Big Blue Door

We got the front door put on! It took 12 hours and more people than originally intended, but it happened and it looks great. Here are some pictures of the process.

 This is a "before" shot. This is how our door has looked since we moved in. The paint is kind of an icky color and it's just beat up, to boot. The handleset is cheaply made and really didn't weather well. The door also doesn't fit very well, so you kind of have to slam it to get it to close properly.

We started out by pulling the old hinges off the frame and then taking off the inside trim. So far, so good.

 We ended up cutting the frame in a few places and taking it out in pieces just to make it easier. We really didn't have to do this part, but it did go a bit faster. We were thinking there would be a bunch of finishing nails hold the frame to the studs and we didn't want to have to find them all, but there were actually only a few screws and we pulled them out pretty easily.

This is the adjustable threshold. This screw used to be a phillips head screw, I'm sure of it. We couldn't get these out of here (it turned out we didn't even need to, so what follows is especially painful), so I got one of those stripped screw extraction kits.

That's the one. I used the biggest one, since the screw had a pretty giant stripped-out hole in the top.

You use this end to "burnish" the stripped area, basically making it smooth enough for the threaded end to grip on.

If you're really unlucky, you spend $17 on a screw extraction kit and it breaks the first time you try it. Lame. Made even worse by the fact that we absolutely did not even have to mess with these screws. They stayed exactly as they were the whole time.

So what's 1/3 of $17? Too much to spend on a piece of crap like this, I say.

Anyway, back to removal. We used out handy little power tool again on this project and it was great.

Just pulling this stuff out, exposing the studs.

There we are. There's a 2x4 in the top of the frame up top there that will become important later. Also, you can see the damaged piece of trim on the right. The paint had stuck to the surface of the trim so thoroughly that it was tearing the thing apart when we removed the door frame. We'll have to replace that before we're done.

Okay, next step here. The whole frame is out and ready to start trying to shove the new frame in here. This hole in the house doesn't seem quite so bad as the one in back, either because it's smaller or because I'm just used to it now.

This is why we should talk to people who know about this stuff before we get too crazy. Remember that 2x4 in the top of the hole there? Turns out the new frame won't fit in with that there. We're pretty well convinced that it's an important piece and don't want to risk the house collapsing on us if we pull it out. In order to fit the door in, we try to thin out the 2x4. We used a saw, a hammer and chisel, our Sonicrafter, and finally, this bad boy. This is part of why I like working on projects at my house. When I need to do something, I have tools from pretty much every period in history that we can try. This is called a draw knife and you really don't see them much anymore. They're very handy for fast shaping of wood, though. This angle makes everything kind of a pain to use and we don't get far before I decide to contact my cousin Eddie. He's a general contractor and could have installed this door in less time than it took me to figure out which end of the hammer to hold. He let us know that the 2x4 is just a filler and that we could take it out without causing any catastrophes.

Yeah, he was totally right. Up above here, you can see three 2x4s or 2x6s on end bridging over top of the 2x6 framing pieces. Keep the 2x6 framing pieces in mind; they'll come up shortly.

What's this? Yeah, that's what happens when your door frame is built for a 2x4 framed wall and your wall is framed in 2x6. We thought to measure absolutely every aspect of this door except the depth, somehow. Lesson learned. Thankfully, we appear not to be the first people to do this, and Lowe's and Home Depot both sell jamb extension kits to solve this very problem.

To attach the jamb extension kit, you take the brick mold off the jamb, then add the jamb extension, then add back the brick mold. It actually wasn't all that hard, but it really scared us. We weren't at all sure whether we'd be able to make it work, or if we'd have to order a whole new door or something. Thankfully, it wasn't that bad and the finished product looks pretty decent.

There's one jamb extension in place. You can see the seam, but it really isn't bad. It just looks like a seam in the frame, not like a giant blinking sign that says "The owner of this house is a moron and shouldn't be allowed to own power tools" or anything.

My friend Erick and his wife came over to help. Rather, they didn't come over to help, they came over because my wife and I said we'd go to dinner with them and the project took too long. They showed up to see what was taking so long, and good people that they are, decided to help us out. being crazy hungry may also have been a factor. Erick installed the new handset on the door for us. It's so much nicer than the old one in every way. The finish is better, the function is better, everything is just smooth and easy.

