closet

A small (but very satisying) project completed this weekend was finishing up the conversion of the obsolete back steps to a hall closet.  Previously, everything had just been piled up on the steps, making it difficult to find anything.   About a year ago, I wired the closet for power and CAT5, as well as installed our router and VOIP unit.  As with all projects that reduce clutter, there is a real sense of calm that comes out of seeing things neatly organized on shelves.

And no post is complete without the amusing or painful “oops” backstory.  In this case, when I bought the plywood for the shelves (back in 2008!), I hadn’t paid much attention to it.  Only after making my first cut did I notice that the grain looked unusually interesting…and suprisinging oak-like.  A quick check of the label verified that someone had slid a sheet of two-sided oak plywood into the stack of what I had meant to buy.  After I got the nerve to pull out the receipt, I learned that I had spent $60 on a single sheet!  And now we have the best-looking toilet paper shelves around…

Neat and tidy...for now!

I got the  bug to pick back up where we left off on the downstairs hall closet (abandoned stairwell).  Back in 2007, we started converting the steps into proper shelves, but we’ve done nothing but pile more crap into the closet since then.  Over the last week, I finally brought some power (including a light) and some network cables for our wireless router into the formerly uncivilized space.  I’ve been wanting to move the router to the ground floor for a long time, because it performed pretty poorly in the basement utility room, being blocked by the ductwork and the furnace.

While I was at it, I relocated our phone’s base station here, too, since it suffered from the same problems as the wi-fi.  Both are working much better than they were before.  And if you’re wondering why I did such an overkill, industrial job with the electric conduit, it’s because I scavenged about 200′ of conduit and dozens of handy boxes when my company’s office was being remodeled a few years ago.  The contractor was going to send it all of for scrap, so I grabbed as much of it as I could.  It’s been taking up space in the garage for over 3 years, so I get all excited any chance I get to pull out the conduit bender and actually get to use some of it!

Conduit and cat5, oh my!

This weekend saw another closet door hung, as well as more trim in Chloe’s room. I basically just worked until I ran out of wood, which didn’t take too long. Got to pick up more MDF this week.  As often happens, I realized that my “vision” was limited when I created the closet openings.  If I had just put them a few inches over, I wouldn’t have had to do all the funky cuts in the trim.  On the other hand, I think they look kind of cool with the notches for the rafters in them.

The loved/hated trip to Home Depot guaranteed a late start and a shorter workday today. However, some progress was made, so I’m feeling pretty good about things. Plumbing is usually one of my slower “skills,” so it’s great when it doesn’t fight me too much.

Holes cut in flooring for supply/drain pipes for upstairs. These will get boxed in once it’s all done. Or, more likely, in the week before we put the house on the market. And no, we have no plans to do so, but how high of a priority will this be when other parts of our house are still inhabitable? I didn’t get the drain pipe all the way up to this point today, but it’ll eventually work its way towards the upstairs through this hole, along with the supply lines.

In the basement, I took out the sink, which has to be moved due to being directly in the path of where I had to run the 3″ drain for the new upstairs bath. I removed the cleanout assembly that I had put in two years ago and replaced it with a 45°fitting to allow me to connect the new drain line to the main stack. I use pieces of leftover wire to help me hold the pipes in place as I install them. I always find this to be the trickiest part…trying to get everything cut, glued and installed with the proper slope. I have to add a disclaimer that all the sloppy wiring visible in this picture was not done by me! It was a gift from the previous owner. When we eventually get around to redoing this bath, it’ll all get cleaned up!

Our house has a 2nd stairwell to the upstairs, which we think is pretty unusual in a house of this size (approx 2000′ sq. ft., not including the basement). However, it was long ago sealed up to create enough floor space for an additional bedroom in the upstairs. We have also opted to keep the extra square footage, because we need two bedrooms upstairs and like being able to use the stairway as an extra closet. We are seriously closet-deficient in this house, so we take anything we can get!

This stairway is also the only available and feasible location for running our new plumbing for the future 1/2 bath upstairs. We’ll be running the supply and drain lines over on the right hand side of the stairwell. The bottom two treads have been removed and the holes cut into the basement, but we haven’t taken an pictures yet. These “before” pictures will have to do for now. We’ll add more soon if we have time to work on it tomorrow…

Closet framing continues.

We had a couple of areas upstairs that were completely sealed off. I don’t think that’s ever a good idea, since you can’t get in to check on things.  Like the piles of raccoon poop that we found in this area.  After screening off the entry points, we started framing out walls for a closet.  Why close the space off and waste it?

This was the original, narrow cabinet.  We later expanded it after removing the chimney.