Home Improvement

Long Slow Remodel: Week 4

By / March 30, 2019

This week most of the progress happened in Howard’s office where this space:

Was turned into this space:

We called these our “test cupboards” we were learning the process of finishing the cupboards and experimenting with hanging them. That way we made most of our mistakes on cupboards that will not be on public display the moment people enter the house.

With Howard’s cupboards looking spiffy, I turned our garage into a full workshop and worked on the front room cupboards.

As of today, the boxes for the cupboards were ready, so we stacked them in the front room to help us visualize how it would go. Milo helped inspect. Picture this arrangement about four to five feet higher up on the wall with shelves in the gaps between cupboards.

Stacking and visualizing turned out to be really smart. We identified a problem. The spacing of those upright cupboards is such that it is impossible to attach all of them to studs simultaneously. We came up with a plan where we’re using planks behind the cupboards as additional support and to create a sort of framing structure. We also realized that our intended height would make most of the cupboards hard to access. but hanging the cupboards lower would cause a problem hanging some of our long coats on hooks below the cupboards. That was when we came up with this arrangement, which we like way better. The upright gap will still have shelves. The open bottom gap will house coats.

So now I’ve got planks to stain, side panels to stain and doors to finish varnishing. Oh, and there is crown molding that I also need to stain. The good news is that I enjoy painting stain and varnish on wood. So the project is being fun.

Long Slow Remodel: Week 3

By / March 24, 2019

This was a week without much photographable progress. And yet, Howard figured out the method and supplies he’ll need to install the in-cabinet lighting. I completely varnished and shined all the cabinets for Howard’s office. Then I sanded and prepped all six cabinets for the front room. The project is underfoot in a dozen different ways, but we’re learning a lot and hopefully by next week we’ll have all the cabinets up in Howard’s office.

Long Slow Remodel: Week 2

By / March 17, 2019

Progress was slowed down this week by stain colors. After carefully testing and deciding on a color, I discovered that one of the colors we picked wasn’t readily available. We apparently bought the only pint size can available at the store and quarts were going for $40 or more online. (Retail price on quarts for this brand $8). I tried having a paint store mix the color, but it didn’t match at all. So we back tracked and picked a more readily available color.

But now we have three more cabinets stained and partially varnished. Staining happens in our front room.

The varnish/lacquer is really smelly and so it has to happen out in our garage, which I’ve turned into a workshop for the duration of this project. Unfortunately, this means we do quite a bit of waiting for the weather to be warm enough so I can work. The lacquer doesn’t soak into the wood or cure correctly if the temperatures are below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

So, not much visible progress this week. But Howard has ordered the pieces for him to install interior lighting into the cabinets. This first batch of cabinets is destined for Howard’s office. The next batch is six cabinets and will go into the front room. I can start on that batch as soon as this batch is completed. prepping the next batch requires sanding and I can’t have tiny wood particles landing in wet stain or lacquer.

Long Slow Remodel: Preliminary & Week 1

By / March 17, 2019

We’ve been working on a remodel for years now. Six years ago, I repainted the front room. In 2016 I tore out a front closet and we stared at bare studs for 18 months. Last summer we finally put in the railing we’d been dreaming of. This summer we’ll be putting in work staining unfinished cabinets and installing them. Bit by bit we are going to transform our front room space. The goal is to get rid of that pantry wall in the middle of the room.

It will be replaced with an island counter. But before we can tear down the wall, we have to create new homes for all the food that currently lives in that pantry. We’ll be creating a pantry wall on the other side of the kitchen. But before we’re ready to put in those cabinets, we wanted to test and make sure that we can actually do this cabinet staining and installing ourselves. So we’re beginning with installing a painting table and cabinets in Howard’s office, and also installing cabinets and coat hooks in the entry area.

We ordered cabinets and they arrived a couple of weeks ago. Since then we’ve been test staining to make sure we can match the color of the railing.

Howard and Keliana picked a piece of plywood with beautiful patterns to be the table top for the office painting station. On the floor you can see the outline of where we removed the closet.

We’ve decided on a two-tone look for the cabinets. This is our test cabinet. For the remaining cabinets the base will also be the lighter color so that the doors look like picture frames. We have some ideas about decorative things to do with those frames.

