Days 6-7

I will normally have something to say every day, but yesterday, in particular, I stayed so busy so late that I decided to head to bed rather than blog. 

So, here's what we've been up to in the home improvement world.

#1: The Wall is down! Take that, Trump! No more walls, man!

For once, the final part of this work was actually pretty easy, except for setting up the ladder in a workable way so I could reach the very top of the wall. 

Happily, I managed to avoid damaging the ceiling (well, okay, one tiny spot in the upper left). I also took out the HVAC register, and one wall of tiles. You can see here what remains -- a crapload of old glue that bonded the plastic tiles onto the plaster wall. That will mostly need to come down. It can be scraped, but I'm thinking a belt sander and several roles of 80 grit paper may be in my future. (I suspect my wife will like this look, and want to keep int as is -- but I ordered almost 300 lbs of tile today, so it's definitely going on.) 

To me, it looks like a book cover. Maybe...

#2: Sasha asked me right before leaving, "Uh, by the way, what the hell is up with my door?" Good question: when we first moved in, I did a lot of work on the house, including various baby proofing. One thing I noticed was that the door to Sasha's room was painted white on the inside, but was peeling like crazy. Not safe to have lots of paint chips near small children, so I scraped away and huge portions of the paint came off easily, revealing some beautiful wood underneath, the finish totally untouched by the paint. Unfortunately, the last 10% or so did would come off (and hence wasn't a baby risk), and Sasha has been stuck with a weird piebald door ever since. And since I almost never see his door closed, from the inside of his room, I had completely forgotten about it. 

Until now. Behold:

Also, those folding plastic sawhorses are easily the best $19 I've ever spent.

This is something of a personal quest for me, finishing a job I left undone almost twenty years ago. And I paid a bloody price, but surprisingly, it wasn't the razor blade scraper that I was using that was the culprit. Both yesterday and today I kept automatically sweeping my hand across the smooth wood of the door to remove the paint chips -- and getting massive splinters embedded deep in my palm and fingers. You'd think I'd learn after the first, second, third, fourth or fifth time, but evidently not. Then kitty clawed my hand when I tried to put away a cardboard box.

#3: I picked up the keys for the old locks, and hey -- they even work! (Some kinks need to be ironed out, of course. I already chiseled out the slot for the deadbolt in the door frame so the bolt could actually go home (filled with paint, naturally), but the keyholes inside and out still need to line up better; as it stands now, you can lock and unlock the door from the inside, but I'd also like to be able to unlock it in an emergency from the outside, and the exterior door plate isn't aligned quite right for that.) The second key needed to be sanded a bit, but will also work. 

#4: I ran an electrical line (UF, course) from the bathroom down into the basement; I won't connect it until the walls are up, of course, but I did disconnect the old socket so it can move to its new upstairs home. That was actually a ton of work (the previous socket in the line also needs to be rewired, unless you want to have a live, unconnected power line in the basement (personally, I do not).

#5: The countertop came for the new kitchen cabinet. I'm checking now with Lilya to see if it's okay; it's cherry, and so more pink/red than whatever we have now (oak? maple?), It looks really nice, but it doesn't match -- on the other hand, the cabinet doesn't match either, so perhaps it doesn't matter. I also screwed the eggs into the cabinet; IKEA does this weird thing where -- and they do this on purpose, but I don't know why -- the legs will fall off if you try to slide the cabinet. It's always supposed to be lifted and carried. Anyway, that doesn't work for me, in part because the shutoff valve for the gas is behind this cabinet. In an emergency, I want to be able to just pull the whole thing out of the way, so the cabinet is now on fixed legs, with slidey felt floor cushions attached to the feet. (In actual fact, the last time we had shut off the gas I think it took two guys and a hammer before that lever would move, so it's probably a moot point. But still.)

Here you can see the color contrast pretty clearly:

Lastly, I learned that they make a brand of paper towels just for women. Men are not allowed to buy them. In fact, I'm not sure adult women are allowed to buy them. You may have to be a girl to obtain these. It does, however, make me want to see a cage match between the Brawny lumberjack and the Sparkle fairy.