This Cold House

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.

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.

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.