Home Ownership And You!

xschop

Oversized pantry @ half size of kitchen when we built the home. Coming in real handy right about now.
Yes, the LEDs are nice at 3000K warm-light. The 6000K day-light ones will blind you.

steveinaz

Nice!

xschop

Was doing some work to my 5Bs and wifey said I had another "more important" issue to fix. Dryer Tstat spilled its guts due to blocked filter housing.... lucky I had a spare from when I changed the element awhile back



I'll have to procure a vent stack clean out tool asap.

Kex

xschop wrote: »

Yes, the LEDs are nice at 3000K warm-light. The 6000K day-light ones will blind you.

Personally, I find even 3,000 kelvin too clinical on full power (without a dimmer). 2,700k is perfection IMO, if you like that warm incandescent glow, even in a kitchen.

xschop

Kex wrote: »

xschop wrote: »

Yes, the LEDs are nice at 3000K warm-light. The 6000K day-light ones will blind you.

Personally, I find even 3,000 kelvin too clinical on full power (without a dimmer). 2,700k is perfection IMO, if you like that warm incandescent glow, even in a kitchen.

Fortunately, the full 3000k is soaked/balanced by the dark brown granite and matching tile my wife chose. If it were alabaster, then yes 3000k would be too bright.

xschop

Testing...

Hmmm. I posted couple hours ago about my garage door spring swap and the message said my post was being reviewed.

Lol. Nothing political about that...

xschop

About an hour and a half job. Spring needs 1/4 turns counted 31 times for a 7 ft door....

xschop

Last Honey-do for awhile....
Amazon doesn't consider garage door springs a necessity item I suppose. One of my vehicles has been held hostage the last 10 days....

xschop

Last Honey-do for awhile....
Amazon doesn't consider garage door springs a necessity item I suppose. One of my vehicles has been held hostage the last 10 days....

Jstas

So, had other plans for the weekend but Mother Nature had a better idea.

Last week we had some pretty heavy wind storms pass through. With all the rain we've had, it's been pretty rough on trees and I had 3 blow down. Two were old, dead, rotten ones that snapped at the stumps and are buried in other stands out by the road. I'll get to them later, they aren't in the way or anything right now and hard to get to. I'm waiting for a battery powered Milwaukee pole saw to show up because the other trees are just a bit too far for extension cords.

The third one was in the middle of the yard. It's not the one that I was hoping would have fallen down but thankfully it wasn't that big. Still took about 6 hours to get it all cut up and removed. Not exactly finishing the attic stair panels or getting doors upstairs painted and hung on matching hardware but, what can you do?

So this is March 30th


That stump sticking up there, that was a massive old maple that died due to ants. I cut it down in the Spring of 2019 when the kids were playing out by it and despite it having leaf buds on it, the wind blew a 15 foot chunk down and it landed about 20 feet from where the kids were playing. That signed it's death warrant and we pulled it down. That stump was 21 inches across at the narrow top. It's all rotten now, I'll get to that in a minute.

Anyway, the tree came down, the previous owner had nailed an electrical box to it and while I had disconnected it a while ago, there was wire strung through the trees that I needed a ladder to get to. So it came down with the tree. The other branch was part of another tree that fell in the lake and I had drug there the day before this tree fell. Cut that up too.

So I grabbed the electric pole saw and the big hoss chain saw and bucked the tree where it was laying. I piled the branches in my ever growing brush pile. I cut the stump of the tree as close as I could get it to the ground, it's going to have to get dug out or a stump grinder will need to be used on it. I cut up what was left of the other stump that was laying on the ground and cut back yet another stump that fell over a couple of years ago. I had left it because it was still green and very hard to cut through. Now that both old stumps were totally dead and somewhat rotten, I was able to get through them easier.

Then, I repeatedly backed the lawn tractor into the rotten stump of the old maple tree until it collapsed. I left it there because it's full of ants and I don't need to be covered in ants. So I'll leave it there until the ants decide there's a better place to be or something goes and eats them all. The section that is left is still solid. I have a couple other stumps I wanted to take out too but I was just gassed by this point. That last stump picture was taken at about 5pm and I had run the lawn mower around shredding what was left of the twigs and rotten wood to clean it all up. I'll go out there again in a little bit, fire up the chainsaw again and cut the rest of that stump down and go get the other two I didn't get to yesterday.