Here's the door with the brick mold on it. You can see it's getting dark. In July. Yeah, this took us a long time.

Replaced the trim piece, which was surprisingly easy. Just a straight cut at the end to get a snug fit and away we go. I really wish all of our fixes were so simple.

And the final product! I have to paint the trim piece, obviously, and probably touch up the paint on the door, but it's functionally perfect.

 Bit of a time-lapse series for anyone who cares (probably just me).

So there it is! One more "big" project in the books, with relatively little fuss. We still haven't gotten the cabinets in yet, unfortunately. Turns out one of them was pretty heavily damaged in transport, so I need to see if I can give it back and get a replacement. That'll be one of the next biggies, though. Other than that, we have a plumber coming this week to take a look at the master bath to tell us what we can expect, cost-wise. That should be exciting and get us on track to take on the next few big projects facing us. Woot! Thanks for reading, and thanks to Erick, Ed and my Dad for helping with the door.

Spongeman Failpants

Well, I tried the sponge texture idea. It didn't work very well for me. Not to say that it wouldn't work well for anyone, of course, but the texture of our walls is a bit smaller and more mottled. Let me show you what I mean, by means of pictures and words.

This is the stuff I'm using. It's really thick so I have to thin it out a bit with water. So far, I'm not really all that pleased with my ability to do this. I think, when I start doing larger sections, I'll get the powder and mix it up myself. Still, this is a handy size, and it's what I need.

I tried this sponge first. It's a natural sponge, sold for use in faux finishing. I thought that the larger, more random hole pattern would work well. It really didn't. I may try it again, but the result the first time was so bad I just scraped it off the wall without even taking a picture.

So then, I took one of our artificial sponges and tore the crap out of it with some scissors. This is actually Mark I, as I did roughen up the edges a bit and added more interior speckles for attempt #2. Neither of these worked well, though.

Here's the result. It isn't awful, I don't think. it's just way too many big splotches and not enough little speckles. I might be able to work some combination of this with a quick spritz from the can or something. I'm going to have to experiment with it. Or, I'm just going to have to suck it up and buy a hopper gun, which is what I'm planning to do today. That's what put it up there in the first place, that's what should be able to match it best, I think. I'm just going to have to practice at it a bit.

In other news, we have done this:

And then this:

Whee! The accent wall is complete, and we both absolutely love the color. It goes beautifully with the neutral of the front room, it'll look great with the wood floor we're putting in, and it even matches the big black table we're setting in front of it. I think it's a big win all around.

So there you have it. Not a ton of progress, but something. Tonight, my dad and I are going to mount the new kitchen cabinets on the wall, and maybe cut in the front room a bit more. Sweet! Thanks for reading!

That wild hair I'm always going on about

I finally got it. You can see it here:

It's one of those. Seriously wild, right? Booyah.

Seriously, though, the wild hair I'm always going on about is the one that inspires me to do a bunch of stuff to the house when I wasn't really planning on it. We got the bug this weekend and actually got a lot done. Here's a quick rundown. Or, more accurately, here's an extensive, plodding rundown, because that's more my style.

Look at the smug little jerks. Sitting there, thinking they own the place. Aspen trees are beautiful in the wild, but they're tough to domesticate. They get buggy and diseased all the time, and they send out little runners into your lawn and into your neighbor's yards and all. They're not ideal to put along your back fence. The good thing about them is that they grow like crazy. These guys were from 4-7 feet tall and they were little more than twigs in the ground a few months ago. Even with that, they have to go.

This here is my weapon of choice. It's the same one I used on the giant weeds and I think it'll do well here. Oddly enough, I have probably 3 or 4 machetes around the house, so I have my pick of the litter. This one is working very well for everything I've had to do with it so far.

All better! The machete made quick work of these guys. Some of the trunks were over an inch in diameter but the wood is soft and wet so it wasn't too tough to chop through.

Trash can full of trees.

