ORC 4: From Dry Walling to Walls Drying

I am officially panicking. In fact, I had three separate people tell me to calm down today. One was my husband, another was a stranger. I am very anxious.

Drywall

When I left you last week, we had just knocked out the old closet.

Early in the week, I bought a sheet of drywall, cut it into various sized pieces, and had my husband help me put it up.

Whoo hoo! I've never dealt with drywall before, so this has been quite the learning curve!

Turns out, I had to do it more than once. The first two strips of paper I put down came up. When I took them off to re-do, there wasn't any mud underneath at all! I had been so worried about over doing it--I under did it.

see those two tracks? That's where my tape had been. When I removed them there wasn't any mud underneath at all. I found out later that was because I had pressed too hard and too much when putting them on.

So, for the next coat, I officially and deliberately over did it. When I was done that coat I had ridges a full eighth of an inch think about four inches on the outside edges from my tape.

 This coat--the one with the tape and the mud is apparently the hardest and takes the most finesse. That's why there are professionals!

When I went back the next time, I feathered over those ridges and smoothed things out quite a distance all around. It took one more coat of mud, yet, before everything was smoothed to my satisfaction.

all ready for sanding!

Painting

I brought my husband and we boogied. We washed the walls and ceiling with TSP and then we primed the walls and ceiling with one coat of Killz Max. (Mom's a smoker. I thought it might decrease the smell. Water and latex paint will react with the nicotine in the walls and stink the place up.)

It dried in an hour--so after a quick run for more roller covers, I painted the first coat. I went back another day and finished up. Now we're just waiting for the walls to dry before we deal with the floor.

Flooring

Turns out we have no idea why the floor in the former closet area is not at the same height as the floor in the rest of the space. But, the renovations my Mom had done about 25 years ago were not done by competent people, obviously.

We are laying vinyl planks--so the floor has to be absolutely level. I'll be taking care of that with 3/4" ply and some pre-mixed leveling compound. Wish me luck.


Lighting

I figured out what we needed for lighting. Apparently there is more than one formula for determining the proper size.

This site advises figuring out the diagonal of the room in feet--and then using that number in inches to land on the proper diameter of a light fixture.

This site says all you need to do is add the width of the room to its length in feet and use that number in inches.

Our room is 5x13 feet--so the first method gives us 14 inches. The second 18 inches. That seems like a reasonable range.

As well, there's a calculation for the amount of light the room should have. That formula is L x W x 1.5 = total number of (incandescent equivalent) watts needed. So, our room should have the equivalent of 100 watts amongst all of its light sources. We will exceed that handily.

I've ordered this fixture from Lowe's. Fingers crossed it 1) gets here in time, 2) looks good in the room. It is 24 inches long which exceeds our guidelines above--but it's long--not round--and the shades seem so tiny.

source

The only thing is, I'm a little worried it won't be different enough from the track lighting we have in there now.

This is a contender at 20.75 inches in diameter.

As is this at 20 inches in diameter (though I am worried it may drop down too far).

I know--they are all so different! The lighting will really set the tone in here.

Punch List:

Empty out every last little thing

Take down remaining shelving

Tear down closet   

Repair dry wall and rebuild closet bit

Prep and paint walls 

Tear out carpet, underlay (padding), and staples.
Put in plywood for floor and level.

Lay down new flooring
Buy new light fixture(s)

Install new light fixture(s)
Sew window valence
Install drapery wall for privacy and doorway

Find a bench/make one
Cover the bench
Buy one pax wardrobe

Assemble 3 Pax Wardrobes

Install closet rod(s)

Install shoe shelves

Figure out Jewellery storage/display

Move clothes back in.

If you'd like to catch up:
Week 1: Creating a Dressing Room from Chaos
Week 2: Down and Out or is that Out and Down?
Week 3: Coming Out of the Closet, No Wait, that's the Closet Coming Out.

There are an awful lot of linking participants this year all busting it out across the internet. If you have time, check them out here.