When I raised the ceiling in the hallway upstairs, I created a small closet to access plumbing and electrical stuff. This space used to be accessed by climbing through the attic space.
I made a custom little door to fit the opening (out of an old door).
Because it’s me doing this, I have to make it a bit more complicated. So I was trying to figure out how to make the door as flush as possible. I found something called “hidden hinges”. They fit into routed slots on the door, and because of some very clever mechanism, they allow the door to open 180 degrees, and the hinges fold up into themselves when the door closes. My mistake: I chose not to pay the $20 to buy the pre-made jig (I figured I could just make my own). There goes a weekend!
I bought a marine door latch that sits flush with the door. It’s not completely invisible, but I’m quite happy with how it came out.
oh, and I love the patterns the lights make on the other wall…
I never thought about them before, but I’ve come to really like towel warmers. They sound like such a luxury: Warm towels! But they are also quite useful because they help to dry wet towels faster, so they don’t go moldy smelling. The only difficulty: They need a plug.
Originally, I had put just a regular towel rail here, and a towel warmer in another corner of the bathroom. Even though I went to architecture school, I’m still surprised by how I really need to live in a space to know how it will work. I had assumed air from the heating vent would dry things. Didn’t really work, and the towel warmer was in an awkward place. So I decided to move it.
Mole caught a photo of me as I was closing the wall back up. I often forget to take photos.
We bought a new litter box for the girls with higher sides: Arwen! Modcat are value added: They include a game for the cats with the litter box packaging.
oh, and upstairs: I also put that towel warmer in. There’s no heating upstairs (yet?) so I got a larger one, hoping it will help to warm up the bathroom a bit in the winter. Same process: I need a plug.
This time, instead of tearing off the finishes inside the bathroom, I took off the drywall outside. I’d been planning this (ten+ years ago), so never plastered the walls.
Here it is installed. It was a bit tricky because the thickness of the wood wainscot below meant I had to add little spacers where it attaches at the top. I think eventually I’m just going to remove that wainscot below: Too fiddly for such a small bathroom.
when we went into lockdown (the first time) I thought: “I’ll just spend a lot of time working on upstairs and get it all finished.” Hahahha
Well, in spite of (or possibly because of?) the debacle of 2020, a few good things happened. Most notably, the majority of Americans were able to spot incompetence after four years of having it rubbed in our faces. And I got to vote for the first time in my life.
I ordered the mechanism for an adjustable height standing desk about.. three years ago.. and it’s been sitting in boxes in the garage since. I finally got enough prodding to stop delaying, and built the top for it. Of course, because it’s me, it was a little complicated.
I wanted it to fit into a corner in our office that’s next to the bay windows, so it has a 45 degree back. But the complicated part is the front: it curves. I used a piece of wood and some clamps to draw the curve, and cut a template out of a scrap piece of wood.
I found that putting a piece of masking tape on the top of the plywood makes the veneer on the top of the plywood splinter less.
The tricky part: I’m using oak veneer plywood, so I need to finish the edges with a piece of solid wood… and it needs to curve.
I’ve never steamed wood before, so after a bit of youtube research, I found a video with some guy making a steamer out of plastic piping. Looked quite simple: I had some old ABS pipe lying around, I figured I could make a simple wood top for the large kettle I use to brew beer, and channel the steam through another piece of flexible plastic hose from my shop vac. I put the piece of wood I wanted to steam inside the ABS pipe, and started up the steam. Just like the video.
Don’t believe what you see on youtube: The steam melted the pipes!
First the flexible plastic pipe became very flexible (similar to warm bubble gum). I quickly disconnected that – didn’t want to ruin it. I then connected to the ABS pipe with some pieces of metal pipe. Then the ABS pipe started melting!
I couldn’t get enough steam to properly bend the wood, so it split when I bent it. I don’t know how that youtuber made it work… I ended up with a bunch of Salvador Dali inspired pipes, but the wood didn’t bend.
Second try: This time all in metal. I bought a piece of metal heating duct to steam the wood in. Once the water started boiling in the kettle, steam was hissing out of all the cracks. I left the wood in there for almost an hour: My neighbors were very curious! It worked.
