Tag: repair

A Few Quirks

I’ve repaired the corners in nook above the closet sink! I’m chuffed about this, though I don’t look it.

I’ve only primed the walls, so the (dusty) mirror is going to come back down when I paint.

I used mesh tape (Fibatape brand), Sheetrock joint compound 45 (you mix it with water and the number refers to the working time — you can get stuff that sets up more quickly or takes longer), two putty knives (1.5″ and 6″), a corner trowel, and a plastic mud pan. To sand, I used a corner mouse electric sander for the first rough pass, then moved on to sanding blocks working my way down from 100 grit to a one that was just marked “fine” for drywall.

No tutorial on the corner repair because I was winging my way through, but I’ll tell you how it went. The process: Put mesh tape on the nonexistent corners in a rough approximation of what a wall should be like. Glob on a bunch of joint compound with the corner trowel and 1.5″ putty knife. Let dry. Slightly panic about how awful it looks, take a picture and post it anyway. Sand smooth, feel relief that it’s really not so bad. Apply another coat of joint compound, this time doing one side of each corner at a time with the 6″ putty knife. Let dry, sand smooth. Touch up any problem areas with a final coat, let dry, sand smooth, pat self on back. Well done, me!

The nook had a sheet mirror up before and I’m glad I took it out (it was streaked and had black splotches, making it not so useful for getting ready in the morning), but it did disguise the fact that the sink is not centered. I’m guessing the house’s previous owners found the antique marble sink top and had it cut down to fit, but they only cut along the right side. Not a big deal, but it’s definitely more noticeable with a mirror centered above instead of spanning wall to wall.

We’ll go ahead and call that an old house quirk. Here’s another!

I wanted the closet ceiling fixture centered in the space. The junction box only had to be moved over 8″ but of course there was a ceiling beam blocking the way, plus wires that had no extra slack. Apparently the only way to move it and patch the old hole would be to gain access from above? This is according to the electricians, so I’m taking their word for it. Without doing that, we would have to have a cover where the old box was, which: ugly. Ceiling medallion to the rescue! This was the electricians’ suggestion and I’m going with it.

The medallion is supposed to arrive on Friday, so my plan is to put it up this weekend, paint the walls and ceiling, and bask in empty space before bringing everything back in. I need to figure out what light is going to go up in the closet now, too. The old one was an antique flush mount that won’t work with a medallion (and it isn’t large enough to cover the ceiling damage). I figure I should aim for something that won’t cast weird shadows, but beyond that I’m not sure because I hadn’t planned on replacing the light. Pendant? Lantern? Maybe one of these? (Just kidding. Crystal pirate ship all the way.)

January 12, 2016
Closet Plans and Layout
Being surrounded by all of your clothes as you drift off to a peaceful slumber really kicks up that urge to pare down, especially with the whole New Year thing.

It has been a couple of months since the closet’s contents took over the bedroom as we emptied the space to work on it. The carpet has already been ripped up, the terrible subfloor repaired, and new solid oak flooring put down. I’ve also removed the old sheet mirror from the sink nook and have made progress on those crumbling plaster corners. (They’re so much better! I scrapped the corner trowel and just did one side at a time. Far easier technique.) One spot needs a touch more work, but I’ll wait to mix up another batch of mud. There are new holes to come, hopefully as soon as this week, when new wires will be fished through.

One of the electricians was working on pulling a whip from the closet today, and she lowered the ceiling fixture to get a better look at the wiring in there. The house is 125 years old and it has been updated in bits and pieces over the years, so some areas are all right but the closet doesn’t look like one of them. Paper covered wires (plus a few modern wires spliced in, temporarily).

This, by the way, is the only type of wiring I’m ever confronted with when changing a light fixture. What a crazy day it will be when I go to put up a new light and the colored wires will match what the instructions tell me to do!

Once the rewiring is done in there, I can get in patch the new holes that are being made. Since the ceiling needs to be accessed anyway, I’m taking the opportunity to move the light over about six inches and center it. More patching will of course mean more sanding, which means more fine white dust everywhere, but then it will finally be time to wipe down the walls, prime, and paint. The walls and ceiling will both need it.

