Category Archives: home improvement

Why can’t I be a natural at something? Why can’t something come easy to me?

I thought I hated removing wallpaper. I’m starting to think that was the fun part. This paint thing sucks ass.

I got my primer layer on. I made an incredible mess. I’m guessing primer can live with some sloppiness. How am I going to make the real color look good? How do you get in the corners? How do you make the brush marks look smooth? How do you keep from touching the smooth part you just painted? Will this paint ever come off my hands? Thank God I read those web tips that included: cover your hair.

What about that extender thing? I felt like I was an I Love Lucy episode, wonking that stick back into everything. Where was the conveyor belt with the cakes? I keep feeling like there’s a hidden camera and I’m the entertainment for a painters convention in Miami. They can hardly get up from the floor they’re laughing so hard.

The guy who sold me the Professional Paint Kit (why not the Paint Kit for Dummies?) said I could reuse that fuzzy paint roller cover thing. I think he was high. Isn’t paint supposed to make you high? It’s not working. The only thing keeping me going is the overwhelming desire to be finished. I’m going to the hardware store to buy about 100 of those fuzzy things and throw one away every half hour. And a smaller paint brush. The professional one isn’t going to cut the detail work.

Meanwhile, I did end up getting desperate to plug in Frodo. Look at my amazing kitchen computer station. This is the most not-ergonomic set up ever. But I’m so desperate to avoid painting a few more minutes, I had to fill you in on the latest.

The minute I got home from work last night I changed into my work clothes, put Frodo and his various paraphernalia (keyboard, mouse, cables, cords, power strips, modem, etc.) in a safe place and got to work on the sanding.

Is there any part of Home Improvement Projects that doesn’t make your arms feel like they’re about to burst into flames? Even my Yoga arms couldn’t save me. (Scroll down to the bottom of the page for some crazy arm balance poses. Yes, I can totally do that. For about .05 nanoseconds before gravity kicks in.)

I took periodic breaks to see what Jack Bauer was up to. I don’t think I’m going to watch 24 next season. I’ve had my season of free-for-all TV and now I want to cut back again. 24 is always the same thing: “We need X. X is impossible to get. But we must have it to save American lives. Okay, give me 10 minutes.”

Back to the sanding, it would have been helpful to know how magical the Joint Compound is and how responsive to sanding because I could have saved a lot of time from my meticulous application and careful scraping and smoothing and fretting over the lack of smoothness. Sanding makes everything smooth.

It also would have been helpful to know that bathing would be an absolute necessity after sanding. I had to wash my hair twice yesterday.

Last night, where I needed a second Magical Joint Compound application, I was fearless, even developing my own method for getting joint compound into corners which involved a dollop of compound and an index finger. The giant hole that I patched looks poorly but I’m praying the magic of paint to make it look less craptastic.

More sanding tonight. This or this are most likely where I’ll get my colors.

Before I write what I intended to write, I have to tell you that it’s just started raining and the sky is rumbling. The light breeze coming from the window smells fantastic: like minerals and candy and summer. I’ve just got out of the shower and started sipping from a glass of wine. This is a great moment after a long tiring day.

Now let me tell you about all the crap moments that came before it.

No, just kidding. But you notice I haven’t been here so I must have been on the Home Improvement Project. I worked very hard this weekend, mostly even having fun but this afternoon I got discouraged and for about a 1/2 hour (or as my cousin Lisa would say: half of an hour. She had a big birthday yesterday: Happy Birthday Lisa!) felt like I was going to cry.

The worst part is that all my stuff is in chaos. I’m working on my room. My room contains all my stuff which means my books, notes, reminders, files, craft supplies, computer, calendar, photos, artwork, yoga mat and meditation area. Everything. And it’s all put away right now in boxes and on counters, all over the house. I don’t know where anything is and I can’t do anything. That part is making me the most crazy.

I spent all day Friday and Saturday washing the walls. It took forever to get the wallpaper off and then when I started washing it took another forever to get the wisps and titanium adhesive cleaned off. Plus it made my arms feel like they were made of noodles. They still feel like noodles.