Here I’m gluing the curved wood edge onto the plywood. You can never have too many clamps…
The curved edge came out quite well.
My star trek command center.
It will never look this neat again, so I’d better post a photo:
… not that getting a fully adjustable desk is guaranteed to make my ergonomics any better, though…
Meanwhile…. We’ve never had anywhere decent to put our bike helmets. They were always balanced precariously on boxes and bags of building materials. So mole decided to make some shelves from a couple of old boxes that we found in the attic of the house.
Shell aviation fuel(?)
So neat!
I was wondering when this would happen: Hot water tanks must be one of the most wasteful inventions that are still part of houses. They are planned obsolescence incarnate. This large heavy contraption is in every house in the country, wastes energy all day long every day, and in the best cases may last fifteen years: you can even buy water heaters that are only expected to last five years!
The previous owners bought a good quality one that lasted about fifteen years, but it finally started leaking. 2020.
Luckily we can get anything delivered, including water heaters! I transferred the insulation blanket from the old one – I figure any extra insulation on a tank of hot water is a good thing.
Oh, and if 2020 didn’t have enough going on, it was also my fiftieth. Friends of mine threw big parties on theirs. For years I’d been thinking about the party I wanted to throw. I guess 51 is the new fifty?
Not all was lost, though: mole made me this incredible vegan chocolate torte. You all missed out.
I did get to see some people for my birthday, though. Friends put together a great bike ride up mount tam. It was incredibly foggy, cold and wet, but I was a very happy fifty-year-old. And I also went to visit my dad.
As a fiftieth birthday present to myself I decided to get a(nother) bike: This time, a gravel bike.
Actually buying a bike in 2020 turned out to be rather difficult. So I bought a frame, and all the parts, and put it together myself. And even that wasn’t without many hiccups. The first frame I received was the wrong color. Then it was missing many of the parts I needed to put it together, the most annoyingly difficult of which was one tiny bolt that holds the derailleur on the frame. Oh, and this is the first time I’ve done this. And none of the parts come with instructions.
After a few months of false starts, I finally got it together. Here’s a pic from my first ride: I really have nothing to complain about. Riding on a dirt trail looking out to the Pacific Ocean, with San Francisco in the background on a sunny day in winter, all I could think was “How truly lucky I am.”
What a month. 2020 is the year that keeps on taking. Well, we’ve tried to push on with the upstairs work, and almost finished the front hallway and stairs.
And of course, there’s mask making. Janeen’s figured out how to make a mask that fits my very three dimensional face. All other masks squash my nose down, so I have to breathe through my mouth.
Arwen loves helping.
Oh, and as if it wasn’t enough that a selfish minority of people in USA insist on not wearing masks (thus keeping the spread of Covid at high numbers and voiding all the sacrifices in March, April and May) the fire season started early and with a vengeance this year. We were having a 100F+ heatwave in California, and one night a thunderstorm came. It has been a long time since I remember that much thunder and lightning. In SF, it started raining during the storm, and the temperature dropped. At the time, it felt like a welcome break to the heat.
But most places just got lightning which started forest fires all over the state. Within a few days, the smoke was choking everyone: Maybe this would get the anti-maskers to finally put them on?
This Covid pandemic has now been going on so long that we are all exhausted. At first, there was talk of baking bread, cooking, and finding ways to be creative. Then we started protesting about police brutality and BLM. And when things got bad, the president-in-name-only just made things worse. Now I just feel beaten down.
The air quality forces us to keep the windows closed, and we can’t even go outside for a walk in the fresh air. For me, my work is going full blast, but meetings and all coordination has to happen remotely. So I feel lucky that I have work. At the same time, it’s exhausting to try to keep pushing on. Many people seem to be just at 25% at work, so nothing is going smoothly – parents are probably distracted trying to look after their kids at the same time.
So I decided I had to at least try to keep baking sourdough.
I have even been baking almost wheat-free sourdough loaves for mole. The starter has wheat flour in it, so out of a 500 gram loaf, about 20 grams is wheat flour.
