That isn’t a frown…

If you ever happen to touch a negative and positive hot electrical wire at the same time, you may first notice a numbing sensation flowing through your fingertips and up to your forearm muscles. If your mind doesn’t register what is going on, the next thing you may feel is the heat generating between your fingers tips.. Luckily around this time, while I was actually experiencing this marvelous tingle on my forearm, my mind triggered my sensors within my hand to let go of the hot current copper metal…

Let me restart the story to a point before I felt the world violently shake between my fingertips…The morning started with me making coffee with no coffee filters… Yes the first hour of debating of what to do was pretty comical. However, thanks to all of the wonderful suggestions from my friend on Facebook, using the paper towel as a coffee filter actually works. Still not sure about the sock. However, talking with a friend, the sock practice is quite common.. Anyway, after satisfying my caffeine addiction, I had decided to install the baseboard trim in the spare bedroom.

I measured the room to determine the amount of materials that would be required. After completing the task, I realized that one electrical outlet was installed way too low. I re-calculated my numbers and determined that the new baseboard trim would certainly hit the outlet. I had decided to replace the outlet entirely. Thus when I removed the electrical outlet cover and to my surprise I discovered…

The outlet was broken and was attached by friction to the outlet protective cover. The glory of having an old house allows me to do more research in finding the correct circuit breaker switch associated to a specific room… I couldn’t find my electricity tester, so I decided to plug in a light. I figured I’ll hit the circuit breaker switch in the basement and then check if the light is on or off… If the light is off, then the circuit breaker switch is associated to that specific room.. Sounded like a good plan at the time.

After hitting the switch, I unfastened the treaded screws that held the outlet to the junction box. Once completed, I place my thumb and index figure on the electrical outlet to remove it. As I’m removing the outlet from the junction box housing, my mind instantly registers a discomfort that I have felt before. The vibration of my right forearm muscle began to increase and I instantly knew that the light bulb test had failed.. The light bulb had somehow blown out when I disengaged the circuit breaker switch. The current ran through me within a nanosecond. My mind registered that electricity was traveling through my body. The discomforting pain was felt like it lasted forever. Once my mind fully registered what was going on, my brain told my hand to disengage…

Now that I got that out to way, I had evaluated my fingers and hand. I was satisfied that I was safe, but I realized that my stupidity could have been more lethal. I was lucky once again. This was not the first rodeo that I’ve gone too.. But I need to make this my last… I need to find that electricity tester…

I dusted myself off and gathered my thoughts. At that moment I decided to completely shut the electricity off throughout the entire house. I safely replaced the electrical outlet and then installed the baseboard. The picture below shows the workaround of having the outlet too low.

After completing the baseboard installation, I move my building motivation to the kitchen… I’ll be painting the baseboard another day. A while back I had updated the kitchen and removed the trim from both windows. I was able to reuse the old trim.

I’ll need to next paint the trim in the kitchen to match the current colors. But that will wait until next time. I then moved to the living room. The window trim in the living room was also needed. This time I had to cut the trim from scratch. The old window trim had taken a trip to the dump.

Next on the list was the master bedroom closet. I’m not a fan of the sliding closet doors. Thus I’ve decided to install new bi-fold doors and replace the wonderful smiley face of a closet pole.

The wood smiling pole was tied at the center with a piece of string. The wood pole was retrained at three points, side walls and the string. I replaced the wood pole with a metal pole and four metal brackets. Each metal bracket are rated to hold 250 lbs. Thus, by installing the four brackets the weight capacity would be for a total of 1000 lbs.

Next on the list was to install the bi-fold doors. Of course, nothing is ever standard with older homes. The doorway opening for the closet was of course 1 inch smaller than a standard bi-fold door requirement. I had purchased standard wood bi-fold doors and figured that I could cut a 1/2 inch of wood per side of the panel. By modifying the standard door, I calculated that I would save about $100 from not ordering the custom bi-fold doors…

But after further inspection, I realized that I could remove part of the doorway wood and gain the required inch.

The bi-fold door preparation was complete. The closet doorway was now ready for the bi-fold door installation.  However, the exhaustion had started to kick in and I had to stop.

