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…

How did you get poison ivy?

The motivation of completing both apartments has certainly taken hold of me. I think it might be the fact that I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. However, that could be just the reflection coming off my flashlight. Regardless, the “Honey Do List” is certainly getting smaller (You may notice the new list on the left). I’ve decided to highlight things that I would like to accomplish prior to renting out the apartments. The exterior stuff doesn’t necessarily impact the individual apartments, however, I guess you can say they are nice to have items…

So with this new found motivation… Could it be that over the last three years, my canvas is finally going to be finished… Maybe I should go to the local gallery with my new painting and display it for all to see… I guess I need to dust off my old wool French beret labeled, “Rusty” and light up my Gauloises that’s being held by my quellazaire…Wait I already do that, except for the beret and cigarette part…

I did spend some time in Paris, France. I honestly don’t remember seeing anything like what I just described… However, I certainly do remember the wine and bread…. So good…But, ok let us switch tracks here… I’m really not sure where that thought was actually going…  Except that I’m pretty excited that things are truly starting to come together with the house.

So with the tenant giving her notice. I’ve decided to hire some help… I originally ask for quotes from several individuals to paint my 3 bedrooms and a storage area. I figured I could focus on other things… So instead of painting this coming weekend I can work on the apartment upstairs. The quotes were all over the map… Sadly a friend was just laid off and needed some help… Luckily, I was able to help him out.

Prior to the painter coming over, I had to prep the rooms… I initially moved all of the furniture to the middle of the room. Below you will notice the 4 rooms that needed to be painted. The blue room was once the workout room, now its just a spare bedroom… The flesh colored room is my office. And the wonderful wall paper room is the master bedroom… The wood panel room is a storage/front porch.

Once the furniture was moved to the center of the room. I then started to remove some of the electrical outlet and switch covers. To my surprise, (actually nothing surprises me anymore) I realized that the junctions boxes were not mounted to a stud and/or wall… They were floating… note the pictures below.

With this new found discovery, I replace the junctions boxes. They are now mounted directly to the wall and should not move. I also switched out the outlets. The original outlets did not socket the plugs properly. The plugs would easily fall off the outlets, causing the electrical equipment to shut off easily.

Additionally, the office walls were pretty beat up. The walls were covered with hole from tacks and/or nails from the previous owner… So I filled the holes with putty and sanded the excess material after it dried…You think that is enough calamine lotion?

The painter came to the house and was done within two days. Here are the results of his work. Sadly the photo’s don’t give the color justice. But the color is of a light brown/yellow color with white trim work.

The painter thought it would be funny to leave the shoe switch cover on… However, the rooms look 20 times better than before…

I feel that the painting is completed for the bedrooms. Thus I’m free to work on other things. Like place a new ad for the apartment upstairs today (Apartment Ad). Within 10 minute of placing the ad, I received 3 calls…Thus far, I have two potential families coming to look at the apartment upstairs on Friday. Everything is truly coming together. Anyway until next time. Happy building.

Time to install the floor…

For me, returning home from any trip is always pretty dreadful. It’s not that I hate travelling I actually like it… It’s really just the feeling of having to return and deal with things around the house.. The enjoyment of going on any trips is the excitement of not doing any house work… Although in reality, I’m only delaying my responsibilities for another day… or actually….another week…

The month of October has been pretty exciting in the travelling department. The lower back pain that haunted me during the summer has made me a travelling fool for the month of October… I have to admit, the cold weather has helped with my travelling decisions. I was fortune enough to travel to San Francisco, California and San Juan, Puerto Rico… With the relaxing view below, you can see how the trip was worth it… Ok, I have to admit, the view of my foot and crusty toes may not help in your decision.. But, the warm water, 95 degree weather and cloudless sky might influence you…

My girlfriend and I, sitting by the beach in San Juan taking in some rays…. Boy did I need some sun 

Here I am at Fort San Felipe del Morro “El Morro” in San Juan

Sentry Box at the “El Morro”

A couple of house in Old San Juan

While walking around in Old San Juan, we came across some property that looked pretty interesting and decent (Picture below)…Then of course the gears in my head started to crank… The smoke started to flow from my ears…What if I purchased a vacation home in Puerto Rico? What if I purchase a little house that I could rent year round? What if I purchase a 2 family home in Puerto Rico? One permanent resident and vacation home… HOLD ON!!! Pump the brakes… Pump the brakes… I need to slow things down… I need to finish my original project before I jump onto another one… Ok let’s move on… But the idea is certainly in the back of my mind…

The house on the right is the property we came across…

Anyway, now that I have fulfilled my vacation quota for the year, I guess it is time to really get back to working on the house. I can now say that I have a new motivation in getting thing done. Like the vacation home idea, but also the news that I will be hosting both Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve at my house this year… You know what that mean, set a bunch of goals to finish certain projects before the holidays and actually do one project out of 25… 

However this year, I feel pretty confident that my project list will be much least than last years. This year, the biggest project was the kitchen and that is almost completed… After this weekend I’m certainly one step closer in finishing… This weekend I decided to finish the floor.

