Home Improvement

I am pleased to report that as of yesterday afternoon, there is no more red shag carpeting anywhere in my house. This makes me very happy.

John is in Las Vegas on a much-needed vacation, and I am trying desperately to get things done while he's gone. Despite saying a few months ago that I'd like to get him out of the house so I could clean out the home office a bit, I haven't had time to even think about that-- instead, I'm trying to do the things that are wildly inconvenient to do with lots of people in the house (Bill is at his parents, I presume until Wednesday afternoon since that's when he usually comes back; John is in Vegas until Thursday; Chris has a construction job so he's in and out, but he's used to not being able to use certain sections of the house for a day or two).

And as with all home improvement tasks, both of the things I really wanted to get done have become more complicated as I get into them.

The first was to remove the last of the red shag, adorning the basement stairs. I started the prep work for this last week, which was removing the wallpaper from the staircase, priming, and painting. I wanted to do that before taking up the carpet, so that I could slop all over it and not ruin the brand new finish. I finally finished all the touch-ups and what-have-you on Sunday, and started to pull up the carpet. I got less than one stair's worth up; it turned out that in addition to the normal carpet tacks, they'd also stapled or nailed it into a few places, and I don't have that kind of strength. But what I did get loose was a problem, too, because instead of the bare wood I was expecting underneath, there was old linoleum. Ugly linoleum. Ugly linoleum that did not seem to want to come up easily.

Fortunately, Chris had scheduled a lackey to be at my house on Monday to tape and mud some drywall. After some discussion about what the ultimate plan was for the stairway (I was going to paint it, but his suggestion of matching the new floor tiles in the basement was better), we re-purposed Jeffrey and had him take up the carpet, pull off the carpet tack strips and extra nails/staples, scrape off the linoleum, and put some backer board (Luon? I don't recall what it's called) on the treads to give it a smooth and stable base for the vinyl tile. I primed the risers (which are still getting paint; I have too many issues with depth perception to put the same pattern on both the treads and the risers) last night, and put the final coat on this morning, so all that's left is the vinyl tile itself, which should be done either tonight or tomorrow depending on Chris's schedule. It will look better than what I had originally envisioned, but it also became a multi-day, multi-person job instead of a few hours of my own effort spread across a couple days.

The second project is to re-caulk our shower. We had some issues with a leak about a year and a half ago, and to stop the water flow I caulked. But it was my first time caulking, and it looks like crap. Plus, the part that actually leaked is starting to wear down. Time to re-caulk, before I have another water problem.

But Sunday while I was painting in the staircase I heard an annoying dripping sound, and when I investigated I found that it was coming from the ceiling. Or rather, above the ceiling, in Bill's bathroom. He was already out of the shower, dressed, and gone, but his shower still had two inches of standing water in it. A quick scraping of some of the hair from the drain helped the water disappear, but while I was watching it with paranoia I started looking closely at the shower. It too has no caulk, and some of the grout between the tiles is cracked or missing. Oh, and the little cap that goes around the shower pipe to cover the hole in the wall where the pipe comes out is hanging uselessly a few inches down the pipe, leaving a big hole in the wall. A big hole that the showerhead is spraying into, because the plastic around it is cracked.

So the "re-caulk the shower" plan has become "fix the showers and stop the leaks". Bill's shower no longer drips onto the floor below now that I removed the drain cover, cleaned all the crap out of it, and put it back. But that just means that the water doesn't have enough of a flow to drip, not that it's stopped doing any damage. There's supposed to be a shower pan underneath the shower floor that goes up four inches, and re-directs water back into the drain. If two inches of standing water creates a dripping leak, that means the shower pan has failed, so I still want to keep as much water in the shower as possible. That means re-grouting the floor, and caulking Bill's shower too.

Which means cleaning Bill's shower, which was flat-out nasty. Ewww. I spent a lot of time in it scrubbing it down (after two rounds of "spray it with cleanser and let the chemicals do as much as possible", because the first time through I didn't want to step into it).

Of course, this means that both the showers upstairs are off-limits, so after scrubbing Bill's shower I went down to Chris's room to actually take a shower and clean up. This means that within the last two hours I have stood in all three showers in my house, and the differences are notable. Namely, Bill and Chris have a lot more room in their showers than I do. I have long bemoaned the lack of a usable bathtub in this house, but from the size of their showers, I suspect that BOTH used to be tub/shower combos. This irritates me a great deal, because sometimes I want to soak in a bathtub, dammit. So now I'm kicking around the idea of re-doing one or both bathrooms and changing the shower stalls back into bathtubs. You know, when I have a lot more money than I currently do. I don't know whether this pipe dream would be before or after the pipe dream of re-doing the kitchen.

