Secretly Ironic

Most of the roof now looks like this, with double-layer asphalt shingles:

The gutters aren’t back up yet and there are various bits of fascia and trim and woodwork that need to be replaced, but it’s come a long way.

Meanwhile, this week we decided we really ought to get a new front door lock and doorknob. At some point before we got the house, Banco Santander or their agents deliberately broke the lock so you can only enter the house from the back door. This isn’t malice on their part, of course, just standard procedure with foreclosed properties with lockboxes- they just pick one door for entry and make the other exit-only. But it does mean we need a new lock. So, off to Lowe’s, which is slightly further away from our house but carries prettier doorknobs, which should go nicely with the huge old solid-wood front door.

Of course, this turns out to be less than simple. This old door has a mortise-lock doorknob, not the cylinder type that’s used in most doors nowadays. Those are kind of a specialty item, and they’re a little tricky to size because you need to know the exact width of the slot they’re inserted into as well as the usual things like the backset (distance from the door edge to the key slot).

So, I called the local specialty key and lock place, Commonwealth Lock. These guys are good, and very well reviewed. Sure, it’ll cost a little extra to buy hardware there, but it’ll help us preserve this awesome old slab of door, and it’s a local business which I do like to support.

When I spoke with them they confirmed that they do carry a line of mortise locks, although we’ll probably have to special-order one to fit exactly. Their advice is to take the lock off the door and bring it in so they can figure out exactly what should replace it… and also they’re only open on weekdays. Apparently if you shop there you either have the sort of job where you can take time off to shop for doorknobs, or have the kind of money that lets you send your architect over to select doorknobs for you. Maybe this is going to cost more than a little extra.

Anyway, the procedure to replace our doorknob and front door lock is now turning out to be:

1. Take a day off work.
2. Remove the lock set and doorknob from the house.
3. Leave the house unlocked while we go to the lock store.
4. Select and order a new lock and doorknob.
5. Return to the house and re-install the lock and doorknob
6. Wait for the thing to arrive.
7. Get out of work early or arrive late to go get it.
8. Install the new lock.

And there you have it: Replacing a doorknob in 8 simple steps.

Well, we just found out how much it costs to heat a house with broken windows using only two space heaters. Even keeping the temp at around 40 degrees, that was a surprise kick in the wallet.

Yesterday I may well have made a very serious error in my renovation project. I let the city inside my house to see it.

If I had lied to the city about where I was living on January 1, 2016 I could have gotten a tax abatement. But I didn’t feel comfortable lying. So I let them look inside to do a proper assessment of the quality and size of the building. Which means I’m going to pay more in taxes until 2018.

When Megan was in culinary school I thought a lot about the difference between ambitious home cooking and restaurant cooking, and now that we’re trying to design a kitchen together I have to think a lot about the difference between trendy “pro-style” home kitchen equipment and actual commercial kitchen equipment. And of course the entire design goal of a pro kitchen is different. A home kitchen is the heart of a home, where you hang out with your friends. A pro kitchen is a workplace designed to the needs of the budget and the health inspector. The style and comfort of the actual cook barely figure into the process at all.

People will say “I want a professional kitchen,” but they don’t mean a twelve-and-a-half-foot-long three-basin sink. In a restaurant kitchen, you need three basins to meet code: wash, rinse, sanitize. In my kitchen, I’m going with one basin. And I will wash both my hands and my dishes in that sink instead of having a separate handwash station.

In a restaurant kitchen, you give the cooks as little space as you possibly can, so that you can have a larger dining room. You don’t care if it’s cramped and hot and noisy, as long as the line cooks don’t get heat stroke too often.

And trust me, Sub-Zero almost certainly doesn’t make the stove in your favorite restaurant. If they’re not using hot-plate-style one-pot induction burners they’re using an old beast with pilot lights and dangerously sharp corners that doesn’t fit anywhere near a standard countertop.