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Showing posts from September 21, 2014

A Quiet and Crappy Day

I awoke this morning feeling exhausted, almost overwhelmingly so. I immediately knew I would not be trying to tackle any big tasks today.  All I managed to accomplish was cutting and installing a small shim for a magnetic cabinet catch and sanding a towel bar for finishing. After these two very small tasks, I was completely spent for the day. It wasn't long afterward that my health crashed completely. Sometimes (weekly or a few times each month) my illness causes anaphylaxis. This anaphylaxis often comes on suddenly but sometimes can come on very slowly over the course of hours. Today was one of those days where the problems built up slowly over the course of the morning. I collapsed for a number of hours... I spent time in the bathroom sick... and I just simply struggled to stay conscious most of the day. Bone and joint pain worsened throughout the day. Today I am even experiencing sore muscles on top of all the bone and joint pain. I didn't even have the energy to showe

Flooring Installed

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Tile installed, toilet flange installed... This morning, I primed the underlayment in our new half bath in preparation of tile. Funny thing about this "primer"... I had to search around for this stuff so I felt a bit relieved when we finally bought some at Lowes the other day. The moment I opened the container this morning, I recognized the smell... It smells exactly like water-based polyurethane... the same stuff I use on all of our trim... the same stuff I have sitting in a new gallon can waiting for the next trim to be installed. So... I'm left thinking that this primer is really just a sealer in the form of water-based polyurethane. As I waited for the primer to dry, I started cutting tile. When the primer was dry, I starting laying tile. I have to say it was a quick and easy job! I then installed the toilet flange and screwed that into the floor.  It is beginning to look more like a small bathroom rather than a closet!

A Productive Sunday

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New beadboard ceiling... Yesterday's exceptionally bad luck was left behind and today ended up being a productive day! I decided to install the ceiling in the new half bath. I had already pre-finished the boards for this project because it is easier to stain and poly when the boards are on sawhorses rather than on the ceiling. Gravity works against you when staining anything above you so I was thinking ahead and pre-finished the ceiling. Today, I installed this ceiling and it is looking great! The hallway and laundry room adjacent to this bathroom both have wood ceilings. We really like the warmth of the wood ceilings and plan to continue installing wood ceilings as we renovate each part of the house.  I also added a bit more drywall today. I managed to salvage just one small piece of drywall from yesterday's catastrophe. This one piece allowed me to continue on with another project too... I had to install an electrical switch box that is deeper than this thinner-th

Someone Doesn't Want Me To Finish This Bathroom

First thing this morning, Sheila and I set out to buy more supplies for our half bathroom. The priority was two sheets of drywall and lumber to custom build a door for the bathroom. We made it to Lowes easily, but... Once we arrived at Lowes, we had all sorts of crazy and frustrating problems. Prices were absurd and about 30% higher than all the other local building suppliers. Some items we needed were out of stock. The quality of lumber was not only rather lousy but the quality we were seeing was not matching the claimed ratings. Things would get worse though. I needed just two sheets of drywall to finish the bathroom so we loaded that onto our cart first. I was really looking forward to getting this part of the job finished. I also needed a good quality sheet of 1/2" plywood for door panels. I wanted cabinet grade A-A rated plywood (each side graded A) but would settle for A-B. They had A-C in stock... okay, I would settle for that if I placed a decent C graded side on the i