Project 1: Redo the Half-bath, Part VI

The half bath under the stairs had its door installed so that it opened outward from the right to the left (I can never remember which way door "handedness" is determined, but the pictures below should suffice to explain the situation). This had two disadvantages. First, it swung into the path that people normally use to get into the room. Second, it was awkward to reach the light switch when entering the room. I had never realized before that most light switches are installed on the same side of the door as the knob and latch.

I have to assume that this was part of the original design of the house, and my best guess is that it was done to avoid a situation where the bathroom door could collide with the utility hall (the adjacent room with the washer and drier) door. It's a smart idea, but a smarter idea is to have the bathroom door open the other way and to use a hinge mounted doorstop to prevent the two doors from entering each other's path. The bathroom door never has to be opened much more than 90 degrees anyway.

It was our good fortune that we had just removed an opposite door from the upstairs bathroom (and replaced it with solid wall). It was an identical size and style, so we decided to use it to replace the awkward door.

I bought a 3/4" wood chisel for this work after checking our house books and the Internet for advice. I took off the old door with a screwdriver. So lets get to the pictures already.

Here is the precision cutout from the old hinge on the left side of the door frame:


I measured carefully by shimming under the new door to hold it at the appropriate height (using a level and a builder's square all the while), and then I used a hinge to sketch the areas to be chiseled:


I started by using a hammer to gently tap the chisel, but I soon discovered that it was easier to just push it by hand. After some time, I had two hinge cutouts that looked like this:


After the cutouts were both capable of holding a hinge piece flush with the frame, I drilled pilot holes and pulled the pin out of each hinge. I screwed the frame sides of the hinges in place. Then I screwed the door sides of the hinges onto the doors. I took a deep breath and tried to fit the door into place. It went together like a dream. Here is a completed hinge and then a picture of the door at this point (you can see how the two doors would collide if they were both opened all the way):


Having chiseled the rounded holes for the hinges, I felt that cutting the square hole for the new latch plate would be cake. First, I installed the new doorknob and latch in the same manner as I had already done for all of the other downstairs doors. Then I carefully measured the place where the new latch plate would need to go, starting by marking the place where the deep hole would hold the latch. I eventually had a diagram:


And again it was time for chiseling. I accidentally dug a chip out above the pattern, but it can be filled in. I made the latch hole as deep as possible without having to hold the chisel at an awkward cutting angle (in this picture it's at about half of its final depth):


Once the plate was installed, the door looked as good as any other in the house (at least when you can't see the half-and-half paint job and the pieces of scotch tape that someone had painted onto the inside of the door). In this photo, the door stopper is also installed:


Here are the tools I used for this project, clockwise from upper left: cordless drill/screwdriver accessories, bucket o' hinges and door stoppers, Dremel tool with wood bit, Phillips screwdriver, old and new doorknob kits, 3/4" wood chisel, 16-oz. hammer, carpenter's square, level, leather gloves, cordless drill/screwdriver, flat screwdriver, tape measure, and some other stuff that wasn't part of this project. In the second picture: drill bits, wastebasket full of wood shavings, chisel holster, bag o' screws, and utility knife. Not pictured but very important: safety glasses, ear plugs, and vacuum cleaner to clean up the mess!


In order to move this door installation project from "fully functional" to "lookin' good," here are the steps that still need to be done:

• Fill in the old hinge cutouts, the old latch plate cutout, and any other holes with wood filler
• Repaint the door and frame
  

Project 5: Fix the Upstairs Bath, Part II

In the second part of Project 4 I explained how my parents framed and patched the hole from the door that N and I removed a few weeks ago. In the bathroom we decided to buy beadboard to reduce the amount of wall space we would have to repair, texture, and paint.

The drywall installed:



The beadboard installed:



After my dad used the mortar to lay the tile in the half-bath, we came upstairs and removed the tile that was broken. Upon second inspection, the tile found in the upstairs bathroom cabinet did not match the tile in the bathroom. The tile left by McVicker was more peachy in color. One must assume that McV never knew that two boxes full of the correct bathroom tiles lay in the garage. Oh, boy.