Here’s where we’re at.
- ~~Empty the closet~~
- ~~Remove wall-to-wall carpet~~
- ~~Rip up old wood floor~~
- ~~Repair the subfloor~~
- ~~Install new hardwood flooring (to match the original)~~
- ~~Remove sheet mirror~~
- ~~Patch the plaster wall and corners behind the mirror~~
- Rewire (sconce, ceiling fixture, two switches, two outlets)
- Patch holes and damage from rewiring
- Paint prep (mostly cleaning all of the plaster dust everywhere)
- Prime (walls and ceiling)
- ~~Finalize design plan~~
- ~~Repair or replace garment rack~~ (I fixed it!)
- ~~Research and order new closet fittings~~
- Paint (walls and ceiling)
- Rewire antique lights or choose replacements
- Rehang lights
- New mirror above the sink
- Add storage near the sink
- Install new closet fittings
- Zhush it all up a little
- Put everything away (paring down in the process)
Is that everything? I think it is.

I worked with the 3D rendering I’d made again, playing around with the best way to organize our closet. There’s only one long, straight wall that makes sense for most of the clothes, but I thought that a mix of double hanging (what we had) and shelves would be more useful. And if we could get our floor length mirror in a different spot, it would free up space on the only other straight wall for additional storage. The Sarah Storage collection looked like a perfect fit so I reached out to Ballard Designs and they’ve sent a few pieces over. They’ve already arrived and I’m pretty excited about them, but they’re hanging out on the first floor until the closet is far enough along to bring everything up.

Such a funny layout, but it’s going to be so great when it’s all put back together again!
January 6, 2016
Old Houses are Fun

We’re nearing the last days of temperatures climbing up into the sixties and seventies, so we’ve been getting some maintenance taken care of outside. A couple of windows on the south side of the house needed new sills, one new plinth, and a storm window repaired. We took down a planter beneath our main living room window to get to some of the areas in need of attention. We’ll hang on to it should we ever decide to rehang the thing and actually plant some annuals in it, but that’s why the siding looks a little funny there.

Did you catch the nice bit of peeling paint there toward the bottom? (It’s, uh, hard to miss.) We diverted our heating exhaust out of the side of the house last year when we replaced the boiler, but now there’s steam hitting the house off and on all day, everyday from October through March when the heat is on. The chimney is shot (which we knew about from the start), so we opted for the new vent when we upgraded to a high-efficiency unit that ties into our hot water system, but the steam caused some paint to peel near the hose spigot. The rest held because it’s relatively new siding (20 years old), but the original stuff was coming off in sheets.

The old paint was scraped off down to the bare wood, then repainted. We’ll see how it holds through the winter. The rest of the house is fine, so hopefully the new paint will last, but if not, we’ll have to see about changing the exhaust vent somehow. And the you can see one of the windows that were repaired there, too. Except, oops, wrong purple. There are seven colors of paint on the house (two purples, three taupes, a pink, and a teal), and sometimes it’s hard to tell if you’re putting the wrong one up because the shades are similar, and paint always looks different when it’s wet. The correct color will go on today or tomorrow.

We hired someone for the repairs since I’m still on kid + baby duty while Brandon is recovering from his surgery. We also had part of the front porch screwed down where it had popped up, which now feels nice and sturdy. Then work started on the railing out front. There was a small spot that had sunk in, about the size of a quarter — maybe a smidge bigger. We knew that meant there was some wood rot, but we didn’t know the extent of it until work was underway.

Yikes. It’s a relatively easy fix, at least, though it takes some time. Scrape out all of the bad stuff to start, and let it dry (moisture was getting in and causing the damage). Then you come back and fill it all in with epoxy, molding it as best you can to the right shape. Let that dry, sand it down, then coat the whole repair job in paint. We need another coat on there, but you can tell it’s way better already.

Eventually the chimney I mentioned will need to be addressed. Either tuckpoint it again (apparently it has been done multiple times already) and hope it holds now that it is no longer in use, or remove the whole thing and either rebuild it (for aesthetics?) or extend the siding and pretend it was never there. Not looking forward to all of that, but we’ll likely give tuckpointing one last try.

The downspout up there has separated from the gutters way up there, which is also being fixed this week. It’s doing something to the windows, so there may be a bit more damage to repair in that area, too. Just doing our best to keep up with the old gal.

October 26, 2015