Fix-It Friday: A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

Fix-It Friday is an occasional series that details the projects I’ve done around the house. Check out some past posts here and here.

It was a joyous occasion on Sunday — the sheetrock in our under-construction-for-months — and months — spare bedroom is finally finished. My brother and I tackled it over the weekend, and I finished up the last few pieces. I all but threw a party in celebration. I’ve cleaned up the mess and hopefully we’ll have a potential taper/spackler come give it a look-see and offer an estimate for the job, which isn’t too easy, since we have to make a lot of speciality cuts that resulted in many more joints than there should be. Much of the original framing on the interior walls was nowhere near 16-inches-on-center, resulting in some creative drywalling.

The worst part? We now have to do the other bedroom, bathroom and hallway so the entire floor is updated. I think we’ll be gutting it ourselves and having someone else do the framing and drywall.

Mini Projects

Replace the kitchen light. On Tuesday, I went to Home Depot to buy new circular fluorescent light bulbs for our kitchen fixture. Since the outer one had blown out a few days before and I had no idea how long the inner bulb had been in there, I bought both and installed them together. Thursday night, I flipped on the kitchen switch after dinner, and the larger bulb blew out again. I assume there’s a short in the fixture. Which is fine, since I picked up a fan with a light kit for the kitchen while I was at Home Depot (set me back $50). I’d like to install it this weekend, if I can figure out which breaker goes to that fixture…

Finish painting the trim on the first floor. I had neglected to finish painting the wood trim around our two major windows — the bay window in the living room, and the picture window in the dining room — mainly because I had curtains up already when I started the job months ago. I’d like to tackle those this weekend. I’ve already painted the bathroom window molding, and mistakenly left the window open. We now have a cat with white paint on his paws, as he jumped onto the wet windowsill before I could react. Silly me. I wiped off what I could, but his poor little black paw pads are stained white. Luckily, it’s only latex-base paint, so I’m sure he will wear it off within a few days.

Fix the sagging bathroom ceiling. The ceiling is made of interlocking tiles, which aren’t all that old — in fact, the previous owners left us a half-full box full of extras. But the ceiling tiles are now dangerously close to collapsing at the center, so we need to either tack them back up (hopefully there’s some sort of furring strip up there that we can reattach them to) or we’ll have to replace them. Fun all around.

If any of you are considering a home purchase, make sure you’re ready for all that home ownership entails! I love projects and being busy, but right now I feel a bit overwhelmed. Once I finish one or two of these projects, I’ll be ready to move forward with other DIY projects.