Horse Hair & Washers

Yay, plaster repair time! Our plaster walls consist of thin strips of wood lath nailed to wood studs, then a mix of plaster and horse hair was applied, and keyed into the space between lath strips. Here is a close up of some authentic old- school horse hair in plaster… Usually they mix it in more…

Although most of the plaster in our home is in good shape for its age, There are definitely a few areas where the plaster has started to pull away from the lath. Sometimes in un-repairable chunks that will be infilled with drywall mud:

OR it can look like a large lump and feel like a trapped air bubble when you push on it, basically held together with paint and magic horse hair but no longer attached to the wood, and if that’s the case you can usually repair it. Just the thing:

These washers pull the plaster back to the lath, then use drywall mud to cover the washer and sand away to a smoothe finish. We’ve already gone thru 50+ of these guys just on this part of the project!

Using Duct Tape for it’s Intended Purpose

With the new closets we had to extend the ductwork to the new wall so we weren’t just air conditioning the closet!

Here is the old register hole which I had to make a little bigger.

We used flexible duct for its ease to run and it’s acoustic properties. It helps attenuate fan and air movement noise that travels down the duct.

We also used this opportunity to replace the hard section of duct to our bedroom with flex to reduce the HVAC noise.

It definitely made a huge difference, muffling a lot of the noise we used to hear…

One Down, Two To Go

Tonight we got the first coat of joint compound on everything and taped all the joints.

For all the plaster joints we used the powder setting-type joint compound. It’s stronger, has less shrinkage (important for large joints), and sets up faster.

Kelly’s Dad was up again tonight to help out. Here he is spackling the upper closet. Thanks Bill!

1, 2, 3 GWB

Along with a bunch of other things like pulling wires and planting mums, a good portion of drywall (GWB) went up today with the help of my dad/ his pickup truck:

It was a literal labor day:

We’re exhausted:

(Dang duct tape trying to steal the spotlight! All he did all day was watch.)

Framed Up

Rob and my Dad framed pretty much all of the closet project today. Here is a veiled view from the bay window side of the room:

This is from standing in front of the linen closet. The floor of the upper closet is 3/4″ mdf, and the whole assembly is super sturdy:

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View thru the little bedroom door into the hall/ orange bedroom door:

Please ignore our amazing array of carpet samples/ drop cloth patterns. I think we make up for it with the coordination of the extension cord to the yellow door paint.

Framing Photo Shoot

Ms. Coat Hanger:

Suitcase/Rob upper closet storage:

Framed:

Lay Out

We laid out the closets tonight for framing- red carpet sample is the orange bedroom closet, purple is for the little bedroom, & linen at the bottom of the photo. If anyone is wondering if these closets will fit clothes hanging on a coathanger, with a shelf above, the answer is yes, if you have mini coat hangers. Kidding. They are regular depth closets.

Just drafting right on the wood in many areas because it’s will be under the wall:

We’re trying to keep the nice orange bedroom hardwood floors safe from harm by layering clean dropcloth sheets under plywood. This method is awesome and I highly recommend it:

Yes these are my current favorite work on the house shoes, what?

Crooked No More

We had a door with a very crooked head/ door:

So we took the trim off:

Then sawzalled and vacummed and hammered that thing back into place:

Eventually we’ll fix the door and replace the trim.