The apple tree gave us a lot of really good Fuji apples this year. We got a couple of boxes of peaches, too. They were tasty, but not as plentiful as other years.
We happened to be working on the house during those really unpleasantly hot days this summer. We masked off the hallway, and I used the sprayer to paint. Once the masking is done, the spraying goes very fast. But I have to wear my full crazy outfit:
Back to the hallway, here’s the detail at the Victorian corner moulding. Because I didn’t tear out the plaster on the wall, the additional layer of veneer plaster makes it a bit proud of the dowel. But I still like the detail (instead of a sharp corner using a metal bead).
Here’s the hallway with primer on.
Here’s the hallway after painting. Initially I also painted the far wall that yellow, but it was too much. The yellow color continues around the corner, so it reflects on the white wall.
This is how the light switch came out. I accidentally installed it too close to the door, so the moulding didn’t fit. So Mole suggested I build the light switch into the moulding!
Next step is to put the Anaglypta on the walls below the chair rails. It’s the same as we used at the front of the downstairs.
The textured pattern hides any unevenness in the wall, and adds a subtle decorative finish. I like it.
Now the carpet is off the stairs, and the paint stripped, there’s a LOT of filler needed. I also had to take off and glue a couple of the treads together. All the nails and staples from the carpet of the last hundred years left a lot of holes.
I stained the stair treads with the same stain I used on all the doors downstairs. We plan to put a runner down the center of the stairs so it’s a bit more grippy and padded than plain wood stairs.
It’s coming together. Here’s mole at the bottom of the stairs…
Once the stair treads were stained, and sealed with polyurethane, I painted the risers and the sides white…
Meanwhile: During the heat, I had the windows wide open in the front office. Arwen decided to climb out of them, and jumped across to the front stairs. But then she couldn’t figure out how to get back, so she started scratching on the front door. She also tried climbing up the front door, and tried to jump in the window.
Bella alerted Janeen by calmly sitting inside the front door, staring at it. Luckily Arwen made it home safely. But the door did not fare well. There were scratches all up the front where she grabbed on below the window and tried to get hold with her back claws.
So I took the front door off, sanded and re-stained where it was scratched, and gave it a few coats of spar urethane.
That took a about a week. So I had to make a temporary front door.
And then we had the brown day. It was so dark, we couldn’t see where we were walking without turning turning the lights on. Mole tried to take a photo, but the camera couldn’t do it justice:
Looking out the front, in the middle of the morning, it looked like night time.
The new hallway closet needs a door, and I had one in the garage left over from (I think) the bedroom door. The previous owners had used this beauty in place of one of the original paneled redwood doors.
I had to cut the width down, and rebuild it because it’s a hollow door. Here I’m mortising the door pull into the door.
I bought replica cast steel hinges from houseofantiquehardware.com and painted them white. Initially I was thinking of using blind hinges that completely disappear when the door is closed, but they are $75 each, and this door really won’t be invisible anyway.
Here’s the door painted and installed. We painted the edges the same yellow as the wall across, and the rest of the door to match its surrounding wall.
I used a magnetic catch to hold the door closed, similar to a cabinet. i wanted to make a flush door handle so it’s not sticking out as you walk down the stairs. I really like the smiling face on this stainless steel handle (it’s boat hardware).
And yet, there’s more: Mole did the graphic design for Misha’s new CD. It was released purely digitally, so mole put together a few actual physical copies. You can listen to the whole CD here: https://eighttwo.bandcamp.com/album/truth-and-fun
Mole made some door stops. We’ve been using my slippers to hold open/closed the bedroom door. These are much more friendly: They remind me of Totoro.
AND Bella got a new ball. This one is a foam ball that’s bouncy and soft. She’s been playing soccer with it, and also bringing it to us so we’ll throw it to play fetch.
Here’s Bella when mole first gave her a knitted ball as a kitten. She still loves the knitted balls.
A friend texted me asking if I knew of a place that a UCSF student could rent for the rest of the year. Hmm. I guess if she doesn’t mind ongoing construction outside her room, she could get low rent… “I just need a couple of weeks to get the room ready.” Gulp.
