This Cold House

 Finishing the living room and dining room took much longer than I expected.  After working on bits of it over the past several months, it’s finally finished.  Before any painting and finishing work was done, the many times textured over ceiling had to be smoothed out and a new texture applied.  With the help of my girlfriend Becky, joint compound was used to skim over the existing texture.  It took two coats to fill in the roughness and bring the celing back to a smooth finish. 

I then used a stomp on type brush with watered down joint compound to apply a crows foot type texture which actually ended up looking more like my own creation because I’m not very skilled.  I call it Phil’s foot.  Doesn’t sound too difficult, right?  Well, in the process of stomping several of the old nails used to secure the drywall strip lathing for the plaster came loose and popped throught the surface of the ceiling.  I had to find a way to resecure the ceiling and remove EVERY nail to keep this from continuing.  To make a very long story very short, I’ll summarize.  I bought some plaster washers (metal rings that provide enough surface to keep from pulling through the plaster) and secured them every few inches between the nails along every joist.  After they were installed I pulled all the nails out, patched the holes, ran a strip of mud over the washers, taped over this and then re-skimmed this section of the ceiling.  The pictures give a much better explanation of the pain.

After the re-skimming, I restomped texture.  Becky primed both ceilings and we were ready to paint.

Becky picked the colors and I have to say that they turned out very nice.  All of the rooms in this house that have been re-done get a very non-traditional color.  People always tell me that it’ll be harder to sell that way but what’s life without a little color?  White is boring.  Get some taste.

Again in quick summary, we applied two coats of paint to each color, mounted new baseboard and quarter round to the wall and floor, and touched them up.  A new light (which I’ve had in a box for a year!) was installed in the dining room.  Completion! 

That’s our dog Sydney by the way.

So it’s been awhile since I’ve updated this site mainly because I just haven’t felt like taking the time to.  I decided I would take a look at my last entry and started laughing when I read that I posted “bathroom almost done” back in May.  Hah.  I could say now that it’s somewhat almost done but still not close enough.

 Since may I’ve finished the floor and installed a vent fan and exhaust out the top of the roof.  I did not take any pictures of the vent installation since I wanted to be up in the attic as little as possible.  I’ll sum it up.  Step 1: I cut a hole in the roof, cut and lifted shingles surrounding the hole, put some roof tar around the edge of the hole, put the bottom of the vent in, put more tar around the vent and then set the shingles back down around it.  I hope it never leaks!

In the bathroom, I cut a square hole in the center of the room and mounted the metal box for the vent and fan.  Then up into the attic to connect the foil vent (looks like a dryer vent) from the metal box to the vent sticking out of the roof. 

Now for the floor.  Last year when I was replacing the steel plumbing in the bathroom with copper, it was necessary to cut up and remove the old floor.  Way back in December (Christmas eve in fact) I put a new sub floor of plywood down and it’s been just that up until a few weeks ago.  The original plan was to slap some luan over the plywood and then some self stick vinyl flooring over that.  I decided that with all the work and blood I put into this tiny room that real tile would be more appropriate. 

After researching a bit on the many Internets I had a pretty good idea of what was necessary to do the floor.  First thin set mortar, then cement backer board, more thin set, tile, and finally grout.

The backer board I used is called Hardi Backer and it seems to be perfect for tiling.  It was a PAIN IN THE ASS to cut.  I read to use a circular saw with the blade reversed.  That worked well despite the blade glowing orange and smoking after a foot or so of cutting.  I ended up using mostly a sawzall with a “rescue” blade (the type used to cut up cars, etc in emergency situations) to make the cuts and a razor to clean up the rough edges.  A drywall rasp seemed to work well on the edges too.  After a lot of agony, I made all the cuts to fit in the room.

A few days later I mixed up some thin set, spread it with one of those notched trowls, laid the backer board and secured it with some overpriced special hardi backer screws.  Drywall screws would probably work fine.  I’m convinced the only thing special about these is the square bit head.  At least they give you a bit when you by a box.  All the joints are then taped with mesh to help with leveling with the thin set for the tile goes down. 

The next step was to layout the tile, cut it to fit and then set it. 

I turned comments off due to spam but they are now back on.  The link is under the title of each post. 

Finally I can get this bathroom done.  I’ve had the project on hold because I needed a pro to do the walls.  I can do very little with drywall, especially finishing, so I had to call in a pro.  Short of slapping up some crudely cut pieces of drywall, I had no idea where to begin, especially around the window I put in.

The guy I hired, a family friend, did a wonderful job.  In less than two weeks he accomplished what would have taken me months to do and he did it 100 times better.  My biggest concern was around the window and the “shelf” inlet because I just couldn’t see how it could be done without a lot of work.  He made it look easy!  A few pieces of wood and the drywall fit right in.  The finishing work looks excellent also.  No bumps, no goofy drywall mud marks.  I’m impressed. 

