The wheel of the year continues to turn and for me, 2024 is not slowing down one bit. I have been working on something so huge, so exciting, and such a long time coming that I can not possibly jinx it by telling you about it now! So instead, I have to just give you a morsal of what I've been working on this past moon towards that goal.
I am a great starter of projects. Then I tend to run with them at a full sprint until I fall from exhaustion about 5 yards from the finish line. Usually it's from decision fatigue, my personal kryptonite (where my fire signs at?, whoop, whoop!) It is the opposite of procrastination, it is concrastination, a word I just made up, but feel free to use it. Besides growing my business and dabbling in homesteading, I've also been working on my pre-War fixer upper. And when I say fixer upper, I don't mean the lady with the shiplap, I mean the daunting hilarity of living in a house built outside the realm of pesky building codes and standardized measurements.
City life did not prepare me for home ownership. I can't just call the super to send some Eastern European to fix the AC when a tea bag gets jammed in the disposal. Annoyingly, I am now responsible for my own poor decisions. My toolbox for the past twenty years has been an empty Sam Adams Lager box, after all, the biggest home improvement job I had to tackle previously was hanging a picture or changing some blinds to get my security deposit back. Now I have to do shit that involves protective eye wear and extra dollar signs. Mostly it's been fun and you get to use power tools, but occasionally home fix its involve bugs (gross!), a big mess (bummer!), and a risk of electrocution (ouch!). Lucky for you, my next trick involves all three!
Some previous owners had built some type of enclosure for a Leviathan fridge, it was made from chicken wire and wood and it lived here when I first moved in. The fridge was long gone (guess, they should have used fridge wire!) and tearing that countryfied tetanus trap out was one of the first things I did. HOWEVER, they had cut into the ceramic tile of the floor and also repaired the drywall hole with literal cardboard. See it back there with the silver tape around it? Yep, house of cards people. Also, do you see the crusty little outline of the old fridge's house? And the water damage from an old water line to a fridge? The location is also directly in front of the breaker box to the house, so I don't understand how they got to the breakers with the thirsty starting linebacker of a fridge that lived here before. Also none of the breakers are labeled, so that's been cool, too.
Season 1 me wasn't prepared to deal with the many moving parts of this problem, so I parked my chest freezer in front of it and made due. Here is a close up what I call the old fridge's butt crack. I really really hate that the tile was cut like this. It's more than an inch wide and creates a wobble on anything that lives here. It also looks gross and harbors grime fugitives. The ultimate solution is that the floor has to be pulled up, the subflooring repaired (I've got some major slopes and unevenness in the kitchen) and a new floor put down, but that is a problem for future me (probably Season 10 me). For now I at least wanted to fill in the butt crack and make an even and clean surface to work with.
STEP 1 - watch a bunch of YouTube videos to build confidence. You want videos made by guys with dad bods wearing hi vis shirts. You do not want videos from professionals whose solution will always be to call a professional and dissolve your assets to pay them. While I respect a pro, I would need a Scrooge McDuck silo of gold coins to hire anyone to fix everything that needs attention in this charming fixer upper.
STEP 2 - go to Lowe's (only option where I live) and buy the stuff you need. I bought a partial sheet of drywall (about 2x2) and DAP. I also got a product called floor leveler and a primer I like to fix where the water damage was in the undercabinet. The total was a little under 50 bucks. For this project I used the pink stuff that dries white. I also used my impact driver, hammer, pry bar, a couple screws, a few shims, a block sander, steel wool, tape measurer and utility knife, but I already had those things. I had DAP as well but it was dried out because SOMEONE did not snap the lid down well enough. That someone was me. I also had bug sprays on hand because I was suspected I was going into a really bad neighborhood part of the house once I yanked back that janky cardboard stuck to the wall.
STEP 3 - demolition! Put on something to protect your peepers and cut away the damaged drywall with your utility knife. Or in my case, just tear the cardboard off and use your hands to dismantle your house like a Dothraki savage. If it feels soggy it's got to go. Make a tremendous mess in the middle of your floor.
I realized about 30 seconds into demolition that drywall has the same yuck texture that chalk and Styrofoam do. Gives me the instant ick. I put long gloves on but the rest of the project doubled as exposure therapy.
STEP 4 - neaten up the big hole you just made with the utility knife and clean up your enormous mess. Stomp around your kitchen in your long gloves yelling, "Get out of my laboratory, Dee Dee!"
You don't want a snaggletooth, Hillbilly hole, you want a squared off one that the new drywall will fit into snugly.
STEP 5 - cut your drywall piece to fit. If you press on drywall and it wiggles, it isn't secured to anything underneath. I lucked out in that there was existing house to attach the new drywall too. I popped out some really old rusty off nails that were sticking out. If the ancient nail heads start popping off like mine did, just pound them in flat. You don't want them poking into the new drywall and tearing it up.
I put my drywall on the counter, scored one side, flipped it and scored the other and then gave a loud karate chop yell and Chuck Norrised the excess off. It was very satisfying.
STEP 6 - pop that bad boy into the space and secure it with some screws. If you have to go back and forth a few times to make it work, that's ok. You aren't getting paid by the hour. You aren't getting paid at all!
Basically the spinal column to the entire house is behind this panel so I was careful about where I drilled. I used my DeWalt impact driver, which is best thing ever made. I built my whole fence with it. I finally coughed up the 10 measly bucks for a pack of DeWalt T26 attachments since that's the only type of screws I use if I can help it. Money well spent.
STEP 7 - use the DAP to marry the new drywall to the existing drywall. Don't worry about doing it perfectly because you will sand off the excess later, but make sure you get it stuck really well. Use a plastic putty knife and resist the urge to just use your hands. It's sticky and does not work like frosting no matter how much it looks like it. Ask me how I know.
Now is the hard part. Waiting. But I had plenty enough mess to clean up. I let the DAP dry overnight. While I was waiting, I cleaned out the old fridge butt crack (when will I ever get to write that again?) and I followed the directions on the floor leveler. It works very similarly to the DAP but it's got a bit of a gritty texture to it. You can only apply about 1/4 inch at a time or it won't dry properly. The sea floor crevasse in my kitchen floor took multiple rounds and I worked neatly because this stuff will not sand off. I ended up using some shims and even some steel wool to jam into the deepest abysses. We call it Kentucky windage where I'm from. Just adjust fire as needed until it works, baby.
This is what it looked like after everything was dry. Then I sanded off the excess wall compound with the block sander and sealed the joint along the floor with silicon to prevent Buggy McBuggersons from setting up shop. I still have to paint and you can see my lil drywall dust fingerprints on the back wall.
It's been raining and the thought of painting with the critters trapped inside with nothing to do but be needy and make adorable tracks through wet paint has deterred me for now. That is a task for another day. As far as leveling the floor and putting a wall where a cardboard shanty once was, I'm happy with the results and I feel much more confident making drywall repairs because it really wasn't that bad and once it's painted over it should blend right in.
Drywall jobs can run upwards of $350 an hour which is what the "pro" who did this epic previous repair charged. I especially like the way you can see the tape right through the paint.
Remember that the difference between a pro and an amateur is that a pro has failed more. So happy failing, friends!