A Place For My Shoes (or New Master Bedroom Closets)

Really the worst thing about this house is the bedroom closets. I have never seen any that are more poorly designed; the person who installed them must have been on drugs. In a typical closet the rod runs from left to right allowing you to see all but the clothes in the farthest corners. In these closets the bar runs front to back allowing you to see only one piece of clothing at a time.

For this reason, you would end up wearing on the first 5 items over and over as it was took much hassle to look any deeper. We ended up each taking a closet in the 2 bedrooms and I must admit that my clothes lived on the floor as it was easier to find them if they were not in the closet.

To remedy the situation, I decided to re-configure the master bedroom closet and build a new wall of clothes storage.

We spent one weekend (which ended up turning into 2 weekends) framing, dry walling and installing doors for the new closets. As it was our first time installing doors we purchased pre-hung ones thinking it would be easier. Unfortunately we had to reduce the height of the doors by 6 inches to fit under the slopped ceiling. Since there were recessed panels on the doors we had to take 3 inches off each end, so we had to re-install the hinges and handles anyways.

Other problems we encountered were: having to drill pilot holes to be able to screw together the framing, running out of screws late Sunday night, having to run down 2 flights of stairs to cut each piece of molding and framing. Also my skills at estimating timelines are greatly lacking. Each step took longer than I had planned for.

The final product is amazing. Each of us has our own space, we can see our clothes again and my shoes have a beautiful new home.

And now we know: seriously the right tools make a HUGE difference, like could have cut this project time by 50%. Just pay the extra to rent them and spare yourself the grief

Changing the Upstairs Toilet

Mysteriously more water suddenly started appearing in our bathroom. This time it was pooling around the toilet. We peeled back the ugly sheet vinyl flooring and discovered a soaked subfloor that smelled rank. It appeared to be rotting, which seemed to indicate a repeat problem.

Having already fixed the pipes and the caulking we figured it must be the toilet this time. So the night before our EcoEnergy follow up visit, we rushed out to Home Depot and purchased a low flow toilet in order to get the rebate. Installation seems easy enough and we flushed to test. Bad idea, water went everywhere.

Turns out the problem was not the toilet, it was the installation. The previous one was not re-installed properly after one of the plumber visits. So that was 150$ that did not have to be spent. The toilet is nice though J

And now we know: take out the old wax ring before installing a new one. If you put the new one on top of the old one, the toilet will leak.