I’ve been pretty busy with working on the apartment and interviewing potential tenants for upstairs. I’ve had about 10 showings of the apartment thus far. Out of the ten, I’ve had 2 interested in my place in the first floor. I have one person that actually put in an application for my unfinished place. So on May 1st my apartment will be available. Next month is going to be extremely aggressive in getting the first floor into an acceptable living place. Additionally, I have a potential tenant ready for the second floor. I’m happy to report that things are going extremely well… Until next time, happy building…

Something is burning my nose hairs....

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been on travel for work to a little town in Virginia called Arvonia. The town is so small that there are no traffic lights or even street names. The roads are defined by number routes (i.e. VA-615). The place is so small, that the nearest hotel is about 1 hour away. I do have to admit, the traveling can be exhausting. Anyway, after several weeks of traveling, I’ve been finally able to do some work around the house.

In the last entry, I started to update my living room. I was on hold from completing the room because I had ordered some new windows. The windows came in about a week ago. I did have a minor issue that didn’t hamper the overall installation of the windows, but minor enough. Replacement windows are usually ordered custom and are measured and cut about ¼ inches smaller than a rough opening. So I measured one rough opening to be 31 ¼ inches and the other to be 31 ½ inches. So the window sizes that I ordered were 31 inches and the other to be 31 ¼ inches. Well of course you guess correctly, this bone-head flipped the numbers and installed the windows incorrectly. Basically, I had installed the 31 ¼ inch window into the 31 ¼ inch opening and the 31 inch window into the 31 ½ inch opening. So of course I didn’t realize this mistake until I was installing the second window.

While installing the first window, I was encountering some difficulty but didn’t realize my mistake until later. It was certainly a snug fit, where I had to use a hammer and a piece of wood to install the window into the rough opening. After feeling confident that the window was in place, I screwed it in place and then installed the window shade.

Pictures of the snug fit windows.

Realization of my bone-head mistake wasn’t discovered until I started to install the second window. I was doing a couple of fit checks when I made the discovery. Of course, I said a couple of loud explicative, at first. But, not to cry over spilt milk, I decided to shim the window in place. Here are the pictures of the small window.



Shimmed window with the reflection of the Redskins lossing from the Giants in the background...

After installing the windows, I decided to clean out my new tool storage area, my exercise room. I started to remove the tools and waste when I realized an odd odor in the room. Growing up, my father would always say, “Never start something new unless the last task is completed.” It is something that I try to live by. The odor was too strong. So I decided to remove the rug from the room.

Note the blue rug under the stuff

After removing the rug, I inspected the sub-floor. Most of the plywood looked pretty good, except a portion that seems to be cork-board flooring. The cork-board flooring appears to have absorbed what seems to be pet urine. So for the next couple of days, I’ll be removing and replacing that area. At least I found my smelly culprit.

Anyway, until next time, happy building…

Happy Belated One Year Anniversary...

I recently had a conversation with someone and a question came up about how long I’ve been living in my house… I had then realized that I’ve been living in my house for one year. My anniversary date was July 28. The date of me purchasing and moving had passed with no fan fair. I’ve been so busy with work and stuff that I totally over looked it. The thought of my anniversary wasn’t really on my mind. But looking back over the last year, I guess I can say that I’ve over come a lot of ups and downs with this place. The list of downs is pretty extensive, but who is keeping a record… wait, I am…

Anyway, Happy Belated One Year Anniversary…

The show must continue, so I’m still on vacation which will be officially over on Monday (tomorrow). My vacation has been pretty relaxing while I’ve been doing working around the house. Hold on, I don’t know if that makes any sense... Vacations are defined as an intermission and/or an exemption from work...But I still did work around the house… So the question is, was it or was it not a vacation? I guess I can define my vacation as “I took a vacation from one of my many jobs”…Ok that makes no sense… Let me just stop... My head is starting to hurt thinking about it… Sorry for the off track thought.

Anyway, in my last entry, I discussed how I removed the rug in the living room. So I decided to carry that rug removing motivation over to the master bedroom. I guess I should first describe what I’m dealing with. The master bedroom walls are covered with a wall paper that has pink and blue flowers. I’m a big fan of the light switch. The lady shoe light switch certainly defines me and the room (sarcasm)… So I guess the previous owner was attempting to match the wallpaper with a rug that has a color of hot pink. A while back I had place a Gatorade on the floor and accidentally toppled it over it on the rug. The stain was pretty bright within the rug.