The picture of the lake was just the end of the day when I was walking up to the house and I thought it was a pretty day so i took a picture. The very last picture was the steak dinner I made 'cause I was flippin' hungry.











And yeah, I know, lawn's gotta get mowed. Was supposed to do that yesterday too but tree fun instead. Was gonna leave it until today but it's raining just enough to make that difficult. So I'll leave it. It will give the new grass I over seeded a chance to get better rooted before I hack it down with the spinning blades of death.

polrbehr

That spread is unreal! And you got it at a nice price. I got my place for a song too, but I basically bought a house that happened to be sitting on 1/3 acre. You bought some seriously nice property, and as they say, you can't renovate location, you got that in spades.

Now get back to work , when you finish I'll give ya directions to my yard.

Jstas

OK, so, after cutting down the rest of the stumps, I decided to get the rest of the dirt moved from the slab.

Oh, didn't I tell you? There's a slab of concrete between the two garages that was behind the outhouse I tore down. You couldn't tell because it was buried under 3 inches of dirt and tree roots.

So this was where the outhouse was. I'll tell that story another time. 'Cause that pile of insulation in the lower right corner is a whole pile of WTF all by itself.



This picture shows the chain hooked up to it right before I ripped it down with the Lightning. But you can see the space behind it between the two buildings. It was severely overgrown, I had whacked all the garbage down last fall in preparation for the outhouse removal. The more clear spot farthest away had a steel shed on it that the previous owner ripped down and didn't replace. Probably because he had to so he could get the block wall of the garage that was coming down fixed.



So I had this mess of stuff and thought that I should clear the cement pad back in the corner, see if I could replace the shed that was removed. This is what I started with.



I had started scraping up near the edge of the far corner thinking I'd just find the edge of the pad along the rear but I got to the edge of the shed space and the pad kept going. WTF?

So I came back to where the outhouse was and started jabbing a pointed piece of rebar in the ground to see where the pad ended at the other end. *thock* *thock* *thock* *thock* *TINK* *thock* *thock* *TINK*

What the...?!?!?!?!

*thock* *thock* *thock* *thock* *TINK* *thock* *TINK* *thock* *TINK* *TINK*

SONOFA....

So I got the shovel and started scraping along the edge of the *TINK* line.







It's hard to see in the pictures but, I found the edges of the slab. So I started scraping and found that there was a 3-4 inch thick mat of roots and dirt. Because of how it sloped from one end of the slab to the other, I don't think this was intentionally buried. I think it was just lazy buried from someone not cleaning off runoff from the garden full of lilac bushes in front of the outhouse.

So I got to work because there were drainage problems here causing seepage into the big garage.

It was EXTREMELY hard and I couldn't use an ax or any kind of saw because the slab below would have destroyed them.

So I fired up old Grumplestiltskin which is a 5 HP tiller I picked up used for about $120 because "it wasn't running right" and the kid had no inclination to find the manual online and figure it out. A couple hours, a tune up and a new governor spring later and it runs just fine and grumbles through pretty much anything including bushes. I mean, you fire it up, point it at a small to medium sized bush, pull the clutch lever and just let it dig in and it comes out the other side with a nasty root clog but no more bush!

Anyhoo, Grumplestiltskin got to work and just ripped that root mat up with prejudice.



But that was crazy hard work and I got the pile mostly gone and then it started raining on me. So I put what was left into a pile and left it until I could get back to it.



Even with the pile there, you can see the absurdity that I had to deal with.

The notched area is where the outhouse was. I'm seriously considering digging it out and prepping it for a concrete pour of my own to square the slab off into something useful and maybe replacing the shed to store the more awkward yard machinery items taking up space in the garage. That and garden implements. There also looks like there was a foundation for a pole barn there at one point too as two of the footings there seems to be still there. One left jutting up and covered in moss, the other capped with asphalt.

