Do I Have To? Organize a Closet

I haven't done a "Do I Have To?" post since August. I hadn't forgot about what I'd imagined would be a monthly feature. It's just that philosophically speaking I was more in the mental state of "I don't want to" and even more possibly "You Can't Make Me," neither of which really bodes well for doing the work, taking the photos, and posting to the blog.

A few weeks ago when I was working feverishly on the bedroom and the bathroom, and had not an iota of patience or energy left, I decided to start a third project, mostly based on frustration over not being able to find a single AA battery in a house I was sure had several packages. Somewhere.

I emptied an entire closet out onto my dining room floor.

Beginning anything mid-hissy-fit is never a good step, and this one involved a few broken light bulbs.

But it felt good, too, as embarrassing as these photos are. Contrary to most older homes, our house has a lot of closets. A LOT. There are six closets on the main floor alone, and that doesn't include the bedrooms. If you include the bedrooms, there are TEN closets on the main floor. And I'm still not counting the dining room built-ins. Go ahead, be jealous.

And I love it. Luuuuuuurve it. But sometimes when you have an embarrassment of riches, be it wine or money or closets, you tend not to use it wisely. In my case, I was trying to move my possessions from three different location to this one home, saw all that vast empty space behind closed doors, and began cramming everything in as the moving boxes stacked up.

It helped for the short term, but in the long term we were looking at this:

I can not even. This photo begs a variety of questions:

Who needs three plungers? (Don't answer that.)
What earthly logic stores a stud finder with bath towels?
When are you going shopping for toilet paper? Soon, I hope.
How can you live like this?

Let's start with what I was absolutely not going to do:
Remodel. I had five fixed shelves (actually six with a little half shelf up at the very top), covered in sheet linoleum and edged with aluminum.

The person who'd built out this closet intended it to go the distance, and almost 75 years later, I'm disinclined to mess with something that's lasted this long. (That opening at the bottom is access to the shower plumbing. I needed to put the panel back up.)

You know those closets that are as beautifully decorated as an entire room, with their own design scheme and everything in labeled vintage containers? The ones with more magazine spreads than a minor celebrity?

Nope. Not gonna happen. I probably have the least Pinterest-worthy closet on the planet with 75-year-old linoleum shelving, but I just need it clean and organized. At the very least, I need to have it not looking like a small tribe of poo-flinging monkeys live in there.

I started by removing the trash. There was an astonishing amount of empty wrappers, probably courtesy of my children, operating on the same philosophy of leaving the cereal box in the kitchen cupboard with a 1/2 tablespoon of cereal in it.

Then I started organizing things in piles. Paper goods, light bulbs, batteries, toiletries. The first aid kit's contents had been strewn about the entire closet, and I got those all back in the box.

Organizing made me realize I'd been overshopping a bit. Clearly I won't need deodorant or shampoo for quite awhile. Or barber talc, though that was a three-fer deal. (I do the boys' haircuts.)

I moved all the tools out and the cleaning supplies went elsewhere too. Batteries and light bulbs also went someplace else. I decided this was going to be strictly bathroom supply.

I did purchase two of the baskets shown, but already had two in house. They were all from Target. The two large baskets are categorized as general toiletries for me, and general toiletries for the boys.

The plastic toolkit contains first aid supplies. The two smaller baskets are for seasonal needs. The small basket on the left holds suntan lotion, bug repellent, and hydrocortisone. The small basket on the right holds winter things, like dry-skin cream, mentholated rub, cough drops, hand sanitizer and chapstick, but it's empty because those items are in use around the household.

Isn't amazing how much spacious it seems when it's organized? It's almost a little spare. But that's okay by me. It's such a relief to open that now and know I can find what I want in an instant.

I also got out the paint and gave the door a fresh coat, inside and out. I know, it leaves the trim left to do and an obvious contrast between the new creamy white and the old pinky-beige, but that door. It was so grubby. Now it's clean, and I can get to the rest when I have time.

