door

This is something I would never have realized without having a houseblog that allowed me to easily look back on my bold predictions, but I believe that I have just solved one of the great puzzles of remodeling. We all know when we think a particular project will be completed, but how can we predict when it will really be done?

Today I put the 2nd coat of stain on the door of our family room closet. That got me to thinking about how long it had been since I had started sanding the door. A quick search on our site revealed the answer…1 year, 11 months. Ironically, I titled that post ‘back in the saddle,’ which implied that we were back on the horse for a ride, not just a quick trot around the yard. Sadly, the door sanding post came a good six months after the room was allegedly nearly done. And not to mention that in the meantime some animal(s) had holed up under the tarp for enough time to do unspeakable things to that door.

So, to summarize, here’s the chain of events that have led to “finishing” our family room:

• Fall 2007: Chloe moves out of her room, freeing it up to be our TV room
• 7/2008: I will give us a pass here, since Ginger was born a year earlier, but we now finally start the project.
• 10/2008: We are nearly finished after only 9 weeks. We are on a ROLL here!
• 5/2009: That’s strange…where did the last 7 months go? Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because the door is being sanded, and we are going to be done soon.
• 5/2010: Now would be a good time to get the patio cleared off for the summer. Ooh, wait a minutes, what’s this crap under the tarp?! Damn it, this never would have happened if I had just finished sanding this door when I stopped a few weeks (a full year) ago!
• 4/2011: Last week I did actually finish sanding the door (as well as the upstairs bathroom door), and I stained it this weekend. Things are really moving now!
• The future: All that’s needed now is two coats of poly and some hinges. How long could that take? [I am documenting this now as a challenge to ourselves to actually see this thing through.]

So back to the question of when a given project will be completed. After analyzing many such improvements in our house, I have realized that all projects can be broken down into a simple equation…

Multiply these factors together:

• Cost of project (in US dollars)
• Number of children squared
• Disgust or annoyance with the project (measured in # of hours it takes to force yourself to start working on it on a Saturday morning)
• Number of other projects that are competing for your attention
• Number of times you think or say “wouldn’t be it be cool if…”

Divide by these factors:

• Bank account balance or equity line in US dollars
• Partner’s “encouragement” to finish (units are # of times subject comes up in a one month period)

The end result will be the number of months it will take to finish the project. The amazing thing I have discovered, though, is that no matter what project you plug into the equation, the end result is always virtually the same…somewhere between 3 and 4 years. This doesn’t apply to the entire house remodel, mind you, as that will never be done, but it is a good estimator of how long a single component of the remodel will take.

I hope that others will find this equation useful and stop themselves before they even start projects. Or better yet, before they purchase their home. If you stopped telling yourselves that this “little” project will only take a few weeks, you could save a lot of headaches and cash. Try this out before embarking on your next job and see if it still makes sense! And if anyone finds this to be useful or discovers missing factors, please let me know in the comments.

And since we are actually getting close to finishing this family room, let’s get back to the closet door. As with all our old fir doors, it looks fantastic with fresh stain, most importantly, there is no visible trace of it having been used as a toilet.

Inspiring

This kind of gets me motivated to start working on the rest of the upstairs doors. How long could that take?

They came back out yesterday to swap out the mis-drilled panels and to install the other door, as well as our hardware. Not only do they look so much better, they actually work. No more fighting with doors that won’t open or close! Now we just need paint and the rest of the trim…

A big difference!

Here is how our garage looks today.  All the trim is up except the header boards, and one of our garage doors is in.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the garage door company fubar’d the hardware, though, which means we have to wait longer so they can get replacement panels.

Because these are faux-carriage doors, we wanted hardware that at least helped maintain the illusion.  Stephanie had discussed this with the door company, and the decision was that we would procure the hardware on our own (since they didn’t seem to be able to or want to get it).  When she came out of the house during the install, though, she found a single, standard chrome handle had been installed near the middle of the door.  It is weird how such a small thing can make such a difference, but it really does.  The handle is neither centered on the door, nor centered on the piece of door to which it’s attached.  It grabs your eye and really makes you look at it.  Additionally, the lift handle at the bottom (not visible in photo) was installed in a similar off-kilter way.  We are now waiting for new panels to be made, and these will end up going to someone that doesn’t want their “carriage doors” to look like carriage doors.  Otherwise, though, the door looks really good and will look even better once it’s painted to match the house colors.

If you compare the two pictures, you will notice the middle looks very different.  Previously, the two doors were centered in their respective openings, but the right garage is about 11″ wider than the left.  This made for a funky imbalance in the trim.  Stephanie had the great idea of shifting the right door over towards the right side, so that all trim could be the same size.  Fortunately, the CMU blocks in the middle section were recessed by almost 3/4″ relative to the concrete header, so it was a (relatively) simple matter of building this area up with plywood, which will get painted to match the garage/house color.  The new symmetry gives the whole garage a much more polished look.

Before the gap between doors was widened

Or maybe it was a raccoon, an opossum and a rat.  And it wasn’t in a pub but actually a blue tarp that had been protecting (I use the term loosely) our large stack of stripped down doors until we had time to refinish them.

