No Task List Needed

At various times over the course of this project I've maintained project plans, to-do lists, punch lists, spreadsheets, you name it.  I'll be cooking up another one soon I'm sure, but over the past few days, all I had to do was turn around and another task was begging for attention, so I started knocking them off one by one.

The vent box got three coats of poly-urethane along with the wainscoating and trim in the upstairs bathroom.  The woodwork there was left unfinished for a while.  Clear-coating surfaces can be tricky because it's not always easy to see which areas you've covered while you're working, especially during the first coat which gets quickly soaked into the wood.

One thing that's important to remember when clear-coating is not to shake the can when mixing.  This stuff should be treated the opposite of a James Bond Martini: stirred not shaken.  And when stirring, be careful not to introduce air bubbles into the mix.  You'll be sorry if those tiny bubbles appear on the newly finished surface.

After completing the wood finishing, it was time to install some shelves in the boy's closet.  These Closetmaid wire shelves came by way of a neighbor who was re-modeling them out of their house and into ours.  This task was pretty straight-forward: (a) use a tape measure and a level to mark the walls where the shelf anchors will go, (b) drill holes for the hollow wall anchors, (c) insert the anchors and then mount the shelves.

Hollow wall anchors always make me nervous.  I guess I've had the experience of hollow wall anchor disasters enough that I'm always expecting the worst. More than once I've drilled a hole that's too small for the anchor only to correct it by making a hole too big and having to either patch the hole or drive 10 miles to the hardware store for a larger size anchor.  This recent wall anchor assignment went ok.

With the shelves mounted it was time to work on the leaky shower head in the downstairs bath.  I re-installed the original shower head because the plastic, chrome painted head/bracket for our hand-held wand had developed a small crack.  Until I can find a suitable replacement for the cheap plastic thingy we'll have to live with conventional showers sans massage.

Then, in the master bedroom I installed a shade for the skylight.  The shade is made especially for the Velux window.  It sat in the box for over a year since I installed the window.  Don't ask me why.  I'm not sure how often we'll use it because we've come to like having the window unshaded all the time.  I suppose there may be an afternoon when we'll want a darkened room.

And if all that wasn't enough, I started in on painting the upstairs bathroom.  If all goes well this week, that could become the first completed room in the renovation project.  All the other rooms still need window and door trim at the least.

One of the problems with lists is having to face the reality of the work ahead.  That may be why I haven't kept my lists up to date.  All I have to do, though, is take a look around and there's a project waiting completion.

handyman

Comments

[Jennifer]

Wow! You did a lot! Puts me to shame. Good job!