Renovations: Master Dressing Room

The Master Dressing Room

12/31/2007-

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12/31/2007	This is being written in partial retrospect, four days after the work was actually done. Beth has taken her first real vacation in what seems like ages and decided that the one thing she really needed was to see her house pushed further toward it's finish. The idea was to complete our dressing room, however that didn't happen. We fixed all the dents and imperfections in the walls, tore out all the cheap moldings that had been hung to impress renters, and then painted the room. At that point, Beth decided that Christina's 18th birthday was more important so we shifted gears and gave her bedroom a total makeover while she was in Florida visiting her Dad. That part of her vacation went well and Christina was very pleased with her new mature-looking bedroom.
1/2/2008	When our home was a duplex the right side had a house fan which was installed in what is now the dressing room's ceiling. The idea behind a house fan was that when this monster of a fan was turned on all the windows had to be open so that a draft would come up through the house and dump all the hot air into the attic and out its open windows. I spent a great deal of time yanking the old thing out, framing up the opening and dry walling it shut. I also ran some wiring for the new lighting. This was all followed up with the installation of the first few glue-on ceiling tiles, the same style we used in the Guest Room. We also made the trek to Home Depot in very windy 28 degree weather and purchased some moldings that will be placed around the two doorways and two closets, and bought our new lighting fixtures while we were at it. Busy day. This room isn't as bad as some of the others and it will be nice having most of the second floor completed when it's finished. The big 2nd floor jobs are still ahead of us. You'll see.
1/5/2008	Incredibly trying day. The wiring in the main light switch was all botched up so I had to figure out what the previous 'electrician' had done in order to make it work, and then run the new wiring across the ceiling. This involved turning one fixture into two as you'll see in the photo page. I ended up cutting out parts of the ceiling, building cross beams to reattach the dry wall and all sorts of other challenging little things. Yes, I also installed more adhesive ceiling tiles throughout the day. The biggest event was closing off the doorway from the dressing room to the guest room. There's now a big wall where there was once a door. It looks nice but it also looks kind of creepy because it's so different after almost 4 years. And now the only way to access the guest room is up the green room staircase in the rear of the house. It's nice, though. It would make a wonderful nursery or office, but we like having a dressing room since it's only the three of us here and soon there will be only Beth and me. (But not soon enough, let me tell ya!) I almost forgot. I was installing the 2X4's in the door frame so that I could hang the dry wall on them and one of the boards slipped. I ended up drilling a nice hole right in-between my left hand's index and middle finger. It doesn't really hurt but it's really gross looking. I can see down into the hole.
1/6/2008	Christina turned 18 today and we celebrated by taking her out to lunch at the casino and giving her some money to lose so we could show her the evils of becoming an adult. This lesson fell on deaf ears because she won $100 and now she wants to become a professional riverboat gambler with a handlebar mustache. When she made this announcement I beat her mercilessly. I couldn't do that until today because her Dad could sue me, but not anymore. Now she's my bitch. Of course, I'm kidding. I would never squelch the dreams of a young adult and have always had a policy of supporting and nurturing all of my kids' dreams and ambitions, even the really stupid ones. To show Christina I was behind her every step of the way I taught her how to shave her upper lip to encourage hair growth. Tomorrow we're having her name legally changed to Rhett and buying her a white shirt, a vest with a gold pocket watch and a derringer. Beth is also teaching her to smoke cigars.
1/7/2008	Beth is as sick as a dog and I had to take her to the doctor today. Don't get me wrong: I love my wife dearly and taking care of her is a privilege, but checking on her every ten minutes kind of got in the way of making any real headway, so I focused on doing things that took lots of drying time in-between so that I could tend to her needs such as making her lunch and then holding her hair while she vomited it all up. She actually looked pretty gross at around Noon and I was getting a little worried because she was sleeping a lot and was all pale and waxen from her fever. Man, was she ever out of it! The only happiness in the house was experienced by the cats who thought she made a fine place to stretch out and catch a few Z's.
6/4/2008	I can see that I'm a little behind in my writing. This is due in part to my having returned to college, and in part to the fact that I'm basically behind on everything. The dressing room is still coming along, but it's a lot better than you'd judge from reading any of this. The ceiling is all in place, but still needs to have its metallic finish put on. Most everything else is completed, so by Christmas it may be completed.