McVicker's Tile:



The correct tile:



The two side by side (correct tile is on the left). Notice that the McVicker tile is smaller than the correct tile.



My dad cut off a nail head that probably made the tile uneven in the first place, and then laid down a new tile. Sunday morning before they left my dad mixed up a small amount of grout, and then my mom demonstrated how to grout on the single tile in the upstairs bathroom.



Also discovered in the bathroom this weekend: a plastic bag full of light bulbs for fans. Along with the receipt of purchase from the former Mrs. McV.

When we bought the beadboard we also bought chairrail to go on the top, and baseboard to go along this wall. I will paint the baseboard later, and N and I still have to install the remaining 12" of beadboard before we can nail in the chairrail. We also need to mark above the studs we found in the wall when installing the beadboard to make installing the chairrail easier.

While we were up in that bathroom for an extended period of time I noticed that the door of this bathroom (and some of the other upstairs doors) has been repainted - in places. I'm not sure it shows up much in this picture, but it looks like someone decided to use up a little bit of paint by painting certain parts of the door a brighter white. But it's been poorly done and I almost wonder if this was a trick that either the Wards or McVicker tried to pull in order to make the house look better for showing. At first glance it's hard to notice, but once seen, it is not forgotten.



The right hand side of the patched wall still needs to be built up some. When it is completely built-up and sanded, we intend to retexture the entire wall (and perhaps entire bathroom, minus behind the giant mirror). Overall, though, we are very happy with how things are shaping up! Doesn't the bathroom look much longer now?

Project: Insane Work Weekend 1

My parents visited us this weekend and...wow, we got a lot done on the house.

Descriptions of project that were already underway will be updated individually. However, I wanted to be able to explain the numerous other fixes my parents helped N and I do this past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I also apologize for not having more pictures of this: we were so busy working, and often working in different areas of the house, that not many pictures were taken at all.

My parents first helped us pick up the vanity from Lowe's, and then later Friday afternoon we added another shelf to the Elfa shelving system in our garage. When we originally bought the house, the garage was a disaster: shelving was put up hap-hazardly around the walls of the garage. Besides removing his car, a shovel, and perhaps a few other yard tools, McVicker left the garage in the same disorder as he probably kept it in for five years. A hundred pennies on the ground, 20-odd gallons of paint (some dried out, others unopened), three different brooms, car cleaning and maintenance liquids, large tubs, three small trash bins, a cat traveling house, tile for various areas of the house (including some funky blue tile that matches nothing), grout, cement, pebbles, an extension cord, and 20 bottles of random gardening chemicals.

Funky blue tile:



Now this bounty was not without its price: some of the stuff left was junk (i.e. busted up gasoline containers, with gasoline in them) and some of the bottles of chemicals were so old they were no longer good, and were promptly thrown away, or leaked the most foul odor imaginable. A cloud smelling like death hung around our house for a week after we disturbed the contents of the garage.

After sorting through the McVicker junk and removing the poorly installed McVicker shelving we then installed some Elfa shelving that my parents were unable to use in their garage and placed only the good items on the shelves, cleaning up the majority of the garage. At the time there were only three shelves to install, but my mother surprised N and I with a fourth shelf for a Valentine's Day present, and we were happy to rearrange things in order to have an extra 6 feet of shelving.

Our next mini-project involved removing an old door handle to install a new one. The master bathroom opens with a French door. One of the two doorknobs is a fully functional knob, while the second door's knob is decoration only, although the second door acts as the latch for the first door. The first doorknob was easy for N to install, but neither N nor I could figure out how to remove the decoration knob. We looked in vain for a secret key or hole that would allow us to dismantle either side of the knob. After a fajita dinner my parents looked at the knob and were stumped themselves. We all pried at the knob with screwdrivers, etc. So, bolstered by the fact that four people couldn't solve this, we decided that the only way solution was to use the Dremel to saw off the plate behind the knob, hoping that a clue would surface then.