That's about it for the yard work. I mowed the front lawn, but the back lawn is chock full of weeds right now. Too many to pull feasibly, so I sprayed them all down with the Ortho stuff. So far I'm not seeing much effect. I got a bottle that hooks to the hose for a wide-area application, and I'm hoping that will be better. I have a nasty crabgrass infestation near the patio and I want that gone all the way.

On to other projects!

I started painting the edges of the door with the white paint. The blue bled past the tape pretty much all the way around. I'd have been better off not taping and just being a bit more judicious with my brush (that's what I'm doing with the white). You can see that it's not covering well with one coat, but I ended up putting a few more on there and it started looking really good. The nice part about the rest of this project is that I can pretty much do it when the door is hanging, if needed. The part that would have been hard to do in place was the front color, and that's still looking really good.

I painted the trim around the sliding door, too. It's looking good, and should combine with the caulk to make this thing impregnable. Anyone trying to impregnate my door is going to be sorely disappointed.

Remember this? Yeah, it's the spot in the hall bath where we keep attempting to fix the texture. I did it once and wasn't pleased, then the handyman did it and I still wasn't pleased, now I'm doing it again.

Gross. Okay, I'm trying something different this time. I sprayed the texture on, but I'm going to wait only a minute or two before knocking it down, rather than the 10+ minutes I was waiting before. That has been giving me a really big flat texture because the peaks you can see here are sort of flowing around while it dries. Not ideal.

The texture, meaning the size and distribution of the plateaus and valleys, isn't all bad, really. It's a decent coverage without looking too flat so far. The key to this is hold the knife almost parallel to the wall. You barely hold it with just your fingertips and the weight pulls it down. This is the same thing I'd been doing before when I was waiting a while, but it's even more important when you do it earlier. We'll see how it looks with paint on it.

While we wait for it to dry, let's get to the other issue in this bathroom:

Yeah. That's our "stainless steel" tension rod for the shower curtain. Apparently they have a different understanding of stains than I do.

We don't like the tension rods. They tend to damage the wall over time (as they slip around you have to keep tightening them, eventually rubbing off the texture) and the curtain will generally fall down every so often. Also, they have the "tube inside another tube" construction that means you have a shoulder on there that your curtain hangy things have to jump over. Ours kept getting bucked off so we'd usually have one or two of them not on the rod at all at any given time. Pretty much a completely unsuccessful operation all around. I had my eye on a non-tension rod with end plates actually screwed to the wall.

The kit came with plastic wall anchors, but we didn't actually have to bother. There were studs right where we needed them and the included screws were plenty long enough to anchor in them.

After a test fitting, I determined that the rod was about an inch too long to fit. Apply tape measure, sharpie and hacksaw liberally until problem resolves. I actually cut off about 1.25" to allow myself enough space to get the thing tilted up into place. It still ended up being pretty close, so I'm glad I didn't take off exactly an inch.

The first collar just gets attached to the wall. The rod sets in there without any issue. The other collar needs to be slid onto the rod before you tilt it up into place or you won't have any way to get the pole in both of them. This whole process is pretty easy, really. It doesn't take long and the non-tension rod is cheaper than the tension rods, generally. The only downside is that the rod and the ends aren't very decorative. They make non-tension rods with decorative ends but they're still the tube-in-a-tube construction. If that doesn't bother you, it's a great way to go. If you want to get really fancy, you can buy one of those kits and the solid rod and then just put the decorative ends on the one-piece rod and get the best of both worlds. That means you're spending $40+ on a shower rod though, so take it for what it's worth.

Another key to the whole process is getting decent hangers to put on the rod. Ours were kinda pretty-looking, but they were also getting rusty and didn't really match the aesthetic we're going for in the room. It has a kind of spa feel and I think the ones pictured above match the feel of the room a bit better. They've got bearings around the hook part and those work like a charm. The two hooks are for your inside curtain and your outside curtain.

Yeah, I like that a lot better. These things move along the smooth rod so much more easily, too. It's pretty much effortless. So much nicer in both form and function.

My lovely and talented wife also taped off and started painting the accent wall. It needs another coat, but I love this color. It's the same color as our front door, which should work nicely. We got it in an interior flat like the rest of the walls, and I'm really pleased so far. That's a huge step toward getting the main floor looking finished, for sure.

