In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2)
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Friday, September 11, 2026 15:29
VIEWED: 338648
PAGE 720 of 834
Boy.... With all the paint I have around here, I didn't think that the possibility of running out of paint is something I'd have to consider. I am using the same paint/color that I used to paint the huge shelving units out in the shed a few years back to do the vanity and the two cabinets.
I haven't even started painting the medicine cabinet body or the shelf/towel rack since they require some pretty intricate hand sanding first and I haven't gotten to that yet.
I've done 3 coats inside the vanity. 2 on the outside of the vanity. 2 coats inside and out on the over-the-toilet cabinet. One coat on the front of all the drawers, doors and shelves, and 2 on the back sides. When I looked at what remains in that can though, I'm wondering if I'm going to make it or not. I think I have maybe a quart left. I wish I paid attention to how much I had when I started, but I don't remember.
I should be good, but I think until I know I will probably only do those two coats on the insides, and only do 3 coats on the outside of the rest of the pieces. I still need to do one coat on the outside of the vanity too, and although it's not a ton of surface area, that side is going to take a pretty good chunk out of what is left.
Oh well... It's not the end of the world if I don't make it. I don't like buying paint when it's not on sale, and it kills me to waste money on quart prices, but I'll probably just buy another quart if I need one. Then I'll have a smaller bucket for touch ups down the road than I would now.
A large part of my dehoarding is going to be getting this house finished. So much crap taking up space in the garage and basement that won't be taking up any space at all when they're finally part of the house.
The best part of taking your time working on it the way I have is bumping into all of those sales along the way, getting good stuff that other people are getting rid of, and ultimately doing this stuff for a pittance compared to what you'd pay somebody else to do it between the free labor and the steep discounts. But when you've already got hoarding tenancies you're always fighting against, having all that stuff on hand and just taking up space for years doesn't really help with your mental well-being.
I've got enough paint on hand to do the whole house twice. Time to start getting everything put together so I can throw out what's left that I don't need.
I'll bet if this house was finished, 60% of those modular shelves I built in the garage would be empty and there would be nothing on the floor right now.
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Of to hearing test tomorrow. Suppose to get some rain.
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I believe my painting skills have leveled up again since the last time I was keeping score. It only occurred to me earlier today that with all of this painting I've been doing, there hasn't been a single stray drip of paint anywhere. Not that it was a chronic problem in the past, but certainly by now I would have noticed one stray drip on or around things like the raised panels, or inside the toilet cabinet around the corners.
Really, this time I think it's just patience. It seems like a pretty big job right now, but compared to when I was doing all those kitchen cabinets, this is nothing. I'm not putting anywhere near the amount of paint on my brush, and learning from prior mistakes I've made, I'm being certain to just take a second or two after each edge is done to feather the brush underneath to smooth out any paint that may have gone further on the other side than I intended. (Basically, all of the edges of doors and drawer faces get painted twice as much, as when I paint either side I also hit the edges).
These things look like I spray painted them. 
I have a bit of an update. I really need to get my camera situation fixed again while I'm doing all this other stuff, because the one I'm using now is a piece of crap compared to the old one, and I just noticed how off the colors are from real life.
This is a pic I snapped from the outside under the basin to show all the daylight that you could see through it (I put my bright lights in the cab before taking it).
The other day I took the time to cut the cabinet trim to size and dry fit it before painting it. Incidentally, when I snapped this photo the sun was blaring right in the bathroom and this is probably the most accurate depiction of the finish paint color, although it's a tad too blue here...
A picture from when I wrapped up last night.
And here's a few with the drawer slides and the backs of the drawers back in the unit.
Just waiting on a few more coats of paint for the fronts of the drawers and the door and that will be done.
And the really cool thing is that I've already got more of those oil-rubbed bronze knobs for the 2 of the 3 drawers that need them to replace those old chrome ones, and the even cooler thing is that the mostly-hidden hinges for the door are so so dark that nobody is going to notice that I didn't take the time to spray paint them to match.
What a difference a few days makes, huh?
Yeah.....
One way or another I have to get a better camera for taking pictures. I need to get a few when it's finished that show the wood grain and all the details that are missing from these photos.
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I know at the end of the day nobody in the world would ever notice this, but I love looking at these two pics side-by-side...
You only see cabinet interiors and closets like mine in mansions or in OCD perfectionist DIY enthusiasts' houses.
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If I'm doing anything else tonight, it's washing the walls and the ceiling in the bathroom.
