March 2023: Humming along
I'm in the process of moving out of my apartment, which means it's PROJECT TIME. The experience starts by me emailing over what I need so that Ket and our volunteers can get the items ready, in case I show up during a rush. My tool order this time was a sander and a 10" miter saw: I had a few pieces of floor molding to cut (pictured left) and a bathroom wall to paint (you might want to expand the pics below). In truth, I stressed out over that bathroom for weeks and approached it slowly. There was wallpaper to strip, a large hole to patch, wall texture and drywall compound to apply, and the painting itself. I'd only had experience painting, so there was a whole bunch of learning on this journey.
Before the 2020 Lockdown, I worked reception and one of my co-workers and I would assign each other things to draw. The best thing I learned was, while I'm a terrible artist, finishing the project gives much better results than obsessing over perfecting mistakes while in progress. Hands are notoriously difficult to draw. Yet, if you don't give up at the third knuckle or whatever and complete the hand, wrist and body, your low points get mixed in with high points. The same 'just finish it' mentality can be applied to home projects.
Those photos reveal that I didn't remove all the wallpaper to expose the drywall and paint from there. I mistook that paper for the paper layer of drywall and sealed it. Then, after a sitcom-episode's-length-worth of swearing, I went on to prime, paint and texture the whole wall. Not bad! The next buyer or tenant won't be able to tell the new wall apart from the other walls in the bathroom. My end result is that the bathroom is presentable, but very much ready for the personal update that the next person will totally want.
I know that spring means reducing clutter and cleaning, but the SKTL consumables section never fails to fuel my imagination, and my most recent trip resulted in this haul:
I got a brand new showerhead, mailbox lock, some toilet seals, a tape measure and a new sink drain. Pricing at a big box hardware store puts those things at ($16+10+4+10+10) $50 for FREE-NINTEY-FREE.
At the end of the day, I learned about drywall compound, knowing what makes up wallpaper and what to remove, how to apply wall texture, and to follow through with the project rather than halting work under my own criticisms.