Up next, pulling doors off of 11 more cabinets so that they can be sanded and stained. I’ve also got a window sill to assemble and stain. Now if only the weather would cooperate and warm up. Wood doesn’t stain well if it is below 60% so right now we’re having to bring things indoors to stain. It’ll be a lot faster when the garage is a good staining temperature and we can assembly line the work.

So that’s where we are with the project this week. My hope is that we can have that pantry wall gone by the end of the summer.

Remodeling and Responsibility

By / January 8, 2019 / 4 Comments

We’re having an expensive week here at Chez Tayler. We finally called in a plumber because we got tired of an ever-filling bucket of garbage disposal water accumulating under the sink. While the plumber was here, he corrected a faulty tub drain, which has leaked at random intervals since we bought this house twenty years ago. Later this week we have someone coming to examine our garage door, which has begun making an alrming clanging noise each time it opens or closes. Howard has a dental appointment for a crown, and two kids had doctor appointments. The financial squirrel in my brain has been making distressed noises, she wants to hide away all the money into safe reserves against impending need. Sometimes it is hard for her to accept that ‘need’ is now.

Even as I’m paying out all of these bills, I’ve been contemplating a minimalism documentary I watched, and that new tidying up series from Marie Kondo. First let me say that Ms. Kondo is adorable, I just want to put her in my pocket and keep her. She radiates happiness and optimism. I like her approach to objects and to adjusting our relationships with them. I’m less enamored of the minimalist philosophy from the documentary which pares down living spaces to echoing rooms and dependence on the infrastructure of others to maintain comfort. Living out of two suitcases means that you’re dependent on someone else to own and manage a laundromat for your use, also you require hotels, rentable furnished apartments, grocery stores, restaurants, etc. A life of extreme minimalism (without being impoverished) is a life of extreme privilege. And yet, the minimalists have reasonable points to make about the fact that most modern Americans acquire far more stuff than will make them happy. The acquisition of stuff becomes a financial, physical, and emotional burden. I just prefer Ms. Kondo’s approach for readjusting that burden.

The thought floats through my mind, all the spending I’m doing this week is to maintain things that we already have. I would not have to spend five hundred dollars (my guess at the cost) repairing the garage door if I decided not to have an automatic garage door. This thought leads my inner financial squirrel to pipe up and say “Do we really need a garage door?” She makes this sort of noise at any expenditure, which is sometimes useful in helping me be conscious about how I’m spending resources. Other times it contributes to anxiety-related decision paralysis.

In the next few months our family plans to do even more spending. We’re going to be buying materials and assistance to reconfigure our kitchen. I spin in mental circles as I contemplate this. I believe that re-configuring our space to match how we want to be living is a good thing. However spending money to replace cupboards when we already have functioning cupboards is kind of wasteful. But I plan to offset that waste by salvaging the existing cupboards and donating them to Habitat for Humanity. Yet the project will require money and time both of which could be spent on other projects, perhaps projects that cost less and would do more to make the world a better place. Also, if we spend money improving our kitchen, we’re committing to spending money in the future to maintain that kitchen. But I believe in the power of Place and doing the work in order to create a place with a particular spirit and beauty about it. Putting in the time and effort to make my home into such a place seems worthwhile. Particularly if I also enjoy the process of creating that place.

Around and around I go contemplating in small scale (my kitchen remodel) issues of resource management and the value of personal fulfillment vs public good; issues that have application in much larger scales in society. It would be kind of nice to just be excited about remodeling without all the attached mental churn. But for now, I need to get back to work earning the money that will pay down debts, buy materials, and grant me a life comfortable enough that I can afford to contemplate these thoughts.

Fall Break

By / October 25, 2018

My kids were out of school for five days. Instead of packing up everyone and heading out for adventures, we stayed home to do comforting things and a few projects. Some of the projects took place in the video game world, but mine were house and harvest.

Years ago we planted grape vines. The starts were gifted to us by a Schlock fan who worked at a vineyard, so we have varieties that aren’t typically seen in home gardens. The vines have matured and we now get a huge harvest each fall.

This year there was a boom in snail population, because for each batch of grapes we brought in, I had to rescue dozens to a hundred tiny snails. The finger pictured is a pinky finger.