Here’s mole painting the trim in the room. Need to get the baseboards on, the whole room painted, and the floor tile fixed. Plus get some furniture together. Not to mention the bathroom…
Oh, and I also added plugs. There used to be no outlets on this side of the room. When we first got the house, I really didn’t like the plugs in the baseboards, so downstairs I moved them all to the walls. But I’ve grown to really appreciate this old detail. It fits better with the character of a house built in 1902. So now I always put them in the baseboards.
Mole is super good with the AlexPlus. I love the caulking tool: it makes perfect caulked joints possible. Before I got that tool, I’d try to get the caulk line just right when first applying it. But any stops or bumps and there’s a dimple… then your fingers get involved, and the whole thing turns into a mess. This tool makes it so clean.
For the ceiling, we ordered a small medallion to go around the junction box. Mole says the hardest part of this project was getting the ladder downstairs by herself without killing herself and the walls.
Meeeeanwhile…. Mole decided to build a planter.
All scrap wood left over from making the fence. The most expensive part was the potting soil.
Where the old closets had been, there was no floor tile. The eventual plan is to put some type of nice flooring in like bamboo or hardwood. But we have a deadline! So I got some self-adhesive vinyl tile at home depot.
I didn’t take this photo. You probably guessed that.
I’m still planning to work on the kitchen and living room, so this is an almost studio. The room is quite big, so it fits the table, fridge, microwave and a hot plate. They need to use the bathroom sink for dishes though.
Phew. Room ready. We couldn’t find a tall armoir (wardrobe) that would arrive in time — everywhere seemed to be out of stock, or shipping was weeks out. Mole found the wardrobe on the right above (an Ikea) on Craigslist. Damn it was heavy. We brought it home strapped on the roof of the trusty Civic. But I couldn’t face hauling it upstairs, so we took it all apart first, and reassembled upstairs.
I often forget to take “before” photos. The dresser above was left in the garage when we got the house. It was a really sad looking thing. It had a corner missing from one of the drawers, holes where it looked like someone had attached a padlock (!), cigarette burns and scratches on the top, all in a fetching greenish-brown. But it’s a quality piece of furniture made out of solid wood. I filled the damaged wood, painted it with black paint, and then put a couple of coats of polyurethane over the paint. The brass handles are original, I just polished them, and gave them a few coats of lacquer.
Which brings me to the bathroom: This was our counter top in the bathroom for ten years. It was a left-over piece of plywood that wasn’t even wide enough, so I’d added a piece on the left. Even with a coat of polyurethane, it was never durable or attractive.
Given the time constraints, I decided to just order some Formica to stick on the plywood. The web bit me a bit, because I thought it was a darker cream color. Never done Formica before and wow the contact adhesive is smelly, but it’s a fast process. I have a flush trim bit for my router, so it was very easy to trim to size.
If you’ve ever tried to use silicone caulk, you know that getting a good result is one of the most difficult things in the world. When I combine blue tape with the caulk tool, I think I have a recipe for perfect silicone caulk. I lay out the blue tape so it is just slightly clear of the finished edge of the caulk. Then I caulk the gap and use the tool to smooth it and walk away. The blue tape prevents the caulk getting onto the neighboring surfaces, so there’s no cleanup or fiddling around that may mess up the caulk. Wait a couple of hours for the caulk to skin over before removing the tape. Voila!
I also sanded and varnished the floor because the girls had scratched it up so much. They may look soft and furry, but that’s just to hide the claws. This floor is Alaska Yellow Cedar – very resistant to rot and quite soft, but I’ll not put wood on a floor in a bathroom again: A lot of people leave a bath mat outside their showers (our tenants downstairs did). Any dampness in this mat will rot the floor quite quickly. Even the cedar.
And then the really hard work (truly): I sanded the ceiling. When we originally did this bathroom, I plastered the walls and ceilings and was so in love with the subtlety of the bare plaster that I varnished it. Problem was, the varnish started peeling – maybe some incompatibility with very alkaline plaster (?) But to re-paint, now I had to get all the varnish off the plaster.