So now I've got this closet and one of Noah's closets (the rock studio, shown here) done. Only 8 more closets to go on the main floor. And yes, they all need a little work.

No wonder I threw a hissy fit.

Do I Have To? The Smorgasbord of Stupid Edition

There are several stupid things about this post, so I'm going to point them out instead of trying to pretty up the situation.

"Do I Have To?" is a first-Monday-of-the-month blog feature. And it's.......Tuesday. Mid-month. But I wanted to really make myself do it anyway. I didn't want to get out of the habit of taking care of one pain-in-the-rear home improvement task a month.

Since blog posts that get written out of guilt and fear of failure are bound to be, well, full of guilt and fear of failure, it's no surprise that I tried to over-compensate by trying to do two tasks, and then failing in some of the details with both. Sigh.

Anyway, meet the drawer in the kitchen that we all refer to as "that damn drawer."

It had been glued, but the dovetails worked themselves apart again, and the repeated open and shut of daily life (reaching for sandwich bags and measuring spoons) were taking its toll.

I emptied out and removed the drawer and took a look.

What's worse, after scraping the dried glue away with a utility knife, it was clear there was no "there" there. Over time the wood had worn down, and in some places splintered away. The joints were no longer tight. Glue wasn't going to help this situation.

I'll admit here that joinery is outside my level of carpentry skills. Also, I tend to need to be doing about twelve other things at any given time, including watering tomatoes, cooking dinner, and finding the sticky note with my son's college account password on it. So finessing dovetail joints on a 30-year old-drawer isn't going to be top priority.

I guess what I'm saying is that I have no idea whether what I did next was advisable, or right, or even remotely intelligent. So I can't recommend this as a solution if you are having a similar problem.

I went to the hardware store and found some long-ish thin screws:

Then I drilled a pilot hole through one of the dovetails......and immediately realized I'd put the hole in one of the non-nesting dovetails, so it wouldn't go through both pieces of wood. I am. so. brilliant. Then, I drilled a second pilot hole:

Yes. Isn't that awesome?

Thank goodness this ugly MacGyver business can't be seen when the drawer is shut. What a mess.

Meanwhile, upstairs in the twins' room, I was looking at this developing situation:

That is a paint bubble which broke and peeled off the wall. Floating in a film of grubby kid dirt. I'd like to claim that I don't live like this. But apparently I do. Ew.

Cleaning was the first step.

Then I skim coated the hole with joint compound, and sanded, and primed, and painted. Which all would have been nice to photograph because you know I write a blog about this sort of stuff. But no. I put down the camera, apparently sustained a concussion of some sort, fascinated myself trying to get just one more bit of joint compound out of a crusty container, and didn't take a single other photo. I have no idea what's wrong with me.

But hey:

It's clean, and fixed. But I didn't "show my work." I blame the monkey.

I'll be back in September with the next monthly installment. I may even drill holes in their proper places, and remember to take pictures. Sigh.

Looking for Something?

Wikimedia Commons image, copyright expired

Looking for something? Like a "Do I Have To?" post? 

Apparently in July I Don't Have To. Or let's just say July's regularly scheduled post is "I Forgot To." I even had a small project picked out, and was going to spend a weekend afternoon doing it and shooting photos for the blog post. 

Somewhere between painting my bathroom, scraping siding, and getting ready for my sister to come visit for two weeks, it kept not happening until it dropped from the running priority list I keep in my brain. Yeah, don't look in there. It's full of dryer lint and desperation.

See? I had good intentions. But we all know what the way to hell is paved in. 

I have family visiting, and a long chunk of time off from work, and some pineapple vodka in my fridge. I think that means to expect erratic (and erratically written) posts from me in the near future. 

Do I have to? Well, no. But I want to. And I'll be back next month with another "Do I Have To?" post, and much, much sooner with something else. Next time I won't forget. No, really. I won't. 

Do I Have To? Caulk the Tub, or The Ugliest Blog Post Ever

This post has pictures of mildew and trash.

