The hallway was repaired and repainted several years ago. The floor was refinished a couple of years after the hall was done. The only part that wasn’t finished was the ceiling.

The ceiling consisted of stapled up ceiling tiles and an unswitched light (pull chain). The light is (was) one of the few still tied into an old circuit. I think the study, kitchen and pantry lights are the only remaining lights on that part of the circuit.

Late last week the pull-chain switch on the light stopped working (the light remained on all the time). Instead of just fixing the light fixture, Susanna and I decided to add a new fixture and a switch.

Of course it is not possible to run new wires and a switch without digging into the ceiling. Nothing like planning a project in a day and starting it on a Sunday morning.

Sunday I was able to take down the ceiling tiles. Demolition is much faster (and messier) than installation. Of course with rain and snow in the forecast for most of the week, it may be a couple of days before we are able to pick up drywall to cover the ceiling.

I was also able to get a new wire run from the basement and a switch installed before we headed out to watch Ben play soccer. Of course I didn’t cap the old wiring and turn the power back on to the lights on the first floor until I returned home later that day (after dark). I figured that Susanna had a flashlight.

I removed all the tiles. Above the tiles is the original plaster. I didn’t remove all the plaster, however, I removed portions of the plaster and lath as needed to run the wires. I will cover the old plaster and lath with drywall.

Thanks to the snow, I had an unexpected afternoon to work on the project. I finished wiring the hall light. We ordered a new fixture that will hopefully arrive this week, but probably not. The hall will remain without light until the fixture arrives. We ordered the light fixture and switch plates from House of Antique Hardware. I am putting push-button switches in the house to match the house style. The switches are a modern replica of antique switches. They are also expensive for switches (about $16/switch). Luckily I don’t need many switches, and already had some in the workshop.

The hallway had the remnants of a switch for an old porch light. Neither the light nor the switch were working. With the ceiling opened up it was easy to run new wires to the porch light and add a new fixture (this one was purchased at Home Depot). So, after many years, we finally have light on the front porch.

Over the next week, I will need to pick up drywall and cover the ceiling. It is a pretty small area (less than 2 sheets of drywall).  We are planning on adding crown molding to the part of the ceiling that meets the walls. It will be a little extra work to make the crown molding look good with the opening for the stairs. It is also a small space, so the molding will have to be reasonably small. But the advantage of a small room is that it won’t take much molding.

I don’t know if we have any hall paint to touch up mistakes, so I’ll have to be careful working. With Will’s birthday party this Saturday, we will probably not be finished until after the weekend. So our guests will have to enjoy the view of a partial ceiling in the front hallway. I never said we were good at timing our projects.

Luckily most of the guests will be 11-year old boys and don’t really care about ceilings. Or even notice them.

Susanna and I have made a good start on projects this year. We are focusing on smaller projects this winter.  So far, so good. It is nice to have projects that can be completed in a single weekend.

This weekend we finished a couple of smaller projects in the bathroom. I replaced the vinyl tiles with improved vinyl tiles. I had done most of the grouting last night, however a couple of the smaller pieces of tile didn’t want to stick (near the tub).  I had to get construction adhesive this morning to finish the job. I had finished touching up the grout by lunch.

Susanna wanted to repaint the radiator. We picked up spray paint last night, and this morning she sprayed two coats on the radiator. It is a huge improvement.

The closet is under the stairs and was 5-6 feet deep. And pretty useless. It had two shelves way in the back, each were 24″ deep. I built a wall that was 24″ back from the door, and reused the wood from the old shelves to build 4 shelves that are only 12″ deep. We were able to take all the stuff that was in the closet, plus all the towels that we had kept above the toilet and put them in the new closet.

So, that is 3 small projects completed this weekend.  There are several small projects that we can still do in the bathroom, but it is working out well to only pick small projects for now.

Now to take a shower and go out for a beer.

We have an old house. That means never ending projects. Over the past couple of years, we have made progress and renovated (or at least repainted) most of the rooms in the house. However, we have a couple that we haven’t touched yet. And those rooms suck.

The worst room is probably the mud room/laundry room. The walls and floor are in bad shape. We have talked about doing that room later this spring or summer, but we will have to see if we have time to get to that project. But, I figure, if people enter the house through the ugliest room, then they will be more impressed with the rest of the house. As long as they stayed out of the bathroom…

The bathroom is the next ugliest room. There is only one bathroom in the house (which does cause some fights).  We also need to replace the walls in the guest room, but it isn’t a frequently used room, so it can wait. I won’t even mention the basement, but that doesn’t really count as part of the house (it would probably be a good place to bury a body – but that is a story for another day).

I would love to gut the bathroom and totally redo the room, but, with only one bathroom in the house, that isn’t really an option. I would really love to pay someone to gut the bathroom and redo it.  But what is the fun in having a project done quickly when one can drag it on for months? Our long-term plans include adding a bathroom on the second floor; gutting the first floor bathroom will occur after the second bathroom is completed.

The floor in the bathroom is vinyl tiles installed on top of a plywood subfloor. The tiles are the cheapest self-stick variety that was available to whomever last redid the bathroom. In addition, the plywood was never sealed prior to the floor being installed. Add humidity and water, and the tiles start coming up and the plywood gets soft.

Susanna and I decided to replace the vinyl tile in the bathroom this weekend. It should be a quick weekend project and hopefully make the room look a lot better. Or at least not so embarrassing.

I removed the old tile in the evenings this week, and used epoxy to repair the plywood where it was rotting. Last night I washed the floor with TSP and filled the low spots with a floor leveling compound.  I let the floor dry overnight and used a latex primer/sealer on the plywood this morning.

