Secret Project Revealed: John’s Room

I disappeared again.

Let’s take a minute or two to talk about old houses, shall we?

Old houses have been around long enough to have their own personalities. The initial phrase people use is usually ‘charming’. As in, what a charming old house this is! You have to focus on the charming to get past the fact that nothing is going to go right when you’re working on an old house. Or at least, it’s never going to be perfect- but what house is? They’re like people that way, kind of wonderful. (Often frustrating.)

This is John’s room.

I love John, he’s a wonderful husband and friend. He’s also a dictator of a big brother and a very devoted son. He does a lot for the people in his life that he feels deserve the best. He’s always going out of his way to make my life as perfect as possible and sometimes I get teary just thinking about how great he is because I’m that kind of sap. Honestly, words will never express how much he means to me, so I’m not going to bore you trying. You get the point: John does a lot for others but he’s never really focused on himself or what he wants.

That’s my job.

So while John was planning a trip for his job, I was trying to come up with ideas for what to do for him. Originally he was planning on being out of town for two weeks. (Two weeks at the beginning of February, in Des Moines. All of that sounds like a fantasy work trip, right?) With two weeks, I could do it all right?!

Or maybe I could just… clean.

That corner confused me the most. It reminded me of Toom’s from the X-files. Only instead of bile and newspaper, I thought John might be making a nest out of old socks and clothes.

Let me show you a few problem areas that John had been looking at every day.

The people before the last owner were big fans of starting projects but not finishing them. (The last owner didn’t do anything to the house except cover it in bird seed and glitter.) So as you can see here, they painted the ceiling but let it come down onto the wall. Maybe they were planning on painting the wall eventually… None of the walls have been painted in the house though. Half of them are in various stages of (bad) repair, with a lot of drywall tape making appearances in weird places.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The doors all looked like this at the top of their frames.

Plus his room had the worst corner in the whole house. Which also happened to be right next to his computer. He told me that he hated seeing that corner because it just reminded him of how much work needed to be done.

Before we get to the in progress shots: there was one wall next to a chimney that runs through his room that was the worst as far as the walls go. Any wall next to a chimney- especially a plaster wall, is going to have cracks. If it gets to the point that you can see it, that means that there’s even more going on beneath the surface. You should actually do some wall repair so that you don’t just paint it and it shows up ten times worse a week after you’ve painted it.

Now you can actually see what I was working against. Every crack had to be caulked, taped and then mudded over with drywall mud. Sanded and then mudded again until it was smooth and blended with the wall.

That’s a lot of work. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d had the right tools. When I finally got around to sanding, I only had 200 grit sandpaper. Which made me want to die. (I needed more like 80.) My dad got a bunch of tearful messages that week and he decided to show up and see what was going on. When he saw the sandpaper I was using her was like, “that’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight, Linds- no wonder you’re having problems.” Then he showed me how to use a power sander. All that I worried about after that was choking to death on drywall dust in the frenzied tornado it caused.

Well, okay, maybe that didn’t get rid of all my worries.

There were some major problems near the window. Problems I didn’t even know how to begin addressing. Once I pulled that big piece of plaster out of there that was just floating around, I found I had more questions than solutions. So I decided to just ‘throw some mud at it.’ A phrase my dad was fond of using this past summer when we were working on the upstairs. (Which I still haven’t gotten around to posting pictures of, sorry!)

My Dad knows he’s awesome. Also- see that corner? That’s the same one that had the hole.

John’s Dad and brother came over and helped us move the big book case so we could paint the wall behind it. If they hadn’t, it would have stayed how it was originally and that would have been fine. But I was glad that they helped us because the room looks so much more put together with every wall painted.

John also had his work trip cut short to a week. Meaning all of the things that I wanted to do also got cut short. I had plans for this and that, but here’s where we were after a week:

Can you tell that he’s a fan of maps?

It definitely looks different. What do you guys think? Have you ever tried to surprise someone while they were out of town? How did it go over? I still have plans to get a rug and a few other things to bring the room together but now all of the big stuff is out of the way. Plus, he was genuinely surprised by the whole thing. I thought for sure he knew what was going on because I’m terrible at keeping secrets but he had no idea what was up.   [<- that link takes you to a movie of his reaction.]

Seriously though- tell me what you think in the comments!

Saturday afternoon project

When we first took possession of the house there were a few things that needed to be taken care of ASAP. Like the vines that were growing on the house and getting stronger every day. However, there were some things that while they weren’t necessary, I wanted to do them before we put our stuff away. Then we’d be moving all of our stuff and trying to fix something later that we could have just done from the get go.

That’s the laundry hole. I looked at that area and was like… ugh. This does not inspire me to do laundry. But I didn’t have a plan so I didn’t say anything about it.

Luckily, my dad took one look at all the miscellaneous boards and props the old owner had used for her washer and dryer and was like, “Oh Linds, we can do so much better.”

Yay Team Dad! His initial idea was to just make a frame and put some plywood on top of it. But then when we went to the hardware store John was like, let’s make a deck so that it’ll look nicer than some plywood on the top there. Not one to argue with nicer I said, sure thing.

Dad brought over the chop saw and we got to work. Which I couldn’t take any pictures of myself helping but imagine me getting in the way as much as possible. Also, picture me getting a metal splinter from the screws because I’m terrible at using a drill.

We framed it out. Then laid two boards on the top to know what depth to put the braces. We secured the back of the frame to the wall with tapcons but they were too short on the ends since the wall isn’t perfectly flat. In fact, the wall is wonky and the floor had a huge bump running along the back wall. So a deck was pretty necessary.

Once we had the braces all in place, we took the boards off and relaid them, screwed them into place and were good to go.

Well, Dad did put a bunch of little legs on the braces to make super sure everything was secure. Then he nailed the wires that were hanging low up so I wouldn’t get decapitated by them. Such a sweet gesture.

When we went to get the longer tapcons we also looked at getting a new light since the bulb was basically in both of our faces the whole time we were making the laundry deck. I ended up getting a halogen light fixture that can hang up between the rafters. It’s great since now both of the corners are illuminated and less spooky looking.

We took all of the legs down on the washer and dryer and put them up on the deck. They were both level right away, we didn’t have to do any sort of adjusting to get them to sit flat. Which I was super impressed by. I’ve never had that, even in our old apartment in Dublin.

This was where we finished on Saturday. It already looks different but I just wanted to show you what we got done in a day. Yesterday my dad brought over a light cap and we took the light bulb out, so it’s no longer hanging there getting in peoples faces. Plus it turned the bulb into an outlet, giving us one more outlet in the basement which is always nice. I vacuumed up all the crap that was on the ground and put my clothes rack in the corner to hang stuff up on. But yeah, you get the general idea. We saw a few boards and miscellaneous debris hanging out on the ground and made it into a super fly laundry deck area that I’m actually happy about doing laundry at.

Here are a few Dad stories: he said that I needed to place an ad for a midget DJ for my laundry disco. He also called every support board that he had to toenail into place a piece of shit. So it’s pretty safe to say that I love doing projects with him.

Feedback is appreciated!