It goes downhill from there. I didn't even finish it, because apparently working in my bathroom until late with the intent of writing a blog post does NOT mean that I'll be taking a photo of the finished project.

But seriously, why do you need to see a tub with fresh caulk? If that's how you get your jollies, you need a new hobby.

So do I.

Anyway. My tub is the original tub from when the house was built, in 1939. In that sense I love this tub. It's got this cool Art Deco design on the outside, and one day I'm gonna have it shipped out and reglazed. That's the plan.

But right now, it's toast. It also has a fiberglass tub surround installed by the previous owners. Also not so cool.

In the past couple of months, ooky black spots of mildew have been appearing in the caulk line between the fiberglass surround and the tub, so I knew it was about time to get the tub recaulked.

Eew:

I removed the old stuff with a box cutter and a putty knife. I'm not sure that's particularly advisable for any type of tub in newer condition, but my tub, like I said, is pretty well shot. The glaze is long gone, and there's not really anything I could do to make it worse. The best tutorial I found online is one by Popular Mechanics, here. So do as I say, not as I do.

More disgusting stuff:

After it was all pulled out, I scrubbed the space with a strong hot bleach and dishwashing liquid mixture and let it dry completely. When I was ready to caulk, I even gave it blast with my hair dryer to make sure it was completely dry in there.

Maybe some of you have seen this pin, from This Old House, making the rounds on Pinterest, about using painter's tape to do a neat line on the caulk. I figured it was worth a try, since caulking is about the messiest thing since eating corn on the cob, and whole lot less fun.

                                           Source: thisoldhouse.com on Pinterest

So I figured I'd give it try:

Those white squares in the tub are plastic cleats which were stuck on the fiberglass surround, I suppose to corral the shower curtain. But they were always catching grody grime behind them, and so I popped them off while I was in there with a putty knife. You can see the grimy spot where it used to be on the far lower right of the photo above. More yuck.

So far in this post I've managed to refrain from caulk jokes in poor taste, but if you can't, I really don't mind. I mean, it's a picture of a caulk gun. What else can you do?

My hands are small and the caulk gun handle hard to compress, so I was shaky. For pete's sake, it looked like I was taking a class in basic buttercream. I mean, look at this:

My inner voice kept yelling: stop acting like a dumb girl. This is a tub, not a cupcake.

That, as far as I was concerned, was the whole problem.

You're supposed to smooth your caulk bead with a wet finger, and really, I just keep both hands, my whole hands, dunked in water during the process. It helps. Wipe everything up with paper towels that you place in disposable plastic bags right away. Caulk, like the common cold, gets every where if you're not careful.

Did the tape work? Yes and no. Yes, it contained the worst of the excess goo on an easily peel-off-able surface.

But it left little ridges, albeit small, that needed to be smoothed with an additional wet finger swipe. At that point it's hard to say whether it saved me excess mess or just moved it around. I think my official review of this idea is "Meh."

Here's the point in the post where I'd show you that picture of a finished project, if I had a brain in my head past 11 p.m. But I don't. You know what it looks like. Use your imagination. Seriously. There's no way that photo was going to rescue this post from its ugly state anyway.

In other "Do I Have To?" news, my oldest son had some unholy fit of ambition and irritation hit him about our garage, and about two hours later I found this on my curb.

Not only that, he took months worth of soda/beer/wine empties back to the store for deposit. He decided to do both of these things on his own. Either he has a virus, or someone hit him in the head with one of those pool cues. Either way, I'm not complaining. I even let him have the deposit money.

Stay tuned for July's "Do I Have To" post; every first Monday of the month I hit one chore that few homeowners like to do. It's like a monthly collective whine. See you next time.

Do I Have To? Move a Shrub

Welcome to On the Doorstep's very first outdoor "Do I Have To?" the monthly segment where I tackle a home improvement chore that makes me whine.

I've been irritated since we moved into the house by a shrub planted right by the front door. Let me correct that. I'm not irritated by the shrub. It's a "Limelight" hydrangea, and during the summer she looks a lot like this:

Source: University of Georgia Extension Services

She is just fine and pretty when in bloom. It's where she was planted that's irritating.