I’ll probably do a second coat on the primer shortly. I’ll pull out the toilet just before I install the tiles.  It is warm out, so it wouldn’t be bad to use the woods, but an indoor toilet is just so much more convenient.

I prefer ceramic tile to vinyl, but the long-term plan is to gut the bathroom, and removing ceramic tile is a pain. So I am replacing the cheap vinyl with a higher quality vinyl tile. I purchased TrafficMaster Ceramica self stick tiles. These are vinyl tiles, but are thick – almost half the thickness of a ceramic tile. They can be grouted to look more like real ceramic or stone.

The tiles weren’t much more expensive than the cheap vinyl tiles, and will hopefully hold up better than the previous ones. You can come visit in a year or two and see how they look. But you would probably just notice how crappy the fake tile walls look and ignore the floor.

My plans today are only to replace the tiles on the side of the bathroom with the shower and toilet. I’ll replace the tiles on the side with the sink another day. It would have been a long weekend project to pull out the sink as well as the toilet.  I also didn’t want to head out-of-town next week and leave Susanna with an unfinished bathroom. I’m just nice that way. Sometimes.

Tomorrow we are talking about adding a wall and shelves to the bathroom closet. I think the project (at least adding the wall) can be done in one morning. Adding storage in the bathroom will go a long way to improving the space.  We can also remove the crappy shelves that were above the toilet.

Now all we have to do is figure out what to put above the toilet. Maybe a nice set of shelves, similar to what I put in the boys rooms. Or maybe a big mirror.

Total cost for tiles and supplies for this project: Under $100.

Susanna and I have a (pretty long) list of small projects to do around the house. As well as a list of unfinished projects. Some of the unfinished projects include things like replacing the door hinges in the kitchen (I ordered new hinges a while ago) and adding lights to the garage that I bought a year ago (I only installed half of them).

One of the bigger unfinished projects was to hook up the new outlets in Will’s bedroom.  I wired up four new outlets in his room when we replaced one plaster wall with drywall a year ago. I ran the wires to the attic, but didn’t run a new wire up from the basement. I wanted two full circuits on the second floor, so I didn’t tie into the outlets in Ben’s room. Will’s room had one functioning outlet so it wasn’t a crisis to finish that project. So I never did. Until today.

One of Susanna’s outstanding projects was to sand down the door the basement. She had stripped and sanded the door last year, but she was unhappy with the results.

Today we decided to tackle both projects. I think we both were tired of sitting around, stuck in the house because of the cold weather and snow (the thermometer read -8F/-22C this morning). So it seems better to be stuck inside doing projects. In the morning I helped Susanna move the basement door down to the basement to be refinished. In the afternoon, I attacked the wiring in Will’s room.

I ran a wire down from the attic to the guest room outlet, and ran a new wire up from the basement to the guest room. I finished the project by dinner time, and have eliminated all but two of the old circuits from the house (I think one of the remaining ones goes to some of the lights on the first floor – I’m not sure what the second circuit is). I didn’t curse as much as I normally do when fishing wires. But I did have to remove some plaster on the basement stairs to get the wiring run. The plaster on those stairs looks like sh*t anyway, so it isn’t a big deal.

The door is nearly done, Susanna will put the final coat of poly on tonight and we can re-install the door tomorrow morning (she put on 4-5 coats of shellac already today). And, since I’m in the mode of doing electrical work, I may add a switched light to the second floor of the barn as well as an outside light to the barn tomorrow. The real win tomorrow will be if I can convince the boys to spend time cleaning the basement tomorrow.

It feels good to knock off one of my unfinished projects.

Sorry, no pictures. I couldn’t think of any possible pictures of the wiring that anyone, including myself, would at all find interesting. And the door. Well, it is just a door. It looks like it did yesterday, just better.

The weather last weekend was beautiful.  Sunday was perfect for painting the chicken coop. The plan had been to let the wood dry for a while, and then paint to match the house colors. Now all I need to do is paint the garage behind it to match the house.

Susanna and I repaired and repainted the living room walls and ceiling in late 2011. At that time we decided to not do the floors and only finish the project we started. The floors had been bothering Susanna since then.

This summer we discussed hiring someone to refinish the floors, but decided to take a weekend to try the project ourselves.  We picked last weekend to try to finish the project.

We emptied out the room before Friday. I rented the floor sander for Friday and Saturday and started sanding on Friday night. The paint on the floors was more difficult to get off than I had anticipated (and went through more sandpaper than I had planned). Finally we had the floors sanded and ready for the first coat on Saturday night. I put down a coat of sanding sealer (shellac), and a couple of hours later the first coat of Minwax rapid dry floor polyurethane.  On Sunday morning I did a second coat of poly before picking up the boys.

By Sunday night I could tell that too much dust had settled in the top coat, and it needed to be sanded smooth and a third coat put on the floor. However, the floors weren’t dry enough to sand on Sunday night, so Susanna and the boys hand sanded the dust out of the top coat on Monday. I applied the top coat on the floor Monday night after the boys went to bed.

We let the floors sit until this weekend and then moved the furniture back into the room yesterday. In hindsight we should have waited longer before moving the piano. The weight of the piano left some marks in the new finish – our plan is to sand out those parts and put down more poly  to cover up those parts. I don’t see a problem fixing the mistakes. However, we are waiting for the humidity to drop before putting more poly down.

In addition to refinishing the floor, Susanna bought a new TV stand. We decided that with a new living room and TV stand that it was time to upgrade the TV to something a little more modern than the old beast of a TV we had been using, so we picked up a Samsung Smart TV. Susanna can even watch SVT (Swedish television) directly on it. Of course SVT limits what can be seen outside of Sweden – fixing that is the next step