Moving and Improving - Part 21 - Doggie Door

The mudroom is also going to be home to the cats food and litter so we needed to have a way for them to get from the house into the mudroom, so we purchased the appropriate sized pet door for the size of the cats. In this case, it was a dog door. Erm...a medium sized dog door.We also killed the TV which was rather fun and involved a couple of phone calls to Direct to figure out what to do with the dish. The answer is nothing. All the same, from my perspective, it had to come down.

Moving and Improving - Part 20 - Reduce, Re-use, Recycle

First, we grouted, then we locked ourselves out of the mudroom again and ticked more items off the "while drying" list.

At the top of the list was putting together the compost bins we've been thinking about for some time. We wanted to do a dual bin system so that we could add to one and then stop and let it decompose properly for (hopefully) next year some time, fingers twisted for spring, but more likely fall or even next spring. Since we're a two person household and we won't be adding the normal household green matter (grass clippings) it will be a stretch to have a fully mature compost quickly.What I like best about it, is that it enables us to reduce our garbage pick-up. I signed us up for once a month. We get once a month garbage and bi-weekly recycling and it thrills me (almost as much as toilets).
What Joe likes best about it is that all the materials we've poured into this project were re-used (with the exception of some of the hardware-screws, and the base of the bins, which falls in the kinda sorta category of having been leftover from the picnic table). The majority of the wood was broken down from hop pallets that Joe saved from the landfill and fencing material.

We have two more pallets yet to break down to create lids (which we're going to put hinges on for ease of use) and the front will go up as slats as we fill the bins and stir them. YEAH!While Joe assembled the bins, I made progress on clearing the mess in the compost area.

Before:
After:

It's a nice little gated area that can be closed if we wanted. We relocated the wood pile there for now. The window resting next to the pallets is another acquisition from the re-building center and will become the top lid for a cloche for early spring seedlings. Still have to build it, but I think it will do well in this sunny spot and right next to the compost.

Moving and Improving - Part 19 - The many faces of the pantry.

It was a laundry closet.
Then it was a closet with an ugly cabinet.

After that, it was just an ugly closet (with a bald spot).
Since the whole closet was not adorned with the beautiful wallpaper, we decided it all had to go.
So the closet remained a closet for a little while longer while we peeled it...So it was dried glue walls for a bit.
And then, I discovered that liberal amounts of soap and hot water applied with a sponge removed the glue and if the excess goo was washed intermittently with a clean rag, it became a white room.
Not white enough though. I gave it some spackle and a coat of white paint that I found in the garage while we decided how to proceed.

Excess paint in the garage, but not enough to do much with except paint a small room...
Shelves!!
And then it was a pantry.

Moving and Improving - Part 18 - ...then we'll quickly lay the tile...

After insuring the best dust free environment we could, we put down the adhesive and tile. It took eight hours...and included a trip to the hardware store for more adhesive.It might have gone quicker, but we were doing our best not to repeat the errors from the bathroom tile. (Which required me to take up six of the tiles from the bathroom and re-set them - after a long day of tiling the mudroom).Another problem we experienced with the bathroom was that people needed to use it, and therefore were walking on the tile before it had time to properly set. So we shut the door on the mudroom for 24 hours and did some more projects from our "drying time" list.

Moving and Improving - Part 17 - Dust

Having heard about the joys of drywall from Michelle and Andy, I was prepared for dust. Perhaps not quite this much though.

I really wanted to take the broom to the task of cleaning up and amass one large pile of dust for a photo, but to reduce the amount of particulate in the air, the vacuum got the job.

After the third and final sanding:

Moving and Improving - Part 16 - The waiting game

I felt a bit like watching the kettle with the drywall mud. I thought it would dry faster so we could move on...not so. Instead we re-visited the remains of our "to do" list to find tasks that we could undertake while we waited for various things to dry.
While waiting for the mud to dry Joe used our new ladder to make some repairs on the roof, we moved the washer and dryer into the kitchen and planned and built a stair for the entrance to the mudroom. Is it a stair if it's just one? I think we put more planning and effort into the stair then was entirely necessary, however, it's a firm step and proud.
That's me trapped in the former laundry room with the washer. It's heavier than it looks, and we had the added pleasure of moving the fridge to get it through the path.
Temporary location, displacing the kitchen table and later becoming a workbench for electrical.

Moving and Improving - Part 15 - Drywall and some locals

The night after our exciting foray into do it yourself electrical we decided to seek out some diy guidance from...you tube. I would never have thought to look there, but Chris recommended it. So after a long hot day, we settled down with a couple of beers and watched a few very helpful streaming drywall videos. Thrilling, I know.

The following morning I sought to make best use of our drywall and sat down with my coffee to make plans on how to make cuts that would enable us to use it most efficiently. While I sipped my coffee in the sun, I was treated to the sight of a mother squirrel moving her babies from somewhere beyond our gate/fence into the front stand of bushes in the neighbors yard. We sat planning and trying to make our presence as small as possible and she moved 4 babies while we plotted our soon to be walls.

Then we cut and hung the walls. Which is to say, we spent the rest of the day making proper walls for the mudroom. Just before midnight we completed the taping and threw up the first layer of mud.

In cutting out the holes for the outlets, a bee became interested and died in pursuit.

Our first hanging of drywall:


Enclosed!
Yellow adhesive drywall tape. Priceless.

Moving and Improving - Part 14 - The attic has a separate weather system

This day Joe and I both spent some quality time in the attic. We were about to the point of putting up walls and wanted to make sure that we had done everything behind the walls that needed to be done.

To complicate things tremendously, we discovered that we had not planned for a light switch going into the mudroom from the garage. So with unfounded confidence we struck a plan for installing one.

We each in turn had a project in the attic that day, Joe was already familiar with the subtropical heat of the attic, having worked on all the other wiring with Jim, so he took it upon himself to do the work up there. Joe also experienced the first shower of stars, as well as a brief thunderstorm in our little contained weather system. With electrical, rubber gloves are a must. Rubber handled wire cutters are also handy when you learn that cutting a live wire is more than a little shocking (it will actually blow a hole through them).

After all the effort, we realized we knew nothing about wiring and I made the trip into the tropical weather to take it all apart.