I tried thinking of anything else I could do right now that wasn't that, but everything else is either opening another can of worms, or doing jobs I really don't feel like doing at the moment. Like patching and caulking all this trim I've been putting up everywhere. I hate caulking. I really have to be in the mood to do a half day's worth of that.
The good news for the bathroom walls is that I don't have to bother yanking out those wall anchors that were in there for the towel bars because the incoming cabinet is wider than their footprint, so when I start priming I don't have to worry about those being pulled and patched. The bad news is that I'll have to patch the small shelf I've had up there for my razor though after taking that down. The worse news is that I'll have to find out where the studs are for that toilet cabinet because it is so heavy and will need some beefy screws going right into them on center. And with these thick walls it will probably have to be done by putting holes in the wall. But again, that will be covered up. And I do know where a stud several down the line is located because of the hole in the wall for pipes in the cabinet, so if they actually framed the house out right, I might be able to find them without any damage.
I'm actually stuck waiting for another 12 or so hours on the computer project now. I didn't realize that until just a few minutes ago. While that image is being compressed and archived, that PC is basically useless for anything else. And my massive drive starts to flake out sometimes if the machine is bogged down too hard, which would destroy everything that it's done up to this point and I'd have to start over again.
I don't want to be making changes to my own personal setup, but I have a plan for a more personal and customized one that would be for anybody I know. I didn't have the option to work on that before, but now with the power of clones I will. And now that I'm happy with my own setup I can clone that and back up that entire clone image in two spots, while also removing the entire filesystem backup I had in place before I started cloning things.
Space is getting somewhat tight at the moment, but once I have all of this figured out and have the various computers doing what all want them to, I'm going to be able to eliminate large swaths of my digital hoard in a way I never thought I could before.
It just occurred to me as I'm writing this that when I made that successful clone today, I didn't just successfully move all of my work from one drive to another...
I just proved to myself that I could make one single file as a backup instead of hundreds of thousands of files. As long as I have that one single file backed up in several places and ready to clone at any time, I have no need for any of those files anymore on an individual level. I essentially turned nearly 3 quarters of a million files and over 20 years worth of work into a single file.
Wow...
This has been a rather cathartic moment for me.
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Glad I didn't stay up until the archive was finished. 12 hours my ass.
Still got about 2 hours left on that before I can do any more work on the computers, and even then it will only be to clone another drive for another 8 or so hours before I can do anything else. One of these days I'll have newer/faster tech, and I probably won't be doing anything like this where I would need it.
2nd coat painted on the faces of the drawers and doors. One more quick coat and a little drying time and I'll be able to get all the drawers up. Might wait a while longer on the door to dry. Unfortunately, that big door for the vanity is so heavy it's doing what some of the larger kitchen cabinets doors did and is putting a very unsightly ring on the paint job from the paint buckets I have elevating the pieces. 2 coats should be fine for the back of the drawers, but I believe I'll hang the door and hit the inside with one final coat of paint to eliminate the ring that I'm sure is forming there now. The only way to avoid that completely with the tools I have is to wait another 2 or so days before flipping pieces over, but this project is already taking long enough as it is. It'll be fine.
Hopefully I'll have the vanity all wrapped up before I go to bed tonight.
Right now I'm going to put the 3rd and final coat on the toilet cabinet (the doors are being painted with the vanity). And after I get all the vanity stuff put back together I'll have room to do more stuff downstairs on my horses, so I'm going to have to get my ass back outside to sand down those final pieces for the bathroom and the louvered bi-fold closet door.
I'm going to have to see if I have any more tracks for bi-folds out in the garage. I can't recall now if they were even there in the small bedroom when I moved in, so I may not even have any tracks for them. I'm fairly confident that the louvered door was something I got from my friend a few years ago, and I'm not entirely sure that the other one that hasn't been painted yet came with the house either. There may have not even been closet doors in that room, to be honest.
Hopefully my friend has some tracks out in his garage or they're not stupid expensive.
Gotta start making a list of what I need to buy. Possibly those tracks. Some wood filler. Rustoleum metallic oil rubbed bronze spray paint for the hardware that isn't being replaced. And probably some dap too. I think the old canister of it I had went bad. I could use Plus3, but there's a little too much water in that for patching up brad nail holes in wood and it would leave dimples under the paint job. I'll just buy a small container of it even though they really screw you hard on the price for the small ones.