It looks so much nicer than when we lived there! I like the paint (same color we used in the laundry room). And a white ceiling is much nicer than the peeling varnish. I still know it’s my plaster under there…
Even though covid-time-warp has us (yes I am baking sourdough bread every week) we have been moving forward a little on the hallway.
When I was buying the wood for the stairs, the salesperson knew my dad from twenty years ago – he recognized the last name! Above right, I left a space for the new medallion. Dad would sometimes try to talk customers into putting medallions in – and when he did get to do one, he’d be super proud of the result. I’m sure his “beauuutiful, beauuutiful” song was sung while doing those floors.
For our little hallway, I looked online for pre-made medallions, but they were all too big and too fancy. So I did the sensible (?) thing: I decided to make one.
It’s a compass rose – North has a very slight emphasis. It will be set into the floor pointing to magnetic north.
“You can never have too many clamps.” Here I’m clamping the cut-out pieces while they glue to a base of baltic birch plywood.
This is before sanding and polyurethane. Baseboards not in yet…
I’d never thought about it before: Usually you put baseboards on top of the floor, to cover the expansion gap at the edges of the floor. Doing the same on stairs, though, is very difficult. It has to fit the contour of not just one, but all the steps simultaneously. If you’re just off by 1/16 inch on each step, that quickly adds up a to a 1/4″ gap.
I’ve been trying not to damage the carpet on the stairs for the whole time I’ve been working on the hallway. But we don’t want that blue carpet permanently – so why not just take it out?
Now we can strip the paint off the sides of the stairs without worrying about melting carpet. Just a quick picture that is the disarray at the top of the stairs:
mole pointed out how cool today’s date is so I had to write it down somewhere.
The front hallway is getting much closer to finished, but still quite a bit to do. This stuff really takes a lot of time. Here are a couple of close up photos: On the right, looking at the ceiling over the stairs, on the left, looking up the stairs. I decided to remove and replace the guard rail here with something more decorative.
When a corner comes up to the ceiling, it presents a bit of a problem. I’m not sure how this would have been handled traditionally. But it was probably done using a pre-made plaster casting, either taking the dowel around the corner, or putting some decoration here.
The photo below left shows how it had been handled in our house. I decided to try to use plaster to make the dowel shape follow the curve of the ceiling. Below right with a rough blockout in basecoat plaster.
It still needs some work, but I think it looks much better than before.
The last wall next to the stairs (on the right of the stairs as you head up.) The photo below shows the wall ready for the base coat of plaster.
Below left with the base coat on, below right with the veneer plaster finished.
Mole caught a couple of photos while I was doing the finish veneer plaster coat. Stairs are a really awkward place to work, because the ceiling slopes, so on my right side I needed to crouch down to reach the piece of wall over the entry. I had to climb down to get more plaster from the bucket every few minutes. And there are a lot of edges that have to be carefully finished around the corner bead.
So now it’s on to putting molding on the doors and windows. This is the back door out of the bedroom upstairs. When I was working on this back porch, we were still living upstairs, so I couldn’t finish the inside of this door. I’ve re-used some of the original trim that was downstairs. Ready for paint.
Here’s a cool pic of mole as she was finishing up restoring the picture rail.
This is the front door before (left) and after (right) I put trim on all around it. I reused old wood, so lots of planing, filling, and routing.
Below left is a close up of the trim on the front door.
Below right, I made a mistake when I put the light switch in: I installed it a bit too close to the door, so it interfered with the frame around the door. Oops. But mole came up with an idea: Build the light switch into the frame. So this is it: I found an old brass cover plate that will make this look really nice.
Almost done with the trim in the photo below. Still need to finish around the windows above.
Again, using pieces of salvaged wood I built up the trim around these windows. Ready for paint!
Oh, and on the other side of this wall, mole put up many of our favorite photos of family and friends.
Yet again, a disaster hits while we have a moron in the white house. As with gwb, the pino was asleep at the wheel, and now we’re going to pay for it.
Had to get that off my chest.
In retrospect, all travel in the US should have been closed until they could get the tests working. But we were blithely traveling around, fully aware of what was going on in China. Before heading to Austin for a short trip, I went to visit dad in Santa Cruz. It was a beautiful day — we played Frisbee on the beach.
