# Weekend Quickies (Small DIY projects)



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Nice, you have twin Ferrari’s there. :smile:


----------



## Drachenfire (Jun 6, 2017)

Not sure what you plan to put in that cabinet, but that robust framing on it will surly hold it. :smile:


----------



## CaptTom (Dec 31, 2017)

Nice! I find I get more done if I break a bigger job into little bits. Sometimes getting one little bit done motivates me to go ahead and finish the next bit, too. For example:

*Project:* Total renovation of a spare bedroom/future office.
*Current phase:* Have to get years' worth of accumulated junk out of the room, first.
*Today's bit:* On my 3rd recycle bin, going through old papers from an overflowing file cabinet. Scanning the things I need to keep, shredding what needs shredding, recycling the rest. Had a nice little bonfire last night before the snow hit, burning off a 12-gallon tote full of compressed shredder output in the fire pit.

(And I'm glad you added the phrase in parentheses to the title. If you hadn't, and you started the post off with "My husband and I," I would have thought I was in the wrong forum.)


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Two Knots said:


> Nice, you have twin Ferrari’s there. :smile:


Isn't that red fantastic?!? I squealed excitedly about it while my husband rolled his eyes with the sales guy:vs_laugh:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Drachenfire said:


> Not sure what you plan to put in that cabinet, but that robust framing on it will surly hold it. :smile:


Bleach, my fancy iron and it's distilled water bottle, and a stain stick! 

It actually came from my husbands shop, used to be filled with spray paint, tape, and glue type stuff, but he picked up a couple of those taller metal shop cabinets so I pilfered it before he could give it away


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

CaptTom said:


> Nice! I find I get more done if I break a bigger job into little bits. Sometimes getting one little bit done motivates me to go ahead and finish the next bit, too. For example:
> 
> *Project:* Total renovation of a spare bedroom/future office.
> *Current phase:* Have to get years' worth of accumulated junk out of the room, first.
> ...


It is a great idea to break your projects into sections and tick them off like that! My husband and I have been doing it for decades and it works great. You get a little "bing" of satisfaction and accomplishment which helps motivate you to continue. My husband prefers written lists, but I've "modernized" it a bit for myself; I have a 12 page "todobook" word document that lists everything I want to do by room and I try to do something off it every day.


(And yes, I am a tad punny :wink2


----------



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Mystriss said:


> Isn't that red fantastic?!? I squealed excitedly about it while my husband rolled his eyes with the sales guy:vs_laugh:



It's outrageous, I love red! I would have picked the same color! :thumbsup:

Red makes everything look better! :biggrin2:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Two Knots said:


> It's outrageous, I love red! I would have picked the same color! :thumbsup:
> 
> Red makes everything look better! :biggrin2:



I totally agree, red is my favorite color. All of my kitchen stuff is red, I have red sofa's and recliners too. One of our boys picked his bedroom colors some ages ago; two fire house red walls, two white walls, and blue carpet. The "adopted" 25+ year old roommate has the room now and loves the 'Merica theme (he even kept the fireman light switch cover :vs_laugh


----------



## BrownEyedGuy (Oct 2, 2018)

Mystriss said:


> I totally agree, red is my favorite color. All of my kitchen stuff is red, I have red sofa's and recliners too.


Hmmm.....I just picked up a new set of cookware last month. Ya like? 

It's anodized red, so it has a clear candy apple appearance. I added a couple extra skillets too.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

BrownEyedGuy said:


> Hmmm.....I just picked up a new set of cookware last month. Ya like?
> 
> It's anodized red, so it has a clear candy apple appearance. I added a couple extra skillets too.


They are a fantastic color! How do they work?


I've gotten totally spoiled from using AmeriCrafts so I have a hard time finding a lighter weight set I like. We'd gotten a set of Rachael Ray red enameled non-stick's for the kids to use (much lighter weight and if they scratched them up it was no biggy,) so that's what I'm using now. I really like the performance to weight ratio, but the color fades on them even though they are hand-washed 90% of the time


----------



## Drachenfire (Jun 6, 2017)

Mystriss said:


> It actually came from my husbands shop, used to be filled with spray paint, tape, and glue type stuff, but he picked up a couple of those taller metal shop cabinets so I pilfered it before he could give it away


It is not called pilfering, it is called re-purposing. :wink2:


----------



## BrownEyedGuy (Oct 2, 2018)

Mystriss said:


> They are a fantastic color! How do they work?


I absolutely love them, but I didn't buy them to be light. They are thicker than typical aluminum, and even have ferrous inserts so they will work with induction top stoves. I'm thinking about getting one of those portable ones just to try out.

I still had/have a nice set, and didn't need these, but when I saw them at Sam's Club, I couldn't pass them up for the ridiculous price. The 2 shiny attachments are a small steamer and colander, and the glass lids are way better quality than my old set. 

I made the decision that these will never go in the dish washer. But they are also worthy of being displayed. If I can get my good camera working tonight, I'll finally get around to writing up a thread about the pan rack. I just found the battery cover a couple minutes ago, so hopefully that's all that was stopping it from working.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

BrownEyedGuy said:


> I absolutely love them, but I didn't buy them to be light. They are thicker than typical aluminum, and even have ferrous inserts so they will work with induction top stoves. I'm thinking about getting one of those portable ones just to try out.
> 
> I still had/have a nice set, and didn't need these, but when I saw them at Sam's Club, I couldn't pass them up for the ridiculous price. The 2 shiny attachments are a small steamer and colander, and the glass lids are way better quality than my old set.
> 
> I made the decision that these will never go in the dish washer. But they are also worthy of being displayed. If I can get my good camera working tonight, I'll finally get around to writing up a thread about the pan rack. I just found the battery cover a couple minutes ago, so hopefully that's all that was stopping it from working.


I'll see if I can spot a set up here and check em out. The color fade is a bit disappointing. My black stainless & enamel set from rachael ray doesn't suffer from the same fading and it's induction ready, so I'm not sure why the red fades on me.

You still use a camera? I have two of them that are just a few years old, but my galaxy note has better resolution so I just use it anymore


----------



## BrownEyedGuy (Oct 2, 2018)

Mystriss said:


> I'll see if I can spot a set up here and check em out. The color fade is a bit disappointing. My black stainless & enamel set from rachael ray doesn't suffer from the same fading and it's induction ready, so I'm not sure why the red fades on me.


You can order them on-line if you wish. Sam's club has a special package that's not normally available elsewhere, but many other stores carry the brand. I bought the extra 2-skillet set from Amazon to give me more skillet sizes than the Sam's Club version didn't have.


Mystriss said:


> You still use a camera? I have two of them that are just a few years old, but my galaxy note has better resolution so I just use it anymore


I have a Conon EOS Rebel, but when I took the camera to a project site to take hundreds of pictures, I installed the large external battery pack. When I was done, I couldn't find the battery compartment door for the normal internal battery. 

Last night.....due entirely to your thread....thank you....me and my son tore the house apart, and I finally found the battery door....right where it belonged....in the camera bag. The door has a little tab that disables the camera unless you close the door.

I tried to use my cell phone camera for weeks, but the lighting totally hosed it up. Only the Canon camera could pull off the tough lighting. Otherwise, I had been meaning to do that writeup for several weeks.

=========================
P.S. Thanks to your thread:vs_cool:....I finally got the writeup completed on my hanging pan rack a short time ago. (Insomnia!!) You can see it here:

https://www.diychatroom.com/f49/new-pans-deserve-new-pan-rack-651455/


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

BrownEyedGuy said:


> You can order them on-line if you wish. Sam's club has a special package that's not normally available elsewhere, but many other stores carry the brand. I bought the extra 2-skillet set from Amazon to give me more skillet sizes than the Sam's Club version didn't have.
> 
> I have a Conon EOS Rebel, but when I took the camera to a project site to take hundreds of pictures, I installed the large external battery pack. When I was done, I couldn't find the battery compartment door for the normal internal battery.
> 
> ...



Awesome, my evul master plan of inspiring DIY'ers all over the world is working already!:vs_box:


....


:vs_laugh:


----------



## BrownEyedGuy (Oct 2, 2018)

Weeeeelll......My friend Joann (Twoknots) was the original reason I wanted to post about the rack months ago, because she has such a nice kitchen herself. But yes....you did prod me along with your love of red. :vs_cool:


----------



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

I have two red frying pans as well...They are both deep, and non stick ( Red
Outside, Teflon inside) ... they are great for making a lot of stuff. 
Aren’t those see through lids awesome!?! 

One of them is 5 quarts...so, I also use it to make
Italian gravy ( tomato sauce with meatballs and sausage and 
chicken soup too. 

Brown eye guy...those red babies are gonna change your life! :biggrin2:


----------



## BrownEyedGuy (Oct 2, 2018)

Two Knots said:


> Brown eye guy...those red babies are gonna change your life! :biggrin2:


:vs_laugh::vs_laugh::vs_laugh::vs_laugh:
Yes, they already have.....Haven't turned on the dishwasher for 2 months now!!!! I use it as a drying rack for hand-washed dishes.:biggrin2:

But I like it! 

Not only are my pans in better shape, but my glasses are cleaner, silverware spotless, and plates cleaner. 

I don't think I'm going to go back to a dishwasher any time soon.


----------



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Well, I wouldn’t go that far, not using my DW...my new dishwasher (whirlpool) has a 
3 1/2 hour wash cycle. It also has an hour cycle, but according to the
book, 3 1/2 hour cycle is more cost effective. The stuff sparkles.

The insomniac that I am, I often unload it in the middle of the night! 
The head guy calls me the dishwasher fairy. :smile:


----------



## BrownEyedGuy (Oct 2, 2018)

Two Knots said:


> The head guy calls me the dishwasher fairy. :smile:


Yeah, when my son was visiting last night and saw me get up to "wash the pans" before taking my picture,.....he probably called me something a little stronger than "Fairy". :vs_laugh:

It's not about whether they are clean or not, but the "hand's-on" that you get with hand washing. If there is a tiny oil spot on the bottom, once it gets set, it becomes damn near permanent. 

I don't hand-wash them because they are delicate. I hand-wash them to make sure they are completely clean. It's those little oil spots that add up.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

*+*









*+ hammering =*










Bonus project this weekend:

















And a lovely end to a productive day.


----------



## Drachenfire (Jun 6, 2017)

Nice job on the picture frame placement. Adds a lot of visual interest to what would ordinarily be a bland wall.


----------



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Nice, :yes: are they black and white prints? I like them. 

We’re on the third day of our weekend project and still counting : sad:

The project is re-doing (the inside only) of a stained glass window 
the back-ass-wards way! let’s just say I’m not enjoying the suffering.:sad:


I looked at your album mystriss and saw the window that
your Mom made . :thumbsup:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Drachenfire said:


> Nice job on the picture frame placement. Adds a lot of visual interest to what would ordinarily be a bland wall.


I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with the stacking yet, but I want to get a new light in there before I decide if I want something less linear. If I did a more "chaotic" pattern I could probably fit in the rest of them (there's two bigger ones and one smaller one left over.)




Two Knots said:


> Nice, :yes: are they black and white prints? I like them.
> 
> We’re on the third day of our weekend project and still counting : sad:
> 
> ...


Yeah they're all pencil prints from a couple local artists we'd found at the state fair. I'd taken them down last summer while painting and we'd gotten the second artist's prints framed to match, but a few of them broke in the earthquake so we had to wait in line for new glass panes to fix them.


Oh ick, that sounds like a horrible thing to try to do. I almost imagine it'd be easier to de-solder that heh

I did like one stained glass, bit off more than I could chew and really soured myself on it. Was back before digital pictures were a thing and I don't feel like digging through the paper photo box, but was morning glories for my huge bay window back in the very early 90s:









My mother on the other hand awe's me with her work, just a few of the hundreds she'd done:















She did like six or seven of these:








And the last one she worked on with bottle glass and dishes a couple years ago:








They're flying all over the world now hitting their bucket list so she's not had time to do as much. I'm hoping she'll have time to make me something for my front door sidelights though.


----------



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Her work is wonderful. Be sure to tell her so.

We have always loved doing stained glass windows.
We’ve made many for our house...
One year we made about 10 windows 
for lChristmas gifts for friends and family.

We have also incorporated a lot of stained glass into
our woodworking projects. 

The one we’re currently partially re-doing is the first one we ever did.
Of course we got better and better at it, so I have been dying to
re-do the center of the window. 

I knew it was going to be a beari, but not a mother bear! :sad:
Hopefully, tomorrow it will be done...it has a lot of sentimental value
attached to it. I think ( hope) it’s going to look much better. 

Did you Mom do it for a living?


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Two Knots said:


> Hopefully, tomorrow it will be done...it has a lot of sentimental value attached to it. I think ( hope) it’s going to look much better.
> 
> Did you Mom do it for a living?


I'll send you some luck that it turns out 

It was just a hobby for my mother, IIRC she started doing it when her and father became discontented with the darts [aka bar] scene. Was ironically a bit of a bad choice because father got bored and took up DIY to busy himself. Things got a bit ridiculous. Father overbuilt everything; 200 screws in the 20x15 deck, 300 in the shed, etc. One year he decided to rebuild the bar in the house. The thing weighed a million pounds and wouldn't fit through the garage door because he'd put the bar top on before install. I recall him and about 10 ex cons trying to move the thing around to the back sliding door in 8' snow drifts :vs_laugh: (Father was always been into rehabilitation programs, now that he's retired from the military, again (he'd retired once to run the youth academy and once to be the military advisor for the governor,) he's a nationally awarded volunteer policeman - which my mother appreciates because he drives her batty when he has nothing to do.)