Anyway, I finished digging up the slab today except for the one spot by the decorative block work. That's a pile of loamy sand that was intentionally dumped there and, again, has roots all through it. The gray barrel is full of construction sand. Has to get dug out before I can move it 'cause it weighs probably 400 pounds. It's crazy humid today and sweating doesn't work so after only about 2-3 hours of that, I was done. I'll get the loamy sand and barrel out of there another day. For now, this is what it looks like. Will have to wait for the dirt to dry out and see what I can scrape/sweep up but pretty sure it's going to have to get power washed. But I have to fix the junk at the back of the slab because the run off gets jammed up there. Also, there's conduit with the main power feed for the big garage buried somewhere there and I don't need to be hitting it with a tiller or anything.

Jstas

polrbehr wrote: »

That spread is unreal! And you got it at a nice price. I got my place for a song too, but I basically bought a house that happened to be sitting on 1/3 acre. You bought some seriously nice property, and as they say, you can't renovate location, you got that in spades.

Now get back to work , when you finish I'll give ya directions to my yard.

Gee! Thanks!

pitdogg2

Looky there a smoker pad

aprazer402

Very nice piece of property John. You're not one to shy away from work. How deep is the lake? Any fish in it? You may need one of these for four acres. Or maybe your plans are to leave it natural? Some areas have restrictions on clearing land. Very nice.

Jstas

I have a wood chipper already

brettw22

Good job but eff ALL of that sheet.........holy hell.........

mrloren

Nice land, you're doing it justice by fixing it up.

I see CPT 1/2 A$$ must have a lot of relatives. Coworker had a small leak that has turned into a $100k full gut and remodel. They opened the wall to fix the leak and found 16AWG CCA in the wall for wiring and some PVC for water. Previous owner screwed him good, poor guy has been living in a hotel for since January.

We can't buy garage door springs in CA. Needs to be installed and inspected.

xschop

I skipped past everything (good job and hard work btw) until I saw the beer and steaks....

Jstas

When we moved in, the first thing I did was redo the kids rooms. They were dumpy and in disrepair. So I went about repainting and getting new carpet and window treatments installed where necessary.

However, in my girl's room, the ceiling was especially trashy. There was old wallpaper over the ceiling that had been painted over and never stabilized. So it created a problem for another story.

Attic access is in my girl's room, though. No big deal. However, as you can see in the first two pictures here, the attic stairs did not close properly. Not only did they not close properly but the trim would move with the ladder that would wiggle as well.

Well, these two aren't that great but, there are more.




So because of the location of the folding ladder, that entire wall was basically unusable. It also used to be the closet for the room but some genius thought that wasted space in the bathroom was preferable to a closet. So they closed it off. I'm suspecting this was Captain Halfassery. Anyway.

As you can see in these pictures, the ladder, when folded up, would recess itself about an inch and a half into the ceiling. The reason why? When it was installed, whomever installed it did not frame out the hole. So the tension springs would twist the end of the frame up and pull the door panel with it. Why? Because, they just cut a hole in the plaster and screwed the ladder's 1x3 frame in between the joist work. There was a total of 5 screws holding it up.

Janky as hell.




So the first thing I did when I was ready to do this was, I got a new ladder. A telescoping aluminum one from Werner. It takes up 1/3rd the space in her room than previously and needs a smaller opening.

BUT!

I have utility stuff in the attic. There's an AC unit up there as well as a ventilation fan. So if I closed up that hole and used the smaller opening for the attic ladder, I wouldn't be able to get any work done there or equipment in and out.

So I built a new ladder frame with an idea.



You can see a rectangle and two panels in that picture. The rectangle was the new opening frame for the pretty part. The panels were a filler panel and a door panel. It would be secured to the 100 year old joist work with new header framing bucking at the front and back of the hole in the form of new 2x8's.

The reason it's so long is because I was able to build a filler panel that is removable. That allows me to pull it out for getting big things in and out of the attic, like the 25 year old AC system that has to be replaced soon.

So I built the new frame to fit the hole.

Then, I had built a 2x3 frame on the back of the filler panel and stuck that inside the new frame and clamped it to the workbench. Then I drilled 6 holes, two on each of 3 sides, and mounted 5/16ths t-nuts in those holes. Then I ran 5/16ths bolts through to the T-nuts and bolted the filler panel in with those T-nuts and bolts. Then I took an extra piece of 1x4 from building the new frame and made a false divider panel that would look like it was part of the frame.

