Home Improvement

Another project mostly done. The third bedroom in the house I just bought was previously used as an office, and somewhere along the line someone put in a hallway directly from the front door which vaporized half the bedroom closet, took up too much wall space in the bedroom, and made the front hall closet very awkward to access from the front door. After a couple weeks of framing, drywall, painting, and journeyman electrician work a buddy and I (he's a demolition contractor and knows everything about houses from framing to plumbing) have converted it back to the way it's supposed to be. Just need to hang the doors on the upper cabinets.

(Yes, we made damn sure nothing was load-bearing and actually reinforced some weak rafter bracing in the process.)

Before-ish from inside bedroom looking through dumb hallway:


Reframed and painted wider closet::



Improved front hall closet. Doorway didn't exist and hallway used to be in the drywall to the right:



"Secret" pocket door between the closets as an homage to the original design and a novelty emergency exit for my kid:
(Yes, I'm going to take the paint off the hardware.)



Next up, my second bathroom currently looks like this:

Intrinsic said:

Second bathroom looks great. I think they call that “farmhouse” style or something. All the rage these days!

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Believe me, after a month of sharing my master bath with my two kids I'm about ready to make them shit through that hole in the subfloor.

Captain Suave said:

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Intrinsic Its the bathroom equivalent of Squidward.

My favorite part is the demo and the basic parts of the rebuild. Its the finer parts that get down and need you to be absolutely perfect that I despise. But man, when a remodel is done - it makes me feel a thousand times better. Looks great so far, and adding a base to the closets instead of trying to find your flooring was a Top Tier move in my book. I would have went nuts trying to find a match probably.

Daidraco said:

Looks great so far, and adding a base to the closets instead of trying to find your flooring was a Top Tier move in my book. I would have went nuts trying to find a match probably.

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Yeah, flooring sucks. Plus we were matching the closet in the other bedroom. The house was built in the 50's and that was the style then.

Uber Uberest said:

Galvanized drains and vents. Ouch.

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Yeah. Fortunately that's the last galvanized in the house after I replaced the kitchen sink plumbing and it's getting ripped out in this reno because we're moving all bath fixtures & laundry. Previous owners updated the main plumbing 10 years ago to copper (w/ ABS sewer) but left the original galvanized risers, which are of course rotted out or rusted shut. The old kitchen sink line had maybe 1/8'' radius open in a 1/2'' line.

I landed a contract with a house where the parent had died and the kids decided to unanimously rent out the property instead. The house is on Smith Mountain Lake but the kids all live up north in and around DC/Maryland. I've suggested that they do some repairs / remodels, which should have been fairly cheap - but they didnt want to go with the people at my disposal. So what should have been a simple job of repainting has turned into me meeting this guy from High Point, NC that does it all. I went over yesterday to check on the progress of the renovation and got to see him and his team working. The guy knew I thought what he was doing was overkill from the first time he met me, so he stopped what he was doing and made sure to show me the specifics.

Long story short, they've replaced tons of sheetrock in the house and have made everything almost picture perfect smooth. I thought I had seen a level 5 finish in the past, but no - this guys finish was perfect. No imperfections at all. I expressed interest in how theyre doing the work and he started showing me everything. Since I have never really been around anyone that did a true level 5 finish, I didnt even think to look for one of these machines - and its a beautiful breeze to use. He showed me how to use it (Im a nerd when it comes to tools and computers, idfk) - but I didnt even get compound dust on me. At this point, I dont think Ill ever have the opportunity to need one - but they are fucking awesome. "Festool Planex 2"

mkopec said:

Festool is nice but they are like $$$$$$$, not meant for the common pleb doing his own home improvement unless youre rich, but then why the fuck are you doing your own renovations when youre rich, lol.

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He said I could rent one if I was ever serious about doing something. Ive never rented a tool in my life, but at $1300, thats probably a more financially sound strategy lol. On the rich part, though, I think if I was that rich that saving a few thousand wouldnt influence me one way or the other - I think I'd still opt to do some jobs myself from time to time. DIY's are so gratifying to see when theyre complete, at least in my opinion.

Intrinsic said:

$1300 + $500-600 for the dust extractor. If there's one thing I've consistently heard / seen good things about it is Festools dust extraction. I've wanted to get one myself to roll around the shop and connect up to small tools. Supposedly that's a huge benefit of their mitre saw, but at $1,600 that isn't something I'll ever figure out.

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Friend helping with my reno has the Festool vac. It's really nice, though not enough for me to buy one. The best feature is the power chaining so the vac kicks on automatically when it detects the tool engaging.