Breathing paint fumes

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

I have been on a bit of a tear the last few weeks.  To understand my level of accomplishment, the back story is totally necessary.  
I decided, back in November and about two weeks after putting poor little Fred to sleep, that it was a perfect opportunity to replace all the interior doors.  I swear the kitty door into the laundry room is haunted.  It's constantly setting off the hubby's ghost meter.  I keep hearing the departed cat scratching away when I'm home alone.
All the doors are original to the house.  They are that horrible dark plywood from the 1970's.  Every door has a collection of scratches and holes from the previous owner, her daughters, and their pets.  I have covered some of the holes with contact paper in an almost perfectly matching wood veneer.  Every door has a different door knob.  The laundry room door handle keeps falling off, and I couldn't pry it off to replace it. 
I had a very nice handy man come out and measure, and he delivered the doors the first week of December.  I ordered all matching door knobs and hinges on Ebay and saved myself a ton of money.  I decided to save some additional money and paint the doors myself.  I bought all of the necessary accessories (paint, drop cloth, and L-bar) and was poised to begin painting in earnest.  I have an industrial sized air compressor and an HVLP gun which I bought to paint the kitchen doors four years ago.  I have been waiting for an opportunity to use my gun again.
Needless to say, it is now Valentine's Day, and the doors are sitting, as yet untouched, in the garage.  The delay?  All those other projects on the list.

Project Number 1:  Finish the guest room.  The poor guest room.  I had managed to scrape the popcorn off the ceiling and paint three of the walls a buttercream yellow, but that was almost two years ago.  Two weeks ago, I haphazardly patched the ceiling, busted out the compressor and texture hopper (yeah, I bought one of those too), and refinished the ceiling.  I should have spent more time patching.  There is nothing worse than being able to see every imperfection.  I moved all the furniture and painted that fourth wall an interesting golden brown.  It's called Bread Basket.  I finally dug out the bedframe, reupholstered the headboard with an espresso pleather, and bought new bedding.  All that is left is putting up the molding, touching up the ceiling, and hanging the curtain rod.  I already hung up some art, and I'm going to wait on ordering the bifold mirrored doors.  They're expensive and not a priority.  I painted the molding, and will probably put it up tomorrow.  I think I'm going to try using a coping method instead of my compound miter saw, but I'm not committed to it just yet.
Project Number 2:  The hallway.  We've had big plans for the hallway.  It is to be a gallery of our family unity and splendor.  I was always jealous of my friends whose parents covered the walls with monuments to missing teeth, soccer league championships, and graduations.  My parents are minimalists.  Even today, the only pictures up are one of my son, one of my brother, his wedding photo, me alone, and my wedding photo.  The good stuff is taped to the computer monitors in their office where guests don't go.  Anyway, the hallway is where the majority of the new doors will be.  Wouldn't it be nice if the doors are framed by nicely painted walls and well placed photos?  Two weeks ago, I scraped the popcorn off the ceiling.  Last weekend, I tackled the lights.

We have been blessed with square recessed lights circa 1972.  Our first month in the house, I had to call the fire department at 1AM because we kept smelling smoke.  It turned out to be one of the hall lights overheating due to loose wires.  Not only are they fire hazards, but they also have big gaping openings that vent all the heat from the house right into the attic.  Not very energy efficient.  My handyman told me that replacing them was a project I could handle on my own.  I decided to see if I could pull it off.  What it took?  The purchase of: three recessed cans, trim, wire nuts, wire clamps,  lightbulbs (picking out the right bulbs took 30 minutes because I had to talk up the Home Depot guy), a small drywall board, drywall saw, drywall screws, drywall tape, joint compound, and then I had to run out and buy heavy duty wire cutters.  I also had some scrap wood strips.
The first step was to shut off the power and finally climb into the attic.  I had vowed that I would avoid the attic at all costs, but it was time to be de-virginized.  My aversion to the attic stems from the previous year's battle with an infestation of Norwegian rats.  Black Plague, anyone?  I wasn't going to take any chances that the pesky rodents may have been napping in the insulation, so I donned a ski mask, safety goggles, dust mask, and gloves.  I only wish I had invested in that pink tool belt.  Lugging a lamp, flashlight, pliers, hammer, screwdriver, cell phone and other oddities was rather precarious as I tried to balance along the 2x4 beams.  Why did I have to go into the attic?  To detach the existing lights.  Duh!  The dang things weren't nailed in, they were stapled in with inch long industrial staples.  It took me over an hour to pry them loose.  Then it was just a matter clipping the wires off of the old fixtures.

Next step, cutting the drywall to patch the squares.  Tedious process to get them to fit even with drawing templates first.  Cutting the circles was the easiest part.  Then there was the securing of the patches with scrap wood.  Each hole took an hour to cut, fit, secure and patch.  The tape and compound was probably the most fun, but it's a multi-phased process, and I'm still working on smoothing everything out.
Final step, connecting the replacement lights.  Unfortunately, the existing wires didn't provide enough slack to reconnect the new lights from below, so back to the attic I went.  Another hour passed of squatting on 2x4s, sweating in my ski mask, and desperately trying to strip and twist the copper wires.  I think I neglected to mention that the lights are connected on a three way switch which allows you to turn the lights on and off at either end of the hall.  Twisting that many copper wires together was a challenge.  I actually ran out of time, and had to run to pick up my son from daycare.  I ran into his daycare two minutes before they closed covered in cobwebs and sweating.  The next morning, I was back up in the attic.  I re-twisted and taped up the bulkier lines to make sure everything was well connected.  Back down in the hall, I screwed in a light bulb and flipped the switch.  Nothing happened.  My parents were a little concerned that I might cause an electrical fire, so I promised that I would call my handyman.  I was positive I had done everything correctly, so I couldn't understand why the lights still weren't on.  A few days later, the handyman climbed into my attic with his meter.  At the first light, he called down for me to flip the switch and turn on the lights.  I could hear his meter start beeping away.  Okay, that means I connected everything correctly.  So why no lights?  From above, Mr.Handy asked, "Did you check your bulbs?"  Really?  I ran to test the bulbs.  They worked just fine in the kitchen fixture.  I ran back to the hallway, climbed my step stool and touched my finger to the bulb I had put in previously.  It blinked to life.  Yeah, that's right, I didn't screw it in all the way.  Mr. Handy climbed out of my attic, I paid him for his troubles, and I stared at my lovely new recessed lights glowing brightly in the hallway.
I've been sick since Mr. Handy's visit, but I did manage to apply a fresh coating of joint compound after sanding everything down.  Mr. Handy warned me that if I can't get it perfectly smooth, I should seriously consider apply a texture to the ceiling.  After my unsatisfactory results of the guest room ceiling, I will definitely be taking his advice.  More construction details to come.