One a day, plus iron

It's going. I am getting some things done and dragging my feet on other things.

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Remember, folks, progress is only real if people hear about you doing it. :)

Painting: Slightly more than half the room has been painted twice (two coats of finish color). I did the one side twice first so that I didn't have to move everything more times. Right now I'm drying the paint (woodstove on, widow in room open, blower fan in window facing outward, pulling warm dry stove air through room and out window) so that I can move the stuff and paint the other side of the room.

Trim: All removed from walls, all nails removed. Needs to be painted but I am not feeling trim painting just yet. Have to put down flooring before I can reinstall trim anyway.

Flooring: I need one box of remaindered LVT (need not match color, but does have to match interlock style) and that's the flooring sorted. I've put out a request to my flooring peeps to see what they can dig up for me. (The plants will not care what color the floor is.)

Hole patching (ceiling): ugh. There are some holes in the ceiling because I was trying to locate studs with, like, negative success. I need to finish the patch and sanding there so that I can effing paint the entire ceiling. I hate above-my-head work but also I will hate unpainted spots in the ceiling so I expect this will resolve itself eventually by way of big girl pants, etc.

( Heck, let's Review The Project Deliverables! )

The fancy programmable thermostat arrived yesterday so I installed the baseboard heater and programmable thermostat yesterday after work and lesson. Now I have to patch the last hole in the drywall (where I took the old heater out) and then when the drywall is all wrapped up, It's Paintin' Time! (please to be saying that as the catchphrase of Benjamin Jacob Grimm, with a similar level of enthusiasm)

Anyway, I programmed the programmable thermostat and the baseboard heat works and it's much quieter than the fan-equipped heater. I also left clearance under the heater for flooring, in the event that I get some damn flooring picked out and ordered. Choices, choices.

After work today, I ran all the new wire (the 25' roll of romex was enough, yay!) for the upgraded heating in the book-n-crafts-n-plants room. (Sunday I made the holes in drywall and 2x4's for the running of the wires so it was all ready to go when I got home from work today.)

While it's kind of a messy project, due to having holes in the drywall and stuff, the new wiring is relatively simple. The old power in (for the old wall mount fan heater) will junction to a new, longer piece -- necessary because it can't reach to a baseboard heater location without help. Since buried junction boxes are a code violation these days, I'm doing the junction in an outlet-sized box that will have a flat brown coverplate over it. Anyone trying to work on the electric heat in that room will thank me later and it'll be fine. :)

From there, the "power in" wire goes over to the location of the baseboard heater. At that point, the wires will thread into the baseboard heater. The hot black wire (both wires are hot, this is 220 electric) will hook to one of the baseboard heater wires. Doesn't matter which one. Either one is fine. The white hot wire in will hook to the black wire of the new romex that goes over to the thermostat, where it will hook to the thermostat as "Line IN". From the thermostat, as "LOAD", the white wire in the new romex will come back to the heater and hook up to the OTHER wire in the heater. This is very much the opposite of difficult.

And I unboxed the 1500 watt baseboard heater and took out the baseboard trim, tacker strip, carpet, and pad where the heater needs to go. (This is just the one wall, out about a foot from the wall, but what it does is let me get a good idea of "how high" I want the baseboard heater to sit once I have the flooring down.) I haven't put the heater in place yet because I need to make a hole in the wall for the wires to come through and it isn't urgent because I need all the parts before I disconnect the old heat.

I installed the box for the (now ordered) programmable single-pole line-voltage thermostat, though I did not go for the $300 "Alexa Compatible" one because first off that's fucking highway robbery and secondly I don't have an Alexa. Thermostat is supposed to arrive by the weekend.

Once I have the thermostat, I can go ahead and do all the installing and stuff. Should have the new heater in service by the weekend if that's true. Yay.

And then there's drywalling and painting and removal of the remainder of the carpet and flooring ordering and so forth.

But it's progress. I need to double-check my measurements and get the plank flooring ordered because headway is being made here.

I realize that it is not super exciting to read about the great culling of the book room, but it is important for me to have a feeling of ongoing progress and one of the ways that this happens is that I tell the faithful lexience (all, y'know, three of you) about my efforts.

( My progress does not need to be observed by others or commented upon to be real, but it does need to be STATED. )