  The green monster

I first had to clean the room and remove all of the stuff from the floor… After doing so, I realized I had missed painting the base boards…

 

Once the trim was completed, I began to remove the excess shims from the cabinets…

It is certainly not an Angel moment unless I get injured somehow… So here we go… I was using a utility knife to cut a line across the wood shims… After doing making the cut, I would take a flat head screwdriver and lift on the shim and snap, the shim is cut perfectly in line with the kitchen cabinet.. Easy, right? Ok so, I’m on my hands and knees cutting and lifting, tooling along… I’m on the 4th one, when  I’m lifting on the screw driver, my hand slips off… I slip forward towards the floor, my hand instantly tries to brace for the impact against the cabinet and floor… But instead of feeling a solid thud, I feel a sharp pain in my left hand ring finger… As I quickly remove my hand from the sharp object that stabbed my finger, blood trickles down my finger…A shard of glass was momentarily stuck to my finger and fell to the ground…

  Good cut… Bleeding through the bandage..

After cleaning and placing a bandage on my finger, I started to clean the floor. I swept and mopped up all of the dirt prior to placing the peal and stick tiles down.

 So it all started here…

 

Well the kitchen is almost there… About 95% complete thus far… I still need to fix a couple of electrical outlets.. I also need to install the window trim… But until next time, happy building and Happy Halloween… 

I give you cabinet doors...

A couple of weeks ago, I was flying home from San Francisco and had a brief stop in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. As I sat by my departing gate, I began to think about my life of travels. At that moment, I happen to notice three young men walking together towards the exit of the airport. The three men were dressed extremely different from each other. However, their stride was together, as if they are going to the same destination. Each person was carrying a vanilla envelope with their military orders taped to the outside.

Seeing these three young men, reminded me of my walk with my vanilla envelope. I remember the bus ride to Sand Hill, Fort Benning, Georgia back in 1993. The moment the bus entered the base, I remember a big knot formed in my throat. I also remember my gut turning when the bus stopped... I remember the Drill sergeant walking onto the bus. The bus was extremely quiet while he stood there… You could have heard a pin drop if it did. The Drill Sergeant inhaled for a second and began to yell. All I remember him saying was, “Get off my bus!!!”

But that was many years ago, as I sat there at the airport, I had looked at their young faces and was reminded of my baby face when I reported for duty. I had such a young face, that I was able to shave every other day. Today, that is a different story... Looking at these young men now, I’m proud to see that young men and women are still answering the call of duty. But, I certainly pray for them. I pray for these young men to come home quickly and safely… These days, the demands on the military forces are extremely high.

I mention this observation because, I’m proud of these young men. But most importantly, when you happen to see a young man and/or woman with a vanilla envelope, you’ll have an understanding what they are about to do. That they have joined a brotherhood of men and women that volunteered their lives to protect us and our way of life…


The layover was really because I took a mini vacation trip to San Francisco. I was able to see the Golden Gate Bridge, a Giants Game and Alcatraz. Here are a couple of pictures from my trip.

Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point

Here I am standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge

If you ever happen to be in San Francisco and plan on taking an Alcatraz tour… I recommend the night tour. The tour was a lot of fun and extremely informational. Also a little spookie...

But my first free weekend since returning, I was able to install the cabinet doors… Here is a picture of my kitchen with the cabinet doors and hardware installed..

The only thing that is left in the kitchen is the floor and window trim… After that, I can move onto another project within the house.. Until next time, happy building…

About time...

Installing the crown molding has been an extremely slow process. I have to admit the process was pretty tedious. I would cut one piece and check its fit. Nine time out of ten the piece wouldn’t fit, thus I would walk back down to the basement and cut a sliver off. This process continued until I felt comfortable with the final piece. On average I would say, one piece would take about 1 hour and twelve trips until it would fit properly into its position.


Well, after several weeks of repeating this process, I’m happy to report that the crown molding for the kitchen is finally completed. Well the cutting and nailing part is completed. Here are a couple of pictures showing my accomplishments.

Here is a picture showing how I cut the molding around the cable housing

Here is part of the real reason behind the crown molding. I decided to build up the wall so that the crown molding would be easier to install.

Here is the first board that I used to build up the wall

Here is the second board that I used to build up the wall

As you can see, instead of cutting several pieces, I was able to used one crown molding board because of the built up wall. Also the tin ceiling damage is no longer visible

Next on the list is finish cleaning the ceiling up. Remember the paint removal that took forever. Anyway, I want to clean that up and then begin to paint the kitchen. I figure it would be best to paint while I have the old counter top and cabinets in place. Well until next time happy building...