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Over the Toilet Cabinet paint finished. Final coat of paint going on the faces, imminently.
It's still early enough that I should be able to get the faces installed on the drawers before it gets dark outside.
I think I'm going to go down and find my TSP now and finally get to washing the walls and ceiling down for primer. Get everything primed so I can better see what still needs to be repaired before paint goes up.
Don't want to get too ahead of myself there though, since I need to take out that medicine cab and light to see what my electrical situation is back there and figure how much work I have ahead of me to get that done. Might be making some heavy wall damage to get 'er done if the outlook isn't good. Finger's crossed.
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All done for today.
Audiologist had to repair my hearing aides. The wiring had to be replaced. Level is fine. Right ear still taking a dip but not drastic, left one is still going off the table. Speech is holding its own which is good.
Finally had coffee and lunch with the lady that used to come in a look after my mum. We met at 11:30am and I got in around 4pm. My throat's a little scratchy from talking so much. We talk about all kinds of stuff.
She keeps trying to spoil me. I let her buy me a sweater from a clothing store in the local mall that is going out. That was only $10 that's why I let her. Then in the Walmart I noticed that my running shoes are starting to develop a hole in one and I know she would have bought me a new pair but I couldn't let her do that. Besides it takes me a few minutes to find shoes that will fit me. I have flat feet and so does she. So, she's in the same boat I am. She did a bit of grocery shopping in the Walmart. Mostly junk food which included a lemon meringue pie. Along with her stuff was a Hershey's dark chocolate bar for me.
She is a lovely lady and we both agreed to do it again. When I don't know.
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How about next month?
Sounds like you had a good time.
I don't blame you for not wanting friends to spoil you. Back to that "who owes who" thing we were talking about a while back. Even with friends, I think it can become too lopsided if you let the little things add up.
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Yup... The one of the previous owners really screwed me on the electric here.
Not only did they use greenfield behind the walls, but instead of having that go to any sort of junction box, they let it just fall somewhere behind the medicine cabinet, and then they attached wires from the abrupt termination up to the light, so I've got about 2 1/2 feet of unprotected wire rising up to the vanity lights almost 180 degrees from the drooping greenfield with a sharp edge.
MORONS.
The really weird thing here is that it's a double wall. There are two frames, back to back. What I mean is that the studs for the bedroom on the other side are a completely different set of studs for the walls in the bathroom. The good news from that is once I make an opening where I want my electric for the over-the-toilet cabinet, I should easily be able to fish some loaded greenfield behind that and pull it out of the opening so I can get it attached to a junction box designed to attach to the drywall, so running electric through the back wall where I want it shouldn't be a problem.
Until I get the light off, which I'm not doing today, I won't really be able to develop a full plan on what to do. I'm hoping that the greenfield is in there REALLY loose. If that's the case, I should be able to run new greenfield with all the proper wiring in there and use the old one to "fish" it all through. I'd just better make damn sure to attach them together solid or I'll risk losing the new one as I pull the old one through and then I'm in a world of hurt. At that point I'll be destroying so much stuff and making such a mess that I might as well just open up the ceiling to get a vent fan up there.
I'm fuckin' lucky the damn house hasn't burnt down yet. It never ceases to amaze me how much more terrifying this house gets every time I look behind the walls.
I also got slowed down quite a bit because one of the screws holding in the medicine cabinet was completely stripped. After trying a few responsible ways to remove it without any effect, I went into Hulk Rage mode and ripped the goddammned thing right out of the wall. Fortunately, the mirror that I had no way of detaching first didn't break when I did that.
My bathroom is also home to the worst caulking job I've ever seen in my life. They put these vinyl "edger" things to deliniate the shower from the rest of the bathroom walls. The caulk job in the shower to the vinyl walls isn't bad, but I don't know what the hell they were doing on the outside. They used about 3 times as much as they should have, then it looks like they may have tried to clean it up but realized that wasn't working out well with silicon caulk and they gave up. It's simply horrible.
I spent probably an hour trying to sand it down by hand, but if I keep doing that I'll be doing that for 20 hours before its done. I'm probably better off cutting it all of and doing it again the right way. I'm just afraid I'll find out the reason they put that much on there is because nothing fit right and it will just be another damn project I have to do because Uncle Bob is was a drunk idiot.
I can't paint anything in there yet. I don't even want to do primer yet. There's just too much that needs to be repaired before I do. I'll get that caulk and any high spots rounded down before primer goes up.
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