2/22/2010	Yeah, okay. So, Christmas of 2008 was a bit of a stretch as was Christmas of 2009. Things happen. I'm back in here again but this time I'm extending one closet in favor of losing the other because it's about to become a hallway from the Guest Room to the main staircase. Today I'll be framing the closet extension in, and maybe putting up the dry wall, too. I told Beth that it may be usable by this evening. We'll see. No promises. I'm just glas that I never finished anything in this room because a lot of it would have been a waste of time and materials.
2/23/2010	I'm actually doing more writing in the photo page than here. This closet, small as it may be, is really kicking my butt because of the sloped floor. Also, I ran out of dry wall scraps, and had to drive over to 84 Lumber for a single sheet that wound up being quartered do it would fit inside the car. Our dogs are driving me crazy. As much as I love them, they tend to get under foot at every given opportunity, and they're becoming a pain in the neck. I'd put them outdoors but I have a terrible fear of looking out there, and then discovering that they'd run off somewhere. It would kill me if anything ever happened to them, so I just tolerate their intrusions as best I can, and do a lot of yelling. I really need to find a job soon. It's getting bad.
2/26/2010	Work has literally ground top a halt while we wait for our tax refund check. The upside of this is that I have no choice but to do some much needed cleaning, and organizing. With four areas being worked at once, you can only imagine the amount of old boards full of nails, dust, and general garbage that has accumulated. I try to save lumber whenever possible by yanking out the nails, and then stacking it off so that I can later power-wash it down. I've found that it can come in very handy for other projects, and it's also environmentally responsible to reuse wood whenever possible. The only other news is that I may be joining yet another band. I'll sit in with them tomorrow for the first time so we'll see how that goes. Let's just hope it's better than the last one.
3/1/2010	6:18am I splurged, and bought a 5-gallon bucket of joint compound. Had to do it.With so many projects going on, and all of them dependant on this particular material it was either spend the $17 or sit around doing nothing. It was a good choice. I've made solid progress on the addition's walls, and hope to have them completed someday in the near future so that I can get painting, and then hit the molding work. It will be a very pretty room when all is said and done. I admit that I've been putting off the ceiling paint. It was a smart move for a while as painting the area would have been a complete waste of time and materials, but now I should really get back to it. 8:47pm Beth is working me like a dog! Every time I try to take a break she starts screaming at me to get back to work. And then she yelled at me to make dinner (lasagna), and yelled at me he entire time to hurry up, and get back to work again. And then she said I needed a shower, but wouldn't let up on me for not working while I was doing as she'd asked. I repaired the master bathroom sink. I hung a painting. I cleaned up as much dust as possible. I mudded and sanded a ton of walls. I laid baseboard trim all over the place. And still she yells and yells AND YELLS!!!!! Just kidding. I did make lasagna, though.
3/4/2010	The lasagna was too sweet. I didn't care for it. I've completed sanding the walls down, so I'll be working in the Second Guest Room Bath for a while this morning, and then while the joint compound I'm applying in that room is drying I'll be back in here to prime and paint. After that it will be time to start putting the moldings in, and wrap up the metallic finish on the ceiling. Lots to do. Time to start taking more pictures for the photo page, too. I'm a little behind on taking pictures of all the projects, really. I need to get back into that because people like pictures.
3/5/2010	7:45am We hit Lowe's last night where Beth picked out the ceiling molding for the room. I knew that we'd need an angled molding to cover up the gap along the wall, and my original thought was to just grab a basic style. However, this is Beth's room. I'll spend little to no time in here, and I really support the her desire to have a room that she can decorate to her personal taste. Everyone needs that, and Beth is a girlie girl" at heart, so having a big personal dressing room matches her personality so I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of art she eventually puts in there when it's done. Beth chose a fancy molding consisting of a rose vine pattern. It's going to be a bitch painting it, and applying the faux finish, but what the hell? It's going to look pretty great if I can cut the corners in a convincing manner. I really don't want to make corner boxes if I can help it. The room is too small for that, but if that's what it comes down to, I suppose I'll just have to do it. The louvered doors that were on the old closet don't fit on the one I just built. I'll be shaving them down on the table saw today. Not a big deal. I hope. All in all the room is nearing completion. There's still quite a bit of work to do but pretty soon I'll be hanging a proper door on the old closet entrance so that it will access the new hallway, and we;ll be just about ready to rip out the old staircase to the attic. That's going to be one filthy job! The railroad dust is going to be overwhelming, but we have a plan to take care of it. Time to get going. 5:36pm I'm done for the day. I worked my butt off on the faux finish items, and even did a "How to" section in the photo page. After that I cleaned up a little around the upper floor, did the laundry, and cleaned up the kitchen. Very tiring day, but the new molding looks great!