According to landscape guidelines, foundation shrubs, trees, and plants should be planted a distance from the house that coincides with their full-grown size. If you look up the info on "Limelight," they are about 6 feet in diameter when full grown. That means it needs to be planted at least 3 feet from a foundation or fence, plus a little extra for air circulation.

So where was our Limelight planted?

About 8 inches from the brick:

She was planted smack up against the foundation, in the corner by the front deck. Irritating. When it rained her wet foliage was up against the wood siding, and in the winter her branches knocked against the house, right outside a bedroom window. Really irritating.

I wasn't looking forward to the job because I had no idea how big of a root ball was under this thing, and after my adventures removing maiden grass last year (see this post), I dreaded the possibility of wrestling for hours with a stubborn piece of plant life. But we'd had a rainy week the second week in April, followed by a sunny Saturday. I wanted to seize the opportunity to do the digging while the ground was soft.

I started by raking away a layer of pea gravel. Then I excavated around and as far under the root ball as I could. It looked like roots were pretty shallow, and with a lot of horizontal roots just under the soil. I don't know if that's the way these shrubs are, a sign of not enough deep watering, or a sign of being in too constricted of a space. This took about ten minutes of digging, though it doesn't look like much in the photo.

There are no pictures of the next part, because it involved me giving the branches a gigantic bear hug and bending them out of the way with my whole body, while Grant trenched out more with the spade so we could pull her loose. This is what we ended up with after fifteen minutes of further digging.  Readers can also see that we have yet to do the landscaping across the front gable of the front of the house, so-- weeds, sump drainage hose, landscape pavers and other ugliness: 

(My house's normally awful beige color looks even worse in this photo. Hurray! Not.)

See? Root ball, not that big:

After backfilling the hole, Grant made a fresh start in a new location:

Here's "Limelight" in her new location. It's now a generous 3 1/2 feet from the foundation and the porch, so she shouldn't cause any trouble with either. She looks a lot less cramped, and has more room to grow: 

Even with all the rain we've had, I gave her a good slow drink:

Here's a photo to give readers a little comparison. The big red "X" marks the shrub's previous location.

I'm glad to have this task out of the way. I think I may have dreaded it all out of proportion to what it ended up being, but you never know until it's over. I'll consider myself lucky.

It gets a major item out of the way for landscaping the front foundation. We've come a long way from this: 

To this: 

And this: 

We'll be thrilled to reclaim a little more territory for the bees, birds, and butterflies!

Do I Have To? Install a Door Sweep

Welcome to the ass-backward part of the show, where I do something in April that I should have done in October. This time, I'm installing a door sweep on the interior of our front door. It's my once-a-month series "Do I Have To?" where I tackle an unglamorous project.

Yes, I should have done this when it started getting chilly last fall. No, it didn't happen. But, it's always possible that April will essentially be another month of winter around here. It's happened before. I'd intended for this "Do I Have To?" to be an outdoor one, but the ground is still frozen-ish. Maybe next month.

And if April actually means spring, it means hot weather soon. That's another good reason to have a good seal on your door.

Let's get started:

This is how it looked for months. The inside of my front door with the new door sweep leaning up in the corner. Shiny, new, and useless:

The door is original to the house, I believe. The flooring is crummy old sheet vinyl. Teaching myself how to tile is going to be a fall project (she says confidently now). That's my bag of tools and a level.

The first thing to do was scrape off the leftovers of some previous weatherproofing. It was some sort of foam tape, and I didn't want it to prevent my aluminum and rubber sweep from fitting tightly to the door:

The door sweep is 36" long, with a little bit extra run of the rubbery flange on each end. I measured my door, and it is 35 3/4" wide.

Now usually, if you have a substantial amount of length to remove off of a door sweep, it's recommended that you take an equal amount off EACH END, so the screws end up evenly spaced. And hey, I recommend that too. I'm not a non-conformist when it comes to these things.

