A leap of faith

I was swallowed up in the black hole of work, volunteer stuff, a bout of food poisoning, radiator activities, and tenant move-in prep for the last week. As a result many of my blog posts for the week stayed in my head-now I'm putting fingers to keyboard and playing catch up.

After choosing our 3 radiators at the radiator graveyard, we decided to get them sandblasted and painted before coming into the house. The tenant's radiator, we want to optimally install before their lease begins on July 15th. Of course, as seems typical at This Old Chicago 2 Flat, we decide to coordinate this feat when life is extremely busy for me. The week of July 8-July 15 resulted in many sleepless late nights and a fair amount of stress for yours truly.

We decided to have our radiator supplier deliver the radiators to a sandblaster in Melrose Park. I had called around to places closer to home, but apparently sandblasting radiators is not a popular activity in Chicago. Go figure. I even looked at the one that House in Progress wrote about, but it was just as inconveniently situated to us. So, ultimately we decided on the recommendation from our radiator supplier.

On Monday, July 9th, I called, got the price ($40/radiator), the hours of operation (7-5 p.m.), the turnaround time (2 days) so we were good to go. On Tuesday, I headed to "pick up the radiators" and "drop them off" at the sandblaster. (though they were deliver by 3 guys and a pick-up-I just was there to handle the particulars and insure the steam radiator was converted to hot water, we got the right bushings, and the radiators we picked out were the ones that made the journey.

When I arrived at the sandblaster, I was told (1) no guarantees they won't crack the radiator through the sandblasting and (2) they only accept cash. At this point, I really had no choice but to leave them there and cross my fingers. I did have the foresight though to at least get a receipt for our radiators, and take a picture to try to protect against a switcheroo.
We also spoke about picking the radiators up, and the manager said Thursday afternoon.