Radiators

Saturday, I went to Home Depot and bought what I thought were replacement covers for the living room baseboard radiators. These radiators are like bare pipes with a million metal fins sticking out from them. When they are installed, they have tidy clean covers on them, but all the houses I saw while house-hunting in New York had tatty, broken covers. So I would very much like to make ours nead-and-tidy. You can buy really nice--and really expensive--custom metal or wood covers, but for now I just want something clean.

So I bought four six-foot, one four-foot cover and two end pieces.

The end pieces were both right-end pieces so I messed up there (well of course there are different ends for left versus right).

Opened the box for the four-foot length and discovered that I would not only have to remove the old cover, but also the finned hot-water pipe. No way that is going to happen this week. Then had the brilliant idea of using the new front pieces of the cover to replace the old tatty one. They didn't fit... but I found out how to remove the old ones, and how to re-place them correctly. So that they work.

This morning, I returned the covers to Home Depot, (180$ cash), and bought heat-proof spray paint (four cans, total 20$) (I liked that). Then I went into the garden center and spent 80$ on new ceramic pots (which may well crack in the winter freeze), a Shasta daisy, and a load of purple, white and peach pansies. So much for saving money.