The snails had to be rescued because once the grapes were de-stemmed, we cooked them into juice.

Then the juice was cooked into jelly. It was a lot of stove work and glass bottles.

The kitties had their own ideas about how to spend the weekend.

On the Monday of the break there was a different project entirely. We had a big solid redwood playset that we purchased when our kids were little. For the past five years or more, it has sat in our yard unused gathering detritus. We decided that it was time for the playset to move to a home with two six year old boys and a baby. So bright and early we began work.

The job and playset were bigger than the new playset owners expected. But I put my crew of adult-sized kids to work and things came down pretty quickly.

The disassembly process showed me all the ways in which this playset is amazingly solid after sitting outside in the weather for more than 15 years. It also let me see that being disassembled is the best possible thing to happen to it. The new owners will be able to clean everything up, replace aging bolts, re-stain, and replace the few boards that are showing structural wear. I’m glad it is going to people who are excited to do that work. I would never have gotten around to it.

It is always interesting to see what you find in a project like this one. I figured out where all the kid scissors went. We used to have so many rules about scissors not going outside. Rules that were apparently not heeded as evidenced by the graveyard of lost scissors.

Now there is a big empty space in my yard where the playset used to stand. Everything feels open and new possibilities are beginning to be mulled over.

All in all, it was a lovely use for a long weekend. Though I was physically tired at the end of it.

Fixing Our Spaces

By / June 2, 2023

This past week we’ve had workers in our house doing some construction. I sometimes feel self conscious about the conspicuous consumption involved in home improvement projects. I was raised in the “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” school of thought. However I’ve increasingly become aware that the way we arrange our living spaces directly impacts how we live inside those spaces. If I am constantly surrounded by things that are falling apart, it contributes to me not making effort to take care of my surroundings. On the other hand, if my surroundings are beautiful to my eyes, I feel more at peace in my life. Unfortunately, beautiful is often the more expensive option, so it has been a long time coming. In fact, we’re working to re-make our house a little bit at a time. This week we finally had the funds to fix up the stairs.

Here is what our front entry looked like before any work was done. The big blocky thing you see to the left was a coat closet. You may infer from the hooks with coats on them that this closet was filled with things which we rarely had a need to access. It was shove space. And it was taking up square footage at the entrance to our house.

About eighteen months ago I decided that the closet needed to be removed. So I dismantled it. Unfortunately right after the dismantling we hit a financial tight patch and we ended up living with bare studs for the next year and a half.

This is what the space looks like today.

We have beautiful railing where once there was a big block of shove space. obviously there is still work to do. The wall needs paint, the flooring has to be replaced, and there will be additional fittings to make this front entry way a better place to put coats, backpacks and other items that are taken off when entering the house.

But I’m so glad that visitors to my house are no longer greeted with this view.

Instead they get to see this.

And when I’m sitting in my kitchen I don’t see this anymore.

Instead I have a view of beautiful railing and the front door.

These railings are only the beginning. They define how we want our main floor to one day look. They are a promise to ourselves that bit by bit we will make our primary living area into one that makes us glad to enter instead of one that constantly frustrates us.

New Task Prioritization Strategy

By / June 24, 2023 / 4 Comments

Last Wednesday evening I was feeling cranky and out of sorts. When I sat down to figure it out, I realized that much of it was that I felt conflicted about how to spend Thursday. Thursday was a week day and I had lots of work priorities that are up against deadlines. I should spend the day getting those things done. However Thursday was also my kid’s first day of Fall break. That mean regular rhythms were disrupted and perhaps I should spend the day in weekend mode, doing house and family things. As I thought it through, I realized that I was surrounded by house tasks that have been bugging me for weeks (or months) and which I’d kept shoving aside because of pressing work deadlines. It was time to let house and family shove aside work. So Thursday was a house day.

Next came the question of how to pick which house chores to do. There are far more than could be accomplished in a single day, but none of them had attached deadlines therefore I couldn’t sort-by-deadline the way I often do with work tasks. Also I was tired of chasing deadlines and following long lists of To Do. I decided to just pick whichever task was bugging me most, or whatever I felt like doing next. Then when one task was done, I would take a break while picking the next one.