So then I installed and leveled the new frame and secured it to the hole I framed out. A bunch of 2.5 inch screws and some shims 'cause 100 year old house framing and it was in. Then, the real test. I slid my filler panel in. Surprisingly, the bolt holes all line up properly and I was able to bolt it in to place. It fit well!

Then I measured the hole left over and cut a panel for the door to fill the rest in. That needed some modification that I will explain later.

So here's the pictures of it.







Now, I used heavy bolts for the filler panel because there was a couple times in my exhaustion in doing this that I almost fell through that hole when the old ladder was still up there. I thought to myself "Self, that could be dangerous. You should address that." So I did. Because of those hefty bolts, a full grown man can fall on that filler panel and it may give, but likely not, but it will not collapse and drop you 8-9 feet on the floor below in an awkward and life-threatening position.

Jstas

Said the previous post was too long so here's the rest.

So, the door. I wanted it to sit flush in the trimmed hole like the old door and the new filler panel do. I wanted it to match the filler door too. But I also didn't want awkward looking hinges in there either nor a piano hinge at the back. So in steps Rockler Woodworking and I bought myself a couple of the heaviest "European" cabinet hinges they had and installed them.

The door, when opened, actually kicks out a bit and then down to clear the trim around the hole. I did have to sand down the one edge so it wouldn't get hung up on the frame as it kicked down. Also, because of the initial motion, I had to clearance the inside of the leading edge of the door to clear the false panel and latch catch. But, when the door closes, the hinges actually draw it tight against the frame. I'm still going to seal it with foam tape but it worked out swimmingly!



I filled gaps everywhere with expanding foam to insulate it. Now, doesn't seem like much but the first winter we moved in, the house was perpetually cold. Like really cold. Like the heater's set at 72 and it's still 63 degrees in the living room and the basement is in the 30's. There's way more to this but I'll get to that later. All you need to know is that despite how shoddily I fit everything, just the fact that the new attic door closed up correctly and had a 1/16th inch gap around 1/3rd of it vs the 5/8ths inch gap around all of it cut over $450 off the heating bill last year for the season. Our average heating bill the first year was $380. That's **** insane. The average bill after I got this hole buttoned up? $210.

However, the first time I got this done, nothing was right because I stupidly believed that the ceiling was straight. The ceiling actually is straight. Whatever jackass that hung the sheetrock over the plaster, they didn't do that part straight. So the back of the hole sits about 1/2 of an inch higher than the front. Peachy.

Also, when I pulled the old ladder down, I found that whomever poorly coped the old quarter round at the top of the wall/ceiling joint frickin' glued it in with Liquid Nails and that came down along with some sheet rock, wallpaper and caulking. So I had to replace/repair that stuff too.

Anyway, here's what it looked like when I first got done with it.



But, at this point, I was out of time and money and we had the pool problem happen as well as a heater failure that cost me like $1200. I also had a hot water heater replaced for another $2300 so...yeah. More stories for later.

Fast forward a year to now and I get back to it.

What I ended up having to do was get the door clearanced for rotation right. All the trim I put up around the hole I had to take back down and resecure with some shims to get it level to level, not to the ceiling. Because the frame it was all mounted to was leveled to level. Subsequently, the rear of the hole hangs down 1/2 an inch more than the front, like I said. So rather than rip down the ceiling and fix the whole room, I nailed the trim back up with the shims and filled the gap with expanding foam. When it was done expanding, I trimmed it back and then I caulked all around it and filled the nail holes.

I also took the door down and clearanced it then adjusted hinges so they were even and securing the door shut properly.








The gaps at the joints at the corner are there because they were cut to the uneven hole, not the properly fixed hole. So I just filled them with the non-contracting painter's caulk because they were getting painted anyway and nobody is going to see it. I also caulked around the trim where it met the ceiling to hide the expanding foam and any other wonkiness on the trim to ceiling joint.

Also, you can see how the door was sitting crooked in that one picture. I got that as straight as I could which you'll see in later pictures. So after that, I sanded and tack-clothed the whole thing. Then I coped and installed new 3/4" quarter round trim.

