We Bought a House

Now that the Independence Day holiday has come and gone, I guess it is time to jump back into the regular, everyday thing. Labor Day is the next “big” holiday to look forward to! I usually do not try to take much time off of work from my full-time job in the winter months, so that I have to take vacation days in order to not lose the time I could be accumulating. I typically burn through a lot of vacation days during the summer.

I mention the vacation time off because I usually spend at least half of that time immersed in some sort of a project. I have many current projects of varying completion. Below is a short recap on those projects.

I just started hanging trim on Monday afternoon in the bathroom. Boy – I’ll tell you. Do you want to know if your walls and ceilings are square? If so, try hanging crown moulding without leaving gaps on the ceiling! I’m glad that the bathroom was my first test subject while renovating the house. Heck, replacing the plumbing and doing all of that work was a cake walk compared to trim! I would re-plumb a bathroom any day than hang trim.

I have been watching some videos from This Old Housefor hanging trim and they professionals make it look easy. Using a coping saw for the non-90 degree angles looks easy, but I haven’t tried it yet. How easy would this have been with true, square corners! I am only hanging crown moulding because I did not want to have to worry about mudding and taping the ceiling corners. Yeah, I took the expensive and time-consuming way out.

Rear Bedroom and Hall Closet Destruction

Two weeks ago part of the ceiling collapsed in our rear bedroom. This was most likely caused by the hot and humid temperatures wreaking havoc on the century-old plaster. I have seen many other crack lines beginning to form on our front bedroom ceiling (not our master bedroom). Can someone please set the price for framing lumber a little bit cheaper than $9 per 8′ board? (There is no insulation in the house which is why we are reframing all of the exterior walls and replacing the original windows.)

My wife has given me the go-ahead to begin dismantling the plaster (not the lath) from our upstairs hall closet. This room has been a treat. Randomly, the plaster would just fall off the wall. So much that you could begin to see animal shapes where plaster used to be on the wall. I am going to start to carefully rip out the plaster, but leave the lath board until we are ready to go full force and demolish the closet.

Did I ever mention just how much I love plaster and lath?

This has been a long time coming. The overall goal is to be able to keep both cars in the garage over the winter months. Last December’s 18″ of snow the week before Christmas was a treat considering my wife’s car was garage-kept for the very first time and mine was under our carport.

Earlier on Monday, I began to rummage through my unruly pile of scrap wood to begin ripping down the bad ends (and cutting off the old tongue and groove) in preparation for planing. You see, this old subfloor wood will become parts of the bathroom vanity (more on this later).

In doing this, I realized later that my wood pile has diminished by about half, AND I created a nice smaller pile of kindling for our fire pit. I just have to learn how to vacuum after using the table saw. A central vacuum would be a blessing!

There were many trees and bushes that had to come out of the yard. I used my sawzall to cut down a tree. Yes you read that correctly – I used my sawzall with a 12″ blade to cut down an old birch tree that was already dead and had a very bad, 30 degree lean to it.

We cut the rest of the branches off of it, and now we are left with the stump of a tree just laying in the yard. Axe throwing, anyone?

I also recently gave some hair cuts to the hedges around the house, and removed some unruly bushes from the front yard. We have been having nice, big, campfires with the dead brush!

Lastly, and ironically the last thing about the bathroom renovation, will be the custom vanity I am making. I had some additional ideas for it this afternoon which drastically shifts the course and plans from one end of the spectrum to the other.

I cannot divulge much because my wife reads my columns, but when I am done with it, it will look farm-fresh vintage. Let’s just say – the old tongue and groove bathroom flooring that I ripped down on the table saw will be returning to the bathroom in another way, shape, and form.

Stay tuned for our next adventures!