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

This weekend's quickie was in the kitchen;

*heat gun + sink liner =*








_(Used the heat gun to get all the shipping folds out of the liner)_

*sharpie + razor blade =*








_(Marked the first pipe then cut a straight line back, then repeated for the second pipe. I did a star pattern so the liner wraps around the pipe and should catch any spills.)_

*More heat gun + stuffing*








_(Used the heat gun to set in the fold on the edges so it's well seated, the board is there to stop my faucet sprayer weight from catching on the water shut off valve, I may or may not do something cleaner someday. Then I got my organizer whats-its in.)_















Moar bonus project:








_(We should have everything put back together next weekend so the youngest can ditch the red truck.)_


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

I forget how busy February is. We finished up the kids engine rebuild on the 11th, [it's all tested and running great,] then last weekend we had guests over. This weekend and next weekend are Fur Rondy (local winter thing, also the kick off of the Iditarod.)

We did find a little project this weekend though! Certain tall people keep hitting their head on this stereo shelf when at the workbench, but we couldn't put it any higher because my husband is 5' 3" sooo:

*Before*








*Wood*







*+*
*Air Tools*







*=*
*Ta da!*








*After*








We also put some lights up over the work bench:








_(After the fact we realized the CD changer is actually wider then the other rack components so now he's got a CD case sized storage spot. We may or may not build a slightly bigger base section for the CD player underneath just to protect it from dust and what not, but we didn't feel like digging any more scrap wood out of the back corner. Next weekend if we have time we'll wire up the rest of the 5.1 surround speakers, ATM he's only got the front 2 and the sub woofer hooked up.)_


----------



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Nice, everything is nice and neat!


----------



## wooleybooger (Feb 23, 2019)

I wish my shoparage could be that neat. Too much stuff. It's far worse now with a walk behind lawnmower, edger and riding mower park inline and under the bench. You can't see the miter saw bench to the left side or the joiner to the right of the planer or the table saw and the dust collector has to reside behind the planer now.


----------



## Drachenfire (Jun 6, 2017)

I know what you mean. 

I built a shed to get all the yard equipment out of the garage and still have a storage problem.


----------



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Well now you’ve got to build a shed for your shed! :smile:


----------



## Drachenfire (Jun 6, 2017)

Two Knots said:


> Well now you’ve got to build a shed for your shed! :smile:


The thought crossed my mind and then I began watching Hoarders and that knocked the idea right out of me.

I am now going the other way and working at getting rid of stuff.


----------



## Yodaman (Mar 9, 2015)

Mystriss said:


> This weekend's quickie was in the kitchen;
> 
> *heat gun + sink liner =*
> 
> View attachment 548893



Hard to pass up a thread titled Weekend quickies.

I like the under-sink liner. I didn't know there was even a product for this. It's always a problem area with rentals. Drain leaks are common and simple to fix, but for whatever reason tenants don't say anything about it until the base of cabinet is rotted out! I have been using Congoleum remnants and some times a shallow dish plastic tote positioned under the trap. But tenants these days take the totes with them when they leave, along with all the light bulbs!


----------



## hkstroud (Mar 17, 2011)

There is no such thing as a "Weekend Quickie". I can turn any 3 hour task into a 3 day job.


----------



## wooleybooger (Feb 23, 2019)

hkstroud said:


> There is no such thing as a "Weekend Quickie". I can turn any 3 hour task into a 3 day job.



:laughing::laughing::laughing::thumbup:


----------



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

hkstroud said:


> There is no such thing as a "Weekend Quickie". I can turn any 3 hour task into a 3 day job.


Don’t get me started! :vs_mad: Everything we do around here is like 
we set sail for the “Three Hour Tour!”

I always tell the my guy, “it’s a project, a project, not a hobby...
You don’t have to make love to it, just get it done!”


----------



## hkstroud (Mar 17, 2011)

Hmmmm, been late for work a lot, have you?


----------



## wooleybooger (Feb 23, 2019)

hkstroud said:


> Hmmmm, been late for work a lot, have you?


:vs_laugh:


----------



## TrojanHorse (Feb 15, 2019)

wooleybooger said:


> I wish my shoparage could be that neat. Too much stuff. It's far worse now with a walk behind lawnmower, edger and riding mower park inline and under the bench. You can't see the miter saw bench to the left side or the joiner to the right of the planer or the table saw and the dust collector has to reside behind the planer now.




I assume the mineral spirits are used for cleaning. What’s the Milwaukee’s Best for? Rinsing off the mineral spirits?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## wooleybooger (Feb 23, 2019)

TrojanHorse said:


> I assume the mineral spirits are used for cleaning. Yes but it doesn't work. If it did the place wouldn't be such a mess. :laughing: What’s the Milwaukee’s Best for? Rinsing off the mineral spirits?
> 
> Worthless shop helper gets very thirsty trying to get the place cleaned up.:biggrin2:
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


.....


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Yodaman said:


> Hard to pass up a thread titled Weekend quickies.
> 
> I like the under-sink liner. I didn't know there was even a product for this. It's always a problem area with rentals. Drain leaks are common and simple to fix, but for whatever reason tenants don't say anything about it until the base of cabinet is rotted out! I have been using Congoleum remnants and some times a shallow dish plastic tote positioned under the trap. But tenants these days take the totes with them when they leave, along with all the light bulbs!


Ouch. Well the 24x48" liner I got was $14 on Amazon, you can put some double stick tape under it so they can't pilfer it - probably cost less than the tote and light bulbs :vs_laugh:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

wooleybooger said:


> I wish my shoparage could be that neat. Too much stuff. It's far worse now with a walk behind lawnmower, edger and riding mower park inline and under the bench. You can't see the miter saw bench to the left side or the joiner to the right of the planer or the table saw and the dust collector has to reside behind the planer now.


To be fair, we kind of cheat, we have two 2 car garages (Mine and his) and a pretty big shed we stick the lawn tractor or snow blower into seasonally


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Two Knots said:


> Nice, everything is nice and neat!


And no more bleeding from the forehead :vs_laugh:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

I'm a bit late posting this past weekends quickie because of Fur Rondy and a game my husband and I started playing with the youngest and his girlfriend :vs_laugh:

Between all of that excitement I finally addressed a thing that's been a minor annoyance since we put the kitchen sink in:









*+ Mysterious Box*









*= Ta Da*









This is one of those things that you don't even think about too much when designing your kitchen remodel . You pick out your faucet and buy the matching soap dispenser. You install it and realize the thing doesn't clear the edge of the sink, but it's not a big deal because soap goes on the brush or on the hands so "whatever." 

Then one day, some kid comes along and breaks the cheap plastic inside the thing and you actually think about what you're really looking for in life; a long enough reach, metal construction that looks every bit as tanky as it is, a legitimate o-ring instead of a flat silicone washer that never quite seals to the sinktop, a lower profile, something that fills from the top AND has a 17oz bottle... 

All of these things and more can, indeed, be yours when replacing your soap dispenser. :vs_OMG:


----------



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

It’s the little things that drive you crazy. 

We had a separate sprayer on our old faucet...
the new faucet has a pull down sprayer, so we ended up up an extra hole in the countertop. 
We bought another dispenser and I put windex in it cause I use a lot of windex. 
It works out great as I always spray the window cleaner 
on the paper towel to clean the mirrors and glass in the kitchen.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Last weekend's project was supposed to be building the deck and maybe running some nat gas pipe, water lines, drain pipe, and/or dryer vent to put the washer dryer out in my garage, BUUUuuut... I says, "Hon... I think you were right..." He stares at me a moment then mutters, "Dammit woman..." :vs_laugh: 

I changed my mind on putting them in the front of the garage, which means we'll be buying more copper, PVC, and aluminum before we can start on that particular project. On the plus side it's where he wanted to put them in the first place so he's happy about that part. Just have to move the cabinets and my wet-vac heh

In other news, not sure if we'll get to it this weekend because my husbands favorite car decided to die, but UPS air dropped these (I think the guy threw them at the front door) yesterday:









Running cable TV, internet, and speakers all over the house will be a multi-parter as there's a lot of other stuff happening at the same time. I was hoping to at least get the sheetrock that was damaged in the earthquake cut so we could make sure the drain from upstairs wasn't cracked when it got punched through the wall - we don't believe it was because there's no sign of a leak that we can find (I mean, other than where I accidentally mounted a dvd player shelf to the PVC pipe thinking it was a stud some years ago. Luckily the now rusted screws and bolts plugged the holes alright...)


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

I've been AWOL, March was a rough month as we decided to share a couple flu's in series. 

We managed to accomplish some stuff, mostly outdoor spring clean-up stuff, but I didn't take pictures. I snapped some pics of this one though:

*Degreaser + sponge mop =*















*Liquid Gold Floor Restore + sponge mop =*















The entry way [laminate] wood is probably over 30 years old and I must admit I never took care of it because we'd always planned to replace it [next summer, of course heh] It came out way better than I was expecting it to so I consider it time well spent, even if we're going to replace it next summer


----------



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

It looks good. :thumbsup:


----------



## Nik333 (Mar 1, 2015)

Do you have a mudroom?

I desperately need one.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Nik333 said:


> Do you have a mudroom?
> 
> I desperately need one.


No, but we have a covered front porch with an aggressive door mat, plus that black and white mat inside that sucks dirt off the shoes.

I had a mud room once, it wasn't that great honestly. It wasn't heated so no one took off their shoes in the cold. Turned into little more than a messy storage closet that all our guests had to walk though. Great first impression >.<


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Thought I'd pop in and say I haven't forgotten about this thread, we just havn't been doing anything really picture worthy. Mostly cleaning up fallen trees around the lot and doing spring yard work. We did get a new toy though:









:vs_OMG: ~Makes really bad chain saw noises~


----------



## Yodaman (Mar 9, 2015)

Mystriss said:


> I had a mud room once, it wasn't that great honestly. It wasn't heated so no one took off their shoes in the cold. Turned into little more than a messy storage closet that all our guests had to walk though. Great first impression >.<





Building a garage this past winter I started using my boiler room as a mud room. It's always toasty in there. Plenty of warm pipes for drying racks! Nails for coat hooks, and a Iglue cooler to sit on. If only I could fit a Lazy-boy! :smile:




Let us know how the cordless saw works. For some light duty cutting I use a SawZall with a 12" pruning blade. It does a decent job, but I usually get impatient and grab a gas powered saw.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Saw is a beast. Way out-performed what we expected of it. We went out and attacked some pussy willows, black spruce, and birch trees for ya'll. Enjoy!

Haz a video!

As a note, that's with the 5Ah 20V battery, there's a smaller one 3Ah I believe, and a big one that's like 7.5Ah. We got the saw & battery at Home Depot up here for like $250. Well worth the price to us.


----------



## Yodaman (Mar 9, 2015)

Wow, I was impressed. You did all the cutting with one 5Ah battery! Did you get a spare blade? I have a electric Craftsmen that was my fathers, (that I used mostly) to cut fire wood that was delivered to the house. It always did a good job as long as the blade was sharp. Speaking of which I need to get a chain sharpener. I must have a half dozen or more blades around here that need sharpening! I still use wood to heat as a back up, but nat. gas spoils you real quick.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

We were impressed too, expected it'd maybe be able to do one tree then we'd have to switch batteries, but that one battery easily could have done more. Figure we could have finished sizing down another two or three black spruce, or a bunch of the willows; including cutting off all the branches so the kids could drag it all out of the underbrush to be prepped for burning, before we'd have even needed another battery. We're /very/ happy with it.

We haven't gotten a second chain yet, but we plan to just for GP. We'll probably be taking ours to the local knife sharpener folks though, they saved my husband $2-$3k on set of new Shun knives last summer so he figures he owes them some business :vs_laugh:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

It's been a busy first half of the weekend with more to come, but husband is taking a nap so I figured I'd drop an update 

We finally managed to run out the battery on the 20v Dewalt chainsaw, went forever it seemed like. Just as an example of the size trees we were sawing here's just some of the logs we made up (the posts on the left are 4x4's):









The grill died last weekend so our second project for the weekend is putting the "new" one together (I bought it years ago but my husband was very attached to the old one so it's just been sitting by the shop waiting.) Had a fancy cover on it, but it still needed a pretty major cleaning. I'd say were about 3/4 of the way done getting it put together/cleaned:
















Then this morning mommy got a new toy, been playing with it all afternoon, but I haven't decided what I'm going to make first yet - maybe I'll turn something with those beautifully mottled birch logs on the top of the pile in pic one 















\o/


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Been outside all day trying to get the deck area ready for the new grill. It was quite a mess since we'd gotten a bit lazy with it the past three or four years. Today we took about 20 years off my monster lilac tree (Turns out there was a glass door and a deck under it! heh):


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Woof what a crazy summer... Husband's work got sold, he got a promotion and finally quit his second job, other family medical emergencies, and a coding side job... We've been so busy adjusting that we haven't got much done in the line of "small projects." Things are starting to mellow now though so hopefully we can get back on track for our weekend quickies :biggrin2:

We did solve a long standing problem with the lighting in our stairway and installed some nightlight switches at the top and bottom:






















Works great! We don't even have to turn on the light at night anymore (used to have to turn it on during the day half the time.)