I primed all of it...about 3 coats of primer. Then I painted it with the same paint I used for the white trim everywhere else. Two coats of that.





Then I went and got the leftover color paint from when I originally painted the rooms 3 years ago now and shook the hell out of it hoping I wouldn't need to buy new paint. The quarter round got painted with the same paint as the ceiling because that's what the rest of the trim on the ceiling is done with. Then I went and fixed the paint on the walls edging the quarter round. I also fixed some nicks in the walls from dumb kid stuff and some damage I did when I pulled the old attic ladder down.

This is the finished result.



It was a ton of work and getting the old ladder out without destroying the ceiling was hard. I had a friend and Jackie on a platform waiting to catch the ladder as I kicked the frame out of place. I still ended up crewing up a bunch of plaster along the edge, necessitating the the baseboard as trim approach because of how poorly the previous ladder was installed. But, I was able to retain the size of the opening for access while reducing the footprint in her room so she could use more of her space. I also sealed up a major HVAC loss point and cut down on the number of bugs that tend to creep into the house through such large gaps.

Everybody who walks in to the kids rooms asks me who I got to do the work. They think I'm lying when I say I did. I have had contractors over to do some work that is just too much for me to do myself and they ask who did the work too. When I tell them I did, they ask if I want a job. But this stuff is tedious and hard when things are done right. When you have to fix someone else's screw up WHILE trying to get something done right, it's exponentially more difficult.

This was all especially more difficult with this virus baloney going on as stores close early so even though I wanted to keep working on it after, like, dinner or something, I couldn't if I needed something because stores that were open until 9 or 10 pm were closed 3-4 hours earlier.

polrbehr

Wow! That whole project must have taken you, what, at least an hour and a half, right?

Seriously though, that's some damn fine craftsmanship, John.

Jstas

Sooooo...just spent 4 days huffing paint.

I don't have before pictures. Well, I do, I just haven't dug them up yet. They are on an external drive somewhere and I haven't dug it up yet.

Anyhoo. There's stories here. A few of them, short though, thankfully.

So 2nd floor of the house, I have 5 doors plus two bi-folds. The bi-folds are in the master bedroom, one is for a walk-in closet (has another story all it's own) and the other is for the small-ish bathroom. Yes, some jackwagon put bi-folds on a bathroom. I'm replacing them with solid doors to match the other doors upstairs but I have to remove the bi-folds and cut new hinge pockets and latch pockets on the frames then measure, trim and cut hinge pockets, door knob and latch holes. Then test fit the doors. Then I get to paint them. Then I get to hang them. So those two I didn't get to, they will likely be their own 3-4 day weekend all by themselves.

The doors on all these rooms? Only one door shut right and it was cut way too short. I'm not even sure why. But that door had another chunk of door grafted on to the bottom and then riveted in place. Not only was that done but the fake grain pattern wasn't even lined up. They were all the cheapest MDF doors one could find at Lowe's so this was easily Captain Halfassery, especially since a couple frames had severe issues and they went unaddressed with new doors cut crooked to fit the screwed up frames.

So, I was going to get new doors and reframe the holes myself. I asked my dad for his help and he was just bitching about how much work it was. Like I asked him to do it for me or something. All I wanted was experienced hands that I didn't have to tell what to do all the time. 'Cause anyone who has to tackle a huge project and have to do huge project 101 for the help knows how frustrating and slow things go when your help is not only uninterested but comes up with "great ideas" all the time to take short cuts and they get mad at you when you look at them incredulously like "Why would you even think that? Can't you see what's going on here?" Then they demand to get taken seriously when they clearly lack the experience to see just how short-sighted their "great ideas" are. Then you get to spend 20 minutes arguing about it while you have to explain to them why their great idea is a bad idea. Then you're just an arsehole know-it-all and they're butthurt.

My dad decided he was going to get the doors installed by someone himself. Fine, whatever. They're pre-hung anyway. Big whoop. But when we pulled the old doors, we found that some doors were missing header plates, thankfully not on load bearing walls but at least now I know why a couple doors have cracks in the wallboard over them and they like to vibrate.

