I hope to do better, if T-Mobile ever hooks up with iPhone.)

Six days ago, I was lounging in eighty degree weather on the lanai at the Royal Hawaiian in Waikiki. Yesterday, I shoveled snow from my driveway and sidewalk in St. Louis.

Sigh.