For reference the switches are Legrand NTL873-WCC6. They work in single pole or 3-way and the light has 3 levels + off so you can adjust them as needed. We had put one of these in the dining room many years back and we were really happy with it, but we had a hard time finding the switches again.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

I decided to cancel our Vivint security service because we never use it so I had to remove the display from the wall. Then I had to redo all the SS hexes to cover the gap behind it - they weren't aligned correctly on the right and left sides of the outlet it was plugged into so I ended up redoing that entire section in the corner.

Before:










After:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

I think we're finally settling into the routine of my husband not having two or three jobs. Getting back on track with our little projects... and some bigger ones in the works as well. Onto today's project though.


The past month or so I've run into a problem with my spice collection so today I fix't it. I've got a 3" spice pull-out (love it,) but it's never really been big enough, and it's gotten much, much worse as I started actually cooking the past couple years. Started with this:









That was good for a while, but I eventually filled up all the jars. So I added these hexagon jars with magnets:









That was perfect for a while, but then I filled those up too. So I went to add more to the next row up and ran into a problem:









I've been "living with" having to pull off the hexagon jars in order to pull out the round ones beneath for quite a while, but then I saw a thing on Amazon and check it out:















Little baby hexagons!! 

They're perfect for my spice blends and smaller quantity stuff AND they even fit between the boards on the top row so I can fit a bunch more in the pull-out now \o/ 

Ran out of the shorter screws to install the magnets and the rest of the bigger hexs are in the wash, so I'll have to finish up later, but for now we are quite pleased with ourself.



Here's the stuff I used. There's major landfiller on the market. These particular products are the higher quality picks of the litter:

Round spice jars - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002I65X6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Bigger hex jars - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010NXYD9C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Smaller hex jars - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0194UN7GA/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Magnets (be careful with these things) - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CZGWY93/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Labels (these are real nice, even survive the dishwasher; remove well too) - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072FHQR6X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Chalk Marker for custom labels (does not survive washing or much rubbing [not really supposed to], but it's a better brand than any of the others I tried as far as survival) - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IRYDH96/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1


----------



## Yodaman (Mar 9, 2015)

Wow looks great! I use like 5 different spices to make anything...............and two of them are salt and pepper!


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

^^ Nothing wrong with that, a lot of times simple is perfect.  Using strange spices is my version of "wild and crazy" cause I'm super picky heh


In other news, yesterday we ran into town and picked up the smaller screws so this morning I finished it up:









I've got a few empty jars for some other spices I am hunting for, and I think I'm going to go ahead and order another pack of magnets -- I had figured I didn't want to put in any more than I'd gotten because the spice rack isn't on full extension slides so I can't get into the back of it very easily, however after looking over my "wanted spice list" I think I'll order a couple of Blum slides so I can put in another 8 jars heh

FYI I had forgotten to mention the magnets I listed above use #8 recessed head wood screws. I used both 3/4" and 1/4" long, but you'll want to get the length for your wood. I do not recommend less than 1/4" or the magnets are likely to pull the screws off with the jars (they are very powerful magnets)

Also, pulled the entire cabinet out and redid the magnet alignment with a ruler so they were centered and spaced well - cause OCD - was way better than trying to do it by eye/fumble with the drawer in the cabinet heh I still had to use the right angle drill attachment though.


----------



## Nik333 (Mar 1, 2015)

Do you have a system for finding them? I notice it's not alphabetical.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Nik333 said:


> Do you have a system for finding them? I notice it's not alphabetical.


I have a near photographic memory so I know where they all are. The ones in the front on the top two rows are the ones I use most though.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Lookie what all I got yesterday:

















Also, on the second picture there. DON'T BUY CHEAP FLOORING. 

We'd bought that green laminate stuff that's down in there because I liked the size of the faux tiles (they're like 14" squares) and the color was perfect to match my kitchen durastone tile. Threw a 9x12 rug on it that matches the kitchen rugs. Year and a half or two years ago I pulled up the rug to get them all cleaned and found basically the entire floor in the middle is trashed. Water damage; from spilled water/juice/etc (dining table was there), and from bringing wood into the woodstove with the snow, and who knows what else wet (had old dogs and the door in there was how they got outside so it wouldn't surprise me if there were accidents.) Basically every tile in the room has puffed up at the seams (each board is 3 tiles x 1 tile) - it's HORRIBLE and now I have to empty out all my carousel horses (hundreds of them) so we can redo the floor. 

Very unhappies about that, but it's gonna have to wait until my other projects are done - I gott'a time line to keep. I think I'm gonna do it in the LifeProof stuff, BUT there's another flooring type (lux vinyl) out there that I can't find the sample of, we'd put that sample in water for 2 weeks with no damage at all - if i ever find the sample I'm getting that stuff.


----------



## Yodaman (Mar 9, 2015)

Keep in mind that LVT can be water proof. That's good, at least it's not going to rot, but it doesn't necessarily protect the sub floor underneath. Water can still get thru it.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Yeah. We don't have kids or dogs anymore so other than some snow on the tiles from having a fire there shouldn't be anymore wet "accidents" of either kind \o/


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

My latest project might be too big to technically qualify as a "small" DIY, but I'm gonna put it in here anyway.

I'm converting my overflow closet into a guest room for the summer and eventually into a home office. 

As part of the project we'll be installing three lights in the game room below, running CAT & RG6 to every bedroom upstairs, running CAT, RG6, Audio, and Video to the kitchen and game room downstairs, and possibly completely redoing our stairs which have an aweful 9" rise.

This weekends task was to empty the new guest room/office of all the clothes stuff and get those to good will, probs need to drop off at least a couple more loads to fit it all into my bedroom closet/dressers. My husband didn't make it through his hanging clothes this weekend, but close enough heh. 

* Note: I had pulled the carpet and pad and painted the sub-floor for GP last summer in prep for new flooring and running the cables and lights, but our summer went crazy because spruce beetles got busy. They killed three of my huge 40+' tall spruce trees, plus took out a bunch of smaller spruces - not to mention basically every spruce over 4" around in the entire neighborhood. We took down the smaller ones and had the pros come in to do the ancient ones (I think I posted pics of that somewhere on here - "End Days" thread I believe) 

This past weekend I also measured and marked stuff up, so here's my new blank canvas & the marks for the game room lights below. We'll be pulling up the stained sheet of sub-floor and replacing it when we wire in the game room lights next weekend [hopefully, husband might have to attend another office meeting]















The center mark is for a pool table light that'll be on one switch, and the other two marks will be LED ceiling fixtures on a separate switch. Then in the guest room and hall closets I've marked for running the networking cables and the game room light switches.















The mark in the hall closet (the tan colored one) [should] line up with this corner of the game room below which was damaged by our huge commercial fridge trying to go through the wall during the 7.0 quake in late 2018. [Related good news, our local McDonalds, which was totaled by the quake and had to be demolished and rebuilt, officially reopened just a couple days ago so we have Big Mac's again \o/]









We'll be cutting out 4 feet from that corner on both walls next weekend [again hopefully] and eventually building a DVD bookcase under the TV that belongs there.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Moar loot! 

UPS just dropped these off:









I need 3 more of these cap-a-treads but they'll have to wait to see what we're doing with the stairs. If we gut them entirely to fix the riser height I'll need bigger ones with edge returns.

Also waiting for my folks to get back from S. Africa so I can get the matching risers up here - they don't ship those to Alaska for some stupid reason. Ship the treads which are larger, but risers? NOPE lol


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Ru Roh...









It was super windy last night. I heard a bang, but when I looked out the front I didn't see anything obvious. I guess the house doesn't want to wait another year or two for a brand new roof & gutters :vs_laugh:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Alright, we got the gutter down - husband tried to fall off the roof and 'bout gave me a heart attack, but it's done.

It's not the weekend yet, but I've been busy with my "little" remodeling project (basically half the house is getting changed heh) I thought I'd share some of my plans to better explain what all I'm doing.

Starting in the game room downstairs, this is what we had in there until Nov 2018:








Kinda hard to see, but under the right side of the tv is where the sheetrock was damaged by the 2018 7.0 quake (epicenter was 13 miles from my house so I'm alright with the minimal damage we took vs others in town here.)

In any event, as you can see we've got all those stupid cubes to hold our DVD collection (or what we've collected since we last purged it) So I decided since the wall was damaged I wanted to build a shallow bookcase for them in the corner. So I drew these plans up:









I figured since we're gonna be opening up the walls (and we've already got the kitchen ceiling tore up for tin drop-in's) we might as well run cable, internet, and home audio/video to all the bedrooms upstairs and the kitchen and game room downstairs. So I did measurements and got a pile of cables for that. 

And while we're at it... There's no lights in the game room, it's a 1978 house so it's just got an outlet on a switch. So we tore out the carpet upstairs in order to pull the subfloor boards and put in a light, and recently a switch in the game room for it - which is why the bookcase got extended into a cue rack to hide the cut across the sheetrock to the end of the wall for a switch. If I have the energy/time I'm going to do stenciled corkboard behind the cues.

Originally we were just going to re-carpet the upstairs bedroom, but we randomly decided to do laminate floor, and since we're doing that bedroom, and the carpet in the upstairs hall is trashed, and the carpet on the stairs is trashed, and the stair risers are far too high...

Uhm, so yeah, that is how you end up "accidentally" remodeling half your house :vs_laugh:


Here's the existing stairway:















And the "decorative" plans (for now) for the new ones:









Not this weekend, but the next one, we'll be tearing the carpet off the stairs and getting exact measurements to see how much work completely rebuilding them to adjust the riser heights will be. The railing picture shows a "cut away" of the existing stair risers/treads, but the thought if we rebuild them is to hang the stairs over that angled half wall. (Also the hand rail and that floor to ceiling post will be trimmed out in maple and stained to match the kitchen cabinets, pool table, and new bookcase. The wainscott is going to be white, the balusters are 1/2" square iron in "pewter grey" (I think I posted a pic somewhere) with the circles being black.

Structurally, we're thinking to put in 3 angled stairs at the bottom landing area. The length to the top landing might be a little tight so we might have to go 7.25ish:11 but that's going to be way better than the 9:12 we have right now. We'll figure that out in a little over a week.

Oh did I mention we have until May 19 to get all this done? lol


Anyway, so I got most of the upstairs done today, pulled all the tack strips in what will be the office as well as the hall closet that's directly above the left wall in the game room. We'll be cutting drywall this weekend - good times.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Apparently as revenge for trying to give /me/ a heart attack last weekend, this weekend my husband tried to have one - for real. Stage III hypertension. We spent Thursday evening in urgent care >.< We didn't get the sheet rock cut this weekend, but luckily we're not very much behind schedule - and he's fine too :vs_laugh:

I did get my job for the weekend done, which was taking apart/down the old metal radiator cover in the guest room/office:









When I saw how bad a shape the fins were in I told my husband I'd like to replace the whole thing and he introduced me to my new adorable best friend; a fin straightener tool! As you can see in these two pics we had some pretty bad damage, I assume from when this was a play-room for the kidos almost twenty years ago:















In any event, this tool is pretty amazing, though the second pic there was basically folded in half so I had to pull out my handy-dandy painters tool to do the initial straightening like so:















Then I hit it with the straightener tool and came out with this. Not perfect, but still a massive improvement!


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Things are going a bit slower than usual, go figure. House is an onion so every time we start to do anything we find obstacles or other things to fix. At least it's the former in this particular case 


Removing 42-43 year old plywood sub-floor was a tough job for my husband and the youngest [21], one of the boards snapped almost in half. I think if one is removing plywood this old, they should plan on replacing it, was almost impossible not to wreck the corners of the sheets getting the nails up. Only one more board has to come up though so good progress there:















Removed most of the drywall from the game room below:









Cut a hole in the upstairs linen closet and spent an entire day fishing cables through. The "light at the end of the tunnel" is coming from the kitchen downstairs. Since I had romex going across the bay I had to do some really uncomfortable reaching to get all all my low voltage cables over top of them (instead of underneath them) to prevent signal interference. We're going to add some kind of separator to keep them "up" [against the bottom of the sub-floor] so they're not laying on the romex there before we button back down the sub-flooring:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

All the cables go to the game room and kitchen. There happened to be a very convenient gap in the firebreak (in the corner of pic two) that we snaked 2 coax and 2 CAT8's through for the other two bedrooms (pic 4 coils laying on top of fridge.) The white CAT8 and coax coiled up on the wall there goes into a keystone plate above the fridge for the kitchen's coax & Ethernet.



























We'll be putting a crown molding in the game room so it'll cover the gaps cut into the ceiling.

This weekend we'll be running the rest of the cables, speaker wire, and electrical, then hopefully we can get the floor buttoned down and leveled so I can lay flooring next week \o/


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Update time. Things are going a bit slower than expected, but I think we'll still get the critical parts done by mid May. 

We had to do a "mad rush" to get all the supplies last weekend, just in case we go into a harder lock-down up here. Went in for sub-flooring and came home with 26 more boxes of flooring... soooo... yeah... two or three more rooms (the entryway, dining room, and the eventual kitchen expansion room) will be getting new flooring as well. 

Now we're "accidentally" remodeling the /entire/ house :vs_laugh:


Anyway, I've cut a drywall opening in the hallway closet for a custom coax & Ethernet distribution panel plus an outlet (you can see the new outlet box sitting on the left side, I built a small 2x4 frame for it in order to get it located correctly, but since I still have to drill the holes for the coax/cat8 in the stud there I just set it off to the side):








And this opening here is for the custom panel for my computer and theater setup:








* I'm still working on the custom panel plates so I'll explain how I'm making those when I install them.

