Plugger of Holes, Douser of Stains, Demolisher of Closets

Woke up late. Went to the Home Despot twice (twice!) to buy hoses for my new used dryer only to find out I got a gas leak in that system somewhere (should I shut the gas off? no, I’m sure it’s harmless). Don’t imagine that’s all that interesting. But filling nail holes with putty?

Spellbinding.

I’m also pursuing the sisyphusian, er, pursuit of filling all the edges of the floor (the part that runs up against the baseboards) so that I can leave the toe plate off. Unfortunately, this floor was laid down with the then-firm knowledge that there’d be another round of molding added to the system, so they just left gaps (you can see one in the photo above). We’ll see how it works out. They should sell wood putty in bigger tubs — I’ve been through two already and will probably need at least a couple more tomorrow.

And then, since it seems like I’m probably going to leave the floor natural (and not stain it), I’m trying to get rid of the last holdout of a urine stain in the house. I guess hydrogen peroxide is supposed to be good for that, but that it can take many days. Hrm.

Today is day two.

Fortunately, the peroxide in this bottle is topical.

I want to get these floors done. I’m tired of living in the basement like a common troll. I might pronounce this stain “light enough” pretty soon. It’s getting a little lighter. It’s about 3″ x 3″ and it’s behind the door in the big bedroom, so it’s not something that you’d likely see very often. Yeah, I dunno. We’ll see how it goes.

As for the closet — all the bedroom closets are standard 1958 in arrangement. They have a shelf with a hanger rod underneath. They’re all in decent shape, but I need more clothes storage space, so I gotta do something better in the big bedroom closet. Here are before and after the removal of hardware:

The main difference is the addition of the stepladder.

It was in there pretty good and 52-year-old nails don’t necessarily like getting pulled. You can also see “Brian’s Bane” in there — that gray stuff coming down from the ceiling on the back wall of the closet. Pretty sure that’s from water damage from some time in the (distant?) past (the plaster has peeled off the old-school “drywall”). The back wall I can just mud over, but the ceiling is pretty screwed up all the way through to the insulation. I’m thinking I might have a guy put (modern) drywall up there or something.

Bought one of those Rubbermaid closet organizers off of Amazon for it. I bought the deluxe organizer instead of the standard one. Couldn’t for the life of me tell what the difference was, aside from the deluxe one being $10 cheaper for some reason. But if I have to wait for a new ceiling, it’ll probably be a while before it gets installed (and I’ll probably move upstairs into the #2 bedroom instead of the “big” one).

I should probably get myself to back off a little, but I’m really stoked on this idea of moving upstairs soon. I’m sort of hoping over the upcoming weekend. That’s probably aggressive, but all I have to do is: plug more holes in the floor tomorrow (where the shoe molding used to go), sand the corners and the putty fill, three coats of urethane, paint the baseboards, paint the ceilings, and paint the walls.

Yeah. Maybe the following weekend.

bkd