Glad to see you're finally out of the closet. You're turning into quite a
handy guy. Do I need to write the wife a note and tell her what you could do
with more tools?
----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Rossi
To: Blind Handyman List
Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 5:01 PM
Subject: [BlindHandyMan] A closet story.
Those of you old timers on the list will remember one of my very first
home projects. This took place between Christmas and New years of 2005.
There was a large closet in the master bedroom approximately six feet
wide, and nearly three feet deep. However, there was just a single 24
inch wide swinging door at one end of the closet. The door wouldn't open
all the way since it hit the radiator. The bar for the clothing was
hanging in the middle of the closet, front to back, and so this closet had
the worst use of space, and the worst access you could imagine. When you
opened the door, you would see the left 24 inches of the bar. 48 inches
of the bar were to the right of the door, so you kind of had to shove your
way into the closet and to the right, to get to anything that had the
misfortune of migrating to that end of the bar. Totally useless.
So, I ripped out the entire wall, installed sliding doors, put an upper
and lower bar in, closer to the front of the closet, put shelving behind
everything against the back wall, and built a large shelving unit in as
part of the system. It is now a much more usable space.
Well, the closet in the small bedroom, soon to be the nursery, is even
worse. It is only barely deep enough to hang a hanger, and at that, the
tips of the plastic hangars touch both the front and back wall, so god
help you if you actually hang any clothing on the hangars.
It is five feet wide, and less than 20 inches deep. It also has a stupid,
useless, 24 inch wide door at one end. So in this closet, if anything
shuffles to the right of the door opening, it is truly gone, because you
can't even force your way into the closet to reach that stuff.
Well, that wall is now gone. Over the weekend I decided to rip it down.
I first ripped off all the trim around the door, along the floor, all the
trim inside the closet, the shelf, the hanging bar, dot dot dot.
I used my circ saw with a cement board blade on it to cut up the wall at
the right end of the closet on the outside wall, and then across the top
to the top of the door opening. I couldn't work the saw inside the closet
to do the same, it was just too tight. I started trying to pry the
plaster off from the outside, but the edges just crumbled. So, I got
inside the closet and just ripped down the plaster willy nilly. Some of
it came down in large pieces and some came down in many many many tiny
chunks.
Let me explain the plaster in this house. It is some kind of precursor to
drywall. Breeze called it Beaver Board. It is bands of precast plaster
about a foot wide and maybe as long as six or eight feet. They are
nailed, horizontally, to the studs. The seams between the boards are
plastered, then a heavy vinyl sheet, like wallpaper is glued over
everything.
Well, after ripping down the inner wall, I was able to gently pry off the
outer boards from the inside. They came off nicely, but were heavy as
hell.
I was then left with two 2X6 studs, on edge. I cut through them with a
hand saw at the tops. They were toe nailed into the nice hard wood floor
at the bottoms, with six nails in each stud.
I am going to build out the frame of the new wider opening so it stands
about three inches proud of the wall, then hang wooden, bi-fold doors.
After talking with a neighbor, I have decided to rip down the vinyl stuff
all over the room as well, and strip the paint from the trim. I would
like to remove as much of the lead based paint from the room as possible.
yes, ripping down the wall paper stuff, will throw some lead dust into the
air, but I will be sealing the room off from the rest of the house,
putting a box fan in the window, blowing out, wearing a full respirator,
and ripping up the carpeting when I am done. Plus washing down all the
walls before having it painted.
I've got three weeks before the little angel arrives. OK, I've got three
weeks before she is supposed to arrive, but they tell me it could happen
any day. I asked Teresa if she couldn't hold out until like February or
March. My black eye is heeling nicely.
--
Blue skies.
Dan Rossi
Carnegie Mellon University.
E-Mail: [email protected]
Tel: (412) 268-9081
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
