Step Back!

After a week or so of pretty much lazing around and ignoring all my projects, I finally decided to get back to work. And the living room is the project of the day, so I bought some plywood and started building...

Look at that fierce concentration!
I told you it's hard to drill holes straight.

I put together the first bits of a cabinet, and then it was time to make dinner, so I put it in place, and this is what I saw:

Yes, I saw Lindsey and the cat (who had to
inspect this new thing very carefully).

I saw that my piece is not centered. Or, rather, while it is centered in the living room wall, it is not centered in the hallway walls. How? How could this happen?

Well, actually, I know exactly how it could happen, and I knew it before I started the whole project. I just had a little temporary lapse of reason when I was tearing out walls a month or so ago. See, on the living room side I measured from the inside corner of the wall to outside corner of the other wall when I cut out the hole, but on the hallway side I measured from inside to inside corners. Like this:

It's subtle, but you can see it.

It was such a subtle difference that I didn't notice it until I put that wood frame into place. On the right side there was a gap of
12 1/2 inches between the wood and the wall, but on the left side the gap was 18 1/4 inches. No good-O!

So then I had to spend a couple of days puzzling out how to fix it. The obvious solution was to rebuild about five inches of wall on the left side. That is also the worky, yucky, stinko solution because I hate working with drywall. (In fact, I don't know anybody who likes to do drywall... No, that's not true. I did meet one man who said he liked it. But he was kind of an old guy, and maybe he had dementia.)

Alas! The stinko solution was the best one. So I re-framed
5 1/2 inches of wall.

And I put up 5 1/2 inches of sheet-rock. (Fortunately we had enough scraps sitting in the garage that I didn't need to buy any.)

And then—Oh, for joy!—I slathered wall joint compound over the whole thing—from the corner of the kitchen to the edge of my new construction.

Well, all right. There is something appealing about squishing your hands and fingers into the mud. And spreading it all over the wall isn't so bad either. But then it leaves gunk on your floor that looks like a giant bird flew through the hallway, and you have to clean it up before it dries or you will be very sorry.

I dislike working with drywall so much that I slopped it on thick and textured it as I went, even though I know better. (The mud will shrink, and can crack as it dries. And then you really have a mess to fix up!)

You can still see the seam through it, but it's not half bad.
Except that it's the wrong texture.

After  a Sunday of dry-time, Monday was the time for the worky, yucko, stinko part: I had to sand it down, so I could fill in the crease in the joint tape—and any other obvious goobers—with fresh compound. And then there was a good possibility that I'd have to do it again!

After the first sanding.
Hm. That stuff probably isn't the best for your feet.
It's worse on your nose, though. That super-fine powder
gets into your nose (despite the nuisance mask), and mixes
with your mucus, and turns the inside of your nose into
hardened walls that last for days.

I've done this all before. I've done an entire, big bedroom—all by myself. I hate it. Fortunately Tuesday's sanding job was minimal. And I found out how to do the texture so it matches the rest of the house. And,  Mwah-ha-ha-ha! I am so pleased with myself!

This is, indeed, the correct texturing. And it was really easy to do. I was doing the dance of joy all afternoon.

The upside of all of this rebuilding is that I don't have to figure out what to do with the wires I exposed when I tore everything out in the first place. They can hide behind my 5 1/2 inch wall, just like they did in the first place. And I don't have to find a new  home for my doorbell that I took down during the demolition either: it can go right back to the place I removed it from.

Oh. And I also patched up the old light switch hole in the living room while I was at it.

The cool thing here is that I could do a lot of the repair work from the back side, where it will be hidden inside the wall and I will not have to give it a beautiful finish.

So, this did seem like a big step back, but I am much happier knowing that my shelves will be centered and symmetrical on both sides of the wall. And, I have to say, I did a pretty darn, good job!

And now that I've patted myself on the back over and over and over again, it is time to get back to building.

Spontaneous Bustion

Here's what's been happening around here lately.

A few nights ago I was minding my own business, making dinner, when I heard a crash from the other room. I thought maybe one of my kids had crashed into something, and possibly gotten hurt, but I couldn't imagine what they ran into that would make that sound. So I went into the living room, crying out, "What was that?!"

Here's (some of) what I saw, although it took a minute to register:

What on earth?!

The glass on the left side of our glass-topped computer desk just...exploded! Nobody was sitting at the desk, or even very close to it. It wasn't hot or cold (and it's tempered glass anyway). It just spontaneously shattered! There were bits of glass in about a three-yard radius from the desk.