Before:

After the drywall:

And after the first phase of finishing (taping):

And finally the finish:

Next step is the floor and finish the shower plumbing (test for leaks!).

Then, I can put the surround in, the toilet, sink, a vent fan, and finally take a shower after all these months! (that’s a joke)

I don’t have any pictures for you!  I haven’t been doing too much to the house lately.  This weekend I will finish painting the old hallway closet door.  The damn thing used to be dark dark brown and I’m making it white.  It’s taking many coats of paint.

I patched several craters in the driveway a few weeks ago.  It looks like hell, but it will at least keep them from getting worse.  I used a Vinyl-Concrete patch product from Quikrete.  It seems to be working well so far and I expect to get about a year or two out of the work.  Cross your fingers!

Since the weather has warmed a bit, I’m having new experiences with lawn care.  I came from an apartment, so it’s been about 10 years since I’ve actually mowed.  The worst part is bagging the grass.  Overall, I find mowing somewhat relaxing.  There is something about seeing the pieces of grass getting lopped in half that fills me with joy!

Last week I evicted a bird that had been trying to nest in the corner of the roof.  The little bugger knocked out a piece of the siding and was putting stacks of debris in the hole.  I glued the piece back in and I don’t think I’ll be seeing him any time soon.

Finally put some new light fixtures in the hallway upstairs.  The original ones were ancient and ugly.  The remnants that have been hanging there for the past 5 months can be seen in previous pictures like this one:

 Here are the news:

I haven’t posted anything because I’ve put just about everything on hold.  Due to the recent exorbitant extortion payments I had to make to the Private Federal Reserve Bank System via the quazi government bully collection arm, the IRS, I have to wait for funds to rebuild to continue on the house.  It won’t be too long though so stay tuned.  In the meantime, I may write to explain my above statement about taxes so check for that.

Well, almost. There are a few things to finish up like new light fixtures, a few wall plates, and closet doors but for the most part, it’s done.  I don’t have a whole lot to say about getting carpet since I didn’t actually install it.  The guys that came did a decent job.  There were a few scuffs on the base but I expected that.  They were pretty cool to talk to also.  I thought I had more pictures than this and I may add some in the future but here we go:

 The Night Before:

And the carpet!! :

 All done!  Stay tuned for the next project.

Just a brief note.  The week leading up to carpet installation was hell.  I decided last minute that all the gaps around the door frames and where the baseboard meets the wall should be sealed with caulking and repainted.  That meant crawling around for hours caulking then subsequently crawling around for hours painting the edge of the baseboard and the wall where they meet white. The next day, the top of the baseboard was retaped and the edge of the wall painted.  It’s pretty hard to actually put a picture of this up and have it make any sense.  The final product looks 10x better, I think and I’m really glad I took the extra time to do this.  It was a pain, but worth it.

Quick blurb about the new door knobs.  I chose to get the round type.  I think the gold french style are too typical these days.  Bring round back.  And as Dan pointed out, they should really only be used on double doors.  What they were designed for.  Here’s my pick:

The baseboards were done at this point.  There was one final hurdle concerning door trim that needed to be tackled in one of the bedroom.  The plaster wall was actually bowed out about 1/2″ in the center making it impossible to mount a piece of casing on the right side of the door without leaving a huge gap where it met the jamb.  It looked something like this ) for those of you who have no idea what I mean.

There is a shot from the side showing the bowing.

 To make a long, dirty, and probably posionous story short, what we ended up doing was taking a few 36 grit sanding belts and shaving that bitch down till it was even with the door jamb.  It didn’t take too long but it was pretty difficult.  In the following pictures you can see the amount that had to be shaved, especially the one that was taken from the floor up.  Looks like a valley.

And in the following diagram you can see the geological progression of the wall:

Once the great valley was cut into the wall, the door casing was mounted.  It ended up actually sitting into the wall because of the bow.  I filled in any gaps and repainted so unless you really know what you’re looking for, it’s almost impossible to tell.

 Before the gap is filled:

After the gap:

I thought I had some close-ups of this stage but I can’t seem to find them.  There should be some of the entire door in the final pictures though.

It’s been over a month since my last post.  I haven’t posted the final pictures on the upstairs bedrooms yet, though they’ve been done for several weeks.  I have been taking a break I guess.  I plan on getting them done today.  Posting 50 times all at once kinda defeats the whole blog thing.  Ohwell.

The most disgusting part is that the skin is still hanging from the metal vent that stole it from me.

After a long day of cutting and uh…nailgunning (I didn’t want to say nailing for all you pervs out there) my cousin and I completed two bedrooms of baseboard and door casing.  1 more room to go and the hallway!  I need help painting all of it now :\  And the doors…

I’m not going to launch into a huge explanation because I already did that in my New Bedroom Doors post.  Bottom line is, when building a wall, make it abnormal size.  This way nothing in the world of standards will be effective on it.  Why would anyone want to stick to a standard?  They make life simpler and ruin the do it twice rule.  So make them a crazy size.  5.64234232362346 inches.  The person working on anything wall related in the future will want to light himself on fire.  (Yes, I’ve made reference to lighting oneself on fire 3 times in the past few posts.  It’s effing cold out, man.)

