Labor Day weekend plans

Gah...What to do this weekend?

I was thinking of actually getting the floor and crown moulding installed. How bad could it be? I just need like at most 50 bucks worth of that crap. Also, I've been thinking about that doorway and have been researching about the style of my door. It's time for a lesson, folks, on doors.

The doorway to the 'Anne Frank' room is 34" wide. Seems typical, at the hardware store you'll see that doors come in sizes of 30", 32", 34", and 36" along with various shapes and sizes- whatever. Well I've been thinking on the door that I want to put in the doorway and I've decided on a bifold french door 10 pane (like this). After visiting a few stores guess what I found - they only make sizes of 28", 30", 32" and 36." WTF happened to 34?! This is the missing link to life itself. Why the hell have sizes other than 34"? I will have to take a picture of the door charts they have at Lowes and Home Depot to prove to you all that I am not crazy.

So my plan is to purchase a 36" and shave it down to a 34 (for you mathematicians and nerds the doors will be reduced from 18" to 17"). I will cut 1/2" from each side of each door and just sand it nice and smooth. The price tag.... more than $250.

Now here's my dilemma. Make it or buy it and destroy it. I got some slap from peeps at work thinking I can't do it, but if you look at the door and piece it out; it's very simple. Let's look at one door for example.

• Three pieces of 2x4
• One piece of 2X8
• Glass
• Mullion (crown/decorative shit)
• Pocket screws
• Glue
• Sweat
• Cursing door companies that do not make 34" bifold doors or 17" for that matter.

So I may make it. I'm on the fence right now because of funds. There is a 100% chance that I will do the crown and the light switch for the room. This is the perfect intro on how pathetic of a designer the last homeowner was. Let me demonstrate with some pictures (you have to love the drawings).



Again... what poor planning! Why the hell would you want the light switch for a room to be controlled from another room?! So here's what I plan to do:

Step 1: Drill a hole to the Anne Frank room (covering the floor up of course).
Step 2: Cut a small, small square box to mount the light switch.
Step 3: Using a 3 way switch, install a light switch.

Why, you may ask, am I putting two light switches? Well because what if I don't want to go down one step to turn off the light to my studio/office (remember the step)?! Hell, I might as well just turn it off from Kyle's room. By watching this video on YouTube, I can definitely accomplish this (if I don't electrocute myself first).

It's going to be a long weekend folks, and I might just do the door project. Hopefully I can get everything done on the todo list for this damn room and finally mark this crap project off my list.

Renovation 4: Anne Frank Room - Update

1. prime
2. paint
3. tear out old carpet
4. install hardwood
5. install white socket plugs
6. put light switch on the other side of wall
7. chair -OR- crown molding
8. window/trim molding
9. patch socket holes
10. repair cracks/scratches on laminate
11. Buy socket faceplates (2x)
11. Get bifold french doors

#4 is done! Damn it to hell. It was a bitch, but it's done. The floor looks very sexy - very sexy. It's like a whole another room! I mean, remember when the floor looked like this:



Shit, I did. Now it looks very modern.

It took a month (other stupid rental homes I had to take care of), but I am satisfied. I would give myself a B+ for the work I did. I had to maneuver around the damn baseboard (it's glued and the wall came with it), and try not to scratch up the laminate.

Things I've learned from this experience:

1. Get rid of the creaks in the floor
2. Buy a slide mitre saw
3. Have a straight table saw blade (.05 degrees is just gay)
4. Add cushion to the pry bar
5. Level the damn floor
6. Be great at Tetris

I have to visit the friendly neighborhood Home Depot sometime during the week in Collierville ($3 a tube compared to $11 at Lowes) to purchase some touch up paint/puddy for the floor where I had cut retardedly. Yesterday, I was "gently" forcing (oxymoron) a plank into place and then face of the laminate snapped off. After some cursing and looking at the damaged, I repaired it with some epoxy. I plan to round off the edges using sandpaper. You can't 'see' where I had cracked the board but if you walked around, you might notice because the floor feels... uneven.

There are some gaps in the board that will be remedy by puddy and the touchup paint. This week, I''ll buy either quarter rounds or a stop base for the floor moulding. Anyways, here are some pictures for your enjoyment. The floor looks damn good and it has an echo! I have added more items to do on the "to do list."