However, a measly 1/4 inch isn't enough to fuss about, and cutting 1/8 inch of BOTH ends just seemed absurd, and possibly difficult (It's harder to make clean cuts of smaller lengths that longer ones). I decided I'd cut off the 1/4 on the hinge end of the door sweep, in case I didn't do such a great job cutting the aluminum. You'll see that was good thinking.

I also needed to decide on placement. It seems like you would want to mark a line first with the level, then decided where the sweep would be in relation to that line. Here's the other ass-backward part: I didn't do it that way. I dry-fit the sweep to the door where it would fit snugly against the threshold and without brushing the floor, by eyeball. And I really mean by eyeball. I was smack on my shoulder on the floor to get a good look. Then I drew a line across the entire door with a pencil, right against the door sweep's top edge. I've dropped the sweep down in the picture to take a photo (because I don't have four hands, and sometimes I wish I did):

People who know me really well will understand what's hinky in this picture. Guess in the comments!

Then I checked it for level:

I was pretty darn spot on. If I'd really hosed it up, I'd have just scrubbed out the line and started over.

I marked the 1/4 inch that I wanted to cut off on the sweep with a Sharpie marker. Yes, I know that shiny brass is "out" but based on what color this door will end up being, it's the way to go. I tried to cut it with some all purpose metal snips:

But they weren't strong enough. Dangit. I'd even bought them for this job (and because I'd had to borrow a neighbor's more than once before, which is a good indication you need your own). There were extrusions on the backside to reinforce the piece, and they were doing too good of a job. Also, I have small, weak, puny, girly hands.

By some miracle (is there a patron saint of tools?), I had a hack saw that came in a box of my late great-uncle's things. The blades were still sharp.

So, hack saw this, baby:

Now I need clamps. This would have gone much better if I wasn't simply wedging it against my thigh with my elbow. But I don't have a bench with clamp. So it's my thigh or nothing (a sentence never used in a do-it-yourself segment ever before, I'm sure).

So? Not that straight. Or great.

And a hack blade slip made a mark in the brass finish. Boo. Thankfully, I've yet to have a guest say in my home: "Your decor is lovely, however, there is a terrible ding in your door sweep. It ruined the moment for me." And this is why I made the cut on the hinge side. A little less noticeable.

I cut off the end off the rubber (vinyl?) sweep:

Next, I dry-fit the sweep to the door again, and attempted to make marks through the pre-drilled holes on the sweep so I'd know where to put the pre-drilled holes in the door for the screws. But no pencil, pen, whatever, would penetrate the aluminum piece (which is arched slightly) and the rubber sweep, and so it devolved into a 20 minutes of well-this-won't-work-what-about-this-dangit-where's-my-awl-nope-can't-find-it-what? up and down nonsense that is so infuriating when this is supposed to be a relatively simple task. I finally just got out my drill and bumped a small drill mark through each hole.

This is my drill. Her name is Dorothy. Dorothy DeWalt. She and I drilled pilot holes for the screws:

Then I screwed the sweep to the door, and done:

A few things:

This door is grubby, and in need of a good coat of paint. That'll come when the house gets painted.

In a post last year I said that every project time estimate needs a dumb-crap margin. The dumb-crap margin is all the stuff that happens that doesn't include actually doing the project. So, losing a tool, realizing your method isn't working and having to change it, running to the hardware store for another part, stopping mid-project to cook hotdogs for the kids, the weather-- these are all part of the dumb-crap margin.

The dumb-crap margin on this was high, because the length of the actual project is pretty short to begin with. So even though my setbacks were irritating rather than tragic or catastrophic, I still spent more time than necessary running around trying to find a tool that would cut the metal, and an implement that would mark the screw holes. The entire project was an hour start to finish. Entirely half of it was dumb crap. My dumb-crap margin was 50 percent. Bad.

I'm hoping next month to move "Do I Have To?" outdoors. Though it will still be true to its theme, annoying projects on my list to get done, it's gotta be better with some fresh air and sunshine. Until May, my friends.