Fixing a poor drywall patch job (nothing new in this house)

It's no plastic grocery bag filled with paper towels and covered with caulk, but the loose 2x4 with a piece of drywall attached to it wasn't very effective either (left picture). I cut out a bigger piece of the wall so that I could attach a custom cut piece of drywall to two of the wall studs (right picture). After that, I put spackle in the gaps and once it was dry, I sanded the wall as flat as possible before priming and painting. It's not the best job I've done on wall repair, but it's behind the toilet and it's the pretty good work for having to maneuver around the water supply for the toilet.

I had two other main wall repair projects in the bathroom:

There was a chunk of wall broken next to the tub that was too big for spackle to fill. I used Plaster of Paris to fill in the gap of plaster that was missing. It took a while because plasters has to be applied in thin layers, letting each layer dry in between. Then, that had to be sanded too.

There was also a smaller hole in the wall next to the door where the baseboard had been. I used another mesh patch and spackle to fix that hole.

More plastic in the wall

I removed the medicine cabinet in the bathroom because it was old and gross and had three panels, which meant 3 small mirrors instead of a decent sized one.

Per normal, whoever installed this mirror decided the best way to install the mirror would be to shove plastic bags and plastic painting drop cloths in the wall beside it and, you guessed it, caulk around it. There were at least 3 drop clothes, and they did have paint on them in case you were wondering. They put some small strips of drywall around the mirror to fill in some of the gaps, but the whole thing was another shoddy job. 

My bathroom has been a really slow remodel. Progress update - I'll post a/b putting in drywall where the mirror used to be, but I've also acquired a black granite counter top, nice faucet, and sink cabinet is in progress of being built!

Hole in the wall... no more plastic bags. Odd cement stuff next to the partial stud

Can't say I'm surprised - - Regrouting Bathtub

I have removed the tiles that do not match all of the others in the tub and what did I find behind them?
Surely not a piece of cardboard attached with caulk!?!?!? You betcha.

Must get back to work!

Weekend Project - Regrouting bathtub

I'm going for it. After much deliberation I have decided to keep the tile in my bathroom. However, the tub walls desperately need to have the grout and some unmatching tiles replaced (what were they thinking with that tile combo?! - - see picture). This is going to be my weekend project.

I went to Habitat ReStore to find "white tiles."  There are so many shades of white, it took a long time to match my existing tiles to a set of ones from the thrift store, but I really lucked out! The best match was a box of over 40 tiles! I wanted to have more than the 2 that MUST be replaced just in case I break some... now I have a lot of flexibility to replace old tiles. The best part is that I got the box for $3.

The rest of the project is a little more pricey since I needed to buy a dremel attachment, the grout, a grout float, a grout remover (which I might return if the dremel is sufficient), a bucket for mixing, tile cleaner, grout sealant. My justification is that I'm building my tool supply. The total cost of items that I won't be able to use again was around $30 ($12 for grout, $10 for sealant, $5 for cleaner). I suppose I should add a couple more dollars for the caulk that I'll need to finish the job, but I've had it for so long I don't really remember how much it was.

I'll try to post more this weekend as the project progresses. So far I've just done a thorough cleaning of the tiles. Next steps - protect the tub and start removing old grout!

Slow remodel of the bathroom... first, new shower rod.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to completely redo the bathroom or just update it with some new tiles, a new sink, and different window. Since I haven't made the big decision about gutting the bathroom or not, I've decided that in the meantime I can at least install some new pieces that will transfer to the updated bathroom. Tonight, I installed a new shower rod. It's one of those stainless steel curved rods that a lot of the hotels have. It helps keep the shower curtain from flying into the shower even if they don't have weighted magnets in them. Those types of rods also provide more space in the shower. I was excited to find it at Marshalls for only $25 (and it included a heavy weight vinyl shower curtain and nice stainless steel rings too). They're upwards of $50 at other stores.