Home Improvement

I am pleased to report that as of yesterday afternoon, there is no more red shag carpeting anywhere in my house. This makes me very happy.

John is in Las Vegas on a much-needed vacation, and I am trying desperately to get things done while he's gone. Despite saying a few months ago that I'd like to get him out of the house so I could clean out the home office a bit, I haven't had time to even think about that-- instead, I'm trying to do the things that are wildly inconvenient to do with lots of people in the house (Bill is at his parents, I presume until Wednesday afternoon since that's when he usually comes back; John is in Vegas until Thursday; Chris has a construction job so he's in and out, but he's used to not being able to use certain sections of the house for a day or two).

And as with all home improvement tasks, both of the things I really wanted to get done have become more complicated as I get into them.

The first was to remove the last of the red shag, adorning the basement stairs. I started the prep work for this last week, which was removing the wallpaper from the staircase, priming, and painting. I wanted to do that before taking up the carpet, so that I could slop all over it and not ruin the brand new finish. I finally finished all the touch-ups and what-have-you on Sunday, and started to pull up the carpet. I got less than one stair's worth up; it turned out that in addition to the normal carpet tacks, they'd also stapled or nailed it into a few places, and I don't have that kind of strength. But what I did get loose was a problem, too, because instead of the bare wood I was expecting underneath, there was old linoleum. Ugly linoleum. Ugly linoleum that did not seem to want to come up easily.

Fortunately, Chris had scheduled a lackey to be at my house on Monday to tape and mud some drywall. After some discussion about what the ultimate plan was for the stairway (I was going to paint it, but his suggestion of matching the new floor tiles in the basement was better), we re-purposed Jeffrey and had him take up the carpet, pull off the carpet tack strips and extra nails/staples, scrape off the linoleum, and put some backer board (Luon? I don't recall what it's called) on the treads to give it a smooth and stable base for the vinyl tile. I primed the risers (which are still getting paint; I have too many issues with depth perception to put the same pattern on both the treads and the risers) last night, and put the final coat on this morning, so all that's left is the vinyl tile itself, which should be done either tonight or tomorrow depending on Chris's schedule. It will look better than what I had originally envisioned, but it also became a multi-day, multi-person job instead of a few hours of my own effort spread across a couple days.

The second project is to re-caulk our shower. We had some issues with a leak about a year and a half ago, and to stop the water flow I caulked. But it was my first time caulking, and it looks like crap. Plus, the part that actually leaked is starting to wear down. Time to re-caulk, before I have another water problem.

But Sunday while I was painting in the staircase I heard an annoying dripping sound, and when I investigated I found that it was coming from the ceiling. Or rather, above the ceiling, in Bill's bathroom. He was already out of the shower, dressed, and gone, but his shower still had two inches of standing water in it. A quick scraping of some of the hair from the drain helped the water disappear, but while I was watching it with paranoia I started looking closely at the shower. It too has no caulk, and some of the grout between the tiles is cracked or missing. Oh, and the little cap that goes around the shower pipe to cover the hole in the wall where the pipe comes out is hanging uselessly a few inches down the pipe, leaving a big hole in the wall. A big hole that the showerhead is spraying into, because the plastic around it is cracked.

So the "re-caulk the shower" plan has become "fix the showers and stop the leaks". Bill's shower no longer drips onto the floor below now that I removed the drain cover, cleaned all the crap out of it, and put it back. But that just means that the water doesn't have enough of a flow to drip, not that it's stopped doing any damage. There's supposed to be a shower pan underneath the shower floor that goes up four inches, and re-directs water back into the drain. If two inches of standing water creates a dripping leak, that means the shower pan has failed, so I still want to keep as much water in the shower as possible. That means re-grouting the floor, and caulking Bill's shower too.

Which means cleaning Bill's shower, which was flat-out nasty. Ewww. I spent a lot of time in it scrubbing it down (after two rounds of "spray it with cleanser and let the chemicals do as much as possible", because the first time through I didn't want to step into it).

Of course, this means that both the showers upstairs are off-limits, so after scrubbing Bill's shower I went down to Chris's room to actually take a shower and clean up. This means that within the last two hours I have stood in all three showers in my house, and the differences are notable. Namely, Bill and Chris have a lot more room in their showers than I do. I have long bemoaned the lack of a usable bathtub in this house, but from the size of their showers, I suspect that BOTH used to be tub/shower combos. This irritates me a great deal, because sometimes I want to soak in a bathtub, dammit. So now I'm kicking around the idea of re-doing one or both bathrooms and changing the shower stalls back into bathtubs. You know, when I have a lot more money than I currently do. I don't know whether this pipe dream would be before or after the pipe dream of re-doing the kitchen.