DIY

I hate DIY projects. When I first moved into the house, we dumped a lot of money re-doing just about every room in the house, and now some of those rooms need re-doing from wear and tear. The short list of what I have done myself or has been done by others:

• New Pergo floor in my living which I did myself and didnt manage to cut any of my fingers off with a band saw
• Complete re-painting of the living room (done by painter)
• Painted the upstairs and down stairs hallways
• New kitchen counter (installed by your’s truly)
• New kitchen track lights – me
• Complete re-do of the playroom, which had one time been an office. There was a lot of demo in this project.
• All bed rooms upstairs repaint (others)
• Re-cushioned the dining room chairs.
• Re-painted the powder (that needs to be done in about two weeks)
• Tiled the kitchen sink and oven backsplashes
• New retaining wall in the backward (others)
• Complete demo of the backyard. This involved heavy machinery, and the landscaper wouldn’t let me give the Bobcat a whirl
• New heater (others)
• Annual drive-way re-surfacing (which I haven’t done yet)

The project that went south halfway through was the playroom. We wanted to install pocket doors between the playroom and the dining room. I found an odd-jobs contractor who came in, did half the work, then disappeared. $500 down the drain. So I had to find another guy to come in and finish the job. Other than that, of all of the projects I have done myself, the ones I am most proud of are the living room floor, and the kitchen tiling. I had never installed any type of wood flooring prior, and to install 400 square feet of the stuff on my own was rewarding. The kitchen tiling project was the same – a “never been done” project by yours truly. While on the surface these projects do not seem complicated, I have absolutely no hands-on skills. What I do have is an extreme cleverness of how things work. Put something in front of me and give me enough time and I will figure it out (or break it). Its why I like to take things apart when they break. I once built a PC from scratch, just to say I did it. Not rocket science by any stretch, but rewarding none the less.

So, let’s get to the point of this post: I am in the middle of painting my laundry room. The wife wanted a project to do on her own, so she ripped up the existing laminate tile and replaced it with new laminate tile (but much prettier). Now, its my turn to paint. I got the splacking done on Saturday, and started painting last night around 6:30. I got most of the first coat on, and since its a laundry room, I don’t think I am going to do a 2nd coat- looks good as is. Heather ripped up off the baseboard and I sanded it down so I can put a fresh coat of white paint on it. After that, I have to paint the door and figure out how I am going to get behind my water heater and boiler. The beauty of this being a utility room gives me the freedom to do a less then perfect job, only because a) it will get banged up alot and b) no one will see it and c) its a huge improvement on the condition of the room over the existing condition.

The downside of this project is moving everything that was stored in that little room elsewhere. My dining room looks like a bomb hit it. I am amazed at how much stuff/ crap we we’re able to fit in that room. There will be a major “cleaning out” of a lot that stuff, with some of it going to the attic, trash and possible future yard sale. But, when its all said and done, the room should be a shadow of it’s former self.

When I do get it into DIT vibe (it takes me a while to get motivated), I usually can’t stop, so after this is done, I am going to roll right into the powder room. I just re-painted this about two years ago with a nice light purple/ lavender color. It didn’t hold up. Since that little bathroom gets about 80% of the foot traffic from the girls and me, the walls are all banged up. So I am going to not only re-paint it, but smash up the existing floor and re-tile it or pergo it. I was going to pay for someone to do this, but its a really tiny room. I could have the re-flooring done in about a day or two, and then its a matter of re-painting.

When the laundry room is completed I am re-staining my outdoor wooden door steps. I re-stained them two years ago, but I dont think I put enough water-seal on because they started to get really dinged up. Luckily, I invested in a small hand sander, so that project is just a matter of sanding and re-staining. Its a one day job. Since its a quickie job, I’ll probably bang that out before I do the powder room.

There’s a guy sitting in front of me listening to music, and he is not only nodding his head to his music, he is in full-scale nod similar to what what the orthodox Jews do at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. This dude is going to give himself a headache.