AIDS/Lifecycle was still in the plans at the beginning of February, so I went on a training ride. I did not plan to ride this year, so I’ve volunteered as a training ride leader. The ride has been cancelled this year, so now the SF AIDS foundation is scrambling to find funding.
In February I ran my first marathon: Supported by mole, my brother, his girlfriend (and my coach!) and her family I ran the Austin marathon. This was the culmination of a year of training. Here are are exploring Austin and enjoying one of the public sculptures.
Austin is a strange town: It has many very beautiful things, and great vegan food options, but it is also so heavily dominated by cars, that it manages to also be quite ugly. I loved this mural, but why is there a shopping cart abandoned on the sidewalk, far from any shops?
The river through the center of town is the major beauty of Austin. I love how they have put pedestrian walkways on both sides of the river. Clearly everyone there loves it too – it was constantly full of people walking and running. Not pictured: The river is full of garbage!
Marathon Day! Misha and Aja both ran the half marathon, but we all dressed fluorescent. Team Highlighter: If you don’t see us, you ain’t lookin’.
Misha had already finished his race when I eventually got to close to the finish line, so he ran the last half mile with me! This is one of my favorite photos ever:
Aja coached me long distance: I started out a cyclist who kept getting injured running, through two colds and a flu, to finish my first marathon 3:39:02 – twenty minutes faster than my goal!
I just had to include this photo: Mole posing in a mask at the Burning Man exhibit in Oakland.
I’ve lived in the US for 33 years, have barely spent more than a couple of weeks back in England, yet I’m still a British citizen. After watching “Fahrenheit 11/9” I decided that had to change. I applied for US citizenship in September, and at the beginning of March, right as Covid-19 started showing up in the US, I had my immigration interview. So I went, and passed the test.
To celebrate, I had raspberries, vanilla and blueberries. One day, when things calm down again, maybe they will reschedule my naturalization ceremony and I’ll be a US Citizen; then I can add one more vote to throw the pino out of office.
Red White and BerriesCitizenship test flash cards made by Aja!
OK, enough reminiscing to days before Covid-19 lockdown. Since the beginning of March, we’ve been pretty much confined to the house. So I decided to try to get more finished.
The day before the lockdown, I ran out and bought plaster. Here I’ve put the base coat on one wall.
Here I’ve got the base coat on the wall up the stairs. It’s really awkward plastering a wall next to the stairs, because setting a ladder up is difficult, there’s not space for me and the ladder, but also I need to reach high up.
Here’s the wall after the veneer plaster coat. It’s still a bit grey as the plaster dries.
Looking down from the top after the plaster is dry: This wall is starting to look nice!
I didn’t stay in the house every day: I went out for a run a couple of times in the last two weeks. Here I snapped a photo looking east on the bay from heron’s point park – about 3 miles from the house.
And no post is complete without:
Here’s Arwen after she decided to jump into one of the kitchen closets (still painted pink from when Po-po lived here).
This has never been a typical remodel project. Mostly, we are trying to restore the house as much as we can, while also making it more comfortable for us.
Here’s mole painstakingly restoring the intricate picture rail. It is covered in so many layers of thick paint, that the decoration of it hardly shows. It looks like it was originally red, with gold leaf.
And this is what I’m up to: Embedding a piece of wood to attach the handrail. I’m trying to get a little bit more width in the stairway.
Here are a couple of details at the bottom of the stair. I’m also not going to have trim around the door to the closet. This will be much more modern than the house, but I’m also planning to use the beveled reveal (that traditionally was used at the corner dowels) along the edge of the embedded board and door.
I added the frame for the attic space.
Now back to the upstairs bedroom: Time for plaster.
I’ve stripped all the old wallpaper, and anchored the plaster the best I can with screws and plaster washers. Below, mole caught a photo of me adding mesh tape over all the cracks. It turns out that wasn’t enough – but more on that later.
Instead of moving all the furniture out of this room, I put up floor to ceiling plastic sheating — completely sealing it into its own corner quarantine. Never thought I’d use that word so much…
Here I’m plastering the walls. Do I look like I’m enjoying myself?
