Coming out of the closet

With the kitchen mostly done, other areas of the house have started to seem in urgent need of assistance. For instance, our bedroom, and in particular, the phenomenal mess that is our closet. 

As you may recall, I fixed the light in August, which was fantastic, but it didn't really help the fact that it's more of a squeeze-in closet than an actual walk-in. Plus, the ceiling is mostly sheets of MDF that are so thin, they almost qualify as wrapping paper. 

Also, the previous occupants left some awkward teenage graffiti:

I realize gang violence is hardly a laughing matter, but I get the feeling that if you're the sort of person who writes "Krip Killer Bloodz" in your closet with sharpie, you're probably not the sort of person who's killing anything larger than spiders on a regular basis. (Just my guess.)

So the closet obviously needs a facelift, and our huge pile of clothes needs an organization strategy. After much mental rearranging with little success, the solution hit me: this is our house, and if I wanted to move a wall, by golly, I can move a wall. 

By moving the wall 36 inches out into the room and rotating the door, I claim valuable floor space (previously reserved for the closet spillover) for actual organization. 

Plus, it wasn't a load-bearing wall, there weren't any mechanicals, and half the drywall from the back side was cracked anyway. 

Things came to a head on a Thursday night. Jesse was out with friends, and I had a crowbar. Only later did I realize that a) moving the bed and removing a wall was perhaps not a brilliant idea on a night when my beloved was likely to come home at least slightly inebriated and b) just because we'd talked about it once or twice didn't mean it had solidified as A Thing That Is Happening. We talk frequently about things (and by we I mean me) and 90% of these things are merely passing fancies. This had suddenly become A Thing. 

Luckily, it all worked out.

On Friday, I took half a day off work and finished demolition. Saturday was supposed to be all about framing, but my original plan to reuse the existing studs was abruptly derailed when all four of them split during removal. Oops. So we had to go acquire more building materials. 

Also, I accidentally found a load of brick. In my defense, it was illegally dumped in the public right-of-way. It was my civic duty to clean it up. If I happen to reuse it, well, that's recycling, right?

Despite the mishaps and distractions, by Sunday I had successfully framed up the new wall, and despite the angle of the picture, it's actually evenly spaced and square. 

By Monday night I had the drywall up and successfully mudded. BUT CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

Answer: I have four corners coming together. I shouldn't have done that. (What I REALLY shouldn't have done is buy a drywall book at Mr. Plywood two days AFTER finishing the drywall. Research first!)

Because I didn't want to paint right before going to bed (and thus marinating in a lovely cloud of VOCs all night) I had to wait until the following Saturday to paint the walls. And THEN, when I did get the first coat of paint on, my drywall tape promptly absorbed all the moisture and started peeling off. NOT COOL. Cue several hours of frustrated snarling, one phone call to Mom, and several re-mudded seams. 

But it all worked out, and I got the black bedroom wall I've been craving. I'd originally painted half of the bedroom in Metro's Storm Cloud, but much like the Misty I had tried out downstairs, it wasn't so much a gray as a very neutral blue. I still had most of a can of the mismixed Benjamin Moore black I used in the kitchen, and it's exactly what I wanted. 

This is the contents of the closet. It's blurred because...well, it's blurred for no good reason, other than it's a hideous mess and I didn't want to burn your eyes. 

It was unseasonably warm here this weekend. (59 degrees in February???? What is that???) I think Jesse may have even mowed the lawn. 

The ceiling of the closet posed a particular challenge. Part of it was covered with the tongue-and-groove decking that comprised most of the bedroom (our fabulous cabin atmosphere). Part of it was covered in thin MDF sheeting, and part of it was bare insulation. There parts that were bare insulation didn't seem to have any visible rafters, and I certainly wasn't about to go digging through the insulation to find them. The easiest solution was to acquire several 4ft x 8ft MDF beadboard panels from Mr Plywood and put as many nails as possible in the available rafters. It's certainly not perfect, but it works, and there isn't insulation lurking over our heads anymore. (At least, not visibly so.) 

My original goal, once the closet was framed/painted etc, was to make a closet organization system out of metal pipe like this one:

Source: Pinterest

HOWEVER. The thing about Pinterest - stupid, beloved timesuck that it is - is that there are never any price tags, just gorgeous pictures of things that inevitably make my budget look laughably small. I'm quickly learning that the more I like something, the more money it will cost. (I have expensive tastes. Sigh.)