I've run nearly all the cables that'll be installed on/in that wall. Since I have the floor opened up I was able to drill "up" into the bottom plate ("sill"?) of the wall. So far I've got the right & left front, center, and right & left front height speakers and I've also run two 8K HDMI cables from the distribution panel to the wall mounted TV as well as a TosLink cable. I also located the TV mount and cut out for the double gang electrical box add-on as well. 

* Adding a TosLink cable gives bi-directional audio even if the TV/receiver/computer doesn't have an ARC/eARC HDMI port. If you have an HDMI ARC/eARC port on the TV and receiver then you don't need the TosLink. However, for me, the $10 to run a TosLink was worth it so I'm running them as well. 
HDMI = video, TosLink = audio, and HDMI ARC/eARC = Video+Audio on same cable 















As you might have caught/notice, my husband has removed two of the 2x10s between the floor joists that were located exactly where the pool table lights downstairs need to go. Some folks on here helped me figure out that these are most likely not firestop's, just floor stabilizer things, so we decided to shift the locations of the ones in the way of the game room lights (there'll be 5 of them relocated in total.)

----

I figured I should get a couple "in progress" shots to better explain how I'm doing the in-wall cables/speaker wires. This is running the left rear height, left rear surround, and left surround 1 speakers [on the opposite side of the room from the receiver.] 

This is an exterior wall with insulation and vapor barrier in it so it was a bit trickier than the empty interior wall cavities - which made what I've taken to calling the "fish stick" [aka wire noodler] invaluable. However, the process is pretty much the same for "empty" stud bays.








First I located my studs to ensure I could actually fit a speaker between them; with the window on this wall I've found some odd stud placements and oddly sized stud bays that I wouldn't have been able to fit a speaker in, so I had to move around where I was planning to install speakers a bit. 

Next I measured up to "seated ear height" for the speaker location (I believe its 46.5" in our case), then drilled a 5/16" hole (for 14/4 in-wall cable) at a pretty sharp downward angle. (The downward angle helps align the fish stick so it's not just poking into the other side of the wall cavity.)

Next I ran the fish stick down to the bottom of the wall and figured out the angle for the bottom cut in the drywall - in interior walls, gravity pretty much dictated the cables would go straight down, but in the insulated wall, the fish stick seems to "find a hard edge", the stud usually, and ride that down to the bottom plate. Also you might have to go around stuff, as in the case of the first two speakers on this wall where I needed the wire to angle from the left stud at the top over to the right side stud at the bottom in order to clear the hot water baseboard pipe.

Once I figure out where the fish stick bottoms out (or get it where I want it to come out) I cut a rectangle out of the drywall so I can reach in and catch the bottom of the fish stick (do wear gloves in the insulated wall, it's itchy if you forget em.) I'm cutting my bottom drywall openings short enough that they'll eventually be hidden behind the base molding.

Finally I connect the wire to the fish stick and pull them up through the wall. (This noodler has a screw on attachment that works great, but unfortunately the threaded screw rods in this particular set keep breaking off [cheap material] so I won't recommend the product.) 









Because of the insulation and vapor barrier in this wall and on/over the rim joist I didn't want to drill up into the wall cavity itself, so I just drilled a hole through the sub floor and ran the speaker wires through there (see the left opening in pic.) It'll be behind the base molding, just need to be careful not to staple/nail into them. Also, 9/16" is a pretty good fit for two 14/4's, just be sure to clean off the hole opening well so you don't have sharp edges that might cut into the wires/cables. 

* I make a point to scrape over ALL my drill holes. I use my painters tool, any flat metal edge would probably work, but I find the bevel pops off splinters really well, then hit it with a sanding sponge to knock off the sharp edges. (This is especially important with your fiber type cables, including Toslink, as damaging the sheathing can interfere with the light refraction inside and either break the cable or cause it to "run slower than advertised" - essentially, as I understand it, breaks or interruptions in the light beam cause data throughput degradation and thus less bandwidth... nvm, geeking out too much for this. Basically you don't want to bend or maul fiber style cables too much so run em careful and maybe run them last so they don't get wrecked.


Lunch is over so back to work \o/


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Oh forgot a bit of work we did down in the game room. We cut a line across the wall over to where the new light switch will be, then realized there's a 5 ply 2x4 "stud" and saw just how full the one bay is... The fuse box for the house is on the other side of that wall there so we knew there would be electrical wires in there, but we didn't realize just how many went into the basement there. We're reassessing how we're going to run the lights and switch; through the basement, "across" all the fuse box wires, or something else entirely.









Also, we did the cut with one of the new toys we got weekend before last. The Dewalt 20V 4 1/2" mini circular saw - so much fun! The other two are the 20V palm sander and 20V compact router. I've also got a Bosh compact router guide I'll be using later on in this project. Fun, fun, fun!


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Had a very productive afternoon. After lunch I ran the left subwoofer cable and got that all installed. I used RG6 with an F-type to RCA keystone:





















Then my husband pulled up another section of sub-floor and I was able to run all the rest of the cables to downstairs. I have to stick 3 more CAT8 cables into the closet distribution panel area then that part is completely done \o/









Here's the cables in the kitchen all done; have Ethernet, coax, TosLink, HDMI, and a 3.5mm for a remote. This is above the fridge so it's not going to be visible - got it a little crooked. Also a pic of the back side of the kitchen box.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Been a while since I posted, busy, busy, busy! Not quite as far along as I had hoped, stupid onion house, every single time we start a project we find something else that's gotta be changed or fixed. In any event, we are essentially done with the office/guest room "structural" stuff and down to easy, peasy flooring \o/

I finished checking that every single cable I ran around the house is working properly and it all checked out! I'm amazed, I was expecting at least ONE wire to break somewhere lol I thought I'd share some of the ways I tested cables. 

For the USB cables, I have a vehicle jumper box that has a USB port for phone charging (the Genius Boost+ GB40, awesome little thing that has enough juice in it to jump even my full-size SUV and it keeps a charge forever - highly recommended) Anyway, I put that thing on the one end of each of the printer usb's in the office, then put my phone on the other end to test.

For the HDMI cables, I used a blu-ray player on one end and the office TV on the other. Fairly portable so it worked out very well + it checks audio.

TosLinks are pretty easy, plug into blu-ray player's audio out; if it lights up downstairs it works heh

Speaker's were a bit of a pain because my in-wall speakers are stuck in shipping still (Amazon's prioritizing "essentials" so us audiophiles are shoved to the sidelines :/) I'm running a 13.2.4 setup in the office (that's 13 satellite speakers, 2 sub-woofers, and 4 ceiling speakers) and I'm doing 14/4 speaker wire (2 pairs per channel - will detail that better when I make speaker connections.) Since I can't fit two 14 gauge bare wires into the back of my boston acoustic satellite speakers I used a multi-meter tone to test all 60 of the wires I have installed... it took all day to test each one heh Also you can see the mess of cables I had to put in the wall/floor for my PC/AVR, my husband was like "WHAT do you need all those cables for!!" lol









One might also notice that we have new paint in the office now. I went in for a slightly bluer gray color, but they had a mis-tint of this grey in SW Infinity for only $9! (usually $40 up here) so I was like "close enough!" and on the walls it went! Gotta say, this stuff rolls on real nice, much better than the bher I had been getting - SW all the way for me now - thanks for the advice pros on DIY!!















Also got the TV installed. Husband put it on the wrong studs, my fault, I said "a stud on the left of the new tv outlet" and "at least 58" up" then I left him alone and he mounted it right at the outlet stud grouping and too high to cover the outlet plate. It's my own fault, but no amount of whining would get him to move it to the left - I'll try more whining later when he's gotta mount my computer monitors heh









Here's a close up of two of the new outlet locations. On the left side is the printer outlet which has a 6 port keystone insert for 2 Ethernet connections and 3 USB 3.0 connections for our computer desks (laser printer and inkjet all in one printer) The one on the right is for all the Ethernet and coax distribution.









Which leads to my custom cover plates for the distribution and my PC/theater I promised to get back to. Close up of the CAT8 and COAX distribution here:









That's a 1U server plate (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079FLDBMF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s05?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and a 1U vertical mount (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07T7DLBTT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s05?ie=UTF8&psc=1) What I did is scuff sand, prime (with white primer) then I sprayed on a couple coats of white enamel appliance paint (The stuff you'd use to refinish a fridge/dishwasher/etc.) <Continued next post cause of image limits>


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Then I used a graphics program (Fireworks is my fav and it lets you set print size by inches) to design the "boxes" and a laser printer to print out clear stickers to go around the different keystones (bedroom 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) and stuck those on, then I did three coats of poly over top of the stickers to help seal them on. In progress shots:















The one shown by my trackball is a 2U (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MYU9V6Z/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) for my speaker distribution, and there's also a second 16 port 1U (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002GWPTG/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s05?ie=UTF8&psc=1) with a 3U vertical mount (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07T59R6P9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s05?ie=UTF8&psc=1) - those three go to my theater / PC distribution panel. I don't have that one installed yet cause I'm waiting on all the keystones to arrive. I'll be back to these next month when all the stuff's here and I'll show how I'm going to trim the custom plates  

I'm pretty pleased with how that all worked out, the paint job seems pretty durable and it didn't scratch off during install or anything. Though, on the stickers, I'd recommend trying to do full "sheets" as much as you can, rather than cutting out each individual "area" (like Subwoofer,) since the "pin stripe"/box lines get pulled out of line far too easily (see Ethernet/coax distribution plate waviness.) It'd have gone a lot smoother if I'd printed as many boxes together as I could as there would have been more "structure" to keep the lines ... in line heh


Moving downstairs, we have lights in the game room! (Sorry about the lighting, didn't get a picture until the sun was already going down)









I /love/ these pool table lights! Only thing I didn't like was that the top wood bit originally looked like this:









Now they match my pool table and will match the bookcase and cue rack. I also finally found the switch & outlet plates I needed in wood (Amazon was asking like $13 a pop for them, I found local for like $6 each) then I stained those too:









FYI that's Minwax Polyshades "Olde Maple". I highly recommend buying only the spray version of polyshades. I had happened to get a polyshades spray in a different stain color a while back and both the ease of use and final results of the spray vs the brush on is a no brainer. If this wasn't such a hard to find color up here I'd cut my losses and just throw the brush on stuff away... (And if I had more talent for mixing my own stain tints I'd totally throw polyshades in the trash entirely (spray and brush on), it's just not that great vs a real stain.)

Also, I found the coolest LED edison style bulbs for the pool table lights, they're called "smoke glass" (like how you can get "amber" or "soft pink" or even "frosted" and so on? Well this "smoke" one is a black mirror bulb finish.) Sooo cool!!









(*I found them at either Home Depot or Lowes, they're even 5000k daylight, which I really needed for the pool table. They're 4.5W LEDs made by Feit Electric. Oh and they're dimmable too.)


Which brings me to the latest "onion" layer... We went to hook up the game room lights and found out that the outlet we were going to use to run two more outlets and all the game room lights on is actually connected to the kitchen circuit for some dumb reason... The outlet on the other side of the bookcase is also connected to a different room. I have no idea what the previous owner was thinking the way he wired this place up...

In any event, we don't want to add anything else to the kitchen circuit cause it's already got a bunch of outlets and lights on it, and we don't want the game room lights on the same circuit as the other room, sooo we're gonna put a new 20A circuit at the box. 

We had hoped to run to HD or Lowes today and get that installed and tested, but it decided to snow... Booo hiss. Ah well, husband is going to pick that up on the way home from work tomorrow then we'll do our testing and be able to button up the upstairs office subflooring and put down the life-proof flooring  

Tomorrow I get to pull 20-30 year old carpet off the stairs Weeee!


----------



## Old Thomas (Nov 28, 2019)

We bought this house in 1980. We did a gut out remodel in the first 5 years. In the 1990s we did updates. I retired 9 years ago and we have updated/refinished every room, including new ceramic tile, granite countertops, sanding oak floors, painting, adding a sun porch, etc. Last year I replaced our stairs with stained oak. Then my wife said everything is done, it is over, everything that can be done has been done. It only took 40 years. That is what you have to look forward to.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Old Thomas said:


> We bought this house in 1980. We did a gut out remodel in the first 5 years. In the 1990s we did updates. I retired 9 years ago and we have updated/refinished every room, including new ceramic tile, granite countertops, sanding oak floors, painting, adding a sun porch, etc. Last year I replaced our stairs with stained oak. Then my wife said everything is done, it is over, everything that can be done has been done. It only took 40 years. That is what you have to look forward to.


Hey that means we're almost half way there! :vs_laugh:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Success!


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Thought I'd share some "DIY tips" I have figured out for removing carpet tack strips and carpet padding over the years. Stair's are basically done the same way as wall-to-wall carpet in a room is done, but with a lot more tack strips and staples and body contortions. I use the same tools & techniques for both, stairs just take longer.

I personally like to remove any baseboard molding when I'm removing carpet, but you can usually get away with leaving it in-place if you need to/want to. To remove the carpet you just have to find a corner or edge and pull it up. Removing the carpet itself from stairs is possibly easier than a room, simply because the carpet is in one or more narrow strips, vs a room is usually a long wide sheet that can be rather unmanageable. It's nice to have a helper to remove a room's wall-to-wall, but stair carpet is fairly easy to do alone. 

As for time-sink for removing tack-strips and padding, I came up with 20-30 minutes per step to get everything off them, which includes scraping off the over-spray from wall texturing that you may or may not have. I also highly recommend planning for breaks every two or three steps to stand upright, walk around, stretch, etc. Be kind to yer back!