While doing the annual spring cleaning of our patio, I lifted up said tarp, so that I could relocate the doors, which had been lying across two sawhorses since last summer.  My first thought was that Chloe had picked up a piece of dog poop with something and then put it under the tarp.  That didn’t make sense anyway, but especially not once I grasped the magnitude of the “deposits.”  And once I got over my initial shock, it became clear that at least two different species had been shacking up under our tarp.  I consider myself open-minded, but even I wasn’t comfortable with this type of relationship.

Another possibility is that it was an opossum having a litter of babies on top of our closet door.  I used a scraper and a hose to knock everything off, but as you can see from the picture, there was definitely some damage.  I am hoping that once it’s sanded and refinished with a dark stain, it won’t be too noticeable.  That is not a job I’m looking forward to!

Pre-stained, err...pee-stained

Another moderate weekend of work, but the end is definitely close enough to taste now!  The biggest indicator of progress is that the scaffold has been broken down and won’t be set up again for this project.  The only things left on the punch list are:

• strip and re-finish front door
• finish sidelights and trim around front door
• touch up the trim around 6 windows with bronze paint
• paint and install 2 more storm windows
• paint exposed trim on back dormer
• add trim around back dormer windows
• rebuild rotted posts and railings in front of porch

Considering where we started, that is a teeny little list.  It may or may not all get done this fall, but we are at least weather-tight and ready for the rain now.

Sidelights look much more distinguised with their new bronze paint

Bronze-painted storm windows re-installed

All rafters painted!

The lazy (but fast) way out of the mess of a back dormer...covering it with metal!

Things are really feeling good.  Three of the dormers are done, sans touch-ups, and we have moved the scaffold over to the other side of the house.  The end is clearly in sight now!

Dormer #3...check.

Cheap labor

Primed jambs and sidelights

Completed west side

The tallest platform shoes ever

After another full week, things are looking much, much better.  The front is almost completely done, as is the west side.  We finally picked the accent color, and the front dormer is the first area to have all the colors together in one place.  I stripped down the peeling paint around the front door and even started the door itself.  Ultimately, we plan on staining the door and sidelights.

Porch ceiling, with only a few touch-ups left

Front window trim painted

Remember how the front windows used to look? Not to mention Chloe...

A full-day project! (trim not painted here yet, but note the accent color above)

The old purple door

A complete paint job! (at least what you can see...)

And the scaffolding has been moved around the corner for more rafter tails

Now it's hard to believe we lived with this color for so long...

I looked back and realized it’s been six months since we’ve posted (or done) any actual renovation updates.  Today, that’s changing.  I started sanding the old, worn stain off the family room doors, so that we can match them to the new trim stain.  It’s not much fun.  If anyone knows of any power sanders that can actually do a good job in the crevices of these doors, let me know!  I spent almost three hours working on a single door, and I’m still not done.  Yuck.

Close, but still a long ways to go...

Today was much more fulfilling than yesterday.  If you compare the pictures, you’ll see why!

It always takes me awhile to get back in the groove of hauling up all the tools and starting the circus of sawing, shaving, cutting, sanding, shimming and nailing that’s necessary to install door and window trim.  At least a couple of times during the last two days I wished that we had torn down the plaster instead of drywalling over the top.  Which is worse?  Tearing down some plaster, which takes just a little physical labor, or creating a trim nightmare by increasing your wall depth?  What made it so bad is that the drywall is not at a uniform depth, so the depth difference varies from 1/2″ to 3/4″, sometimes along the length of a given piece of casing.  That meant I had to try to cut and sand down a  strip of fir at an angle to try to even things out.  Of the four openings in this room, only the closet door cooperated by needing a constant 1/2″ filler strip.

Next?  Finishing the base trim and filling all the old and new nail holes, a little more sanding and then onto staining.  I also need to buy, finish and install the crown and the little cap trim that sits on top of the base.  I never have any idea what that piece is called.  I will be going to McCoy Millwork to get these pieces, since I couldn’t find anything appropriate at the usual suspects, Mr. Plywood and Home Depot.

I went through the site and realized that we didn’t have any “before” pictures of this room.  I created a new post so you can see what it used to look like.  Don’t be fooled by the walls in the picture.  The white paint over the wallpaper over the cracked plaster photographed really well!

Door now has trim

Side window and first piece of base trim

Closet door and window facing patio

This is the part where you simultaneously realize how good things are going to look, feel like you are making progress and become completely aware of how long it’s going to take to finish. It’s a 50/50 mix of elation and dread. Today I sanded Ginger’s closet doors and got the first coat of stain on them. The fir looks simply beautiful. I don’t think anything can touch old growth fir in terms of warmth. While new doors, such as the ones we put in the kitchen, look great, the vertical grain doesn’t look as varied or interesting as the flat-sawn to me. And if you don’t remember, we scored these old cabinet doors for $40 at the Rebuilding Center. There aren’t many places where you can find 5′ doors, especially for a great price. Of course the real “price” comes when your back is sore from spending hours and hours bent over while sanding and staining