And, if you haven't already figured it out, nothing is easy with this house. With the plate removed, we still couldn't see a screw or fitting that would facilitate the removal. So N cut the plate on the other side of the door. At that point we were able to snap off the door knobs, and then pull out the pieces fitting into the door. The way these doorknobs were designed to be put together, it appears that the pieces snapped into place without allowing them to be taken apart without completely destroying the parts. Great design door engineers!

The bathroom doors with handles on:


The difficult doorknob completed:


A third mini-project involved pulling off the baseboard near the door to the backyard, since N and I had noticed some mold on that spot a few weeks ago. Once the molding was removed, however, it became clear that there was an ongoing leak from outside into the house when it was raining. A piece of the backdoor has rotted through. We sprayed this area with bleach and then my mother caulked up the cavity. We intend to recycle a piece of the baseboard in the blue bedroom to install here. However, we will still need to replace the exterior door before too long, as this is only a temporary fix.







The fourth project was actually a completion of a repair begun in November. During Ike the winds whipped the satellite dish that McVicker had left attached to the chimney off the house and into the backyard. Subsequently water leaked through the exposed parts of the chimney/roof and after two weeks we noticed a water stain in the now-orange bedroom. The stain was repaired, and we brought planks to replace the wood damaged in the storm. Measurements were incorrect, and more planks were bought and painted. This weekend we were able to nail the final two boards into the chimney, along with more caulk as a precaution. Yeah!

Those were the mini-projects completed this weekend. Most of our time, energy and money was spent continuing work on Projects 1, 4, and 5. Hurray for my wonderful parents, helping us with so much!

Project 5: Fix the upstairs bath

The second full bath is located upstairs between the second and third bedrooms. The bathroom shared a door with the second bedroom, but the door and the frame of the door were recently torn out of the wall:



Besides the ugly cabinets, sinks, faucets, mirrors, and light fixtures...wait, is there actually anything good about this bathroom?

The tub is decent, and is draining better than it used to, although we would prefer that it wasn't so slow. The toilet isn't in as good of shape as the downstairs toilets. However, the floor of this bathroom was tiled with the same tile as in the master bath and half-bath. A tile near the toilet is loose, and the materials needed to repair it were found underneath the second sink. It appears that McVicker thought about fixing this problem, but then laziness overtook his good impulse. Also, this room isn't currently painted any real color, which will make painting it easier, and I appreciate the fact that the wallpaper I suspect used to mar this room is now gone and we didn't have to do the work ourselves.

Once the wall where the door was is filled in, N and I are thinking of adding bead board to hide most of the wall, as well as replacing the baseboard in this room and the bedroom, since new baseboard will be needed to go along where the door was previously.

We have bought the color of paint for this room: Valspar's Temptation in flat enamel. The ceiling in this room was repainted a true white (as noted in the description of Project 4). Financially we have to postpone any further renovations until later in the year. We have replacement light fixtures that my mom gave us, and will consider what type of mirrors and vanities we would like to install in the future. We still have 90% of our fence to replace, as well as new carpet sometime this year, and those are priorities.

The upstairs bathroom, picture from the real estate brochure:



The sinks are the same as what was in the half-bath downstairs. This bathroom features a cultured marble counter/sinks, and faucets that one can still buy at Lowe's for $14.99. Both of the sinks have a slow drip that is causing a calcium/iron/whatever build up on the hardware. Anyway, here's one of the nasty-looking sinks:



The broken tile:



Whenever we can replace the vanity in this bathroom I would like to, if only to make accessing the toilet tank easier:



Isn't that a great design?

Project 4: Second Bedroom Redecorate

Upstairs there are two bedrooms and a full bathroom. The third bedroom was damaged during the storm - pieces of wood protecting the chimney were pulled off (likely due to a satillite dish that McVicker either put up or never removed) and water was able to leak down into the bedroom. It was only water-stained, no structural damage. We primed the damaged area with KILZ and then painted the room. Afterwards, my family help us reframe the window. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the previous framing "attempt," but the woodwork was uneven, ill-fitted, and painted poorly with the same paint that disfigures most of the woodwork in the house.