Here's some of the tools I find really useful for removing carpet pad, & tack strips in general (stairs or otherwise):

View attachment 593081

Gloves 
Needle nose pliers
Crowbar
Hammer
Trash can
Painters tool
Flat head screw driver
Small broom and dustpan
Shop vac
Flashlight/portable work light

Firstly, if you're going to re-carpet, you should only remove the tack strips (the thin wood strips on the first step) if they're torn up or otherwise falling off, or maybe if you have an area that your old carpet wasn't staying right. It saves a lot of time to reuse them and the location's of them don't really change for different carpet types or anything. They don't tend to get really beat up either, like if you look at the pics below you can see how well the tack strips tend to hold up; 3-4 boys, 3-4 dogs, 2 cats, and 2-3 adults using those stairs multiple times a day for _at least_ 18 years.

I do not personally like the idea of reusing carpet pad (see second step.) I suppose it could depend on when you last carpeted/installed new pad, or if you want to upgrade to a higher quality/thicker pad. Personally though, even if the pad is still in decent shape, I want it replaced because of all the dirt and stuff that gets in and on them. 

Since I'm going to be installing vinyl risers and treads, plus adjusting the riser height on my stairs, I've done a complete removal.

I recommend starting at the top of the stairs; it makes clean up a little easier and it's kinda nice to have a little padding to sit on while working  I only did the bottom steps in my example because the lighting at the top of the stairs wasn't very good for pictures.

I prefer to pull the carpet padding, then the tack strips, then entirely clean up one step at a time, but I wasn't entirely sure my knees and back would allow me to do the entire staircase when I started, so I went through and removed all the dangerous tack strips to make the steps safe to use just in case.

The carpet pad is just held on by staples so it's pretty easy to pull off. I find pad comes up more completely if you pull straight up at the staples (or "toward you" in the case of risers) - basically the staples come out best if you pull in the same direction they would have gone in. However, it doesn't usually come off clean, occasional chunks and bits tend to be better stapled and stay on the floor/tread/riser like these:















I first like to go over the step and use the point of my painters tool to loosen up the staple anytime it leaves a little padding chunk like that, makes it easier to grab the staple with the pliers. Sometimes it requires the flat head screwdriver and a hammer to get a corner of the staple loose. However, I do not like to pry out the staples that way though because they fly everywhere.

Once you have the staples all loosened it's just a matter of pulling the staples. For positioning you want to be able to pull the staples straight up/out with the pliers. For my stairs, with my riser height, I found that sitting two steps down to pull riser staples, and one step down to pull tread staples gave me the best positioning and leverage. 

I like to have my trash can on the same step I'm sitting on, and I find it easiest to pull the staple, then grab the staple with my other hand to throw it away - the staples and left over padding tend to stick to the pliers so trying to do the "logical" method of "pull staple, open pliers to drop staple in can" thing doesn't ever seem to work very efficiently for me.

Once I think I've got all the staples pulled I like to scrape over the surface with the edge of my painters tool. The staples often break off and leave a little "nub" in the wood that's really hard to see. Like this one that was conveniently in a white splotch for picture purposes (usually they're basically invisible - stealth toe biters):









Typically you can just get the nose of the pliers on the nub to pull it out, but sometimes they're too short to grab so you'll want to hammer it in flush.

With the tack strips on narrow stairs and walls, it's kinda hard to get a good angle so you have to go about it a bit oddly for the longer back tack strip. I like to hammer my crow bar in at an angle near the first nail like so (I work from right to left cause I'm mostly right handed, but you'll probably want to work left to right if you're left handed.)









You don't really want to pry up on the crow bar so much, the tack strip will just split on you - you're just using the crowbar to coax the strip up and pop the nail loose. The nails are short and they'll come up easily, and you can keep the strips mostly together for easier disposal if you just coax them out, rather than brute forcing them.

On the stairs I usually have to loosen up the first 3 nails using the pictured angle in order to get enough clearance for the "easy" part. The "easy" part involves reversing the angle like so:









Once you get that angle you can practically just tap the crowbar down the entire length of the tack strip. Just kinda plan to just clear the nails with the edge of the crowbar and you can tap your way down an entire strip start to finish. This method is super efficient in rooms with wall-to-wall carpeting; tap tap tap, slide over, tap tap tap, slide over, etc.

You can apply this method directly to the two side pieces of tack strip since you don't have a wall in the way of the angle. Like so:









It's not quite as satisfying nor efficient since most of the side tack strips only have one or two nails.

Once I've got the tack strips off I run the bevel of my painters tool across the entire surface. You can usually feel and hear any metal bits that are sticking up. Often there's nails need to be hammered down. On stairs I prefer to log the location of the nail in my head then clean up before hammering it in; sweep, then vacuum. I just feel like the fine silt and dirt under the carpet might get in the way of hammering home the nails. On room to room carpeting there doesn't tend to be as much of a concentration of silt/dirt in a small area so I'll hammer any popped nails down as I find them with the bevel.

If your stairs have wall texture overspray or drywall mud on them you can use the painters tool bevel to scrape that all off as well. Its a bit of work, but I do like to take all of that stuff off because there could be nails and staples under it that need to be removed or hammered in.

My only other tip is to remember to take breaks to stretch your back. I did four steps in a row at first and that was a mistake, seems like three steps in a row is my backs limit. Ultimately I took a break to run the tack strips to the fire pit and have a drink after every two steps and that worked out pretty well for me the rest of the way down the stairs. Slow and steady like.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Who want's to make some custom coax cables?!?

It's just impossible to find shorter lengths and if you wanna do something custom you have to make your own. On the plus side, it's easier than ever to do.

Supply list:

_Coax Compression Tool_ - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BYM4MGK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s04?ie=UTF8&psc=1
_F-Type Compression Fittings_ - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079C8GKWT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s04?ie=UTF8&psc=1
_Wire Cutter_ - https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-CHP-17...-a4db-4490-a794-9cd9552ac58d&tag=spyonsite-20 (I really like this micro one, I use it all the time for all my electronics work.)
_RG6 Coax Cable_ - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ESG5W0A/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s08?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (Didn't need "bulk" quantities and this 100 foot cable was the cheapest option for a good quality cable. Do be sure to get *RG6* cable, you can get it in different colors, single shielded, even unshielded [though I don't personally recommend the latter.] Just be aware that there's a few different types of coax out there - RG59 is also common, but that's for like antenna's, not for modern audio/video use.)


Cable Prep:

Before starting a new cable make sure you've got a clean cut through the RG6. You want the end to be pretty square so things line up better and you ultimately get a better connection to your devices.

1. Remove 1/2 inch of the outer [white in my case] sheathing, being careful not to cut off too much/many of the braided silver wires just beneath it. *Note; There is a blade on the compression tool I linked above, but it was difficult to line up the cuts where I needed them and to not cut too deep with it, so I did all my cutting with a small wire nipper/angle cutter. There is a special tool, similar to a pipe cutter, that you spin around the cable to make cuts out there if you prefer - I forgot to order one and I'm not waiting a month for Amazon to ship it to me.









2. Remove the end/final 1/4 inch of the cable's "guts" down to the small solid copper wire at the very center. Be careful not to cut through that copper wire as it's what the signal travels though, if you accidentally cut it off or nick it too bad then you'll have to start over. (Which is why I do it as step two heh)

3. Next you want to smooth the remaining 1/4 inch of wire braiding back over the sheathing. Try to keep it generally even around the cable.









4. Next you peel off the aluminum/silver foil. There's typically an overlapped "edge" you can get a hold of to tear the foil cleanly off. A precision flat head screwdriver (watch/glasses repair type) can slip under the foil and you can kind of roll it around the cable under the foil to find the end.

5. If you have quad shielded cable like mine, you'll find another layer of braided silver wire beneath the foil, which you want to smooth back over the sheathing just like before to expose yet another foil layer.















6. Next remove the final layer of foil. In my cable this foil layer is semi glued to the white foam core so I used the precision flat head to peel up an edge and work it lose enough to fit my mini cutter "horizontally" to the folded back braided wire, then a small nip "vertically" let me peel off the entire piece.









7. Test fit your compression fitting. You want the white foam core you just exposed to go just past the hole/opening at the base of the spinning part of the fitting. This helps keeps the solid copper connection wire centered so it can make a good connection to your device. Hard to explain, but see picture: 









You'll want to give the fitting a little bit of a twisting motion to get it in the right position, but it does go on easy. Just make sure you get the foam core in the fitting's barrel (if yours have them) <Continued next post>


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

While you're test fitting the connector, you want to make sure the braided wire you folded back isn't going to be exposed. If you did the measurements I noted in the prior steps you should be good, but if you were off a hair or didn't use a tape measure you could have little braided wire sticking out at the bottom of the fitting once it's compressed. It's a little hard to judge how long is too long since the connector gets "shorter" when you compress it on. 

I did this as an example, the fitting here is compressed and you can see all the silver wires showing, that is what you want to avoid so kinda check your braid wire lengths while you're test fitting. If they're long then you can trim them up before you compress the fitting. Once the fitting is compressed, it's not easy to trim them off short enough, even with the micro nipper:










Compress the fitting:

The tool I've listed is adjustable for different fitting types and styles so there's a bit of adjustment to set it up the first time. You want to make sure you've got the F-Type setter on the tool (It's the only not flat-ish one, or see the last picture in the listing) on the tool and you'll want to make sure you've got the correct "stroke length" for the particular fitting you have. 

I do a "simulated" compression of the fitting, without actually putting a fitting inside the tool. Basically the spinning bit on the fitting will go over the narrower part of the F-type setter bit. Then you can look at the distance from the roughly center of the thinner setter bit and the "nose" of the tool and compare to the "guesstimated" compressed length of your fitting... Yeah, it's a bit fiddly, but once you've got it set up it works very well. 

This is how an uncompressed fitting looks inside the compression tool.









Compare to the final fitting images and you can see roughly how much it compresses. You might have to sacrifice a fitting or two too get it right, mostly you don't want to have the "stroke" too long [aka compress the fitting too far] because it's really hard to engage the ratchet release on the tool, these fittings are strong and hard to compress "past" where they're supposed to be - I had to grinder wheel one off, JS. So yea, fake compress until you get it pretty close, then stick a bit of scrap cable in a sacrificial fitting. You can write down the measured distance from the top of the setter to the "nose" of the tool and keep it with those fittings so you can set it up again later on. (The adjustment for the "stroke length" is a nut under the setter part. I hear the industry standard is 22mm of compression, but I fully compressed my fittings because I liked the way it looked.)


8. Almost done! Once you've got the fitting compressed onto your cable, you'll want to check the length of that copper wire, seen sticking out here:









You'll want to trim the copper wire so it just pokes out past the spinner's end. This makes it easier to get on your device without bending the wire over:










All done! Now you can make any length coax cable you want for neat and tidy install like this:









You can also make RCA cables for sub-woofers and composite audio/video. Also there are some fairly nice compression fittings out there. 

I bought these one's for the more visible location cables I'll be making later on in my project:

Fancy F-Type: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0723B1JR6/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s08?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Fancy RCA: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071HJ8SFV/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s05?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Fancy Right Angle RCA: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HDU8704/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s05?ie=UTF8&psc=1


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

I just realized I hadn't updated this for a bit. We've been busy redoing the stairs inbetween husband having to work and catch up on work from their brief shut down the past couple weeks. 

The old stairs were horrid, quite steep and with a mix of heights, and poorly constructed so they were really slanted. Here's an example of how uneven and high they all were. Almost none of the risers or treads were the same size:










We've built a landing with a few steps at the bottom of the old stairs in order to get the height necessary for more comfortable risers. Here's the original bottom of the stairs:









And here's the new landing with a mock up of what we're ultimately doing - the red lines on the ceiling indicate where we'll be cutting the ceiling out so us tall folks don't bonk our heads on it:









We stripped the old stairs down to the stringers and cut out drywall so we can put in brand new stringers; 7 1/4" rise with 11" tread. Here's a shot test fitting one of the stringer's we cut, you can see just how much of a change we're making to the slope of the stairs









Once we got the one fit right, we traced it and cut two more:









Also, when cutting stringers, you'll want the biggest bladed circular saw you can get, then you set it to do as "deep" a cut as you can. We've got an 8" blade and it leaves a little corner we have to hand cut and sand out - I didn't take a picture of the corner bits before we cut them out, but you can still see the saw blade marks on this unsanded corner here:









I think if we had a 10" blade we'd have been able to avoid the left over corner bits. We have a 10" table saw, but we figured it'd be basically impossible for us to deal with 12 foot boards on it so we didn't even try. It's not too bad to hand saw and sand the corner out, a 1" to 1 1/2" chisel is handy to have too.

Stringers will be going in today (Sunday) and we should have all the structure done for the stairs. Sadly all the riser overlays and the bottom step tread overlay with return hasn't been delivered due to the shut down so the whole project will be on hold for a while longer. It'll probably be another month, month and a half, before we get those according to Home Depot.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

OMG my new stairs are soooooo nice! \o/















I have to go through and sand level every step over the next week or two, then we can put on the riser covers and hopefully be able to pick up all the overlays.... 

Maybe. I'm eyeballing the bottom 5 steps that overhand that knee wall there and wondering if maybe I wanna suck up a bit of lost money and buy tread overlays with returns for them... I think it'd look nicer, hubby won't be too happy as I already changed the flooring around so we're short on the white and a bit over on the grey flooring; I imagine he'll be irritated if I 'waste' anymore money on "changing my mind".... We'll have to see.