Master bedroom with the pink rug

Floor after removing the rug


The bedroom floors are in a much better shape then the living room. I still plan on sanding and staining the floor... But, because I wanted to finish the living room first, I decided to just remove the rug and finish the room later.

I was also able to finally finish the back hallway. I had mentioned the back steps prior to the tenants moved in. The landing and steps were damaged pretty badly. There were nails sticking up and three steps were damaged. So for the landing, I install .25 inch thick plywood then laid new peal and stick flooring.

Back hallway, before

Three damaged steps


Back hallway, with the repaired steps

The landing with the new floor installed


Back hallway completed, painted with new threads

After completing the back hallway, I continued the process of painting the living room. The primer was certainly dried by the time I started to paint the new color. The color that I had selected was called Beach walk. The color is a yellowish brown. I painted the trim with a color called Glow. See it glowing… I painted the trim only with one coat. The reason being is that I still need to install the new windows and new trim work. Then I’ll paint the second coat. Also, I’m kind of stuck on what to do about the brick work. I’m actually thinking of putting a decorative shelf in front. But, I’ll decide on that in next couple days.
Here is a picture of the living room with the new paint

Here is a picture of the living room with the floors cleaned. They also still need to be refinished.

Here is a picture of the brick work...

Here is a picture showing one of the outlets that I plan on replacing

Also, over the pass year, I had a pile of rubbish that accumulated. It was generated from upstairs and my place...Well over the weekend I was finally able to completely remove all of the trash and debris. Now I am able to park my truck in its place and free up another parking space for any visitors.

Here is a picture with the trash removed and my truck in its place.


Things are starting to slowly come around... I still have a lot of things that I want to do to the place. But I guess they can wait for now…Well until next time, happy building…

Trash...

It’s late on Sunday night…Another productive weekend is about over. Many of us spent the weekend with the one’s we love. Gazing into each others eyes... Enjoying the scent of our new flowers and/or the strawberries dipped in chocolate… Others, well…. let’s not identify them. We’ll just say that we love them too… But as I sit here and ponder about my weekend, I begin to wonder, “How the heck did I get myself into this position.” I guess what I’m trying to say is “How did I end up with a house that is purely a mess?” I mean, when I bought this place, it was horribly disgusting: rugs were stained, the walls smelled, the bathroom looked to have years of grime, and a new sun roof was installed (we can chalk that one up to nature). Honestly, on a side note, I still wonder why I purchased this place, especially after what I’ve just described… Anyway, the dismal list can go on and on…I can say however, that the work accomplished thus far does present some encouraging emotions. But the root of this disappointing feeling is that the house is a mess… Not in a foul stench per say, but a mess with rubble. I’m truly referring to the second floor apartment. I didn’t realize the magnitude of this disarray until I trip over it. Yes I hit my head and stubbed my toe several times...

Before I get into that subject, I had planned to finish installing the window frames over the weekend. It was a task that was extremely fun to do, because I got to use all of the fun tools… You know the tools like a router, pneumatic nail gun, table saw, chop saw, drill, and a jig saw. But to answer your question, yes, the window frames are installed. Sorry I was jumping ahead…

Anyway, the window frames were installed fairly quickly with minor difficulty, but, there in.

Here is a picture of the window in the living room. This is before installing the window frame. Note the pink insulation...

Here is a picture of the window in the living room, now.

Here is a picture of the window frame in the front hallway; this one is located by the front door.

This picture is a close up of the same window; I’m trying to show the rounded edge… I know you can’t see it… But just trust me... its there…

Ok now back to the trash at hand… Here is a picture of twigs and branches that were found within the window upstairs… You may remember me mentioning it a while back.

Here is a picture of the trash in the living room… This is mostly empty cardboard boxes.

This picture shows the construction and demolition rubble in the dining room.

More trash in the bedroom... But I guess the good news about describing my debris problems, is that the major hurdles are completed. I’m a lot closer in completing the second floor apartment. Besides cleaning the mentioned wreckage, I just have to paint all of the window trim and a hallway. Things are certainly starting to come together… Anyway, until next time… By the way, thanks for reading about my trash…