Author: Justin

The right thing to do in a project when you’re unsure how to proceed is to just procrastinate on it indefinitely, right? Then one day in the bath, inspiration will struggle like a lightning bolt, you’ll shout “Arcata!” and then do some recreational streaking, and the problem will be sorted.

Something like that, anyways.

We have had the bookcase door sitting on the floor in the family room for quite a few months now, and I’m sad to report distressingly few signs of providence and/or muses preparing to supply me with the perfect plan for getting it mounted.

Alas.

So I finally worked up the gumption to move forward with my least unsatisfactory plan. This involved attaching the top pin hinge to substantial blocking between the joists to help them resist the substantial horizontal forces that are going to be trying to twist the joists.

Today I cut the drywall to access the joists and mount my blocking and found this:

That’s a heating duct, right where my blocking needs to go.

I think I’ll go take a bath. Couldn’t hurt.

The downstairs bedroom has a walk-in closet that’s a little bit funky to use the space efficiently. It’s about 68″x108″, with a soffit down one side and an off-center doorway.

On the suggestion of a friend, to The Container Store we went. A lovely designer helped us figure out a plan, and a rather large list of components was spit out by their custom software they use for these things.

The order was placed, and an inordinate number of boxes (30 or so) made their way to our carport. Sorry, FedEx guy.

Many hours of installation work later and we have a closet that works way better than I thought it would! And is impossible to capture in pictures without a much ridiculously wide angle lens. Here’s a peek:

Today I also put up the bifold doors for the furnace alcove and this closet. Unfortunately the closet bifolds are just a little too wide, so I’ll have to trim them down tomorrow:

With the closet put together, the downstairs bedroom is much more livable. Exciting times!

One of our rough openings is…really not good. The whole thing has enough skew to it that, if the jamb sits unshimmed against the top right of the opening, the bottom left of the jamb is too close to the door and it won’t close.

Remind me to have some stern words with the guy that framed that opening. [1]

I would just us a sledge to persuade one of the studs to move a bit, but the part.that needs to move is pressed against a concrete footer, and so is definitely not going anywhere at the very bottom.

So, shaving back the stud on the bottom left is the order of the day. Not sure what the best tools for this job would be, but I chose…hammer and chisel.

I also managed to move it a bit above the concrete footer by really wailing on it with the sledge.

End result is an extra rough rough opening, but it’s now pretty plumb.so hopefully the door will actually fit.

Happily, though this stud is in a bearing wall, I happen to know this particular stud is redundant (the jack stud on the footer is behind this one) so I don’t need to worry about nibbling too much wood out.

[1] – Some guy by the name of Justin Carlson. His friends-and-family prices are excellent, but he sure screws up a lot.

Pepper is still pretty sure our stairs eat puppies. I’m reasonably sure it is a fear that would work itself out given enough time, but he’s getting awfully big to schlep up and down.

So we’ve been working on it. Baby food is the lure of choice here; it motivates even the mostly timid of canines to attempt great feats.

Yesterday I got him to go all the way up, today we spent some time working on the reverse.

So I was moving some (large, heavy) shower doors, and one of them, sort of, well…

exploded.

Not sure what caused it. I was resting it on the ground (while holding it) when it happened. I must have tweaked it in just the wrong way.

But wow, when it went, it really went. Glass *everywhere*.

I was not wearing long pants. Or a long sleeve shirt. Or shoes. Or safety glasses. Or any sort of safety gear at all. It just didn’t occur to me that “massive piece of tempered glass shattering while being held” was a thing that might happen.

In retrospect, I got extremely lucky. Initially I thought I was completely unscathed, but then I started bleeding from a lot of little cuts. Had a few small cuts on my neck, found glass in my hair, but my eyes were fine. Needed bandages for a few cuts, but nothing requiring stitches or medical attention.

You know that trope of action-hero-dives-through-window-and-arises-unscathed? Gonna me a lot harder for me to maintain suspension of disbelief on that one these days.

You can bet that I’ll be a little more appropriately attired the next time I wrestle shower doors around.