Today I apprenticed with the joint compound and the patching and spackling. I really want to do a good job but it seems like there are more and more problems. Cracks where there shouldn’t be cracks. Stuff chipping off metal. Crackly paint that doesn’t behave. I now completely and fully understand why people do a half assed job on stuff like this. One wall where I removed wallpaper is completely pitted. I don’t think it’s all from the wallpaper I think the person who put the wallpaper up originally had another plan and gave up on it. That was a half bucket of compound right there.

Also I decided to remove the entire closet infrastructure so I can install my own which will be a bunch of shelves for all my crafts and boxes and yoga supplies and junk. I don’t need to put clothes in here. Turns out the infrastructure was installed to withstand Armageddon (is that supposed to be capitalized?). There were Paul Bunyon nails of a size I didn’t know exist, keeping these wood fragments bonded to the walls. So I basically destroyed large areas of closet to get them out. We’ll see what the Power of Joint Compound can do.

What you need to be aware of is that I am going to start sanding very, very soon and when I do that, my extra limb, Mr. Frodo Computer, will be put in another room, safe from The Dust. And Frodo only works in my room because that’s where the DSL hookup is.

Hm. Well, now that I think of it, maybe he can be plugged in elsewhere but that would be like the kitchen and I already have my crap taking up every conceivable corner. I’m not sure I want to put Frodo in the kitchen. We’ll see how twitchy I get without him. (Aside: seeing all my stuff all over the house is making me want to get rid of it which would be perfect because I started this farking project so I’d have more storage for my stuff.)

I can access my email and blog from my work computer so it’s not like I’ll disappear but I won’t be quite as reliable.

I’d make some sort of goal statement here except I don’t want to jinx myself. The Home Improvement Project will take as long as it takes. Stay tuned.

Good effing God. What a sorry project this has turned out to be. At this point, I think our only solution is to move.

Working with drywall is like working with pastry dough. I was supposed to cut out (at a bevel!!!) a piece and use that to recut where the hole is so that the piece fits into the hole. It was like the pie crust recipe where they tell you to fold the dough into quarters and then unfold it into the pie plate. CAN’T BE DONE.

And the small hole didn’t work because I didn’t buy the right thing and I didn’t like the stuff I bought. So I didn’t even get to use my putty knife.

As I was sitting on the floor swearing and trying to remember how to put the drill in reverse so I could remove some screws (this was after taking about 10 minutes to figure out how to put the blade in my new utility knife) Bob came in to tell me he was going to Dinners Done Right to make us some dinners for the next month. Nice role reversal, eh?

Since the drywall was a bust, I went on to the wallpaper, first scoring it with my paper tiger and then spraying it with some warm water. Then I stood back and waited for it to fall off the wall.

Apparently this wallpaper was installed with a titanium alloy adhesive. It took forever before I could even scrape a tiny corner up and it’s coming off in wispy fragments. And I’m not sure, but I don’t think that’s even a real wall underneath. It looks like a prop from a grade school play about a land with no real walls. Assuming I ever get all the wall paper off, I’m going to be sanding and/or priming and/or patching these “walls” for the rest of my life. Especially if I keep complaining about it and not doing it.

It’s safe to say I’m not going to going into the home improvement business anytime soon.

I just got home from Home Depot. Now I know what a man feels like when you send him to the grocery store for fennel and fusilli.

As I have written before, we have never done any home improvements and my best idea for a reason why is that we don’t want to.

Recently I’ve been on this crafts thing. I want to make everything. I have zillions of ideas for cool things to make and how to decorate myself and my surroundings more creatively. I would make a list of the crafts but it’s pretty much everything except ceramics. And soap carving. And macrame. But pretty much everything else.

So far I’ve been big on looking at books and websites and looking for classes. The only class I signed up for so far, sewing, was canceled in winter and not offered in spring so I’ve been meaning to go to the sewing store and just buy a bunch of stuff and try to make something see how I do. I’ve bought a few crafty things but I don’t have a good storage area so I had this idea that I would make over my closet with shelves.

