Bill Lantry
Member
- Messages
- 2,663
- Location
- Inside the Beltway
Hey, folks,
Well, here's the way things work in Williamdom (or should that be Lantrystan?)
So, long story short, I got the cabinet cathedral doors mocked up, using some scrap poplar and sycamore I had lying around. They came out pretty good (yes, I have pics, but not here). By good, I mean acceptable. By acceptable, I mean that in spite of all the tearout and blade burns, they hold together as doors... I at least solved most of the structural and conceptual problems... now I just have to make the execution better.
Anyway, I just had one more step before I started on the real ones: Installation. So I drilled a hole in a piece of scrap, made sure it was right for the hinge, and went into the kitchen to test fit... and that's when the trouble started...
Doorlink asked me to help carry the mop bucket down to the basement. My best advice: if *your* darling ever asks you to this, run away fast!
So I get down there. The reason the mop bucket was making the trip was that I'd discovered that young Daniel, who is allergic to mold, had left a few boxes of opened cookies under the sofa (the basement is where the boys' gameroom -PS2, etc- is located) and they'd gotten moldy. It's also a big storage room, home of over-tired furniture, etc. "Help me move this couch", she said. Yuck on the tiles underneath it (hey, when you're blasting monsters, who wants to worry about housekeeping?). Everytime I moved something, more yuck. We may be food for worms, but old hidden empty boxes of crackers in a damp environment are food for mold. Eventually, I'd moved every piece of furniture, every box out of the room, and got the first good look at the room since we'd moved in.
Now, I have to explain that we got the house at half the market value a few years back, precisely because there'd been a flood caused by a water company mistake. The homeowners took the settlement and went on an extended vacation to mexico, and when they got back they sold the place. So I *did* know that this room was a problem: half the cieling was ripped down, the wall board was missing in several places from the damage inspection. I took a hard look at the remaining paneling, and realized it was soft near the bottom. Ripped it out with a hammer and my bare hands, and clouds of what I can only believe were mold spores came billowing out. At that point, I was ready to rip *everything*, and Doorlink was ready to authorize purchase of however many building materials it would take to fix the problem.
So all the rest of saturday was taken up by moving and ripping. Sunday morning was prep work and the despot, sunday afternoon was putting down the underlayment for new tile. I've got weeks of work in there by the time its fit for human habitation in there. Suffice it to say her kitchen doors are on hold.
Anyway, there will be much work done while I have the walls open (rewiring, new lighting, etc.) We'll need a builtin dehumidifier (do such things even exist?) I can drain it out the back wall... I just want something I can turn on and not think about). The room is 16 x 25, so there are many opportunities for builtin furniture. In fact, the space is so big, it can be my minishop while I build it back up.
If any of you have any good thoughts on what kind of builtins should be there, they would be much appreciated. I need to move fast, because she wants her kitchen done by her birthday in mid-september. Yikes!
All this leads me to wonder whether I should invoke ancient english poetry: "So always this middle-earth fails and falls" or something more modern like, say, 19th century french: "Such is the daily news from the whole world." Geez, Louise...
Thanks,
Bill
Well, here's the way things work in Williamdom (or should that be Lantrystan?)
So, long story short, I got the cabinet cathedral doors mocked up, using some scrap poplar and sycamore I had lying around. They came out pretty good (yes, I have pics, but not here). By good, I mean acceptable. By acceptable, I mean that in spite of all the tearout and blade burns, they hold together as doors... I at least solved most of the structural and conceptual problems... now I just have to make the execution better.
Anyway, I just had one more step before I started on the real ones: Installation. So I drilled a hole in a piece of scrap, made sure it was right for the hinge, and went into the kitchen to test fit... and that's when the trouble started...
Doorlink asked me to help carry the mop bucket down to the basement. My best advice: if *your* darling ever asks you to this, run away fast!
So I get down there. The reason the mop bucket was making the trip was that I'd discovered that young Daniel, who is allergic to mold, had left a few boxes of opened cookies under the sofa (the basement is where the boys' gameroom -PS2, etc- is located) and they'd gotten moldy. It's also a big storage room, home of over-tired furniture, etc. "Help me move this couch", she said. Yuck on the tiles underneath it (hey, when you're blasting monsters, who wants to worry about housekeeping?). Everytime I moved something, more yuck. We may be food for worms, but old hidden empty boxes of crackers in a damp environment are food for mold. Eventually, I'd moved every piece of furniture, every box out of the room, and got the first good look at the room since we'd moved in.
Now, I have to explain that we got the house at half the market value a few years back, precisely because there'd been a flood caused by a water company mistake. The homeowners took the settlement and went on an extended vacation to mexico, and when they got back they sold the place. So I *did* know that this room was a problem: half the cieling was ripped down, the wall board was missing in several places from the damage inspection. I took a hard look at the remaining paneling, and realized it was soft near the bottom. Ripped it out with a hammer and my bare hands, and clouds of what I can only believe were mold spores came billowing out. At that point, I was ready to rip *everything*, and Doorlink was ready to authorize purchase of however many building materials it would take to fix the problem.
So all the rest of saturday was taken up by moving and ripping. Sunday morning was prep work and the despot, sunday afternoon was putting down the underlayment for new tile. I've got weeks of work in there by the time its fit for human habitation in there. Suffice it to say her kitchen doors are on hold.
Anyway, there will be much work done while I have the walls open (rewiring, new lighting, etc.) We'll need a builtin dehumidifier (do such things even exist?) I can drain it out the back wall... I just want something I can turn on and not think about). The room is 16 x 25, so there are many opportunities for builtin furniture. In fact, the space is so big, it can be my minishop while I build it back up.
If any of you have any good thoughts on what kind of builtins should be there, they would be much appreciated. I need to move fast, because she wants her kitchen done by her birthday in mid-september. Yikes!
All this leads me to wonder whether I should invoke ancient english poetry: "So always this middle-earth fails and falls" or something more modern like, say, 19th century french: "Such is the daily news from the whole world." Geez, Louise...
Thanks,
Bill
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