Anyway, I'll probs pull the handrail, drywall on the knee wall, and the drywall off the ceiling part next week, week after, so we can take care of the "scalping problem" at the bottom. I've already strafed the top of my head once going down, and the youngest hit his head on the ceiling going up. That's gonna have to get fixt ASAP so we don't kill ourselves :vs_laugh:

All in all though, very happy with how it turned out. The rise is sooo nice by comparison; barely any complaint from my bad knees!


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Minor-ish update. The risers came in Friday so we went through and cut and leveled all the final treads for the stairs yesterday:















As you can see we've decided to eat the $$ loss and do tread overlays at the bottom rather than an angled knee wall. We think it'll add a lot of character and openness to the rather small entry foyer. That said, we're going expand the existing full height wall a full stair, so the fourth up from the bottom landing will be inline with the ones above it, and that longer one will end up on the first step from the landing wrapped around the column post/newel post - hopefully we can get on installing that tomorrow.

In other stair news, the Cap-A-Tread riser overlays are /way/ thicker than the tread overlays. The treads are about a quarter inch thick, the risers are half an inch thick. Due to that thickness we won't be putting on riser boards like we did the top to steps. Saved us a little work at least. 

Also, having looked at the tread overly with "return" I'm unimpressed. Basically they just cut the tread overlay's bullnose at a 48* angle, and included a laminated 1/2 circle that you cut yourself. Depending how it glues up, we might just cut the bullnose off a standard overlay tread and glue that on instead of waiting another 4-6 weeks for new return overlays to get delivered. (I'll have pics of all that stuff when we start installing those.)

----

In office update news, I'd originally installed the surround speakers too low to clear our computer monitors DOH! My project last week was rerunning them all (since I'd cut all the wire to length) and I've finished all that, except the rear height/presence, which I'm unable to get fished through the exterior wall insulation. I do not know what we're going to do with that yet, as nothing we've tried for running them has worked so far. In any event, here's where the office is at:















My plan is to hang all the speakers tomorrow, which includes cutting holes for some in-wall speakers, but it depends on how much I have to help my husband with the other projects in the works.

----

I also finished up designing the plan(s) for my husbands custom desk that I'll be building later this summer. He's going to be in the corner between the closet and window and I'm turning the closet into a built-in printer station and networking distribution area. I'm planning to build it with maple plywood, curly maple accents, and a dark wood like walnut, depending on what I can buy up here/have shipped up here:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Didn't get as much done today as I'd hoped. Husband had to do spring prep work before too many leaves burst out so he only had enough time to help me pull the top plate of the old knee wall. 

I'm so glad we decided to go ahead and rebuild the entire kneewall, it was horribly constructed, the one drywall panel was giving it all it's structure. It was held together by drywall screws and finish nails... I'm no longer surprised by how outta plumb it was :vs_laugh: 









I got everything pulled out and cut the drywall off the end of the full height section as I'll be extending the full height wall out between 12 and 13 inches. 









Three or four nails through the subfloor were all that was holding that old knee wall down, and the subfloor is pretty tore up so I figure I'm going to have to sturdy that up with the new wall so it doesn't get all rickity like the last one. I think I might use some scrap 2 by lumber in the basement secured to the floor joists on either side just to give my nails... or maybe bolts, something "more" to bite into. 1/2 inch 40 year+ old plywood just isn't up to the task...

And here's a baby mini stringer I'm thinking about using as the outside "top plate" of the new knee wall. I figure if I nail a double 2x4 on the back side of it (plenty of clearance to fit the extra width back there) and notch a corner off the top of the wall studs, it'll keep help keep the new wall plumb to the old full height wall and the stairs + it'll give me a good nailing surface for the new wainscot panels and finish trims.









I'm gonna see if I can work on the new knee wall tomorrow. I'm not sure I can muscle around the 10 foot 4x4 post that goes at the bottom of the stairs by myself though so I might not be able to do much more until husband has time. He's having to work 12 hour days to try to catch up so it'll probably be next weekend before I can get much more done on the stairs.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Another minor-ish update. Things are moving super slow cause husband is having to work 12 hour days + weekends trying to catch up at work - they're mega behind cause of the 2 week shut down and difficulty getting parts for units.

I had some trouble running the speaker wire for the rear height's, couldn't bend the fish sticks enough without breaking them, so I opted to cut 4" holes in the drywall so I could fish them up (had to be big enough to stick my hand in there):









Since I was busy making holes I pulled out the rotozip thing and cut some 6" holes in too:









Then it was time to fill the holes:















The other holes got "butterfly patches" and drywall mud:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

"Butterfly patches" are pretty easy to make if you have the right size hole saw and some drywall. 

Basically you use the appropriate size hole saw to drill the hole in the wall.
I drilled out a 4" hole to patch an old telephone jack and a 2" hole to path some random hole that a cable had run through.















With holes drilled:















Then you use the same size hole saw to cut a hole partially through the BACK SIDE of a new/spare piece of drywall to make the patch. The goal is to cut out the drywall "guts" but leave the front paper intact. So you drill the hole part way through like so:









Then make some relief cuts (make a sun) then break off all the triangles and clean the circle bit up a bit so you end up with a patch something like this:









<continued...>


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

The "magic" is that the kerf (thickness of the hole saw blade) leaves just enough space for mud to hold the patch in place. So you kinda "butter" the patch like this:









Then stick the patch in the hole and kinda squish the mud out a bit to the edges like this:









Then go over the patched area to generally flatten and fill the edges out like this:









It just kinda needs to be generally flat to the wall, not really smooth - supposedly a light sanding later will clean a lot of the "mess" up.


I only had the water resistant type drywall handy so the bigger patches are made out of that (black back) but I used one of my speaker hole cut outs to make the smaller one in the corner, which is regular drywall, with the exception of the paint making it a bit thick on edges, I think the regular drywall patch was easier to make and got flat to the wall better. 

You can see with the green board it smushed in further; like the front paper had more stretch or give to it or something so the center got filled in with mud, where as the regular drywall paper was stiffer and didn't flex in at all. It is however possible that's because of the paint on it. Either way, I liked the regular drywall patch better than the green board patch.


I'm going to try matching the existing knock down texture on that wall there when I can find (or buy) a throw away brush with stiff enough bristles to do it. Supposedly you just add a bit of extra water to the mud, so it's a bit soupier, and flick it on the patched area, then once the "shine" goes off it (aka it starts to dry a bit) you float a knife over it to smush the high points down into a classic orange peel finish. Will see how that works eventually


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Alrighty, finally have enough time to post updates. It's been a real hit and miss kinda few days around here, half the stuff I did failed, and the other half didn't get done :vs_laugh:

That said, I did get the hand texturing on the office butterfly patches done. I used a tire/wheel well brush cause it had semi-stiff plastic kinda bristles that I figured would give the right "flick" and clean up alright. That part worked out fine, my technique is a bit questionable, though I think with some more practice I can do it seamless.

So here's the splatter pattern I did. I think I went a bit too heavy in the middle there and not heavy enough on the edges. I also didn't sand out enough of the patching mud from the original texture areas, needed to hit the "feathered" mud sections way more aggressively than I did.









Then I tried the "knock down" part. I think I let the mud dry too much cause it kinda flaked off more than flattened. I also think that next time I try it I'm going to use a metal blade rather than the special foam thing I bought. With the foam I couldn't... "feel" the mud while I was "floating" it across, so I believe I ended up pushing too hard around the edges and they got way too smoothed out for the texture to show up (as you can see in the close up picture with the paint on it.) That or maybe I should have thinned out my paint a bit - it's SW Infinity which seems really thick.

















All that fail noted, in the end, you have to look for this repair and get just the right light angle on it to actually see it. Taking a picture from the middle of the room, it's basically a success:









The smaller patch in the corner is also basically invisible other than being a little thick (so there's a barely visible ridge around it,) but since that patch already had texture on it I don't think that counts as me texturing so I'm not gonna post the close-up pics of that.

The rear height speaker patches didn't turn out as well as I'd have liked either. I kinda think it was using the green board/water resistant type drywall. The "butterfly" edge parts kinda wrinkled a bit. I'm not sure if it was close contact to the cooler exterior, too much mud, too much water in the mud... the other one (above) was done last so the mud had dried up a bit more maybe? I'm not entirely sure what went wrong so I'd have to fiddle with that kind of patch a bit more to make a call. That said, once I put paint on those two patches I couldn't even get a picture of them because they both completely disappeared even with the 'wrinkles'. I'll take it!


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Husband ended up having to put in 26 hours over the weekend to appease a livid customer so he was zero help on me getting other projects done .... or at least done correctly anyway :vs_laugh:


1. With the patches fixt I moved onto other projects I had been "authorized" to attempt. I bought a cool memory rug for the upstairs bathroom, but the door couldn't clear it so I enlisted the youngster's help to pull down the door, take it into my garage, and sand the bottom to clear the rug. 

Fail! I took off a good 1/8 inch with the belt sander, leveled it all up with a square, and was all impressed with my detail work, then oops not enough clearance :vs_laugh: Husband needed to shower before passing out so I haven't had a chance to try again.

2. I had the miter saw brought up to the office so I could cut my custom panel frame's and get those glued up and painted this week....

Fail! The miter saw touched the 1" trim and basically exploded it across the office :vs_laugh: Spent 20 minutes cleaning off the subfloor, yet again. Then I ordered a beautiful 9" Japanese Dozuki pull saw - I've been wanting one for a while and this tiny trim is the perfect excuse! Saw came today so I'll be playing with that tomorrow 

3. I figured okay, lets chalk mark all the joists in the office so husband can screw down the subfloor so I can put vinyl down this week.

Fail! I'm just going to say I had to immediately take a shower to get the blue chalk out of my hair and leave it at that...

4. After all these fails I thought I'd do something I was more familiar with, just to get something actually done. So I lugged my 33 pound receiver upstairs to check all the speakers were clean and none of the wiring had gotten mucked up - prior I had just tested connectivity, this was a sound check.

Major fail! Banana clip dropped a wire and shorted out my Onkyo :vs_mad: Ah well, it was a 2005 model so I suppose it was due for replacing anyway. 

5. So I go to Amazon to research and finally order a new receiver - the next day I'm told the seller won't ship to Alaska... Two days, and multiple "Can you ship to Alaska?" seller email's later, I was finally able to buy a Pioneer LX303 cause that was the closest I could get to what I wanted to ship up here. It's alright, 9.2.2, multiple zone... it'll work for now.


Then today, I had the tree people out to grind out the two stumps in the front yard. Nothing but a pile of wood chips and a very angry squirrel left now.

Tomorrow I will accomplish things with a saw... 911 is ready on speed dial :vs_laugh:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Slight update; no hospital visits were required, however, I've discovered I am unable to eyeball a 45* miter (yet)... Moar tools are needed for woodworking!!!

Miter box I had was for construction work so husband and I did some toy shopping yesterday. New Toys to play with this week:

Craftsman Miter Station - https://www.lowes.com/pd/CRAFTSMAN-...81&gclid=CJ3U4K6tzekCFRAsfgodrl8LWA&gclsrc=ds

Some Kreg 90* Corner Clamps - https://www.amazon.com/Kreg-KHCCC-90°-Corner-Clamp/dp/B07CZLRXB3

Wolfcraft Stair Gauge (So much cool) - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CT2XH9L/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Worx Hydroshot and some accessories - https://www.worx.com/20v-hydroshot-portable-power-cleaner-wg625.html



Also picked up a baby blue spruce to take the place of the one we lost, except this time we get to put it where we want it. Figure by the time husband is ready to retire it'll be grown and the kid'll be happy with it :vs_laugh:

New receiver came in yesterday and it's nicer than I was expecting. Pioneer seems to have upgraded a bit since the 80s, still can't drive an 8ohm speaker, but it's pushing my Boston Acoustics's well enough for the smallish room it'll be put into. I believe it'll allow me to push off buying another receiver until I can justify the monster flag ship to myself.

Oh and the new office fan light came in too - very much cool (pun intended) wait till ya seez it heh


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Saturday I played with the Worx power sprayer while my husband worked on vehicles. I'm semi meh on it performance wise. It does increase your hose water pressure, but like I couldn't clean the 2nd floor windows with it, so I had to use the bottled exterior Windex stuff. That was a little bit disappointing. However, I don't regret the purchase (we got it at Home Depot for $99) because the real feature I was after was being able to use water from any source - bucket, bathtub, etc. - which means I don't have to drag around 100' of garden hose if I want to clean the mailboxes or end of the driveways off 

I cleaned off the front porch and finally got the bird "gift" off my storm door - I have no idea why a bird was flying around under my 7' x 15' covered porch, but it's finally warm enough outside that I didn't have to worry about turning the porch into a skating rink and killing our wonderful postman when he drops packages off. I used the Worx to clean all the deck boards and to power wash all the rugs, also washed the kids car (which I think hasn't been washed in oh 8 years or so.) The battery power was less than attractive, maybe 45 minutes max. Perhaps I'm spoiled by the Dewalt 20V and my Dyson's battery life performance, but I expected more time. We got the 2.0aH battery in the box kit from HD, I think they make a 5aH so maybe I'll pick that up some time and see if the Worx can handle a real job. 