When we all recovered from the shock I told the kids to clean up while I finished making dinner.

Ryan sweeps up what he can.

After hearing Ryan cut himself a few times I gave up on dinner and went back to help out. (Very minor, although no less irritating, cuts; nothing to worry about.) The living room carpet got the best vacuuming job it's had in a long time, I'm sure.

And now the desk looks like this:

We will have to figure out what to put there to replace the glass. And, as in algebra, whatever we do to one side we should probably do to the other side.

So that was one thing.

The next thing wasn't so spontaneous—quite the opposite, actually—but it's been interesting to see. We have a metal roof, which is nice because it will last longer than shingles will. Well, in the winter we get lots of snow, and then when the day warms up all of the snow slides off of the front (west) side of the roof into a big heap on the driveway and our front porch. (Usually after we've already shoveled.)

But for some reason it doesn't fall all the way off of the back side of the roof. (Probably because we don't have to shovel back there.)

Well, here is what's been happening this year: The snow on the back (east) side of the roof would start to melt, and it would start to slide down, and then it would freeze up again. So it was creating this wall of ice that hung down from the patio roof.

taken from the inside of my great-room window
If you look closely you can see water dripping from the icicles
(it's really not just dirt on my window—although there is, admittedly, some of that, too).

Here's what it looked like from inside the patio.

I wish I had gotten another picture yesterday morning because on the right side (behind the grill) that sheet of icy snow had finally met up with the snow on the ground. And because of the way it melted every day and then refroze we had layered rows of icicles that looked like shark's teeth. But, alas! Yesterday it finally all came crashing to the ground before I could get another photo.

Now it just looks like this:

This was a much more interesting sight to see:

Well, anyway, that's been the excitement in our house for this week.

The Solution to All My Remodeling Woes

Or
   
Bruce is da Man!

When we last left the big living room project, the light fixture was like this:

one big, messy can of worms

I had wanted to rearrange some light switches in the living room, and one in the hallway/kitchen, so that they made more sense to me. Instead I got the kitchen hallway light pulled out, and couldn't figure out how to even rewire it back the way it originally was. Our friend Daniel came over for a little while to work on it, but had to leave before he could finish it. Fortunately he got the wires put away enough that we could turn the breaker back on and still use our living room light—and the hallway/entry light too! (You may read about it in detail here if you really want to—scroll to about halfway down the post.)

Well, my very manly and amazing husband has been home for a week, and he fixed it all up for me!

In this picture you can see that the wires
already look a lot less messy.

First he got the kitchen/hallway light to work. This included his removing the wire for the three-way switch.

I wanted this to go away.

He did it!

The offending wire—and its switch—lie on the floor
like a snake in death throes.

And look at this!

It lives! It works! It looks fabulous!

After he got the kitchen/hall light working the right way, he moved all the wires around to the way I wanted them to be. Because he is awesome! 

Can you actually see what happened here?
It's pretty cool.

Here you can see how he switched the switches (well, the wiring). 

All of this planning and moving of the lighting wires did have an unexpected side-effect on me. For the entire time we've lived in this house I really have flipped the right-hand switch when I came through the front door and wanted the living room light on. If I was already in the house I knew that that switch would turn on the outside lights; that was not a problem. And the other two—the entry and kitchen hall switches—were guesswork every single time.

Then I labeled them so I could rewire them. And then I left it like that for a few weeks, and learned which switch switched what. Now I have to relearn them. But, as this arrangement is much more intuitive, and I am a clever girl, I think I'll get it pretty quickly. If not, I will just have to write it all on the wall.

Anyway, my amazing husband fixed the mess I made of the kitchen/hall light, and he rewired the living room switches the way I wanted them to be, and he put in the new LED light fixtures I bought for the hall lights, and he installed the new flat switches that I like. And then he went to the other side of the living room and put a flat switch there. And then he put flat switches into the great room too! (I had replaced two switches in there, but there were three more to go.)

Bruce happily switches the light switches.

AND, as if all of that were not enough, Bruce also replaced the thermo-couple in the great room fireplace, so now we have heat in that room again! (I did not break the fireplace! Although at first I thought I did because it quit working when I turned off the breaker to replace the light switches. This made no sense, because I'd been playing with the breakers for days and the fireplace survived it. This bad thermo-couple really, truly was not my fault!)

Jessica enjoys the fruits of Bruce's labors.

So this past week Bruce got here, fixed everything I messed up and other things I might possibly have messed up in my future remodeling efforts, and made life thoroughly enjoyable for me. 'Cause Bruce is da Man!