The room as it is now, with the window needing a final sanding and a final coat of paint:





We painted the ceiling a true white, and the walls are painted with Olympic's Indiana Clay in eggshell, which isn't terribly glossy, but because this paint shows more brush strokes than a flat, we'll stick to flat or flat enamel finishes from now on. A little electrical work was needed to replace the ivory outlets and stubby switch with white outlets and a flater, easier to use light switch. We've replaced the original closet door handles to match the doorhandles downstairs, which we hope to carry upstairs before too long. The handles are oil-rubbed bronze.

Left to do is finish painting the window frame, repaint the doors, replace the fan, order blinds for the window, redo the inside of the closet (since the current shelves are falling down), and recarpet. I should also note that the baseboard will most likely be redone in the future as well.

I preface the description of Project 4 with this story because the second bedroom is in more need of repair and it wasn't even affected by Ike.

Here's a picture from the house brochure of the second bedroom:



First off, there's the door between the second bedroom and the bathroom. Looking at the original floorplan of the house, as well as the state of the walls around this door (drawn on with red), I believe that either the Wards (the first owners of the house) or McVicker decided to tear out the wallpaper that was originally torturing human eyeballs, and installed a new door as well as retexturing the walls, painting the ceiling a truer white, and then painting the walls beige. We've found texture spray cans in the garage, and the patterns match the texture in this bathroom, which is unlike any other texture in the house.



This door directly to the bathroom leaves the blue bedroom with no uninterrupted walls on which to place furniture. One wall is dominated by closet, another by two windows, and the third wall has a funny inset section. If we want a wall on which to place the bed, it almost has to be the wall that currently has two doors. Once the hole from the second door is patched there will be plenty of wall space for a full or queen-sized bed. And it opens up a room that currently feels tiny, but is in fact at least 14' by 12'.

So, there's the poorly done door install. The frame of the door was nailed into the wall with one (1!) nail. The demolition took very little time, and the door is now gone, with the hopes of repairing the wall in the immediate future.





The second big problem with this room is the color. It's a pasty blue that is one or two shades off from being attractive, but is rather sickly than calming. The paint is also high gloss, which I don't understand. The ceiling and fan were originally covered with glow-in-the-dark stars (a whole solar system of them). My mother tore down 99% of the stars during a recent visit. On Saturday N and I removed the fan, which was wobbling and threatening to endanger guests, painted the ceiling with KILZ because we do not know the origin of the grease spots on the ceiling, and then painted one coat of "Ceiling White" Olympic paint over the KILZ. The ceiling will need a second coat, and we've bought another can of paint in order to do so. During the painting process we discovered some green, pink, and red splashes of color on the walls and ceiling, and we wonder how many colors this room has been during the past 23 years. We're still looking for the perfect deep blue for the final room color.

And the final major problem, one which we encounter again and again: random screws, nails, anchors, and holes in the walls.

When we bought the house, this room had a set of three shelves on the wall in the shallow recess. The shelves were only 5 1/2" inches wide, and I assume they held something, although I doubt they held books since they weren't wide enough or sturdy enough for books. Upon unscrewing the bookshelves from the wall (because ugly is ugly, and must be thrown out) we found the following example of McVicker craftsmanship:



That is a group of four anchor holes, which were not used to support the shelves. The screws instead went into the drywall 1/8" BELOW the anchors. Ta-da!

Upon further inspection it appears there was a fourth bookshelf below the three, which was not to be found in the house. I'm not sure what prompted the removal of one and not the other three, but this is indeed not the biggest mystery of our house.

Around the room are various other holes, random screws, and nails. The closet is marred by a row of three pastel hearts:



I replaced the doorknobs on these closets with the same handles as in the orange bedroom closets. The curtain rods we still need to take down, and in the attic (oh, the attic!) we discovered two white, faux-wooden blinds cut to fit the windows. In this house one actually discovers items, objects, and belongings: they appear like presents you hide months before Christmas and then forget about until the following February. Finally, the ledges of the windows need to be repainted. Spots of grey paint decorate our window ledges. Where that grey came from, only McVicker knows.

Onward! Next part: close up the wall, repair the random holes, and paint, paint, paint!