Okay, back to the bathroom wall.

All dry! Now for some paint.

The paint is wet here, which is why it's so much lighter. The texture isn't as bad as it was originally, or after the first fix, but it's still not great. I'm pretty much decided that I need to get a hopper gun and just do this crap right. I'm never all the way satisfied with these patches. I keep thinking I can just live with their imperfection, but it's not as easy as you'd think. I'm going to do a little research and see what people like, hopper-wise.


Okay, that's about it. It was a busy weekend even without the improvements, but I'm really glad we did some work on the house. I always feel so much better when I get to work and write about it. Thanks, as always, for reading!

*Update*


I found this video: how to do a knockdown patch on youtube and I'm thinking this might work perfectly. I will probably have to sand my current texture off to get to flat wall so I can do it properly, but it looks so much easier and more precise than using a sprayer for a small patch. I think it could even work on corners, if you rolled the sponge around. I'll let you know how it goes.

I've got a handle on this

Titles that also would've worked: "Come to the dark side, ya knob" or, for Good Eats fans, "Lever-Man to the rescue!"

Here's what we had:

Bad photography and overexposure, all over our doors! Actually, we had these cheesy brass knobs. They wouldn't be so bad if they weren't loose, broken, stained, dented, chipped, and mis-matched. To begin the replacement, ditch these screws in here.

Once those are gone, just pull the thing off.

This is what holds the latch in here. Take out these screws, too.

Now remove your strike plate. Is anyone else feeling like this is a home improvement blog set in "The Blair Witch Project"? Because I totally am.

Ooh, new handle! This is from a company called Gatehouse, available at Lowe's. We were originally looking to use Baldwin hardware, which is pretty seriously high-end stuff, but then we realized that we live in a tract home. Baldwin is beautiful, solid brass, has a lifetime warranty on the function of everything, and even warranties the finish for life! They just cost like $40/handle. Gatehouse is more like $30/handle and they are also solid brass, and have a lifetime warranty on the function and finish, which is awesome. It doesn't have the Baldwin name, but the style is great, and you can definitely feel the quality. If you're using oil-rubbed bronze (ORB to those in the know) hardware, stay away from Schlage and Kwikset. Our old apartment's leasing office had some of that on there and the black had worn off after less than a year. It looked awful and your only recourse is replacement since there's no warranty on the finish.

Ideally, you will remove all your door hardware, paint your woodwork, then put on your new stuff. We didn't do that because the handle on the bedroom was actually broken. It only worked when you turned it widdershins and even then, only about half the time. This is also a test run for this handle to make sure we like it and feel that it looks good in the house and all before we go around replacing all of our handles with them.

Slide this bad boy into the same space where the other one was. This brand came with a square plate and a rounded one, depending on your door. The rounded one fit perfectly, and the screws were actually nice and tight in there.

This is where the Gatehouse differs from the cheaper brands. The screws aren't actually exposed. There's a cover that goes over this part to hide them. Also, you can see the mass of brass involved here. If you go back up to the picture where I pulled the old handle, you can see the thin-walled, hollow brass base for the handle. This is heavier, more solid, and just plain nicer. Quality matters, and you have to spend a bit more to get it.

To get the cover off of this part, you have to pull off the lever. That means you take out the little set screw on the side and then the lever will slide off, allowing you to pull off the cover. Just reverse that to put it back on.

The cover slips on nicely and fits tightly. The little nub at the bottom is the lock. It works well, operates smoothly, and looks much nicer than the twisty ones, I think.

 Here it is all put together. Again, you will want to paint your door and frame and all before you put these on. I think we'll be taking this off to paint. Tape is okay, but the installation process goes so quickly (seriously, maybe 5-10 minutes) there's no reason to risk getting paint on your pretty handles.

So far, we are very impressed. The operation is smooth, tight and clean. It's everything the previous handle wasn't, plus it just looks much nicer. The lever looks classier to me, and the ORB really pops against the white woodwork. I think we're going to be very pleased with these for a long time.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!