Then I realized if I was going to do that I should at least paint the closet first. Then I realized if I was going to paint the closet, I should probably paint my whole room and now it’s turned into a Home Improvement Project.

I broke it down into small parts to keep from getting overwhelmed. I’m going to need to patch drywall. There are nail holes and some scuffs and one good sized hole the previous owners used for a cable. And there’s a large hole from what we will call, a situation.

I also need to remove wallpaper, figure out what the hell is wrong with this leaky window and fix windowsill and pull up carpet in closet and put something else in there. Then I can get started on the painting part. But I figure once I get my feet wet I’ll be inspired to do other projects around the house.

This weekend was the planned drywall fix weekend and I did my homework which involved looking at 3 different online tutorials and making a list of things I would need. Then I went to the store and looked at all the stuff and got psyched out and left empty handed. My next step was to consult with my next door neighbor and my Dad and this morning went to Home Depot (because we had a gift card there.)

I had to call Dad once from the store, but look at all the swell loot I got:

I didn’t get it in the picture but a very nice man named DW “found” me some drywall scraps. He asked me a few questions and quickly figured out that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing so he very helpfully made me two (2) scraps so if I screw up one, I have another chance.

My First Putty Knife

Now I have all my stuff home and spread out on the floor. It’s more fun documenting this than actually trying to do the work. I guess I’ll try the small hole first and see how I do.

Stay tuned for updates.

I unclogged my own sink this afternoon.

It’s been draining more and more slowly for quite some time. I put one of those enzyme drain openers in a couple weeks ago and bought myself another week but it quickly went back to barely tolerable. I could have called a plumber except we’ve had a plumber in here in the last 6 months and I hate being helpless at seeminly routine house problems.

I looked online for methods of dealing with clogged drains. Half the sites make it sound like it’s a psychosomatic situation. “Try flushing with hot water.” If that was going to work, the drain wouldn’t be clogged. The environmental people don’t want you to use drain cleaners because they’re hugely toxic and horrible. In my personal experience, there is no substance you can add to a clogged drain, toxic or not, that will do jack squat.

Regardless, I tried the non-toxic thing because that’s what I had in the house: baking soda and boiling water. I dumped in the soda and poured the water and was encouraged to see the fizzing action. Then the drain stopped up completely.

I went and got the plunger which I found two weekends ago when I cleaned out the shed in the backyard (there’s a story there too but don’t know if I will get to it.) I applied “steady, rhythmic, and forceful downward and upward strokes” until it felt like homeowner porn and my entire upper body got a cramp.

Normally, at this point I would have quit in a furious huff. I was furious and called my sink all kinds of very vicious bad words which I’m sure made it feel very bad but didn’t unclog it. I couldn’t quit because we have company coming over tomorrow and I can’t have a stopped up sink in my bathroom when company comes over. So I went to the next step and got a bucket and put it under the sink and futzed around with that trap or loop or whatever it’s called. It wasn’t pretty and I don’t think I’ll ever get the memory of that smell out of my head but I cleared my own effing drain.

Today I went to the mall to try to get a few things for fall. I’m not going back to school, but I’m going back to cooler weather. I still have a hard time finding anything that fits. Petites are a wee bit wee, regulars are baggy and need 8 inch hems and Juniors large is way too small. Where are the clothes for the girls like me? I got a couple of pairs of pants for my hours of trouble. I still need tops and shoes. I had a miserable experience buying shoes. I was the only person in the store but could this gal have been any less interested in helping me find something that worked? She was friendly but useless.

In the meantime, we’re having a plumbing issue downstairs. When I got home Bob announced that we were getting a new water heater installed next week ($350). I asked him if he remembered that when we bought the house we’d signed up for a program where you pay extra on your electric bill and then the power company bails you out if your hot water heater goes? I’m not clear on the program exactly and am almost certain it sounds better than it is — but regardless, this had completely vacated Bob’s memory and I had to dig around in our files until I found proof on paper. So now we have the power company coming out to look at our water heater and hopefully save us a bundle.