I also polished up the Ethan Allen pine bed bench that's been on our outside porch for the past 15 years or so. We'd found the bench at a garage sale or something for $20, but when we got the king size temperpedic we didn't have room to put it at the foot of the bed anymore so we put it out on the porch and I'd decided I rather liked having a place to sit and take off my muddy boots and stuff. Still looks great, amazing. I can't wait until I have a woodshop and can make that kinda thing  

---

What was supposed to be a one day project to do the laminate flooring in the office turned into a few day project due to appointments and other things, but it is finally basically done \o/









I'll have to pull the carpet in the hallway before I can put in the last few pieces - maybe today, depending on if my backs on the same page heh Onto the details then!

There was a very slight difference in thickness between the new 3/4" (actual 0.633) plywood we bought for the subfloor, and the old 1970's era 1/2" plywood in the sections we couldn't replace (aka under all the walls.) 









I spent some number of hours sanding down all the edges and high spots with the belt sander (I don't recall the model, but it's a corded Craftsman) and I thought we were going to have to use floor leveler on the whole room to get it flat, but my husband happened upon some super thin (might be 3/16" thick) packing/shipping/crating plywood at work and it was just perfect to level out everything but one spot. We got that all installed over the weekend then husband showed me how to put on... sorry, "trowel out", this Henry's floor leveler stuff. 









He thought it was awful smelling and fled to bed, but the smell didn't bother me at all and I went through and filled all the cracks, seams, and knot holes. Here you can see some of my handy work:









The Henry's "Patch n level" stuff is pretty neat. For some reason I thought it'd dry more like drywall mud and was a bit skeptical it'd be all that good at filling the low spots, but this stuff is more in line with grout hardness when dried. I like it! Let that dry... sorry "set up", overnight and then I got to laying flooring.

I think Lifeproof is slightly more "troublesome" to install than the Pergo laminate I installed 15 years ago... It's not so much that the lift, slide, snap down part is harder per say, but the lipped edges on the Lifeproof are a lot more fragile than I remember Pergo being. I don't think anyone could take this stuff apart and reuse it in another room, certainly I'm unable to remove a piece without breaking the lips. 

That said the quality of it seems alright, manufacturing process or packing process is a bit less than ideal, I had to vacuum off every single plank to get off random bits of sawdust/dirt/etc. and they must have some dirty rollers there cause there were darker smudges on either end of every plank - rubs right off, and maybe it's just cause my flooring is white, but it's less than "install ready" IMO. 

Out of the 8 boxes I installed, there were a few planks that had chips on the edges/corners - I was very careful with handling the planks so I don't think I chipped the edges/corners, but its possible so I'll say that's my fault. It's minor stuff after all, like you could easily cut the boards to work around the small chips and stuff, I just happened to miss a chipped board that I'd put right in the middle of the open area of the office so I'm slightly miffed since I couldn't take the stupid board out without breaking all the edge-lock's so I'm stuck with it.

I also had one plank that had a 2" long cut, almost like a razor blade cut, which I found randomly in the middle of one of the boxes - no way that one's my fault. Luckily I'm planning to build desks so I tucked that one into a back corner where it'll be covered up.

As to the cutting and fitting, I'd bought a nice 120 tooth plywood 4 1/2" blade (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000222X0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1) for the Dewalt mini-saw (https://www.amazon.com/DEWALT-DCS57...hi&sprefix=dewalt+mini+circu,tools,235&sr=1-1) but I wasn't sure I got the arbor nut on tight enough so on day 1, I just used my dozuki saw (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HYVW78L/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and that was absolutely amazing to cut with! I'm not sure if the flooring will wreck the blade on it, but the dozuki was like $30 so I figured I'd just buy a new one for dovetailing if it got ruined in the process. It worked so well that I've ordered the folding ryoba saw (https://www.amazon.com/SUIZAN-Japanese-Folding-Double-Woodworking/dp/B075L4P4FN?ref_=ast_sto_dp) specifically to do the rest of the room's. 

I'm of the mind that all you flooring peeps need to get on the ryoba train! The ryoba doesn't have a stiffening bar on the back side of the blade which will make deeper cuts easier so that'd be my recommendation if one doesn't want to invest in a laminate circular saw blade - though the folding Ryoba I ordered was close to $40. Also, just as a note, the Japanese pull saws don't require nearly as much muscling to use as "western" [push] saws; my sawing arm only got a hair tired from all the cutting I did in the room, better still the dozuki cut this stuff like butter, smooth, crisp, and clean, even on longer cuts. Very happy with how that turned out.

(Though if you don't want to buy a blade you can just use a razor blade, heavily score the top then crack the planks in half, like drywall sheets, and cut the backer padding. That works perfectly fine. The Lifeproof core material is a semi-soft plastic, so once you get through the idk 1mm thick hard top picture it shaves right up with a razor blade/utility knife.)

With the cutting of flooring I finally got to make "real" use of the pair of Pegasi folding work stations (https://www.amazon.com/WORX-Pegasus...id=3593671060301&ref_=sbx_be_s_sparkle_asin_1) husband got me for xmas. I'm quite pleased with them, though I find the included bench dogs far, far too short for any woodworking project, they can indeed hold down thin laminate sheets. I haven't used the T-track clamps for anything yet either. Irwin F-style clamps were faster/easier for what I was doing. The pegaus are sturdy though, they've got enough weight to stay put on the floor even for face clamping and hand saw cuts. 









Downside for me is that I have trouble moving them by myself (just heavy enough and awkward enough to be over my muscle limit - but then again I can't move the boxes of flooring myself either, so that might be a bit of a moot point.) I do highly recommend having some kinda workbenchy thing in the room for use while flooring though; not just for cutting either, it makes drawing up your cut lines much easier on your back as well.

Also recommend having a shop vac with you. I've been quite meticulous on cleaning - since I have to vacuum off every single plank, I'm also vacuuming the area I'm going to lay the plank into. I love my shop vac (https://www.amazon.com/Vacmaster-Gallon-2-Stage-Mountable-Control/dp/B001O6RA6Q?ref_=ast_sto_dp), it's got a remote start on the end of the hose, and without having one you wouldn't believe how handy that is.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

I have a tip for laying the lifeproof laminate in "weird" areas of a room.

So when you install laminate you want to work left to right and "toward" you so you can lay the next plank's edging lip over the previous board's edging lip. However, you can install "backwards" - meaning you're tucking a new planks edging lip /under/ a previously laid board's edging lip - but it's a bit more difficult. Sometimes you really don't have a choice though, as was the case with one of the planking rows coming out of the closet in my case. I found a couple things that helped with that, so I thought I'd share them.

Here's the layout situation I had in the second half of the closet:









I had to notch a board around the closet door opening and get another plank inside the closet. Because the flooring goes under the closet door frame, I couldn't get the correct angle to overlay the previous planks lip. AKA a "backwards" install. 

What I did there is loosely pre-attach the plank that went inside the closet to the one I had to cut for around the frame, and pushed that in all the way to the inside closet wall - aka into the expansion gap. Once I had that slid in, I carefully lifted the edge of the plank I cut around the closet door wall just enough to get it over the previously laid planks lip and slid it into it proper position. Finally using a pull bar (probs the only specialty tool you need to buy to install laminate) I snugged up the seams.

That worked great, however, that left me with a "backwards install" across the entire length of the room. A trick I found, as seen in the above pic, was to tuck the pull bar (could use anything that's under 1/2" high and of enough length to span most of your plank width) carefully under the edge of the laid board so I could just slip the next plank's lip underneath it. Another pic to help explain:









You have to fiddle with lining up the seams a bit when doing this - I recommend trying to leave a little space between the two planks (as seen in pic above), then tapping it home with the tapping block - (rather than getting the new plank in too far [under previous plank] and risking chipping the edge at the seam - did that once) 

It was pretty easy to finish off that row using my trick, though I don't recall if I heard it on the internet or if I invented it; sometimes I fall asleep during videos but my brain still logs all the info and spits it out at random heh

---

A couple more random tips; when using the pull bar, hold the hook end down onto the laminate edge so it doesn't slip off - that also focuses the power of the hammer strike to the laminate so it moves along. The same is also true with the tapping block (or scrap laminate piece if you don't want to buy the tool) press the tool onto the laminate. You're not really pinning the tool down or anything so don't press too hard, this is just so the tool doesn't slip off and chip the edge of the laminate.

Do clean the seam edges of your laminate before installing them - especially if you have a light colored laminate, dirt really shows in the seams with my white. 

Don't run your fingers along the edge of the laminate planks, no matter how much you want to clean that edge. Laminate bites pretty hard. I had to stop working for half an hour because I was bleeding heh

In addition to checking the top of the board, check every plank's edges and corners carefully for chips - I installed one with a small chip without noticing and now it's stuck there. I had, perhaps illogically, assumed none of the planks would be chipped if the box wasn't damaged or dented - that is not the case.

When connecting new planks I found that lightly tapping down the short seam before I used the tapping block to get the long seam seated fully worked best. I found tapping with a bit of an angle from the new plank onto the old plank worked really well to keep that short seam a bit tighter together and making the longer seams seating a bit easier.

I also found that aside from the short seam's many downward hammering blows, each plank installed generally needed at least 5 whacks to get all the seams seated correctly; I do the end of the plank nearest to the short seam first, then the far end of the board second, third and fourth on either side of the open short edge of the plank I'm installing, and finally a whack (or two) in the middle of the plank to get it really tight. I also typically ended up doing at least one additional whack with the taping block centered on the seam - mostly to even out any tiny gaps caused by non-straight walls and such.

When a full width plank doesn't fit, you turn the board 180* from install direction, then set it in place and mark it where the previous plank's laminate starts - aka remember that it's the laminate part that you're lining up to, not the actual edge of the previous plank (the lip part goes /under/ the plank you're going to cut, if you cut at the lip of the previous plank, your cut plank will be a bit too narrow/short).

Also when making a plank narrower is the perfect time to "scribe" that edge to the wall and account for the bows in your walls (there is no such thing as perfectly straight walls, nor perfectly square rooms) Just lay your board almost exactly where you're installing it, then make two marks - one on each end - and you'll have a pretty good scribe of the wall going (considering of course that you've gotta leave expansion room for the floating floor, of course)

On the final row of planks I recommend cutting them a hair narrower, just the width of your lip edge narrower. 









That way you can pop them into the gap, slide the short end of the plank your installing into the previously installed plank, then use the pull bar to get the new board's long end seam up over the previously installed row. 

Even easier, *if* you properly leveled your floor, you can actually just slide the plank in Tetris style:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Had a pretty productive weekend and checked off a bunch of to-do stuff.

Replaced six shingles on the shop roof that'd gotten blown off in a huge storm last winter (was the same one that took the gutters off the front 2nd story) or just got damaged in general:
















Fixed the windspinners that'd gotten broken in same wind storm, plus put up my new one.

Hung up my monster windchime (it gets put away in the fall so it doesn't freeze.) 

Burned up nearly all of the lilac branches from last years pleaching (we were under a "red flag"/burn ban basically all last summer.) 

Got the dandelion rash that cropped up in the past week cleared up:
















And got my baby blue spruce planted just perfectly in the open area of the front wild area - you can also see the pile of wood chips near the hose there; that's all that's left of the huge blue spruce the beetles ate last year


----------



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

You’re sure ambitious Mystress, you’re making me tired just reading 
about your projects. You said you hung your monster windchimes.
I love windchimes and have three of them... what does a monster windchimes
look like? Also, is that a white birch? Love white birches, we had one and
lost it years ago.

keep up the good work. :thumbsup:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Two Knots said:


> You’re sure ambitious Mystress, you’re making me tired just reading
> about your projects. You said you hung your monster windchimes.
> I love windchimes and have three of them... what does a monster windchimes
> look like? Also, is that a white birch? Love white birches, we had one and
> ...


hmm I thought we were being lazy the past few weeks, it's going much slower than I'd originally intended heh

Windchimes! Not the best pic. We're hunting for a cast iron wall hanger so we can leave it up permanently on the side of the house, but for now it's on a rather flimsy hook on the trashed master bedroom deck railing so I can hear it at night. A lot of chimes have the higher tones, but these ones are deep and very pleasing to me.









As for the tree's, they're all Alaska Birch. A lot of the "white" birch, at least up here are "paper" birch, which only generally live 20 years. The Alaska birch we have in the yard are probably 40-50 years old. I do love them, lots of character in the winter and they're solid trees with deep roots - unlike all the spruce/pines that have shallow roots and fall over all the time, Alaska birch don't up-root, they can stand for decades after dying; the wood peckers love them. They're also kinda cool cause they younger ones have red bark, I'll try to get a pic of one of those later today for ya.

The pair (from above post) in the back yard is named "Kyska's Tree" cause our pup Kyska loved those trees; we put her ashes down there. It was originally a pack of 3 birch, but the largest middle one was dead and had a carpenter ant colony in it so we had to take it down when we moved in. Our logger friend who took it down figured it was 60-65 foot tall, which is quite a bit taller than usual for Alaska birch. Anyway, here's a pic from last winter, its a beautiful pair:









They're actually the smallest of the "mature" birches on the lot. Up next to the house in the back we also have this guy whom I've been calling "Dead tree growing" pretty much since we moved in. That "split" is actually where they'd hit the trunk installing the new leach field in 2000/2001. It'd taken off a kind of triangle chunk at the base and you could see the core of the trunk for a long while. I thought it wasn't going to make it, but over the past 17 years the bark has grown completely over the hole/gap. It almost looks like two trees grown together, which is common with the Alaska birch, but this is just one tree. Unfortunately it's days are still numbered as it'll have to go for my new deck:









In the front we have "The General", as he looks like he's survived a few wars. He's the largest we have and is actually two birch that have grown up squished together. He's got a broken top that we've been waiting to break off for 17 years, but he just won't let go of it. He's super cool looking in the winter (and in the summer he fluffs up big time):















At the end of the main driveway we have this cluster of three birch that I'm working on making a feature. We've been hunting for a huge green or black toned boulder that we can etch our address into for a few years, but we haven't found "the one" yet. When we find "it," that'll go at the base with light orange/tan colored fist size rocks around it, and they'll be up lights. It's gonna be great and the plow guys can stop killing my address sign all the time. They take care of my police support sign perfectly though - I had to wait two years and sent an officer on a special mission to get me that sign cause they'd stopped making them before I could get one. It's "recycled" from a friend of his who'd gotten stationed outta state and let him have it to give to me


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Might as well update real quick too. Not as much done as I'd have liked, but we've added stuff so I suppose it works out alright. Last week I pulling up the carpet, pad, & tack strips in the upstairs hallway, then on the weekend we decided to go ahead and replace the sub-floor as well.















