The baseboard heater works now.
According to my electrical engineer friend, the thermostat was arcing. When dialing it up and down, one can hear a kind of buzzing or hissing sound, the sound of a small arc going on within. Likely the contacts are dirty. He thinks it’s fine, but I think I will replace it anyway. Arcing leads to carbon building which leads to more arcing.
In adding faceplates to the outlets, I noticed that a few of them were buried in drywall mud. A buildup layer of mud was added to compensate for the crooked wall (the top half, the gable wall above the level of the hip). Dave is a wizard with drywall mud. The wall doesn’t look crooked now to the naked eye, but the outlet was now inset by a quarter inch. I moved the outlet box out by that much, making it level with the mud. It’s still not perfect.
Other faceplates worked out well enough.
Floyd showed up as I was leaving to get some tools. I needed a grinder to cut the stairway storage area hinge. Putting in the hinge gave me a chance to clean up the debris left behind. Now the tenants can store stuff down there.
While out getting tools, I returned the ones bought by mistake and got the right ones.
To end the day, after vacuuming the entranceway, I turned the vacuum hose around to blow the patio area clean.