I'm sure you're wondering, "how did installing the new rod go???" Well, luckily the pieces that mount to the wall and actually hold the rod had the same spacing for screws as the one that I removed. Oh and while I'm on the topic of the old rod, here's a glimpse of what was there:

It was a decently strong metal rod, but noticeably tarnished and covered with a plastic that was once painted white, but much of that paint has scraped off to show the original sky blue color. On top of that, the mounts had been painted over yellow when the walls were painted. Not only were the mounts painted, but so where the screws holding them onto the wall. **What were they thinking?**

Back to the installation... I had to chip off the paint in order to get to the screws and to pry off the mount. I ended up peeling off the paint around the mounts and grabbed my bucket of primer and a paint brush so that the wall would have some protection and consistency around the new wall mount. Installing the mounts would have been easier had I ensured that my drill battery were charged, but I just used my biceps instead to put the mounts into the screw holes that were already there. If the holes hadn't been there I would have had to drill holes after making sure I had everything level. I did make it more difficult for myself to put the rod up because I didn't feel like switching the curtain rings on my curtains or trying to pull the current ones over the new rod after it was installed. I ended up putting the curtain on the rod before setting it onto the mounts. The unique piece about installing a curved rod (as opposed to a straight rod) is that there are additional bolts to attach the rod to the mounts so that the curved part is parallel to the floor and arching away from the shower. It took me a while to thread the bolts through, but if you haven't already put the curtain on the rod and are not working with an injured right thumb (which I had recently cut on my mini food processor blade), then lining up the rod with the holes on the mount would not be as difficult. The finished product is NOT silver, white, and blue... it IS a big improvement to a slowly improving bathroom.

Another hole in the wall

I got around to fixing another hole in the wall. This one was in my bedroom and I knew it would need to be fixed before I moved in (unlike the one from my previous post). I forgot to take a picture of their make-shift fix before removing it from the wall, but I pieced it back together the best I could and took a picture so you'd have an idea of why this is another "What were they thinking?" moment.

I can't even really describe the material, but it looks like tar. The hole was caused by the door handle and was hidden when the door was open, which may be why they didn't even bother to make the tar smooth. It, too, was indented. Anyway I used a retractable razor to make a wall patch fit in that space and plastered over it. Still haven't finished sanding it flat, but here's what it looks like:

I'm working on getting the rest of the walls even so that I can paint over the yellow paint. My power sander has helped get rid of a lot of the bad patch jobs and I'm making good use of the joint compound.

Out with the old, in with the new Doors

These are the sad, sad doors that were on the house when I bought it. The back door was especially bad with an inch gap at the bottom that let in bugs, and with a window pane that had obviously been replaced poorly with a horrible caulk job (yes, tape and caulk were the M.O. of the previous owners - - what were they thinking?). Oh... and neither of the storm doors closed.

I got new doors from Home Depot and had a contractor install them and they look a ton better. The poorly painted red door is gone and although I kind of miss the smiley face that my friends painted on the inside, it's much nicer to have that streaky red paint all gone. My place is no longer the McDuplex! Hopefully I'll get rid of most of the yellow by the end of February!
Here's a picture of my new front door in the snow:

Dryer Vents... The Homeowner's Slinky

Imagine, if you can, using duct tape for its actual purpose… taping ducts! I did just that in order to prepare to use for my new clothing dryer. In the spirit of “what were they thinking” I must explain that I’m anti-tape right now because the previous occupants tried to fix EVERYTHING with tape. However, since duct work requires duct tape, I made an exception. The ducts from the bathroom exhaust fan and the dryer needed to be connected together to exhaust out of the house. Those were connected with a T-duct that was in inch too small in diameter. In order to remedy this, I bought the correct size T-duct connector (4 inches, in case you were wondering) and duct tape. Basically all you need to do is put the ducts over the ends of the connector and tape them down. It normally results in the whole connector being covered by duct tape, but there’s nothing wrong with that because it ensures that the exhaust is, in fact, exhausted from the house. 

Fun fact - - Duct tape was originally called duck tape b/c of its waterproof quality according to wikipedia.
Also, I must admit... even though dryer vent duct work looks like a slinky... it's not as fun.

How NOT to fix a hole in the wall.

When I took the baseboards off of the the walls in my dining room, I was able to figure out how the former owners tried to fix a hole in the wall. First, I came across a fistful of caulk. Caulk is NOT the answer to everything, but some people seem to think so. Secondly, I figured out that in order to keep the caulk somewhat in place, they filled a plastic grocery bag with paper towels and shoved it in the wall before covering it with caulk.

How I think you should fix a hole in the wall - - I removed the caulk-grocery bag-paper towel combo, got a wall patch, and used joint compound to cover the mesh/metal wall patch. Fancy that... hardware stores actually carry products MADE for repairing walls.