Cold Feet, Hot Flashes, and a Little Elfa Too

Yesterday started with the realization as we crawled out of our cozy bed that the heat pump was, once again, not working. How did we know?  Once a bare foot hits a terrazzo floor that has not absorbed heat for a while, one soon realizes that something is amiss. Wow!  Concrete gets cold and hangs on to that chill for quite a while.  That's great in the summer, but not so great when Florida is experiencing a very cold winter.

In an earlier post I talked about the fact that the heat pump stopped working on December 9 just before we went back to Wisconsin for the holidays. Rick was not happy when he called the heating contractor yesterday to come back for the third time to fix the heat pump.  This time the technician came, saw the problem, noted some communication errors, and then gave us the bad news: he was not sure what to do.  He said that he would have to call the engineers at Trane for advice.  We also learned later in the day that Trane was bought out two years ago by Ingersall-Rand, and that since that time they lost 50% of their support staff and are very, very, very slow to respond.  The call from our service technician is in a queue, and we were told that they MAY get back to us some time this next week.  Until that time, we just need to turn off the breaker every time it goes down and restart the system. Eventually, that will not be good for the system as a whole, so we do need to get this resolved.  Thank God we are not in Wisconsin where temperatures are predicted to range from -18 to a high of 8 to 10 this week.

Ironically, after giving us cold feet in the morning, Gladys experienced a couple of hot flashes last night.  While that would not be unusual for a 54 year old human, Gladys should not be experiencing the same thing.  Last night the temperature was set at 73 degrees.  Gladys was up to temperature, so the heat pump shut down.  In less than 30 seconds, while the thermostat still registered 73 degrees, the heat pump kicked in again and started to heat the house.  Hot flash!  Gladys actually did this twice to us, and at this point, we are just recording everything that is going on so we can report it to Trane.  Trane used to be a good system and a good company, but we do not know if we could recommend their systems to anyone anymore. I know that people's attitudes sometimes run hot and cold, but Gladys does have to learn that she is not really human. Stay tuned for further developments...

The guest room closet with some of the shelves installed.

We started this morning with the intention of putting in the Elfa closet system in the guest room.  Rick is very handy and basically knows what to do, so the installation actually went very well. The installation directions were not the greatest; if a student had submitted them in my technical writing class, I would not have given them more than a C-/ D+. They were not complete and parts were confusing, but we figured out what to do in the end.

The problem end wall with vertical supports
that were slipping off the ends of the
horizontal support bar.

The only problem we had was with the end walls.  The upper support bar was cut a little short, so we were not happy with how the vertical supports rested on the support bar.  Rick said that we needed some vertical support anchors which we did not have.  We returned to The Container Store in Tampa and talked to a saleswoman who told us to move the shelf bars and vertical supports under rather than at the ends of the shelves. By doing so, the vertical supports would not slip off the end of the upper support bar.  Yes, that did solve the problem, but neither of us felt that move would be enough.  We still bought the anchoring system to make sure that the vertical supports did not move.

While we were at The Container Store, we also purchased a second shoe rack for the master bedroom closet.  After seeing how the guest room closet went together, we are sure that we can make some slight alterations to gain even more storage room in the master closet.  We can't wait to get that started, but we need to finish a few other things first... like cutting off and painting the giant doors that will cover the guest room closet.

Wow!  Everything fits with room to spare.

The fun part, after we finished the closet, was to fit everything back inside.  As I expected, we had room for everything with empty shelves left over.  Having too much storage is always a good thing!  We do not want to put anything into the upper storage area yet; the paint needs to dry for a few more days before I start to fill that section up again. However, the lower closet easily accommodated the items that we wanted to store, and those items are now much more accessible than they were before.

Tools rest on the shelves and the tool
chest can easily roll out of the way
for better access to the shelves.

We are very happy with the results of the guest room closet.  Our paint cans and Rick's tools will be in a climate-controlled environment (if we can ever get the heating/ cooling system to work!), we have room to store other seldom-used household items, and we can offer our guests a small shelf space and a hanging bar for clothes. Once again, Gladys just keeps getting better and better.