Laundry Room Cabinets

Sandra thinks the laundry room cabinets need to be more like shelves. She's been reading all these design blogs, and it's a minimalist thing, I guess. I agreed with it somewhat, and let her be in charge of the project. She'll be removing the cabinet doors to the bottom cabinet, sanding it down, and refinishing it somehow.

Here's how it looks now:


She ended up removing the doors, but I forgot to take a picture of it without the doors. I'll do so and upload one. The hinges were painted over, so she had to chisel the paint out in order to get to the screws to remove them. She filled the screw holes with wood bondo.

Living Room Shelves

The ugly front book shelf got some new shelves cut for it today. It was kind of a pain in the ass to cut the 1/2 inch notches for the top shelves. They're not the prettiest, but it's done, and it fits.

Reapiring the Kitchen Wall

I sanded and applied another layer of joint compound over the drywall tape. One more layer should do it!

Repairing the Kitchen Ceiling

I finally decided to close up the holes in the kitchen ceiling. Today, we were at the house from roughly 9 AM to 9 PM. We did get a lot done, though.

The hole in the ceiling above the stove was a bit hard to get. The back of the ceiling around the hole wasn't even. I cut a piece of plywood to place behind the hole, but it was not sitting flush. I ended up going upstairs and using some extra pieces of wood to apply pressure on the plywood from the top, so I could secure it to the existing ceiling. Thank you, MacGuyver!



With the wood secured, I attached a 1/2 inch piece of green board, cut to fit.

Repairing the Kitchen

We spent about 4 hours at the house today. Sandra taped the living room floor and primered the walls and ceiling. She's been getting pretty good coverage with the primer. We need to hurry up and get the wall color so she can keep moving forward.

I worked on the kitchen and laundry room holes again.

In the laundry room, I used plywood secured behind the drywall to provide a backing for the plaster. I filled the hole with 3 parts 45 and 1 part Plaster of Paris. I've found that this mixture dries within 10 minutes, is easy to work with at the beginning, and hardens really well.

The holes behind the stove weren't that big, but because it was behind the stove, I wanted to use the water proof drywall instead of just plaster.




I drilled plywood behind these, just like the ceiling. The drywall was cut pretty much to fit exactly into the holes. I secured the drywall with two screws in the center of each piece. The plaster was a 50/50 mix of 45 and Plaster of Paris. The 45 makes it easier to work with, and the Plaster of Paris dries hard as hell. Drywall tape was placed over the whole area since it was so small. I'll have to lightly plaster over it tomorrow to hide the tape and completely seal it off.

The big hole in the ceiling above also received the same treatment. I used a skill saw to cut the plywood, and the green board was left over from the bathroom cutouts. There's less then 1/8 inch gap all the way around. I'm going to putty and tape this one tomorrow.

Repairing the Laundry Room Ceiling

The holes in the back bedroom were now dry enough to texture. I used my 45/Plaster of Paris mixture and a roller to apply texture to the back walls. The back bedroom is now done and ready for paint! Too bad we're using it to store tools...

Remember when my sister's contractors cut holes in my ceiling? Since I finished closing up the holes and texturing the walls in the back bedroom, the kitchen was the newest project.

Today, I cut and secured plywood behind the holes. Since this whole area opened up directly into Michelle's kitchen, I decided to completely cover the holes with the plywood.

I had to cut this hole in the laundry room bigger, since the plaster was already separated from the lathe, and the area around it was sagging.

I had to cut the lathe as well, since it was the end of a piece.
I forgot to take pictures of the holes in the kitchen with just the wood in it, but it looked pretty much the same. There's one hole that hasn't been closed yet. It's the one above the fridge. Michelle's gas line hasn't been secured yet, so I'll let them take care of that before I close up that hole.

I couldn't use the pieces of drywall that had been up previously (the ones cut out when the hoes were created), because they were just regular drywall! The cut outs had already begun to grow mold, so I've tossed them out.

Sandra finished applying primer in the front room.

Drywall...

Gil and Lan picked up the green board today. We delivered it to the house and left. I visited the opthomologist earlier, and I'm still super far sighted.

Flippin Switches!

Somebody please remind Sandra to remind me that if I think something's going to be simple, but I've never actually done it before, we're looking at 2 hours, not 15 minutes!

The plate of switches in the hallway controls the porch light (left), doorway light (center), and hallway light (right). All of them down means they're all off. All of them up means they're all on. The problem is that the doorway light is a three way switch that has the motion sensor on the bottom. If the top switch is off, then the auto feature of the motion sensor doesn't work. So, I decided to turn the center switch upside down! Simple, right?

I removed the wall plate, noticed that the right screws were a bit tight. Odd, but kept going. I unscrewed the center switch, rotated it 90 degrees, and the light turned off! Crap! Was it the wiring? I checked the wires, and they were all secured. After rotating it back and forth a few times, I think there's got to be something inside the switch which keeps it from working when upside down. Like a mercury sensor or something. But, from all my twisting, one of the old wires cracked! Great. I had to unscrew the connection, strip the wire, then reconnect it. Not bad, but I didn't feel like removing the other switch (right). I reconnected it, rotated the center switch, and the left side wire snapped! This kept happening until some of the wiring was too short to be used! I ended up replacing the two connecting wires (they ran power into the other two switches) as well as using a new three way switch for the center. I installed it as needed (on is down, off is up). Perfect.

Now to screw everything back in place... In trying to put everything back, I found that some of the screws were stripped and had to be replaced. Good thing there was a bucket of electrical stuff in the garage! I salvaged some screws from there, and put everything back into the wall. As I secured the plate, I discovered something else! The switches weren't even! I had to screw in the bottom right first, then top left to get everything askew in just the right way, so I could secure the wall plate. 2 hours down, and finally it all works. Time to go to Target!