So the doors got installed, took a couple days due to the problems we ran in to with insufficient framing and stuff I had to do to get doorways square or the pre-hung doors would get drawn out of alignment when secured in the doorways. But, I didn't have hardware when the doors were installed because the decision maker didn't like any of my ideas but didn't have any of her own. Finally decided on oil-rubbed bronze and white porcelain to go with what would be traditional but fancy for a house from the early 20th century.

After the doors were installed, though, it took almost 2 weeks to get the hardware in and that was her first lesson in lead times because I could have easily had the hardware when the doors were installed but we took over 2 months to reach a decision. So I held doors shut with masking tape and door stops until the door knobs showed up. The matching hinges didn't come in until almost 2 months later than the door knobs. Thankfully, the doors had hinges since they were pre-hung. It was fun.

The door knob hardware finally came in and in early December I installed it all. Was supposed to arrive for Thanksgiving weekend but delays in shipping due to diseases in the Asia made them late (same for the hinges, especially since production got delayed because the factory was shut down). They showed up the Monday after Thanksgiving. After I installed the door knobs, I found that a couple doors were not exactly latching right. This wasn't noticeable before the hardware was in place because there was nothing keeping the doors latched in place. They were tight and wanted to spring open. So I decided to check some things out and started removing one hinge, testing closure and so on until I found the problems.

A couple doors are not hung straight. The framed holes are plumb and square but the doors are cocked in the holes. One door is racked from side to side, the other is racked front to back. The 2nd door, it's hard to show pictures of. The first door is this one.



You'll have to zoom in but you can see that the gap on the right narrows at the top and widens at the bottom on the right side and opposite on the left. The door likes to spring open because the gap is so narrow that the it's actually hitting the jamb on the bottom left. Additionally, the latch was barely catching because of the gap difference.



Sorry for the other doors being in the way but you can see the gap being very tight at the bottom left.

The problem? The hinge pocket on the jamb is cut too deep. Since it was done at the factory, this is on the door company. I thought that the door was hung crooked but it's not. Plumb, square, couldn't get it straighter if I tried. The real problem is that typically, to fix this, you do what's called a "dutchman" where you score and chisel out a larger section of the door jamb where the hinge pocket is that's deeper than the hinge pocket, effectively removing the hinge pocket. Then you glue and nail in a new piece of wood and cut a new hinge pocket in place. This is not an insignificant amount of work. Especially since the hole depth is less than 1/16th of an inch deeper than the other two pockets. But that small bit, when stretched over the height of the door, translates into a 1/4 inch gap difference from top to bottom. So it's not good. Especially since the doors are MDF. The excess tension will eventually cause the MDF layers to separate and the hinge to extract itself from the door catastrophically.

Needless to say, I experimented with some door shims to see. As you can see in this picture, the shims are behind the hinge plate and that has solved the alignment issue.



Now I'm trying to decide on if I should just cut a shim for it and leave it that way or if I should dutchman this and do all that work. Thankfully, I did some tests with a solid piece of 2x4 and that fancy pants Delta miter saw I got. It is entirely capable of cutting a sliver of 2x4 off that is less than a sixteenth of an inch.

Before anyone says anything as well, I did make sure all the hinges were mounted the same way and if you put the barrel end plate on the opposite side of the other two hinges orientations, it can cause this kind of issue. Typically, though, you end up with a door that likes to close itself partially due to such shenanigans. But when tolerances are this tight, it can also cause the door to impact the door jamb and want to spring back open.

