Liz was gifted an old ironing board (it was in Najwa and Joe’s condo, and was something they were removing prior to their renovations). We’ve had it at our place for a while, and were finally in a place to install it this weekend.
I was a little bummed that with our recent house night, I only got the demo part of the flooring done. I was hoping to also install plywod to cover the gap, but ran out of time.
Today, though it wasn’t on my to-do list… I opted to suit up and put a little time in the office after work.
The house work ebbs and flows. Sometimes it’s just slow and we don’t get much done. And then there are nice moments like this, where the momentum is going and we get a solid patch of work finished in a single session.
There was some work to get some custom drywall pieces, sitting on top and going into the joists. The wall is a bit angled, so we did some fancy work with a laser level.
We had an 8×4 piece of plywood, that we wanted to use in this space. We tried a few different approaches (one involved folding a large piece of paper)… but ended up going with multiple pieces of cardboard.
Tonight, Liz had a solo evening in the office. She suited up after work, and was up and down the stairs a lot (refining a piece of wood on the chop saw, in the basement).
During her demo of the space in front of the fireplace, she put in a lot of supporting pieces (to bring the area flush with the floor joists). During this time, she realized that there was a gap in the far corner, behind the fireplace.
Things got a little challenging, as we’ve been filling up the floor here. See the piece of plywood near the bottom there, with the black X inside a rectangle? That space is 49″ wide. Which is 1″ wider than your standard 8’x4′ plywood board. A little maddening.
Today, we added some more drywall along the North window. But Liz also made a pretty custom piece, to fit the gap that we left. A shame gap, if you will.
Happy to report, it fit quite well. At least, well enough – since this whole thing is going to get covered in another 1/4″ layer of drywall.
Now let’s never speak of this again.
It always goes like this: it’s hard for us to work on the house. At the end of a work day, we’re both tired from our jobs… and the last thing we want to do is suit up for a few hours. On the weekends, all we want to do is lounge and relax, and it’s difficult to suit up and spend the day getting dirty.
But once we do – we get into a good rhythm. We get energized, and we get some momentum. And it makes suiting up the next time just a little easier.
With that other piece installed, we tried to shake off the ugliness of it. And Liz focused on yet another custom cut, to go near the top.
You would think that there might be some clerical update that could happen, that would just allow us to change things on paper. But you would be WRONG. To get a better monthly rate, we had to sign a new contract, and physically move our stuff, from one unit to another.
I cannot emphasize how dumb this is/was. I get it, to some degree. But the storage unit company seemed determined that I exercise, and haul each and every box to a new unit. And so that’s what we did today.
I wasn’t able to work on the house tonight. But Liz was undeterred, suited up, and started doing demo near the fireplace.
Liz, holding up one of the boards while I went running to get some screws.
Nothing super glamorous, but still exciting. Today, Liz and I put some time into the front office. With a lot of insulation down in the floor joists, we got to screwing down a first layer of plywood.
We’ve got several batts of soundproof insulation, just waiting to be put in. And with the work I did previously, we were a bit closer to install.