The first thing I tackled was finishing the paint in the kitchen. I began painting the kitchen almost a year ago, because I was really tired of dingy white with dirt streaks where grime accumulated on the studs.

But when I got to the space over the cupboards, a confluence of circumstances (I needed different tools, reaching over cupboards was more awkward, Planet Mercenary started demanding full attention) meant that I painted some of the edges, but not the entire area. I don’t have a picture of this partially painted state, but it was the worst of both. Painted sections looked sloppy/unfinished, while unpainted sections still sported dingy white and dirt streaks. It sat that way for ten months. Until last Thursday when I hauled out the ladder and paint supplies. Within two hours I had this instead.

The kitchen still needs a lot of work. A full remodel is in the planning stages, but this small piece of it is done.

A related task was started last December and had also been stalled since then. As part of our proposed remodel, we wanted to remove a closet. This one:

It was basically a box near the front door where we shoved all the things we didn’t have places for. It was always cluttered and unusable. We wanted to open up the space. Last December I dismantled the closet, painted the wall, and put up coat hooks.

Then I ran into a problem. One post from the closet ran all the way up to the ceiling. We were pretty sure that it wasn’t a load bearing structure. Other houses in our neighborhood with the exact same floor plan, didn’t have posts. However, I wanted “pretty sure” to be “absolutely sure” before I took it down. So the project stalled. And I stared at bare studs and an ugly post for ten months.

I finally got out the ladder and climbed into the rafters of the attic crawlspace. Using a flashlight and taking care not to step on anything except solid rafters, I measured to where the post was. I discovered this sticking up from the insulation and sheet rock.

Definitely not a load bearing structure. I didn’t tackle the removal on Thursday. I still have research to do on how best to remove it. I’ll probably need to rent tools. But that post is now doomed and the project can proceed.

Other things I accomplished on Thursday:
Taking a pile of unwanted clothes and things to a thrift store
Scouring out a bathroom that had become disgusting
Vacuumed several rooms
Reorganized a linen closet (thus acquiring a new pile of things to donate)
Turned a jumble in the garage into a swept and usable space

At the end of the day I’d done many tasks that had been niggling at my attention for a long time. A new set of household tasks is now jockeying for position, because that is the nature of houses and tasks. But I feel better about my house than I have for ten months. It feels like house projects can move forward instead of being perpetually shoved aside or stalled.

Friday I spent six hours driving to retrieve college girl from campus. She has fall break this weekend.

Saturday I had to decide whether to re-shoulder the burden of my work To Do lists or to continue focusing on house and family. I picked a middle ground. I did work, because those deadlines really do matter and I couldn’t feel good about blowing them off completely, but I didn’t sort tasks by deadlines. Instead I did whichever work task was bugging me the most. They’re all the same tasks, just sorted a bit differently. I got quite a bit done. There is still much more left to do.

Here at the beginning of a new week, I know I have deadlines to meet before Friday. So I’m going to have to do some deadline based prioritization, but it is nice to have another strategy available so I can switch things up when I get worn out. I get worn out a lot lately. I’ve been under deadline pressure since late 2016, which is a really long time to carry that weight.

Recreating a Living Space

By / June 24, 2023 / 2 Comments


The project I’ve been working on this past week that I haven’t been able to talk about was a house renovation. My daughter was coming home from college and the room we have for her is small. But we realized that if we knocked out the wall of the closet, her bed would fit in there, leaving a much larger space for the rest of everything. I decided to knock out that wall and have it ready for her before she returned. So while I was making the fun discoveries that always happen with home construction projects, I wasn’t able to tweet commentary because it would ruin the surprise.

I retrieved Kiki from college on Friday. Then she and I spent Saturday assembling an IKEA dresser and using power tools to create a platform support for the back half of the bed. I feel very pleased that the platforms were created entirely from materials that I salvaged while removing the wall. The result is a lofted bed with a dresser so that the old dresser can be removed from the room, giving her even more space. Also, there is a crawl space behind the dresser which is very useful for storage of college things that she won’t use again until August.

I’m bumped, bruised, scraped, and sore, but the project has been a good one. Now Kiki can set up art studio space in her room.