I truly am. Plastering can be such a satisfying project.
Here’s the wall after plastering. Looking good! The only problem is that the wall developed some hairline cracks a few days after plastering. I filled them with a flexible caulk – they’ll be invisible.
I’m not certain why it cracked (a similar thing happened on some of the downstairs walls), but there are a few possibilities:
The old plaster may not have been all tight to the old lathe – trying to attach it all with plaster washers is quite a project. Would be quicker to tear it out and replace with drywall.
The mesh tape I used may not have been enough. Typically, when plasterers (the professionals) do this, they have big wide sheets of mesh that they cover the whole wall with.
The veneer plaster I’m using is typically part of a two coat system. I skipped the veneer base coat. In future, I’ll always do the base coat first. The base coat also makes it easier to flatten out any surface irregularities.
Here’s Bella doing her best impression of the United States government in the face of the Corona Virus.
Even though I haven’t posted about it for months, the hallway does continue to progress…
The quarter inch thick drywall on the hallway wall had been exposed to years of moisture from a leaky roof before we bought the house. Years ago when we were stripping wallpaper, the smell of mold established that this drywall should be replaced, rather than plastered over.
Well, now’s the time: Here’s Mole pulling it off the wall. It came down shockingly easily; it had been nailed up with the wrong type of nails, so they just pulled through the drywall.
The wall framing under the drywall is a mess of different sized pieces, some not even nailed in place properly. No wonder this wall rattled in tune to music in peoples cars in the street. I had to plane the wood flat on lots of the studs to make sure the new drywall lays flat; Also added some screws to hold things together a bit better.
I finished up connecting the utilities in the hallway wall. It turned out to be quite a lot jammed into that tight space: Drain for sink, conduit for network cables, and a hot water return. Also wiring for a plug and light switch.
Mole caught a photo of me as I was finalizing the stairs.
Here’s the new drywall going up, to flush out the corner. It’s starting to come together.
The leaky roof also damaged the plaster in the ceiling. Here I’m adding plaster washers to hold it all in place, rather than replace the ceiling.
This is the edge of the ceiling, where it transitions to vertical wall. I’ve filled up to the dowel on one side with joint compound. I prefer to use joint compound on ceilings than plaster, because it doesn’t need to resist bumps and scratches like walls, and it’s easy to sand flat.
Here’s the ceiling after a couple of passes with joint compound. I haven’t sanded it yet. Probably needs one more pass before sanding. Now I need to go find some cat photos…
I took out the winders at the bottom of the stairs, and opened up the wall to reveal space for a coat closet.
I put a landing instead of the top winder, and the stairs will extend into the hallway three steps.
I had to cut into the floor dad I and installed ten years ago. But I tried to do it carefully so that I don’t have to refinish the whole thing…
A small detour: The microwave suddenly stopped working. Well, that’s what we thought at first, but actually the receptacle (that I installed) stopped working. Turned out there was a loose wire (!!!!) – and the only way to access it was behind the dishwasher. Not sure why, but it seems common that junction boxes end up behind dishwashers:
The second photo is my brother dealing with an electrical issue behind his dishwasher… Next time I build a kitchen, no junction boxes of any kind behind dishwashers: They are painful to remove and put back (power, water and waste have to be disconnected and reconnected.)
Ahhh, but here’s the floor fixed, and the stairs roughed in. I’ve also put some gypsum board (drywall) in the closet.
Every closet needs a light: This one gets a light and a plug.
Just about finished with taping. I’m just going to skim coat the closet, instead of plastering.
When we painted the front stairs, we didn’t get around to putting the second coat of paint on. So it didn’t last well. I’m putting a few coats of paint on before the rain starts…
Simultaneously.. (disobeying my cardinal rule of remodeling: One project at a time!) We tore out the fugly built-in closets in the upstairs bedroom.
Not sure how many stages they were built in, but they were a rather scary mixture of incredibly flimsy and hugely overbuilt. Some parts I’d pull out a nail, and it would come crashing down. Others it would take hours and scores of nails and screws. We filled half an empty paint can with nails, just from this.