Pipes were definitely one of these. A wooden closet rod? Like, $10 at Home Depot, and in our case, literally free, because the previous owners used them as curtain rods. But I figured since I built the freaking wall myself, I deserved something nice, so I drew up my plans and bought $150 worth of greasy black pipe. (Had I used non-greasy galvanized pipe, it would have been more like $250, but I have paint thinner and dish soap, and the grease washed right off, leaving a cool antique-looking finish.) 

Vacuum up all the drywall dust, slap on two coats of Metro Mountain Snow, add a $9 rug from Ross and some random basement shelves, and voila! We have a walk-in closet!

I am so pleased I can hardly stand it, and Jesse can actually stand, period. 

The other side looks pretty good, too:

Not bad for two weekends' work. (The next ten days will be spent putting the monstrous clothing pile in order. Yikes.) 

For queen and country!

How many crown-related titles can I come up with? Not many, apparently - I blame my heathen colonial roots on that. The only crowns we have in this country are the ones that come from the dentist. (Not that I have any of those. Anyway.)

I could blame the long radio silence on a great many things - namely, my lovely baby sister getting weddinged to her equally lovely wife - but to be perfectly honest, I've been avoiding the crown molding because it looks hard. I've probably watched two hours of Youtube videos of distinguished craftsmen earnestly explaining to their patient camera operators how to properly set a miter. I've slowly chopped about eight feet of crown into six-inch sections trying to get it right, but it's a complicated formula of bevel-miter-fence-crown, and while an infinite number of monkeys may eventually bang out the complete works of Shakespeare, this particular monkey doesn't have the finances for an infinite amount of crown. (Even as cheap as it is at my favorite store.)

So...I've been avoiding it. Until tonight, when Incredible Builder Mom sent me a link on Pinterest that is probably the best tutorial I've ever seen in my life. 

 

Source: The ever-fabulous Sawdust Girl. I could kiss her dusty boots right now.

So I followed her directions, and made my own templates:

And once I got the bevel-miter-fence-crown combos ironed out, it was - dare I say - easy. I only stopped tonight once my project manager (aka Jesse) gently pointed out that it was getting late, and we like our neighbors and want them to continue liking us and our noisy pneumatic nailer. 

Yes, there are gaps large enough to drive a truck through, but that's what caulk is for, right? Right. It's part of the, erm, charm of discount trim. Or possible the innate charm of our house. Definitely not the fault of my miter saw Dad's miter saw. 

And yes, the ceiling paint does stop right in the kitchen. That's another project for another paycheck.

 

LOOK AT THAT! It looks like an actual almost-finished house. (And feminism be damned, that horrible boob light has got to go.)

And speaking of looking, I fully recognize that this blog is a vanity project. I am awesome. The things I do are awesome. Occasionally I even finish an awesome thing:

This is the built-in bookshelf in the dining room - painted and done! (Please ignore the monster plant. I rescued it from a dumpster right around the time we moved, but neither it nor I have been happy with any of the places I've put it in so far. It's a work in progress.) There are additional shelves drying in the garage, which hopefully I'll be able to put up tomorrow, provided I remember where all the hardware is. 

 

There is no before. There is only during. 

Construction can be very existential.

  
The bookshelves started out life as laminate IKEA BILLY units. I primed them with Zinsser water-based primer, which is my new favorite thing ever, because I didn't even have to sand the laminate before priming. This stuff adheres like crazy to EVERYTHING.(Including, um, the metal bits of the paintbrush, should one inadvertently allow it to dry. Oops) Once the bookcases were primed, I made a base out of 2x4s to raise them enough so our wide baseboard could comfortably wrap around, anchored the units to studs and added trim, caulked around the edges and painted. 

Yeah, I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out so far.

In related news, I have finished five gallons of paint. This should be a triumphant story, but it's not. After relying almost exclusively on recycled or mismixed paint for my color needs, having to actually buy new white paint was annoying, and also having to pay $80 for a giant tub of Glidden Ceiling and Trim was even more annoying. I was certainly not going to pay twice that for the higher-quality Behr stuff, and the biggest tragedy of all is that Metro has been sold out of their Mountain Snow all freaking summer. It's a problem. The other problem? The coverage. I put four coats of the Glidden on the above bookshelf in the dining room IN ADDITION to the primer, and I swear there are still spots I can see the dark laminate lurking underneath. (I have been informed by my beloved that I may in fact be crazy. We do try to exemplify romance.)

So. It may be time to buy a brand of paint that doesn't suck. I can already feel my bank account crying. My paintbrush hand, however, is crying right now from overuse, so it may in fact be worth it.