Closet Construction Chaos

It has been a fun few days at Casa Deborah...

As some of you know, I live in an approximately 130 year old farmhouse. It's not large--only 1,200 square feet, and most of it has been added on to the original even smaller structure over the years. Usually by people whose ambitions clearly exceeded their skill sets. In short, there are lots of crooked walls, slanting floors, and odd bits and pieces.

Take my bedroom closet, for example. This is what it looked like Monday morning.

The outside

 It looks like a small closet, right? (And it is short, only about 68" high instead of the normal 80".) But in actuality, the closet runs the length of the wall to the left towards the dresser.

The inside

Of course, the problem was getting at anything shoved in that far side, since you kind of had to sidle in sideways and pray the giant spiders didn't get you. It was, in short, a pain in the patootie. The door was also sort of jury-rigged and only half attached. I put up with it for 15 years, since I moved in, and finally hit the wall this spring. Or maybe hit the closet. Anyway, I decided to have it redone. I also discovered that the overhead space was actually empty--a continuation of the cupboards on the bathroom wall on the other side, so I figured I'd get them cut out too, so I could actually access the whole space.

Easy, right? [Any of you who have ever had work done will be laughing at this point.]

So the Guys Who Do Stuff came in and did the work yesterday, and it was sort of right, with a lot of not so right mixed in. (Also, the cats were very indignant about having to be locked in the upstairs room so they wouldn't accidentally get out while the Guys were running in and out.)

This is what it looked like when I got home yesterday.

Two of the three Guys Who Do Stuff

The mess, to be expected

 Even Magic, when she got to come take a look at the "finished" project, was not impressed.

That's not right.

The doors didn't line up

Seriously? WTF is this?

Nails coming through on the inside of the door for me to get snagged on

I'm a pretty easy going person, in general (stop laughing, people who know me) but if I pay for a job, I expect it to be done right. Also, HELL NO.

So the Guys came back today and fixed it. It's not perfect, but that's at least in part because nothing in my house is straight, including the walls, ceiling, and floor in that room. But it is a lot better.

Much, much better!

 I still have to paint it (or maybe stain it, I haven't decided). Probably paint. But now I can actually access the whole closet, so I get to reorganize All the Things, and hopefully move some stuff from other closets into this one. I'll probably get a few organizer thingies to help with that. I love organizing messy things and making them neat. Even though I know it won't stay that way. I call it my "Organizational Neurosis." LOL.

Look, I can get to the whole closet now!!! (Don't look at how ugly it is in there. There are limits to what I can fix.)

Of course, now I have to take the original contents of the closet and put them back in. I'm pretty sure I have too many clothes. My plan is to look at each one as I get ready to put it back, and hope that about 20% of them will go to the Salvation Army. Do I really need 8 black sweaters? (The answer to that, of course, is YES. They're all different!)

I have too many clothes.

 Still, at least one of the things that has been bugging me since I moved in is finally fixed. Only 527 left to go...

What construction project have you ever lived through? Did they go well? Or did you want to kill the Guys and bury them in the back yard?

Faucets Ate My Wednesday

I had plans for my day off on Wednesday. Lists of things to do. Long lists. Including writing, plus a bunch of household chores. The list started out with: replace bathroom and kitchen faucets. This should have been a fairly easy task. (Really, just read the boxes the faucets come in.) I've done my own minor plumbing for years--I can fix a toilet like nobody's business. And the REALLY OLD pipes had been cleared away after I moved in (and, you know, broke them trying to replace the bathroom faucet the last time).

But NO.

The bathroom faucet took about 5 hours. FIVE HOURS, people. Most of that was trying to get the old faucet off. Things were stuck. There was copious use of WD40. I consulted the Interwebs (someone sent me a great link to This Old House, which said use a hammer...which actually worked). Wrestling, then walking away, then more wrestling. There might have been cursing. But in the end, there was this:

This was the old faucet. See that drain thingy lying there? Broken. Also, it was a crappy faucet.

Everything got taken out from under the sink. No, it didn't all fit back underneath after. I don't know why.

After four hours, the old faucet finally decided to give up. The hammer might have had something to do with that.

Bare naked sink. I almost left it that way.

Look--the new faucet is so pretty! (The sink however, is filthy. I'll clean it tomorrow.)

 Like a sensible person (okay, a sensible person would have called the plumber after hour two, but nevermind), I gave up on the idea of doing the kitchen sink on the same day. I was tired, dammit. And the kitchen faucet was only sorta broken (it was supposed to rotate, and it had stopped doing it a year ago, which was inconvenient over a double sink, but obviously not impossible, because A YEAR AGO).

And then my pal Glen (you remember him, he built my new desk for me) came by to rescue me from the bathroom sink. Which I'd literally finished five minutes before he got there. So he said, "Let me take a look at the kitchen sink. It doesn't look that bad..."

Really, I should have known better. It mostly came apart easier than the bathroom faucet (it helped that there were two of us, and you know, he had the right tools--note to self: buy more tools). But when we had it put together, the LAST connection kept leaking, and we couldn't figure out why. We tried everything. Silicon tape. Plumber's putty. Filing down a rough spot on one of the connections. Finally, Glen thought to try using a washer (those little black rubber thingies that usually go inside a faucet--thankfully, although I don't have all the right tools, I have a wiz-bang collection of washers in every size and shape imaginable). It shouldn't have worked, but it did. Which is good, because by then it was 6pm, and I'd started on the first faucet at 10 am. *headsink*

The spiffy new black faucet and soap dispenser. It's a crappy picture. I was tired. So sue me.

So that's what happened to MY Wednesday. What did you do on yours? Do any good household repairs lately?