Jstas

The other door with similar problems? The hinge pock on the MDF door itself is the problem. The pocket is cut deeper at the back of the door than the front. So this causes the door to not sit square against the door jamb. It also causes the chamfer on the door edge to hit the jamb stop instead of just missing it like it should. This causes the door to pull on the hinge which stresses both the jamb and the door itself. Given that the door is MDF it will fail first. Since the door is MDF, it's hard to dutchman it because you have to separate the glued MDF sheets with the "real wood texture" from the chunk of wood framing it's glued to. Then you have to cut the wood chunk out with the bad pocket it in. Then you get to cut down another chunk of wood, slide it in, glue it and clamp it until the glue dries. No matter what you do or how good you are, this will be apparent in the finished product because the MDF will stretch and not lay down properly again. It's also a failure point because the disparate glue means that small section will expand and contract differently from the rest of the factory glued joint. This eventually causes demlamination at the stress points and ultimately door failure necessitating replacement. So my only real recourse on that door is to shim the hinge plate. But I'll have to fill the holes for the screws with a binder because they won't get enough purchase on the door frame in the already there holes because the shims will change where the threads hit the wood. So to fix that, it's pretty simple. A toothpick, a dab of wood glue and stick one in each hole. Let it dry. Then with angle cutters or wire dykes, clip the toothpicks off flush. The toothpick takes up enough space in the hole and crushes easily enough that the screw will bite and torque down again.

These pictures don't quite show what I'm talking about but if you zoom in to the bottom hinge you can kinda see it.



What you can see is the ever so slight taper in the gap with the door sitting at it's tension point here. This is where you have to use some force to close it. It swings freely up until this point. All the other doors, even the shimmed one, will close completely with just a flick of a single finger. This one swings all the way to this point and then it's like it just puts the brakes on just before reaching home.



Have I mentioned how much I hate MDF? MDF stands for "medium density fiberboard". It's basically cardboard (hard wood and soft wood fiber "residuals"), a type of wax and a binder resin that they make into MDF by heating it and pressing it together under high pressure. There's also low-density fiberboard, aka: particle board and high-density fiberboard which is the backing you find on inexpensive laminate flooring. None of them do well with moisture and once damaged, they have to be replaced, they are not repairable. I hate it and I really wanted solid wood doors and was willing to pay the price premium for them but that decision got shut down by proxy so now I have this baloney to deal with.

Anyway, those problems will be dealt with, I'll update when I find success. In the mean time, I had 5 doors to paint as well as two more to cut and hang. Sadly, I did not get to all of them this past weekend because the MDF doors required more coats of paint that I thought they would so they took twice as long due to drying times between coats.

But you can see in the pictures, they came in an "antique white" which just looked dirty and didn't match the white trim either. Plus the white porcelain door knobs looked out of place too. So I had to paint them. So 2 coats of KILZ Hide All primer and the two coats of Zinnser Ultra White trim and door paint. The MDF soaked up a bunch of paint and slightly changed the door dimensions which is partially what the problem is here. But the pocket inconsistencies are much more the culprit as the door and jamb can be clearanced slightly with sandpaper or a razor blade and touched up if it was just paint.

I only have one set of pictures for the first door I did. All the other doors look the same. I only got through 4 of the 7 doors this past weekend. In between door painting, I was filling, sanding and painting the door trim and painted all the trim in the dining room white too. I would have gotten more done if I didn't need 4 coats of paint on each door.

So here you can see the door color differences.



Here's that door, finished and ready to be hung again.



Oil-rubbed bronze latch plate and door knob set.



Oil-rubbed bronze hinges going on. Original hinges from the factory were brushed nickel.



Here's the door hung



The outside.




All the doors look the same. All the hardware is the same, from the same company with matching patterns. Even the lock tab has the same finials as the hinges. I even got oil-rubbed bronze door stoppers to protect the walls and keep the porcelain knobs from being broken. Details matter. The hallway will be repainted a different color soon so I'm not worried about the mess that it is. We'll get to that.

So that's my door saga. It's on-going. But I literally spent about 40 hours from Friday to Monday night on this and still not finished with it.

At least the doors look ok.

scubalab

Jstas wrote: »

At least the doors look ok.

Nah...

They look GREAT. Step back, take a break and admire your work. Makes it all worth it. I feel your pain with the hinge issues. I made shims (in the shape of the hinge cutouts) to resolve misaligned/deeper hinge pocket cuts, and they did the trick! Keep up the great work. I really enjoy reading about your projects.

We had a similarly busy weekend with ongoing house projects. Finally put a tile countertop, LED lights, and reading lights on a built-in bookshelf/window-seat unit I made in our living room 7 or 8 years ago. Was a ton of work, but when finished, we had a sense of accomplishment checking another project off the list. Still need to adjust the bottom cabinet doors on the left (why they are not on), caulk some joints, put the header trim piece on, and install knobs on all the cabinet doors, but those are easy.

nooshinjohn

scubalab wrote: »

Jstas wrote: »

At least the doors look ok.