Payday = new appliance

The title says it all.

Today is payday and I decided to go to Lowes to check out on what was on sale. In the discount aisle, I found a wine chiller. The Lowes on Perkins was asking $300 a few weeks ago but the Lowes on Germantown was asking $110; I got it lowered to $100. I will post up pics along with the model.

I don't even drink wine, but hell... it looks good.

Renovation 4: Anne Frank Room

1. prime
2. paint
3. tear out old carpet
4. install hardwood
5. install white socket plugs
6. put light switch on the other side of wall
7. chair -OR- crown molding
8. window/trim molding

So this is the first entry of renovating my 1915 victorian style home. My sisters dubbed it the 'Anne Frank' room because it sits adjacent to a room that is only accessed through ANOTHER room. There isn't a hallway to access it, just walk right on through a bedroom to this room. I think this room has an identity crisis compared to the other rooms.

I sketched out the design of the 2nd floor to illustrate my complaint/story:

2-D View from Kyle's room to Anne Frank's room.



The previous owner, who was foreclosed on, added this room to the house. From the looks of it, he didn't sketch/design the room and then build, but build then look back and said "opps, i messed this up! There's no way to access this room except to go through a room! I am an idiot." I also believed that he was blind or needed a change in his prescriptions because when you walk into the room, you have to take a step DOWN, not STEP ACROSS to a FLUSHED floor like normal homes (pics below).

The not-so 'FLUSHED' room





Originally, I believed this room was constructed be used as a playroom, but in the meantime, it will serve as an office or a studio. I got sick of the tattered,worn, old carpet. To keep up with the look of the home, I decided to invest in installing hardwood flooring or laminate.

I've been shopping around for weeks and tried to find a floor/pattern I really liked. Then on one Sunday afternoon, Kyle, sis, and I decided to visit our not-so-local neighborhood Lowes (Perkins).

I visited the hardwood flooring and saw them bastards on sale! These bastards though, were laminate flooring -a close match to natural hardwood. Hell, I didn't care, the floorboards looked good AND it was on SALE! Many of know don't know but I am the cheapest bastard. I'm very compulsive when things are on sale.

They were heavily discounted. They were discounted 50% off their price which turned out to be $35 a stack (83 cents per square) which is a deal compared to other stores/dealers which offered me $1.50 per square.

We kind of ripped of Lowes because I looked at the original packaging and it said 8 boards to a carton but we instead stuffed 10 boards to a pack. We also got 10 boards of other laminate mixed into purchase. I've read that when you install laminate, try to random the pattern. Hell, I'm going random - 10 boards of different colors/styles. Shit, Lowes wouldn't care if 10 different boards disappeared.

Total purchase: 140ish dollars. Not bad at all. If the guy from the flooring department didn't show up at the register, we could've got the entire thing for $35.00 cause the cashier was retarded and didn't know how to calculate 50% off the entire flooring NOT 50% off a single box.

The vapor barrier/padding took me forever on deciding where to purchase. Home Depot was outrageously expensive, Home Liquidators 2nd place and, Lowes took 3rd place. I found that surplus warehouse had the padding for $15 per 100 sq ft! I bought two because the room (if you did the math is 131 sq ft) was a bit larger.

30 bucks and some change, not bad at all. Buying the vapor barrier/padding took me 2 weeks to purchase because I went everywhere trying to figure out who was the cheapest.

Installing the bad boy:
So you think this would be easy. Let me remind you, the guy who built the add-on before me did it by himself. I read everywhere that you should remove the baseboard moulding. Well guess what!? Instead of nailing the baseboard and calling it quits, the retard installed it with GLUE! When I started prying the board off the wall, it took the wall with it (damn you to hell)!!

So I'm pissed off at this point swearing here and there and just started to put the floor together. The first 5 rows were a learning experience in installing and laying them together while navigating around the floorboard moulding. I had some problems on the way because my mitre saw doesn't extend or have a wider circumference of a blade. I opted to use my table saw but the problem is... it's a bit off... like... .05 degrees. Wutever, look at the pics of the floor. I will post more pics as the work progresses.

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With the paint, but still with the shitty floor:

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Pics with the nice, new floor.
Look at the yellow tags! ON SALE!