3/8/2010	What a day! Lots of repair work done on the new moldings; custom cuts on the closet doors; floor moldings installed; the big clean up, all of which was done so that Beth could come home to finally see it completed. Well, that didn't exactly happen, but I was pretty darned close. In fact, it was so close to completed that she was able to use her magic "Beth vision" to see how it would look with certain pieces of furniture in there. That's what I'll be doing to surprise her tomorrow. I hope so, anyway. I still need to clean up the hardwood floors, and apply a coat of Bruce Hardwood Floor Restorer before anything goes in.
3/9/2010	I decided that the floor took precedence over putting items on the floor after all. It took longer than I'd anticipated, but what doesn't? While applying the finish I inhaled more than my share of fumes. Hey, when the directions on a can say "open a window for ventilation", they really aren't kidding around. This is especially true if you're applying a toxic liquid directly by hand pad so that your nose is right down in the invisible fog of death. My thoughts always tend to roam around even on a good day, but when influenced by chemicals they can go pretty much anywhere. For some odd reason I began mulling over the reasons why President Obama should be removed from office. Of course, the obvious reasons center around the fact that his ineptitude to handle the responsibility is really showing these days, but that's just too obvious to bother discussing. I loved seeing a bumper sticker the other day, which read, "Hey, how's that 'hope and change' thing working out for you?" It pretty much beat anything I'd ever have to say on the subject. No, I'd have to say that the #1 reason I don't like the guy is because he's allowed an invasion to happen in our country. The only difference between an assault-style invasion, and the influx of illegal immigrants now poisoning America is that these illegal's don't use parachutes to breach our borders. But is this simply prejudice on my part? I try not to voice any of my opinions that tend to lean toward bias based on race. No one wants to hear them except for a handful of beer-bellied jackoffs with bumper stickers disparaging over the loss of ol' #3. It's a distasteful way to write, even when popular. In my chemically-clouded mind, a thought occurred to me; what if the illegal immigrants weren't Mexicans? What if they were all naked Swedish female models? How would I feel about it then? I'd like to say I had an epiphany, but that isn't the case at all. In truth, I'd be pretty pissed off. Look, I like chocolate. Pretty much everyone likes chocolate, but the fact of the matter is that if you eat an entire box of the stuff you'll get tired of it pretty quickly. Too much of anything isn't ever a good thing, and naked Swedish models wouldn't be any different. In no time we would all be getting sick and tired of going into hospitals with waiting rooms filled with naked Swedish models. We'd utter, "Look at them. They just come here because they can get free health care." Also, our school system funding would be crushed by the overwhelming numbers of their kids. And would they even bother to show up for PTA meetings? I'm betting not, and as a real watchdog kind of guy you can bet that I'd show up to check. And what about The Home Depot's usual pack of labor rats for hire? Do contractors really want to pull into the Home Depot's parking lots every morning just to see a bunch of blonde, naked women standing around in a cluster? Yuck. No, my views are concrete. I don't care that the illegal's our president is welcoming into our country are Mexicans. I couldn't care less who they are, or from which country they swarmed. The only thing that matters is that we've been invaded, and we have a goofball in office who doesn't give a rat's ass what America's actual views on the subject truly may be. He doesn't ask us because he doesn't care about anything except his own self-serving agenda, and that is the mark of a terrible leader. He needs to go. I finished the floor, left the room, and did some work on the Guest Bathroom. It all looks pretty good.
3/17/2010	I finished the Guest Bathroom ceiling over the past few days, so I took a day off from the usual to thoroughly clean, dust and vacuum the house. Beth once asked how I'd work if this was someone else's house, and the truth of the matter is that it would be much cleaner. Why? Because people who can afford this kind of thing usually have a maid. And since we don't have a maid, and Beth works a regular job, I thought it would be nice to step up to the plate, and really clean the place so that she doesn't feel she needs to on her days off. The lack of thanks I received tells me that my efforts were expected, and that no thanks were actually needed. I'm cool with that. I made her dinner, too. Keeping the household civil takes as much effort as the actual work. My advice to anyone taking on this kind of renovation? Be flexible. Be compassionate.
3/25/2010	Been downstairs refinishing the dining room, and kitchen floors. Check out the date entries if you want to see what I've been up to. No pictures as of this date, but soon.