Nah...

They look GREAT. Step back, take a break and admire your work. Makes it all worth it. I feel your pain with the hinge issues. I made shims (in the shape of the hinge cutouts) to resolve misaligned/deeper hinge pocket cuts, and they did the trick! Keep up the great work. I really enjoy reading about your projects.

We had a similarly busy weekend with ongoing house projects. Finally put a tile countertop, LED lights, and reading lights on a built-in bookshelf/window-seat unit I made in our living room 7 or 8 years ago. Was a ton of work, but when finished, we had a sense of accomplishment checking another project off the list. Still need to adjust the bottom cabinet doors on the left (why they are not on), caulk some joints, put the header trim piece on, and install knobs on all the cabinet doors, but those are easy.

I love Ikea cabinets. They make remodeling so much easier.

scubalab

John - We've been very satisfied with a lot of Ikea's stuff. Yeah, some is, well, not the greatest, but most everything we've gotten from them has been rock solid. Cost-effective on a budget, and honestly these cabinets, have held up better than cabinets we paid 2-3 times as much for. And, sometimes the assembly goes smoothly, so the remodeling isn't too time-consuming...

Sorry for temporarily hijacking John's home improvement thread. I really like the oil-rubbed bronze hardware and porcelain doorknobs - very complimentary to the door style!

nooshinjohn

scubalab wrote: »

John - We've been very satisfied with a lot of Ikea's stuff. Yeah, some is, well, not the greatest, but most everything we've gotten from them has been rock solid. Cost-effective on a budget, and honestly these cabinets, have held up better than cabinets we paid 2-3 times as much for. And, sometimes the assembly goes smoothly, so the remodeling isn't too time-consuming...

Sorry for temporarily hijacking John's home improvement thread. I really like the oil-rubbed bronze hardware and porcelain doorknobs - very complimentary to the door style!

Those are Ikea???? I was being sarcastic and trying to be funny. I did not know.

Kex

I didn’t know they were IKEA either, @nooshinjohn.

Looks great! Very stylish nook, beautiful molding and trim, love the color scheme.

scubalab

Eh, I'm not trying to hide anything. I'm also not too brand-conscious if the price is right AND the quality exceeds the price point. We've gotten a few things from Ikea - mainly some toy storage bins and those cabinets. I'm telling you, the cabinets are great compared to some other 'name brand' (and more expensive) cabinets we installed elsewhere! And the toy storage bins were made of solid (yes, NOT MDF) wood. They were strong enough to park a truck on!

I'll even admit that I have a few tools purchased from Harbor Freight. For stuff that I know I'll use regularly as long as I'm able, yes, I do invest in better quality (mainly DeWalt, Milwaukee, Grizzly), but if it's something I know I won't use regularly, I will buy cheap. He11, I've got a $49 tile wet saw that my dad got for me 17 years ago to install tile in our kitchen thinking we'd be happy if it got us through just that project. We put in over 600 S.F. or porcelain tile on that project. Since then, I bet I or friends/family have put in over 3000 S.F. of all sorts of tile over it's life. The darn thing just does what it does. Is it as nice as a bridge saw? No. But I can't complain since It was purchased for LESS than a rental! Just used it again this past weekend to cut the glass tile for the counter top in that picture.

My dad also bought a hardwood floor nailer from HF about 10 years ago when he put Brazilian Cherry hardwood in his first floor. Since then, my one brother used it to do over 2000 S.F. of the same hardwood in his house, and my other brother used it to do about 600 S.F. of hardwood in his living & dining rooms. I then used it to put about 900 - 1000 S.F. of Bamboo hardwood flooring in our second floor (flooring in the picture above). Again, it cost less than renting one for a weekend, and has performed flawlessly for multiple projects over the years. My only problem with HF is the fact that everything they carry comes from China. But, what doesn't anymore?

And, thanks for the compliments on the LR 'nook'. Wife is happy and, well, we all know that's most important!