The carpet at the bedroom doorway's wasn't centered correctly so I had my husband cut that for me (I couldn't get through the carpet & tape myself.) Then I cut down sections of the reclaimed tack strip's from the hallway and tucked them under the carpet, we "stretched" the carpet as best we could without a "kick tool" thing and hooked it on.









The bathroom flooring wasn't centered on the doorway either so husband cut that as well:















Here's the transition strip molding parts; you screw down the metal track to the floor then snap in the decorative transition molding part into it. Gotta get the leveling panels down in the hallway before I can install them.










Since I had to take out the bathroom door & frame I'll be able to fix a rug problem we've been having for a while. We'd bought a 1" thick memory rug, but the door didn't clear it so we've had to lean it against the tub when we're not showering, then we had a second rug that stayed on the floor. Rather annoying. I've got enough clearance above the door frame so I'm going to raise the door about an inch to clear that - probs reinstall that tomorrow presuming I can reclaim enough nails - somehow, despite our large collection of screws & nails, we don't have any that are long enough to do the job here LOL

IDK when husband will have time to get the hallway floor ready for me to put down the vinyl. We're going to replace the downstairs powder room fan for something quieter. We've had the new fan for a couple years, but it turned out we needed to rewire to the switch (2 sets of 12/2) for it to work right - since we pulled the floor we can push new romex up from the switch box and run it to the fan hole. Husband won't let me do electrical work on the house though so that's dead ended until he's got time to do it >.< 

I have no idea what I'm gonna do this week, maybe start painting the foyer wainscot or something :/


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Today I managed to salvage enough nails to get the bathroom door reinstalled, at least enough to get through until I feel like picking some more nails up.

In order to get the door high enough to clear the memory rug I laid the rug in the doorway and threw a square on it, then made a mark on the wall to indicate the minimum height of the bottom of the door:









Then I laid the door casing on the floor and lined up the door hinges so I could make a mark on the door casing indicating where the bottom of the door would be at. Then I just aligned the two lines like below and knew that my door will clear the rug when I reinstall it.









Since my rough openings are bigger than my door casings, I screw the hinge side of the door flush to the rough opening, using shims if needed. Once I get the hinge side of the casing plumb and nailed in, I use a level on the top of the casing (I never nail top casing in, no idea why I do that either.) I usually get a spacer or shim under the bottom of the casing on the hinge side to bring the top casing into level (so I'm only juggling with one side of the casing at a time.)

Then I get a level on the latch side of the door casing so I can figure out the general thickness of spacers I'm going to need to fill in the rough opening. Just keep in mind that you want there to be some space available for shims so you can fine tune it - especially in an older house that doesn't have plumb construction 









I find it easiest to tap my nail into the main spacer to hold it while I finagle the hinge side casing into its final position; get it plumb, flush & centered with the wall, and at the right height - needz more hands! Once you get it close you stick shims in from either side, tapping the shims in from either side until it's as good as I can get it.















I do like to start right at the latch catch like that too; I figure that's the most critical to have aligned right (if you're out of plumb here you might have a door that won't shut, or won't latch, so I figure it should be first. Then I typically do the top area second, and the bottom last. I tend to OCD and check my level/plumb on the top and latch side every time I hammer a nail in, I also check that my casing is flush with the wall. It's good to be square, plumb, and level.

In any event, once it's all nailed in I score & snap off the shims; hold one side of the shim wings while you cut the other so it doesn't move around and throw everything outta level. You do want a deep score if you've got thick shim to cut through. I didn't score mine well enough and this happened when I hit it with the hammer to break them off.









Luckily it'll be covered by the door trim, but I could see that having been a drywall repair job pretty easily heh


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

So as you can see I've got a pretty large gap. I usually stuff that with some insulation for sound control like I did in the office doorway here (I find it works surprisingly well.)









And Success!









----

I realized I hadn't posted pictures of the new subfloor in the upstairs hall before so here ya go:









At the end we decided to put in some extra support between the joists cause it felt a bit bouncy. Now it's nice and solid there and we also straightened out the top of the stair opening (basically the top step) quite a bit so it'll be a lot easier to get the bullnose molding on and parallel with the flooring planks 

_(wow how did I manage to line up that picture so well, can barely see where some of the steps start/end LOL)_ 









We'll fill in the perimeter edges with some narrow strips of thin plywood like we did in the office, then I'll be able to get the flooring laid and be able to move on to my other projects


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Today I reorganized the snarled cables that I found under the hallway floor. AKA this disaster that comes from the networking hub in the office (backside of that panel in second picture) and routes downstairs to the basement, game room, kitchen, and two of the bedrooms:















Generally speaking it's not a big deal to have loose coils in the wall/floor, the exception being if you're running over, under, or beside electrical wiring (romex, and whatever the official name of that thick grey sleeved feed is called.) It causes interference which can mess up your picture quality, slow down your internet speed, and even prevent IR remote control's used in other rooms from working (newer receivers let you say watch a movie in one room and cable/satellite in another, so you want to be able to change channels in the "second" room.)

I had cables over and under the two romex in there and that grey feed so it turned into a if you're gonna do it, do it right situation. Ended up pulling half the cables up from the downstairs so I could detangle from the electrical wires. After a couple of hours of clean up I ended up with this:









Much better, but again, if you're gonna do it, might as well do it right. The grey feed and one of the romex's is laying right on the cables so I screwed a little cleat to the joist and put in a strip of scrap to make a kind of track or riser to lift the electrical up off the the cables below. Side view shows the little cleat as well:









The last couple things I did were deeper under the floor (basically right under the network hub,) so I stapled some of my cables above and below a romex feed through the joists (right side), and secured all the cables that run down into the basement to the vent stack with some zip ties to keep them lifted off some romex (left side). Zip tie is black so it's a bit hard to see but here's how it looks under there now. As you can see I've got a bit of a rats nest of cables way back there but I've already made sure those loose coils aren't near any electrical:









Then I hit it with the shop vac to clean up the 20 years of silt and dirt that's acquired between the joists upstairs (amazing how much can manage to sift through the carpet, then work it's way through the gaps between subfloor sheets.) I've been vacuuming them all out so maybe we'll have cleaner air in the house or something - at a minimum when we remove the ceilings for radiant heat I won't get who knows what in my hair :vs_laugh:


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Oh I almost forgot, I finally had time to design my desk and get it into my 3D program:









I'm going to fiddle with the smaller stuff a bit more, but this gave me most of the measurements so I know how much/what size wood to buy. I'm hoping to dig out the trailer over the next month so we can go pick up a house worth of plywood :vs_laugh:

(I'd posted these a page or so back, but this is what I'm going to build on my husbands side of the office)










Which reminds me, the second little couch we'd ordered came in and is now the pair of em are blocking me from doing any painting/staining or building in my garage, and generally being pills. We'd ordered two because husbands mom, brother, and sister in law were supposed to come visit last May (the sofas have air beds in them.) I was planning to build our desks /after/ that visit, but they had to cancel due to Covid. Now I'm stuck with two sofas and need to find a home for at least one of them. Husband's been trying to give one of them away for a week now >.< (First world problems :vs_laugh


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

We decided to take advantage of the upstairs hallway floor being open to replace the old noisy fan in the downstairs powder room. As usual, the "onion" house strikes again... I should just plan on everything we do taking twice as long as expected heh

So for whatever reason the old fan was installed on the wrong side of the joist bay - it wasn't centered in the bathroom, the vent was easily moved over to the other side of the joist bay, and there were no clearance or other issues that we saw. They just installed it on the wrong side for whatever reason so we had to cut a new hole on the correct side of the joist for the new fan housing. Old fan position vs new fan position:















We had to run additional romex up from the switch to control the new fan. We ran two romex taped together up from the switch using the old romex in the wall, then belatedly decided to run a third romex for the night light (we were originally going to skip the night light, but figured we might as well install it since we were in there - wasn't worth, the night light is basically useless.) In any event the nightlight romex we stuffed up through the box then fished out of a new hole in the top plate upstairs, was a bit of a trick, but we managed it. Here's the new fan, and the hole I'll have to patch up - which means I get to practice my texturing in another spot that's hardly noticeable and not real important 









Sooo the down side is that we've got 4 romex inside a single gang box, a normal sized single gang box... I think we'll replace it with a double gang box now and put a filler plate over the open gang until we remodel the powder room this winter-ish. I wanted vanity lights in there anyway so it's not a big deal.


Onto other things though. We finally got to play with our new ladder from Xmas. It works great, very solid and flexible to use on the stairs - this is great cause I'll finally be able to paint the stairway comfortably - 16' ceilings are hard for me to do with the long stick roller  

We had a couple hours before husband had to get to bed, so we got the drywall pulled off the ceiling and the wall over the new stair landing. Progress! (Last picture is looking down the stairs, I couldn't back up enough to get a good enough perspective to really tell what it is off hand)





















This next week is probs going to be boring, we didn't get the hallway floor put back down so I can't finish laying laminate. I think I'll either be painting wainscot or doing some outside stuff, have to see what the weather is like.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

@Two Knots

I finally had time to get a picture of an "immature" Alaska Birch for you:









They pop their bark when the trunks expand outward and then it peels back like paper to expose this beautiful red toned bark underneath. There's a saying up here that our birch trees "bleed red" because of that young bark underneath - like if you damage a birch, or it splits, you'll see the red hue down in the crack. In any event, the bark bleaches out over time and turns white as the trees mature. I think they have to get somewhere near 10" diameter before that orange/red/pink bark goes completely white. When the younger ones are growing like this one you get pink stick trees for a couple years 


I also got a better picture of The General out front, he's looking particularly fluffy this year as he poofs out to take over all the extra sun from having removed the huge blue spruce.









And a better picture of Dead Tree Growing out back as well, it's a far larger tree than it appears to be in the other picture I posted










I'm really looking forward to cutting down Dead Tree Growing. See these black nodules?









Those have a high chance to have grown what's called "curly" grain patterns. Usually you see curly maple, but I think curly birch is WAY cooler looking! Check out these samples (first one is oiled and absolutely amazing, the second is a more typical curly birch slab with a bit of spalting on it as well):



















I'm going to have a local specialist guy come over and cut it into slabs for me when we fell him. I'm hoping to make tables for the outside deck and maybe even some countertops for in the house.


----------



## Two Knots (Nov 12, 2011)

Birch is a beautiful wood. Your future projects with the birch will
be wonderful. We made a nice big try with birch, and I love it.


----------



## AleesLLD (Jun 17, 2020)

*Current project*: Installing a roller garage door

*How's it going?* Terribly. Husband tried and failed, me on the other hand now reading the handy online guide. 

I'll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck.


----------



## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

So I basically took the week off my remodeling projects as there wasn't anything I could do on my own. This weekend we had to make an "emergency" run out to the valley to pick up new toys:









Dewalt's 20V trimmer and pole saw. Mostly I just wanted the boxes for my long wood scraps 









Of course, when you get new toys like this, you gotta play with them! So husband went around the whole house, the sides of both driveways, and all around the back deck to clean up all the stuff the mower couldn't get to. I won't bore you with pictures of that, but the trimmer works great, even with slightly damp grass. We didn't wear out the 5Ah battery either, still had a bar left even after doing everything (I didn't time it, but I believe he was out there weed wacking for a couple hours)

As for the pole saw, I've been complaining about a branch that comes off the big birch (The General) out front cause it was preventing a spruce behind it from getting any light. Husband went out and fix't that:

Before:








After:








The offending branch was 3-5" across by my brief guesstimate of size - the pole saw had absolutely no problems what so ever taking it down.








Other than that we ran around the entire lot with the 20v chain saw taking down dead trees and pole sawed a couple other branches that I didn't like the way they were growing - including clearing out a big clump of willows near the shed on the second driveway that were blocking the pine I'm worried about and another clump on the main driveway that looked pretty ratty. Maybe I'll get pics of that later on. 

Also, put a new chain on the 20v chainsaw; husband had dug it around in the ground to clear out roots for planting the baby blue spruce and dulled it pretty bad.

In addition to cleaning up the yard, we also managed to screw down the upstairs hallway subfloor. Later this week I'll screw down all the leveling sheets and possibly get the new flooring down. Will have to see cause I'm feeling a bit under the weather today :/ 

We'd planned to get some 2by for headers to raise that landing ceiling, but their wood cutting saw was out of service so we couldn't fit them in the subaru; not for such a long drive anyway. We'll have to get them from town next weekend.


Here's a sneak peak at another "not small" project I'm planning for next summer.


----------