My cousin is coming over today to help me cut and mount the door casings and baseboards in the upstairs.  This is the last major step before the carpet can be installed.  Exciting!

I finally got the hallway around the bedroom, at the top of the steps, and down the steps painted.  The color is sorta of a dark cream color even if all the pictures you see on this site make it look yellow. 

After painting the hallway, I decided to go out and buy 3 new prehung doors for the bedrooms.  Notice how I said after?  I do everything backwards.  It’s a rule.  Paint the wall then scuff it up.  Of course.  If I didn’t do this, each tiny part of the project wouldn’t follow the twice rule.  For those of you that don’t know me well enough, the twice rule pretty much states that not matter what you do in life, 9 times out of 10 you’re going to have to do it over at least once.  I can’t explain it.  It’s just how the world works today.  

Anyway, the doors.  First, below are the old doors.  One look at these pictures should explain to you why I replaced them.  If it doesn’t, go outside and stand in naked in the cold for a few minutes, come back in, and look at them again. 

 I decided to get prehung doors to replace the exist doors, frames and all.  Of course this wasn’t going to work.  In a perfect world, or normal I should say, walls are either around 4 and 1/2 inches wide or in somewhat more rare cases, around 6 and 1/2 depending on what type of wood is used to frame the wall originally. 2×4 + 1/2 on each side is around 4.5, 2×6 + 1/2 on each side is around 6.5.  (2×4s and 2×6s are actually around 1/2 less than their advertised width.  Why you ask?  I say instead of asking, just say of course they are.  Why on fucking earth would it make sense?)

Now, this makes putting a pre-hung door a pretty simple task, however, my walls were neither of these “standard” measurements.  Were they at least close?  Not really.  5 Inches.  5.  Fucking 5.  for some reason, and I’m going to have to go with “that was how they did things then” since it seems to be the standard answer I get from people that know what they’re doing in remodeling / construction, my walls are built with 2 3/8″ laminated pieces of wall (1 drywall, 1 plaster).  This makes them 3/4″ thick adding to a total of 5.  2×4+1.5.  Well, I wanted the doors so I found some 1/2 x 3/4 moulding at the Home Damn Depot and got an idea.  I extended the jambs with it but cutting and nailing a piece to each edge of the frame.  I found out after that some store on this earth sells prehung doors with ajustable width door jambs.  Too bad it’s not anywhere that is visible to humans.  Why would it be?  After nailing, I used some Dry Dex spakle (I love this stuff) to fill in the line where the pieces of wood meet the jamb and all the nail holes.  After a few passes with spakle and sanding, you can barely see the line.  Once it’s painted, it’ll be gone entirely.  You can kinda see my extensions in this picture:

Oh, and of course there was yet another hitch.  One of the doors was a little more than 5 inches thick.  Luckily I found some 11/16″ moulding that worked pretty well.  The wall is completely uneven so I’m going to have to somehow shave it down where the trim will mount.  Also, the guy that built the frame was doing peyote or something.  Had to create a HUGE gap to get it to mount straight.  Some plaster repair is in order here too.

Below are the almost finished doors.  They still need painted of course and the casing wood needs to be put up.

This is ridiculous.  I want to light myself on fire.

After a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, I finished repairing the wall in the smallest bedroom several weeks ago.  It was time to paint that bitch.  The color I picked, against all unwritten rules that I’ve heard from people, is pretty dark. 

  < this is a crap picture, but that's the color.

I think it turned out really nice.  So nice in fact that after it was dry and pretty, I got a bug up my ass about re-painting the other bedrooms.  Last week, with Dan and Steele's help, the other two were done with equally as semi-depressing, but very striking colors.  The pictures below don't really do them justice as the camera and lighting are causing distortion.  You'll just have to stop by and see.

     < my comment on having to paint yet another wall.

 Oh, and by the way, this will be the 3rd time I’ve painted one of the bedrooms.  I think I finally like it.

A few days after I did the bathroom insulation, Dan and I installed the CAT5 cable for data and phone and the RG-6 coax for cable TV into the upstairs bedrooms.  Each room has 2 CAT5 runs and 1 Quad-Shielded RG-6.  I don’t have a lot of pictures because, well, most of the cable is in the wall.  I’ll take a few of where it is exposed and add them to this post later.  We ran from the basement, to the bottom of the first to second floor steps (maybe pictures would help at this point), under the steps to the second floor, out into the floor of the future bathroom closet, and from there into the attic.  I had to crawl around a lot in the attic to get the wires into each room which sucked.  There isn’t much clearance to the roof and I kept smacking my head off of it.  Also, the insulation up there is fairly old so there was a lot of death dust floating around, especially after I crawled across it. 

I did, however, find an alternative to the shitty paper dust mask: